It's definitely a concern as a policy and culture point, though. Currently people who replace a civic with a prius are considered environmentally friendly while those who replace their F-150 with a new one that gets 2x the gas mileage are considered assholes. It turns out that perhaps this attitude isn't actually that green.
Similarly, setting minimum fuel standards could be more effective than setting average fuel standards in reducing consumption.
I'd say most are comfortable in a "I know what a meter is" sort of way, but not in a "I know how many kilometers it is to Georgetown" sort of way. All of your mental estimates - how tall is an average person, how much does a car weight, how much can I drink, how much flour in a recipe - would need to be readjusted.
And of course just how fricking expensive it would be to actually make the switch.
Really, aside from the scientific benefits (which, all science in the US is already done in metric), and being able to use the same socket wrenches on my ford f-150 as on my honda, what is the real benefit to switching? I wonder how much money is lost having to make separate bottles labeled in gallons and meters... but it doesn't seem as though it's as much as would be lost re-tooling machining equipments and rewriting software (not to mention replacing all the road signs) just to be consistent with people on the other side of the world.
The whole article is about how much you save compared to your previous car. Yes, it's obviously better to drive a 30 mpg car than a 20 mpg car... but that doesn't mean it's better to replace that car with a 50mpg car than it is to get all of the 10 mpg cars off the road. If we never sold a single car that got more than 40 mpg, but we upgraded our truck fleet average from 10 mpg to 20 mpg, the country as a whole would be using much less gas.
It also shows why hybrids have always been a horrible buy if you're just trying to save money. I can get a compact that gets 40 mpg for $5k-10k less than a prius. Hell, I can get a car that actually has good handling, 0-60 in less than 7 seconds and still gets over 30 mpg for less than the cost of a prius, and the prius will only save me a couple hundred a year in gas. It's never been worth it.
By the way, I was in no way disagreeing that cops should be videotaped. I think these anti-videotaping legislation is *complete* bullshit. Just countering the guy who seemed to be implying all US cops, and to a degree only US cops, suck.
I'd imagine that most libertarians support federal powers that protect individual rights. No one wants states to run all over individual rights, either.
So, yes, the federal government should jump in when state governments are infringing on essential human rights (like, for say, slavery) but they should stay out of most everything else.
I find that most people in general don't think their political principles through.
True. The majority of the time, though, it's because people are going > 10 mph over the speed limit or changing lanes dramatically. Anything under 10 mph on a freeway doesn't put points on your license, so most freeway cops ignore it.
Or so say the majority of traffic cops I've talked to.
Wow, look like a productive, law-abiding member of society and you get treated like one, what a crazy idea. My black co-worker who also dresses nicely and is polite doesn't exactly get her car searched all the time, either.
Not saying there isn't a massive problem with the militarization of the police in the drug war, or the way we police our racial and economic underclasses, or even with just pure old fashioned corruption. But Christ, there are over a million police officers in the US - calling them all corrupt assholes isn't going to get you anywhere, it's just going to make them want to kick your ass.
Oh, I agree with you - I drive a fast car, speed everywhere I go, and have never caused an accident. I go to race driving classes.
That doesn't change the law, though, and if the grandmothers who vote all decided we should have speed limits, that's what's legal. That's what I meant by legitimate - I was breaking the law, and they pulled me over for it. It's their job, even if I disagree with the law.
It could be argued that this simple, stupid, easily exploitable social knowledge is the basic building block of human cultural evolution. What is any of our culture but rules we can learn without having to know the specific reasons they exist?
Yes, and I'm sure we tell on all of our friends as well, and report every guy in our department who watches youtube videos when he should be working, or is running a server on the side, or who looks through people's pictures on their PC's when they bring them in for support.
It's not the same degree, because most people in non-police jobs don't deal with the same seriousness of situations, but the impulse is *entirely* human nature.
Not saying it's good, not saying excusable - I'm saying it's expected, it's how we're wired.
Also, I assure you that most cops just want to get home at the end of the day and *not* mix themselves up in the attention they would get from standing up and ratting someone out. You're throwing a lot away in any career being a whistleblower, and most people care much more about their paycheck and their pension and just getting on through life than standing up for some guy they don't even know, who very likely could have been a guilty asshole instead of an unlucky innocent.
Now, do I think we should have policies that encourage keeping police officers accountable, respecting rights, and having competent responsive management? Hell yes. That doesn't mean that *encouraging* the sort of us versus them mentality you rail against in the Blue Code of Silence is going to do anything productive, though. If the good cops still get shat on by the people they are serving what reason would they have to break against social pressure to get the bad cops?
I really honestly hope this isn't why, but I'm willing to believe it's possible. I also dress well and speak clear English.
That said, I wasn't exactly an asshole to the cops, either, and I hear that helps. And in many of these video-taping the cop incidents the defendant is white, too.
I'd say it's even broader than that - give someone a goal and they will try to accomplish it, to the point of losing all perspective of why they were given that goal to begin with.
If your goal is to catch criminals (which is only part of the larger goal of maintaining the peace, but the part you deal with), it's human nature to be frustrated at everything that keeps you from doing that, including to a large extent our constitutional protections.
I've been completely happy with my interactions with cops here in the US. Every time I've been pulled over (for legitimate speeding) the cop was polite and nice, didn't throw his authority around. Another time one helped me catch a neighbor's horse that had gotten loose.
The problem is not that cops are bad guys, any more than anyone else is a bad guy. The problem is that they have an enhanced ability to be a bad guy and get away with it.
I came to a very odd realization the other day - I have no idea what an Indian "jock" looks like. There are certain countries where the vast majority of immigrants to the US are in technical fields - engineering, computer science, you name it, and India is definitely one of these, at least in my part of the country. It's very easy to end up with a warped image of a whole culture if you're only exposed to such a small subset of it - I'd never use my CS classes as a representative cross section of white America.
Sometimes I wonder with tort whether the perception of ridiculous lawsuits is as important as their actual existence.
I have read studies in several legal journals showing that awards and numbers of ridiculous cases have not actually gone up significantly in the last twenty years, but people just feel they have because every crazy case someone files gets on national news. Or you hear the reward without hearing the real details of the case (see the infamous McDonald's coffee suit). However...
There is no denying that liability is much more in the forefront of everyone's minds. There are more waivers to sign at every vaguely dangerous event I've been to, and everyone talks about all the stuff they used to do but that insurance now requires them to for liability purposes. Just look at children's playground equipment. And everyone says "oh, that makes sense, because people sue for any crazy thing nowadays." Surveys for CEO's show that they definitely feel they have to consider it more on all actions.
I've spoken with multiple doctors who say that they over-treat and over-diagnose symptoms (sometimes to the tune of thousands of dollars - paid for by insurance, of course) because they want to cover their own ass against liability. Everyone's terrified of malpractice suits and acts accordingly.
So the end result is the same restrictions as if people were actually successfully litigating anything, whether it's happening or not...
If they're polling college kids - nearly every scholarship not directly tied to a test score requires community service. It also looks very cool on college applications.
Somehow none of the companies I've applied for have asked about it, though....
I haven't done charity work since college. I will however immediately drop everything if my neighbor/person whose car broke down in front of me/friend/family needs a hand. Wonder where their test puts me.
I'd actually be fairly happy if that's how it works. Remember, though, that Diablo II and WC3 are both pretty old games now. I'm pretty sure for D2 you just entered the code off the cd case and called it a day.
Your analogy is flawed. This is more akin to taxing the amish to pay for roads that don't allow buggies on them.
Also, it's not an unusual occurrence at all to have ISP's fail or delay when you move houses.
The consume gains *nothing* from online activation save the fact that it is slightly less odious that other DRM schemes. You still receive a better product by stealing the damn thing.
Now, online activation for online play? Completely fair. It's the online activation for single player games that gets me. A large part of the reason for a single player game is to play when you do not have net access... I'm not upset that I can't play World of Warcraft offline, I'm pissed because I can't play a primarily single player game without calling home to their server and asking permission first.
Also, I bought the orange box in a store, and had even activated and played it previously, but apparently not recently enough for their online activation.
It makes sense when you realize that the "clean" janitor screams at you for an hour if you miss the waste basket and introduces a charge to use the bathroom to keep people from making a mess. Oh, and somehow the place doesn't really look any cleaner...
Beyond the basic "what makes you think people who want to run everything will therefore be good at it" question, you big government types need to remember that no matter what you do, the giant rambling apparatus you create *will* later be driven by someone who completely disagrees with you. The benevolent dictator idea only really works when you've got a perfect system for choosing dictators.
Yes, it isn't an inconvenience at *all* to have to haul my giant gaming PC to someone else's house just to install my new game.
What about people who just moved? What about people on a vacation? What if you installed it at a lan party that doesn't have general internet access?
I've been stuck for over a month waiting for the damn ISP to get my account set up and working again. I had planned to use that time to play Half Life 2, but hey, offline mode requires that you've activated online first.
It doesn't affect the majority of users in the majority of situations, I get that. But a significant minority get screwed by it, and get their enjoyment of their purchase *significantly* delayed. For those of us who have to ration their video game time carefully to fit into real life, having the nice block of free time you set aside to enjoy a game get blown to pieces can really sour you on a game. I still hate steam for that month of not being able to play Half life 2 *single player*.
Who never highlighted or made margin notes in any of my books in college? I never saw the point, really, if I was going to study pieces of a chapter I'd go download the professor's lecture notes... I don't even really remember having the book open during class - I just brought it in case someone started referencing a problem or a diagram. In any case, it's always felt weird to me to mark up a book...
Still sounds like the kindle would suck as a textbook for many things just because of the lack of color and the slowness of page changes, but personally the other "issues" wouldn't affect me at all.
So take your punishment like a man and take it again if the bully still doesn't leave you alone.
It takes a lot of punishments in high school to actually keep you out of a decent college. Aside from that, they don't mean jack. Part of growing up is realizing that the only power a school actually has over you is your final diploma. As long as you can still get that with enough of a GPA to go to a decent state school, fuck 'em and don't worry about what they think.
Slashdot Mirror
The real problem is going to be "does it run *this* app". It's the same problem macs have had for years.
There are plenty of great programs on Android, but the game selection especially is nowhere close to as good as on the iOS devices.
It's definitely a concern as a policy and culture point, though. Currently people who replace a civic with a prius are considered environmentally friendly while those who replace their F-150 with a new one that gets 2x the gas mileage are considered assholes. It turns out that perhaps this attitude isn't actually that green.
Similarly, setting minimum fuel standards could be more effective than setting average fuel standards in reducing consumption.
I'd say most are comfortable in a "I know what a meter is" sort of way, but not in a "I know how many kilometers it is to Georgetown" sort of way. All of your mental estimates - how tall is an average person, how much does a car weight, how much can I drink, how much flour in a recipe - would need to be readjusted.
And of course just how fricking expensive it would be to actually make the switch.
Really, aside from the scientific benefits (which, all science in the US is already done in metric), and being able to use the same socket wrenches on my ford f-150 as on my honda, what is the real benefit to switching? I wonder how much money is lost having to make separate bottles labeled in gallons and meters... but it doesn't seem as though it's as much as would be lost re-tooling machining equipments and rewriting software (not to mention replacing all the road signs) just to be consistent with people on the other side of the world.
Is there a mod for -1 wrong?
The whole article is about how much you save compared to your previous car. Yes, it's obviously better to drive a 30 mpg car than a 20 mpg car... but that doesn't mean it's better to replace that car with a 50mpg car than it is to get all of the 10 mpg cars off the road. If we never sold a single car that got more than 40 mpg, but we upgraded our truck fleet average from 10 mpg to 20 mpg, the country as a whole would be using much less gas.
It also shows why hybrids have always been a horrible buy if you're just trying to save money. I can get a compact that gets 40 mpg for $5k-10k less than a prius. Hell, I can get a car that actually has good handling, 0-60 in less than 7 seconds and still gets over 30 mpg for less than the cost of a prius, and the prius will only save me a couple hundred a year in gas. It's never been worth it.
By the way, I was in no way disagreeing that cops should be videotaped. I think these anti-videotaping legislation is *complete* bullshit. Just countering the guy who seemed to be implying all US cops, and to a degree only US cops, suck.
I'd imagine that most libertarians support federal powers that protect individual rights. No one wants states to run all over individual rights, either.
So, yes, the federal government should jump in when state governments are infringing on essential human rights (like, for say, slavery) but they should stay out of most everything else.
I find that most people in general don't think their political principles through.
True. The majority of the time, though, it's because people are going > 10 mph over the speed limit or changing lanes dramatically. Anything under 10 mph on a freeway doesn't put points on your license, so most freeway cops ignore it.
Or so say the majority of traffic cops I've talked to.
Wow, look like a productive, law-abiding member of society and you get treated like one, what a crazy idea. My black co-worker who also dresses nicely and is polite doesn't exactly get her car searched all the time, either.
Not saying there isn't a massive problem with the militarization of the police in the drug war, or the way we police our racial and economic underclasses, or even with just pure old fashioned corruption. But Christ, there are over a million police officers in the US - calling them all corrupt assholes isn't going to get you anywhere, it's just going to make them want to kick your ass.
Stand up for your rights, but don't be a dick.
Oh, I agree with you - I drive a fast car, speed everywhere I go, and have never caused an accident. I go to race driving classes.
That doesn't change the law, though, and if the grandmothers who vote all decided we should have speed limits, that's what's legal. That's what I meant by legitimate - I was breaking the law, and they pulled me over for it. It's their job, even if I disagree with the law.
It could be argued that this simple, stupid, easily exploitable social knowledge is the basic building block of human cultural evolution. What is any of our culture but rules we can learn without having to know the specific reasons they exist?
Yes, and I'm sure we tell on all of our friends as well, and report every guy in our department who watches youtube videos when he should be working, or is running a server on the side, or who looks through people's pictures on their PC's when they bring them in for support.
It's not the same degree, because most people in non-police jobs don't deal with the same seriousness of situations, but the impulse is *entirely* human nature.
Not saying it's good, not saying excusable - I'm saying it's expected, it's how we're wired.
Also, I assure you that most cops just want to get home at the end of the day and *not* mix themselves up in the attention they would get from standing up and ratting someone out. You're throwing a lot away in any career being a whistleblower, and most people care much more about their paycheck and their pension and just getting on through life than standing up for some guy they don't even know, who very likely could have been a guilty asshole instead of an unlucky innocent.
Now, do I think we should have policies that encourage keeping police officers accountable, respecting rights, and having competent responsive management? Hell yes. That doesn't mean that *encouraging* the sort of us versus them mentality you rail against in the Blue Code of Silence is going to do anything productive, though. If the good cops still get shat on by the people they are serving what reason would they have to break against social pressure to get the bad cops?
I really honestly hope this isn't why, but I'm willing to believe it's possible. I also dress well and speak clear English.
That said, I wasn't exactly an asshole to the cops, either, and I hear that helps. And in many of these video-taping the cop incidents the defendant is white, too.
I'd say it's even broader than that - give someone a goal and they will try to accomplish it, to the point of losing all perspective of why they were given that goal to begin with.
If your goal is to catch criminals (which is only part of the larger goal of maintaining the peace, but the part you deal with), it's human nature to be frustrated at everything that keeps you from doing that, including to a large extent our constitutional protections.
I've been completely happy with my interactions with cops here in the US. Every time I've been pulled over (for legitimate speeding) the cop was polite and nice, didn't throw his authority around. Another time one helped me catch a neighbor's horse that had gotten loose.
The problem is not that cops are bad guys, any more than anyone else is a bad guy. The problem is that they have an enhanced ability to be a bad guy and get away with it.
I came to a very odd realization the other day - I have no idea what an Indian "jock" looks like. There are certain countries where the vast majority of immigrants to the US are in technical fields - engineering, computer science, you name it, and India is definitely one of these, at least in my part of the country. It's very easy to end up with a warped image of a whole culture if you're only exposed to such a small subset of it - I'd never use my CS classes as a representative cross section of white America.
Sometimes I wonder with tort whether the perception of ridiculous lawsuits is as important as their actual existence.
I have read studies in several legal journals showing that awards and numbers of ridiculous cases have not actually gone up significantly in the last twenty years, but people just feel they have because every crazy case someone files gets on national news. Or you hear the reward without hearing the real details of the case (see the infamous McDonald's coffee suit). However...
There is no denying that liability is much more in the forefront of everyone's minds. There are more waivers to sign at every vaguely dangerous event I've been to, and everyone talks about all the stuff they used to do but that insurance now requires them to for liability purposes. Just look at children's playground equipment. And everyone says "oh, that makes sense, because people sue for any crazy thing nowadays." Surveys for CEO's show that they definitely feel they have to consider it more on all actions.
I've spoken with multiple doctors who say that they over-treat and over-diagnose symptoms (sometimes to the tune of thousands of dollars - paid for by insurance, of course) because they want to cover their own ass against liability. Everyone's terrified of malpractice suits and acts accordingly.
So the end result is the same restrictions as if people were actually successfully litigating anything, whether it's happening or not...
I believe we are confusing empathy and sympathy here.
Empathy is the ability to understand how another person is feeling, to "put yourself in their shoes."
Sympathy is actually giving a damn how they feel.
I empathize with all sorts of people, I just continue to think they're idiots for feeling that way.
If they're polling college kids - nearly every scholarship not directly tied to a test score requires community service. It also looks very cool on college applications.
Somehow none of the companies I've applied for have asked about it, though....
I haven't done charity work since college. I will however immediately drop everything if my neighbor/person whose car broke down in front of me/friend/family needs a hand. Wonder where their test puts me.
I'd actually be fairly happy if that's how it works. Remember, though, that Diablo II and WC3 are both pretty old games now. I'm pretty sure for D2 you just entered the code off the cd case and called it a day.
Your analogy is flawed. This is more akin to taxing the amish to pay for roads that don't allow buggies on them.
Also, it's not an unusual occurrence at all to have ISP's fail or delay when you move houses.
The consume gains *nothing* from online activation save the fact that it is slightly less odious that other DRM schemes. You still receive a better product by stealing the damn thing.
Now, online activation for online play? Completely fair. It's the online activation for single player games that gets me. A large part of the reason for a single player game is to play when you do not have net access... I'm not upset that I can't play World of Warcraft offline, I'm pissed because I can't play a primarily single player game without calling home to their server and asking permission first.
Also, I bought the orange box in a store, and had even activated and played it previously, but apparently not recently enough for their online activation.
It makes sense when you realize that the "clean" janitor screams at you for an hour if you miss the waste basket and introduces a charge to use the bathroom to keep people from making a mess. Oh, and somehow the place doesn't really look any cleaner...
Beyond the basic "what makes you think people who want to run everything will therefore be good at it" question, you big government types need to remember that no matter what you do, the giant rambling apparatus you create *will* later be driven by someone who completely disagrees with you. The benevolent dictator idea only really works when you've got a perfect system for choosing dictators.
Yes, it isn't an inconvenience at *all* to have to haul my giant gaming PC to someone else's house just to install my new game.
What about people who just moved? What about people on a vacation? What if you installed it at a lan party that doesn't have general internet access?
I've been stuck for over a month waiting for the damn ISP to get my account set up and working again. I had planned to use that time to play Half Life 2, but hey, offline mode requires that you've activated online first.
It doesn't affect the majority of users in the majority of situations, I get that. But a significant minority get screwed by it, and get their enjoyment of their purchase *significantly* delayed. For those of us who have to ration their video game time carefully to fit into real life, having the nice block of free time you set aside to enjoy a game get blown to pieces can really sour you on a game. I still hate steam for that month of not being able to play Half life 2 *single player*.
It is almost assured that they would have happened later, though, since they didn't beat the military research to begin with.
Who never highlighted or made margin notes in any of my books in college? I never saw the point, really, if I was going to study pieces of a chapter I'd go download the professor's lecture notes... I don't even really remember having the book open during class - I just brought it in case someone started referencing a problem or a diagram. In any case, it's always felt weird to me to mark up a book...
Still sounds like the kindle would suck as a textbook for many things just because of the lack of color and the slowness of page changes, but personally the other "issues" wouldn't affect me at all.
So take your punishment like a man and take it again if the bully still doesn't leave you alone.
It takes a lot of punishments in high school to actually keep you out of a decent college. Aside from that, they don't mean jack. Part of growing up is realizing that the only power a school actually has over you is your final diploma. As long as you can still get that with enough of a GPA to go to a decent state school, fuck 'em and don't worry about what they think.