I remember discussing this on Usenet in the nineties. This really is old news. The only surprise is that driver's ed might still be teaching 10 and 2. The issue was, and still is, that there really was a reason to have your hands in that position, as it maximizes control of the vehicle. By making steering wheel airbags mandatory, the collateral damage is that we can't safely hold the steering wheel in the optimal way. We have relinquished control of our vehicle to some degree for some perceived additional safety. I think statistically this makes impacts measurably less lethal while making them measurably more likely.
Also at the time, there was a set of recommendations that full power airbags should not be used for people under 5'3" (as you would likely have your seat dangerously far forward) and over a certain age (I think it was 70). This was about the same time as the recommendation came out to not have a baby carrier in the front passenger seat unless you could turn off the airbag (a feature that was just becoming available in some two seat vehicles). Short people (my wife is 5'2") could apply for an exemption to have their steering wheel airbag disabled.
It's important to remember that the original NHTSA spec for air bags was to protect a medium-height male around 40 who was not wearing his seat belt. At the time, that was the majority of drivers. When the number of woman drivers spiked and the baby boomers started to age and baby carriers became more popular, problems with that paradigm started to surface.
My solution is to carefully maintain a car that doesn't have a steering wheel airbag. Your mileage, as always, may vary.
Personally, I think the more information we get out there about how violently airbags deploy (they always show it in super slow motion on tv -- it actually goes BANG like a shotgun shell) and the caustic nature of the propellant, (I have an ophthalmologist report somewhere from the nineties about the sharp increase in certain kinds of eye injuries) will have a positive effect on driving given that it's so difficult to legally disable them. I want every driver to imagine that airbag as a big ol' knife pointing out of the steering wheel at their chests. Imagine how slowly and gingerly people would drive with that mindset.
Right, because watching most content with black bars on the sides is so much more convenient than watching the occasional 2.39:1 with black bars on the top and bottom.
The Sony XBR I purchased in 1985 was still bright enough and could be properly color balanced up to 2004, (I am somewhat of a videophile, was an early adopter of Laserdisc and DVD) when the high voltage section died. Even then it could have been fixed, but tuning one of those suckers to avoid X-ray emission was more risky than I could justify, especially with a small child. I'm not saying stick with your 1960 National TV at all costs. I *am* saying that we're way too quick to listen to marketing that tells us to throw out perfectly working appliances because there's something new and shiny available.
I bought a high end tube TV in 1985, kept it until it couldn't be fixed anymore, finally replacing it in 2004. The computer on which I am writing this was first purchased around the turn of the century, replacing the guts over the years as they died. I tend to buy lease return vehicles (which tend to be low mileage and no "new car" premium on the sticker) and keep them for 15 - 20 years.
A new version of my phone just came out this year. It has dual cores and a lot of other neat stuff. So I'm going to run right out and KEEP THE PHONE I HAVE, because, you know, it still works. When it stops working and can't be fixed, I'll look at what's available then.
This rabid consumerism is shameful. It's not just electronic waste on the back end; the process of creating the devices is dirty also. As consumers we're expected to spend a significant portion of our discretionary income on the next incremental improvement on our entertainment devices, while a few companies, and a few people in each of those, get fabulously rich. So when 4K comes out, I fully expect a massive re-purchasing of TVs and monitors, along with a measureable spike in electronic waste. What a con game.
Because most consumers are morons. Alternately, buy high end, get the service manual, learn to properly adjust your tv. It's not hard. The phosphor does eventually wear out, but we're talking decades. I think what the original power was decrying was frantic consumerism, where you junk your major appliances every time something shiny comes out. A lot of people do this, and it's massively wasteful and generally not necessary.
Agreed. I find 1080 tall confining when I work on documents. There is, after all, more to life than watching movies.
My current old-style tube is 1600 by 1200, is taller than most screens and has better colors. When it dies I'll have to look at 1920X1200 (16:10) monitors, which are rare and expensive.
Well, first of all, none of them go to sleep. I have all of them set to "always on". I've found that this is the only complete solution to sleep issues. Sorry, greenies, I'd have them sleep if they behaved, but my primary purpose is to get my work done. And sorry corporate, but it's not my energy, and if you wanted a better solution, you shouldn't have riffed so many of us.
As to what I use to control them, at first I used an enterprise grade KVM; a spare that became available after a computer room downsize. But later, when 88% of IT personnel was riffed and most IT went offshore, a huge amount of office equipment suddenly became available, so rather than screw around with the KVM (which sometimes had to be reset after a system was rebooted) I ended up with multiple monitors, keyboards, and mice. It looks inefficient to the naked eye, but all I have to do to switch environments is swivel my chair. And I can have system monitors up constantly, and tell what the systems are doing with a glance without interrupting my current task.
I know, this is a brute force solution, inelegant in the extreme. But it works.
On Unix the solution is trivial. On Windows the most convenient solution I have found is to have multiple machines. With the current economy that isn't difficult to accomplish if you're ok with using hardware previously owned by riffed or outsourced employees. This also makes sense from the standpoint that we are fewer people with more responsibilities, so it takes more desktop to do the work and more resources to drive it.
I currently have two desktop machines and two laptops on my desk. One is dedicated to alerts and performance metrics. One does email. One is my primary workstation, and the fourth catches overflow from the main machine. The youngest hardware is two years old, the oldest is six years. But it all still works, and there are spares from other former employees waiting in the wings.
According to the article, what you're seeing is the result of a huge high pressure zone, which although unusually large, is still local weather. You'll revert to your regularly scheduled weather, I think, when it finally breaks up.
On the other hand, what I'm seeing here since 1989 is a warming trend in the nineties, followed by a cooling trend starting approx 2003. There are a lot of tells; the amount of wood I need for the winter has been steadily increasing, an increasing number of below-forty days and snow days, (especially this year) year-long temperature averages below average, and on the mountain they measured snow in inches in the nineties, and now they measure in feet.
Whether one is "weather" and the other is "climate" or they're both "weather" remains to be seen.
...this man-made-global-warming free-for-all, but didn't the summary say "A huge, lingering ridge of high pressure over the eastern half of the United States"?
Snowed today in Portland, OR. And yesterday. Unheard-of at this time of year. I remember hearing that last year was the first on record with no 90 degree days. I suspect we're in for a cold summer this year as well.
A madcat can easily beat the slow ponderous hulk of a Daishi in a fair fight. It can't turn quick enough
By turning the legs AND the torso at the same time, EASY if you have pedals and I do, you can turn quick enough to hit anything slower than about 96 kph any old time, and if you strip any Mad Cat or MkII down that far it's a tinderbox or it's toothless
The problem is, after you get to the end of your turn radius, you're limited by how fast the chassis can turn, and a mad cat can walk in a circle faster than that.
It's been awhile since I played the game, but I'm pretty sure that the light gauss rifle had a longer range. I have seen the tactic you describe, but you can't fire without exposing a weapon, and if one goes after weapons instead of trying to pound on the thick armor around the cockpit, it's pretty easy to disarm the big guy. It takes more finesse, but bigger is not always better.
I disagree. A madcat can easily beat the slow ponderous hulk of a Daishi in a fair fight. It can't turn quick enough, and it moves forward slower than a madcat can move backwards. It's only competitive if your opponent decides to stand and slug it out. Which would be moronic.
Nope, sorry, a Daishi is a big, shiny, loser's mech. It's a trap!
I already have registered my old callsign on the Online website, but the issue I have with Online is that there appears to be no mission tree or narrative. One of the things that made the MW series interesting was how the story unfolded through the missions.
I know, right? In every game from MW2 onward, once I got to the point where I could deploy a Timberwolf/Madcat, the rest of the mechs became uninteresting. I played with the 100 ton mechs and always came back to the Timberwolf. Best combination of maneuverability, firepower, and armor than anything else out there.
In... MW4, I think, there was a MkII you could play for a couple missions. Heavier and a little slower, but still better than any 100 ton class. And you could reduce armor, upgrade the engine and have almost the same speed and maneuverability as a timberwolf with increased loadout.
After playing the games for years, I loaded up every mech (at the point where it became possible) with as many light gauss rifles as it could hold, and sniped while out of range of 90% of the game's weapons. It made the games absurdly easy. I suspect that's a programming or conceptual weakness in the game.
When I got bored with Mech Commander 2, I played the game with the smallest, lightest scout mech, and found what I think is a loophole in the game. It's absurdly easy to win with a flock of small mechs against a few larger ones. (Although it takes a little more strategy.)
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First thing I thought, too -- the interface looks like LCARS, which will likely call down the wrath of CBS.
My cat is silicon based. It's a statue of the tomcat my grandparents used to own when I was five or six.
(I'm allergic to cats.)
You just saved me $50.
I remember discussing this on Usenet in the nineties. This really is old news. The only surprise is that driver's ed might still be teaching 10 and 2. The issue was, and still is, that there really was a reason to have your hands in that position, as it maximizes control of the vehicle. By making steering wheel airbags mandatory, the collateral damage is that we can't safely hold the steering wheel in the optimal way. We have relinquished control of our vehicle to some degree for some perceived additional safety. I think statistically this makes impacts measurably less lethal while making them measurably more likely.
Also at the time, there was a set of recommendations that full power airbags should not be used for people under 5'3" (as you would likely have your seat dangerously far forward) and over a certain age (I think it was 70). This was about the same time as the recommendation came out to not have a baby carrier in the front passenger seat unless you could turn off the airbag (a feature that was just becoming available in some two seat vehicles). Short people (my wife is 5'2") could apply for an exemption to have their steering wheel airbag disabled.
It's important to remember that the original NHTSA spec for air bags was to protect a medium-height male around 40 who was not wearing his seat belt. At the time, that was the majority of drivers. When the number of woman drivers spiked and the baby boomers started to age and baby carriers became more popular, problems with that paradigm started to surface.
My solution is to carefully maintain a car that doesn't have a steering wheel airbag. Your mileage, as always, may vary.
Personally, I think the more information we get out there about how violently airbags deploy (they always show it in super slow motion on tv -- it actually goes BANG like a shotgun shell) and the caustic nature of the propellant, (I have an ophthalmologist report somewhere from the nineties about the sharp increase in certain kinds of eye injuries) will have a positive effect on driving given that it's so difficult to legally disable them. I want every driver to imagine that airbag as a big ol' knife pointing out of the steering wheel at their chests. Imagine how slowly and gingerly people would drive with that mindset.
Right, because watching most content with black bars on the sides is so much more convenient than watching the occasional 2.39:1 with black bars on the top and bottom.
> and then someone will make a consumer-priced, lightweight VR-headset and that'll be the end of the laptop.
Not if implants occur first.
The Sony XBR I purchased in 1985 was still bright enough and could be properly color balanced up to 2004, (I am somewhat of a videophile, was an early adopter of Laserdisc and DVD) when the high voltage section died. Even then it could have been fixed, but tuning one of those suckers to avoid X-ray emission was more risky than I could justify, especially with a small child. I'm not saying stick with your 1960 National TV at all costs. I *am* saying that we're way too quick to listen to marketing that tells us to throw out perfectly working appliances because there's something new and shiny available.
Bravo!
I bought a high end tube TV in 1985, kept it until it couldn't be fixed anymore, finally replacing it in 2004. The computer on which I am writing this was first purchased around the turn of the century, replacing the guts over the years as they died. I tend to buy lease return vehicles (which tend to be low mileage and no "new car" premium on the sticker) and keep them for 15 - 20 years.
A new version of my phone just came out this year. It has dual cores and a lot of other neat stuff. So I'm going to run right out and KEEP THE PHONE I HAVE, because, you know, it still works. When it stops working and can't be fixed, I'll look at what's available then.
This rabid consumerism is shameful. It's not just electronic waste on the back end; the process of creating the devices is dirty also. As consumers we're expected to spend a significant portion of our discretionary income on the next incremental improvement on our entertainment devices, while a few companies, and a few people in each of those, get fabulously rich. So when 4K comes out, I fully expect a massive re-purchasing of TVs and monitors, along with a measureable spike in electronic waste. What a con game.
Because most consumers are morons. Alternately, buy high end, get the service manual, learn to properly adjust your tv. It's not hard. The phosphor does eventually wear out, but we're talking decades. I think what the original power was decrying was frantic consumerism, where you junk your major appliances every time something shiny comes out. A lot of people do this, and it's massively wasteful and generally not necessary.
Wait until 2.39:1 becomes standard. Eventually we'll be carrying around laptops that look like ironing boards. Won't that be convenient.
Agreed. I find 1080 tall confining when I work on documents. There is, after all, more to life than watching movies.
My current old-style tube is 1600 by 1200, is taller than most screens and has better colors. When it dies I'll have to look at 1920X1200 (16:10) monitors, which are rare and expensive.
Well, first of all, none of them go to sleep. I have all of them set to "always on". I've found that this is the only complete solution to sleep issues. Sorry, greenies, I'd have them sleep if they behaved, but my primary purpose is to get my work done. And sorry corporate, but it's not my energy, and if you wanted a better solution, you shouldn't have riffed so many of us.
As to what I use to control them, at first I used an enterprise grade KVM; a spare that became available after a computer room downsize. But later, when 88% of IT personnel was riffed and most IT went offshore, a huge amount of office equipment suddenly became available, so rather than screw around with the KVM (which sometimes had to be reset after a system was rebooted) I ended up with multiple monitors, keyboards, and mice. It looks inefficient to the naked eye, but all I have to do to switch environments is swivel my chair. And I can have system monitors up constantly, and tell what the systems are doing with a glance without interrupting my current task.
I know, this is a brute force solution, inelegant in the extreme. But it works.
When will fusion power my car?
Different meaning of "light".
On Unix the solution is trivial. On Windows the most convenient solution I have found is to have multiple machines. With the current economy that isn't difficult to accomplish if you're ok with using hardware previously owned by riffed or outsourced employees. This also makes sense from the standpoint that we are fewer people with more responsibilities, so it takes more desktop to do the work and more resources to drive it.
I currently have two desktop machines and two laptops on my desk. One is dedicated to alerts and performance metrics. One does email. One is my primary workstation, and the fourth catches overflow from the main machine. The youngest hardware is two years old, the oldest is six years. But it all still works, and there are spares from other former employees waiting in the wings.
According to the article, what you're seeing is the result of a huge high pressure zone, which although unusually large, is still local weather. You'll revert to your regularly scheduled weather, I think, when it finally breaks up.
On the other hand, what I'm seeing here since 1989 is a warming trend in the nineties, followed by a cooling trend starting approx 2003. There are a lot of tells; the amount of wood I need for the winter has been steadily increasing, an increasing number of below-forty days and snow days, (especially this year) year-long temperature averages below average, and on the mountain they measured snow in inches in the nineties, and now they measure in feet.
Whether one is "weather" and the other is "climate" or they're both "weather" remains to be seen.
Couldn't this be, you know, weather?
Snowed today in Portland, OR. And yesterday. Unheard-of at this time of year. I remember hearing that last year was the first on record with no 90 degree days. I suspect we're in for a cold summer this year as well.
A madcat can easily beat the slow ponderous hulk of a Daishi in a fair fight. It can't turn quick enough
By turning the legs AND the torso at the same time, EASY if you have pedals and I do, you can turn quick enough to hit anything slower than about 96 kph any old time, and if you strip any Mad Cat or MkII down that far it's a tinderbox or it's toothless
The problem is, after you get to the end of your turn radius, you're limited by how fast the chassis can turn, and a mad cat can walk in a circle faster than that.
It's been awhile since I played the game, but I'm pretty sure that the light gauss rifle had a longer range. I have seen the tactic you describe, but you can't fire without exposing a weapon, and if one goes after weapons instead of trying to pound on the thick armor around the cockpit, it's pretty easy to disarm the big guy. It takes more finesse, but bigger is not always better.
I disagree. A madcat can easily beat the slow ponderous hulk of a Daishi in a fair fight. It can't turn quick enough, and it moves forward slower than a madcat can move backwards. It's only competitive if your opponent decides to stand and slug it out. Which would be moronic.
Nope, sorry, a Daishi is a big, shiny, loser's mech. It's a trap!
I already have registered my old callsign on the Online website, but the issue I have with Online is that there appears to be no mission tree or narrative. One of the things that made the MW series interesting was how the story unfolded through the missions.
Michael Bay is single-handedly improving the economy, at least for me, by populating the theaters with movies I have no wish to see.
I know, right? In every game from MW2 onward, once I got to the point where I could deploy a Timberwolf/Madcat, the rest of the mechs became uninteresting. I played with the 100 ton mechs and always came back to the Timberwolf. Best combination of maneuverability, firepower, and armor than anything else out there.
In ... MW4, I think, there was a MkII you could play for a couple missions. Heavier and a little slower, but still better than any 100 ton class. And you could reduce armor, upgrade the engine and have almost the same speed and maneuverability as a timberwolf with increased loadout.
After playing the games for years, I loaded up every mech (at the point where it became possible) with as many light gauss rifles as it could hold, and sniped while out of range of 90% of the game's weapons. It made the games absurdly easy. I suspect that's a programming or conceptual weakness in the game.
When I got bored with Mech Commander 2, I played the game with the smallest, lightest scout mech, and found what I think is a loophole in the game. It's absurdly easy to win with a flock of small mechs against a few larger ones. (Although it takes a little more strategy.)
Man, I miss Mechwarrior.
Someone explain this to me:
> "and will be eliminating the book from the school."
According to TFA, the kids were fourteen, so that makes it freshman year in high school. (The book is rated 12 and over.)
The quote indicates that the book was available at the school, most probably in the school library.
So let me get this straight:
The teacher reads an age-appropriate book, available at the school, to students in the class, and gets fired? Seriously?
I predict that if this story goes viral, the school will suddenly reconsider.