but I leave the vehicle door unlocked and the key in the ignition for the sake of convenience.
It must be wonderful to live in a place where you can feel that secure... I remember it wasn't too long ago that in my town, we didn't have to lock our doors, take our keys out of the car. I wanna live where you do.
So, kindly tell me where you live. Please be specific. Google Maps link if possible. What kinda car do you drive?
Okay, you're right. Although I said there are many details that bugged me and ultimately turned me off, the examples I've given in this thread can mostly be disabled. As soon as the devs give us checkboxes labeled "speed this slug the hell up" and "enable tabbed browsing mode" I PROMISE I will give GNOME and Nautilus another chance.
Oh, I'll really torch some karma if I start telling you how I feel about Apple... Anyway, not showing the location bar by default isn't the thing that bugs me so much as the way the location bar works. If the GNOME HIG stuff has really helped other people adopt it, then what few people like me that were turned off by it are inconsequential. We'll just use something else, and that's a good thing. I'm glad I have a choice. I do like GNOME a hell of a lot better than Windows or OSX though. And I certainly believe their hearts were in the right place when they started making all those changes. It's just that while their arguments make sense and their interface guidelines probably do make things intuitive for lots of people, it has quite the opposite effect on some of us who are already quite at home with all the functionality that allegedly confuses new users.
Gnome didn't swap the Ok and Cancel buttons. They placed the button most likely to be pushed to the edge of the window, where it is easier to be accessed. This has to do with Fitts Law. The Gnome HIG also recommends that the buttons have descriptive terms, such as "Don't Save" and "Save" rather than "Ok" and "Cancel." This isn't such a crazy idea, you know. Apple does it too, and everyone and their brother seem to think that Apple gets everything right.
All this stuff makes sense when you explain it, but if it has to be explained then it's hardly intuitive to me. Perhaps people smarter than I am came up with these ideas and that means I'm wrong, and when the buttons are labeled "Save" and "Don't Save" instead of "Ok" and "Cancel" it means that new users don't have to think as much. But it also means that old users have to read the buttons now. That's a small thing but it distracts me a lot more than, say, a toolbar.
I know they're trying. I have to give them credit for doing something new. And I know they're doing great things for their target audience. Their target audience just isn't me anymore.
network browsing and other gnome-vfs goodies are only getting better.
Yes, better than they were. Took them long enough to get there, but I did notice that. Better than kioslaves? I'm dubious but I admit I don't actually know. Early gnome-vfs left a bad taste in my mouth. Oh, and how about some tabs in Nautilus so I don't have to open fifteen windows?
Burning CDs/DVDs is extremely easy
Easy if you want to do one specific thing. Frustrating as hell if you're trying to do anything other than drag a few files into a window and burn them to a disc. I like K3B a lot better. And Nautilus could really use tabbed-navigation.
drag'n'drop works beautifully across different GNOME apps
I should hope so. That is after all what this whole pointy-clicky thing is all about. Just open up a tab and... Oh, wait...
Also, the spatial mode hasn't been the default since 2.12
If that's the case, then it took them six releases to do that. What, should we give them a medal? They had it right the first time, and we have known this since Windows 95. To think of all the time they wasted when they could have been implementing tabs in Nautilus!
I find the GNOME people are very clearly on the ball in terms of providing power users what the want
Admittedly, I wouldn't know. I gave up on GNOME 'long about the time Konqueror got tabs.
Yes, like most of GNOME's new obstacles, there are workarounds. I knew about that, but it's really not good enough. I don't mind so much that it's a non-obvious solution. If something like that bugs me enough I will research it and once I've learned it, I've learned it. The extra step bugs me, and the overall reduced functionality bugs me. That location bar is better than nothing, but it still sucks. It behaves in an unintuitive way all its own. Example, start typing a location, then get halfway through it and press the down arrow a couple of times like you've been conditioned to do by every single other app that has that type of input method. Nothing. That means you have to remember the path or at least the first few letters of everything. Have to remember whether or not that name is capitalized, etc. So you just press enter halfway through what you were doing, find the right name, and either click, click, click, click or press ctrl-L again to get back to what you were doing. Why did they do that? Sometimes I think they do weird crap like that just to be different, not better... Stuff like swapping the OK and Cancel buttons around on everything. What purpose could that have possibly served? Standardize the apps, sure, but at least look to the de facto. Software should stand apart from the herd because it's better, not because its UI guidelines are completely different just for the sake of being different.
At least they got their branding down. I definitely know a GNOME-ism when I see it. The one big, black mark on Kubuntu is all of that GNOME weirdness that filtered down into the Firefox package.
Spatial mode was just one of many nails. The file dialog changes were another big one. The whole spatial really thing breaks down when I want to move to a place several directories up or down. Opening a bunch of new windows does not help usability in my opinion, and I think a lot of people would agree with me, since the tabs in Firefox are wildly popular even to the point that the next IE will have them.
The address bar being gone by default from Nautilus and the file dialogs is also infuriating. What if I don't want to take my hands of the keyboard and click a mouse a bunch of times times, scrolling and closing windows behind me all the while when I could have gone to the address bar and typed "/etc/httpd/conf" in about four keystrokes with auto-completion? I'm sorry if that means people have to learn something to take advantage of it, but why remove it when it works so much better for the people who have a little practice?
Did you ever really love GNOME? Judging from your comment history, you seem to be promoting KDE rather frequently. I am not saying that you are a KDE troll, but at least some of your comments look suspicious.
Really, I did love GNOME. I felt like KDE was too bloated, GNOME seemed faster, didn't load me down with stuff I'd never use. And KDE frankly was the gayest looking thing I'd ever seen with it's old default "Keramik" theme and putrid default colors. Thankfully somebody recognized this, and you may or may not like Plastik or Lipstik, but I think it beats the old stuff. No, GNOME was clean and polished at 2.4, KDE was buggy and all fluff at 3.1. The reason you don't see me embracing GNOME in my comment history is that I fully defected to KDE with the release of GNOME 2.6 a couple of years ago. Really it seemed like GNOME just kept getting worse while each thing I didn't like about KDE got fixed. I'm really picky about having an optimal user interface tailored to my habits and needs, and KDE has infinitely configurable behavior. GNOME seems afraid that configurability, versatile UI's and usable file dialogs, will somehow confuse and frighten their users... But come on... These are Linux users. Most of these people are somewhat technical, or at least interested in computers enough to have installed their own operating system. There are exceptions, but for the most part a person with linux on their computer has USED a friggin' computer before and does not need his or her hand held to that degree. People don't switch to Linux for the same reason they switch to Mac. A typical Linux user didn't become one because Windows wasn't easy enough to use and he was afraid of viruses. He switched because he wanted to do more with his computer and the learning curve didn't scare him. That guy is well past the "problems" that GNOME started addressing after 2.4.
Every time I'd upgrade GNOME, I'd comb the system hunting down ways to re-enable what they took out. New features were scarce and it was all about gutting the ones it had. When I install a new KDE, I eagerly comb the system looking for features and improvements and I'm never disappointed.
There for a while I was expecting Clippy to show up in the next version of GNOME, but
I think Nautilus is cool for what it is, but it was a lot cooler before we got sent on a trip back to 1995 with the infuriating "spatial" default mode. I think that was the nail in GNOME's coffin for me personally. And when they did that, it also coincided with the release of KDE 3.2, which (imho) finally brought Konqueror to a mature enough state to use as a browser. It was already a kickass file manager, and the main reason for that, aside from its file system transparency, (kioslaves - FTP, NFS, SMB, SSH... All treated just like a folder on a hard drive, and now in tabs too!) is that it doesn't make assumptions about my intelligence. It's built to be simple enough for the majority of users, yet manages not to compromise any of its convenience and power for more advanced users. I really hate it when a tool I like gets dumbed-down for the masses and becomes less functional for me. I used to be a GNOME guy, but because of the very counter-productive "usability" campaign and mass removal/hiding of features, 2.4 was the last great GNOME and everything since then (while I was still bothering to look) has sucked. Konqueror owns Nautlius, and only the rate at which KDE improves its feature set can match the rate at which GNOME reduces theirs. It's really quite sad, 'cause I used to love GNOME.
Farraday cage is a much better idea than the one I had. Whatever you do, I suggest not trying to shield your subwoofer box with aluminum foil. That was a stroke of pure genius right there. No more buzzing sounds... As long as I didn't turn on the speaker...
See what you get when you click the Tell me about: Tiananmen link at the top of that search. I'll bet that's the kind of thing a Chinese IP gets when they search for it.
Disclaimer: it was a warranty replacement, so I don't know whether or not it's easy to get these from Dell, but here's documentation that it's a replaceable, upgradeable component. On that laptop chassis, which consists of the Inspiron 8500, 8600, the Precision M60, and some others... D810 I think, M10... There are a few optional video cards you can order with the machine. More on the procedure here.
You're right about one thing, certainly. If you take two identical cars and put a turbo on one of them, the fuel economy on the turbocharged car would go down while the excess engine output would go up. If the cars remain identical, then the turbo car would accellerate faster while the naturally-aspirated car would be more fuel efficent. But when you're talking about the efficiency of an engine by itself, and not the car as a system, it purely means input to output ratio, in which case the turbocharged engine is most definitey more efficient. Slightly more fuel, a lot more power. When you're talking about the efficiency of the car as a whole, other things have to be considered. Totally depends on the intended purpose of the system. Those two identical Mazdas might have the same gear ratios in the transmission and differentials, or if they're different then the turbo car is geared lower if anything. Why would they put taller gears in a car they're trying to sell on speed? But if they were to gear up that turbo car to the point where its acceleration matched its NA brother, then the "zoom-zoom" wouldn't be there anymore but the fuel efficiency would be greatly improved.*
*Assuming a smaller turbine on the exhaust side, so that the the turbo can spool up at lower RPMs. But that doesn't help your peak horsepower, just low-end torque. Again, it's all about the intended purpose and the resulting design.
You are forgetting that the car can actually do something with that added horsepower and torque besides just accelerate faster. The additional horsepower means that, when geared accordingly, you can turn fewer RPMs at highway speeds with little or no loss in performance. You may be burning more fuel per revolution of the crankshaft, but power gains from forced induction and proper gearing can enable to you to turn far fewer RPMs to move a given distance.
That's GNOME's dumbassery, not Gentoo's. Several versions ago GNOME was a feature-rich, robust desktop. But that was apparently too much for people and so they made it act kinda like Windows ME for a while. Now it's Windows 95, and in a few months they'll have it stabilized somewhere around MacOS 6 while they work on GNOME-NG which will finally achieve the roadmap goal of a revolutionary user experience that you guys will probably recognize as "Windows 3.1"
Competition from foreign car manufacturers. Up until maybe the late 80's, we used cubic inches, but it's easier to compare apples to apples when you're deciding between a Chevy and a Suzuki.
Okay, replace "hill" with "hick" and assume the car doing 10mph is a moron who got onto the highway without looking. Or assume it's a deer jumping into the road. Or a couch that just flew off the back of a pickup truck. The vehicle in front of you hydroplanes and spins out. A tree falls. Rock slide. Or a meteor fell in front of you, whatever. My only point is that sometimes being able to haul ass can save your life. I would most certainly have had a horrible wreck in that situation if I'd been driving an underpowered car, let alone one that babysits the driver.
I've had to accelerate out of trouble. Imagine you're in the right lane of a four-lane highway, traffic is heavy, you top a hill or round a curve and you come upon a vehicle in front of you who is going maybe 10 mph. Stalled, stupid, whatever the reason, it's there, and it takes a moment to sink in because there are no brake lights. Traffic is moving at about 65 mph. You will not brake in time, and if you do, the guy behind you probably won't. Let's make it more interesting - you just got onto a bridge with no usable shoulder. The only place you can go is the left lane, but traffic is coming up FAST and CLOSE. At this point you can either chance it with the brakes, or chance it with the gas... I was in this situation and the only thing that saved my ass was the old-school gas-guzzling, tire-smoking, eco-terrorist V8 I was driving. Had my speed been physically limted by a stupid and uninformed computer, or had my acceleration been hindered by traction control or proximiy sensors, I would probably by typing this from a wheelchair with a pencil in my teeth. I love computers, but keep the damned things out of my car.
I've always wanted an alarm clock with electrodes. I've had several ideas for how to build one, thought about it for a long time, but haven't actually tried it yet. My reasoning is this: I have never, ever, had a good hard jolt of electricity and felt sleepy afterwards. Ever. I figure a capacitor from a camera flash ought to do it, or maybe a transformer from an electric fence controlled by a relay attached to the alarm clock's speaker. Maybe a small automotive coil... Attach the electrodes to some place sensitive but not near any vital organs, perhaps the feet. Maybe inside some specially-made socks. Any alarm clock that only uses sound, I will be fully immune to its effects within a week.
Slashdot Mirror
but I leave the vehicle door unlocked and the key in the ignition for the sake of convenience.
It must be wonderful to live in a place where you can feel that secure... I remember it wasn't too long ago that in my town, we didn't have to lock our doors, take our keys out of the car. I wanna live where you do.
So, kindly tell me where you live. Please be specific. Google Maps link if possible. What kinda car do you drive?
Yes, but their 'bots will dominate next year when the new "tentacle rape" event is introduced.
Now we'll never know what kind of mystical skills and powers it had.
Okay, you're right. Although I said there are many details that bugged me and ultimately turned me off, the examples I've given in this thread can mostly be disabled. As soon as the devs give us checkboxes labeled "speed this slug the hell up" and "enable tabbed browsing mode" I PROMISE I will give GNOME and Nautilus another chance.
Oh, I'll really torch some karma if I start telling you how I feel about Apple... Anyway, not showing the location bar by default isn't the thing that bugs me so much as the way the location bar works. If the GNOME HIG stuff has really helped other people adopt it, then what few people like me that were turned off by it are inconsequential. We'll just use something else, and that's a good thing. I'm glad I have a choice. I do like GNOME a hell of a lot better than Windows or OSX though. And I certainly believe their hearts were in the right place when they started making all those changes. It's just that while their arguments make sense and their interface guidelines probably do make things intuitive for lots of people, it has quite the opposite effect on some of us who are already quite at home with all the functionality that allegedly confuses new users.
Gnome didn't swap the Ok and Cancel buttons. They placed the button most likely to be pushed to the edge of the window, where it is easier to be accessed. This has to do with Fitts Law. The Gnome HIG also recommends that the buttons have descriptive terms, such as "Don't Save" and "Save" rather than "Ok" and "Cancel." This isn't such a crazy idea, you know. Apple does it too, and everyone and their brother seem to think that Apple gets everything right.
All this stuff makes sense when you explain it, but if it has to be explained then it's hardly intuitive to me. Perhaps people smarter than I am came up with these ideas and that means I'm wrong, and when the buttons are labeled "Save" and "Don't Save" instead of "Ok" and "Cancel" it means that new users don't have to think as much. But it also means that old users have to read the buttons now. That's a small thing but it distracts me a lot more than, say, a toolbar.
I know they're trying. I have to give them credit for doing something new. And I know they're doing great things for their target audience. Their target audience just isn't me anymore.
network browsing and other gnome-vfs goodies are only getting better.
Yes, better than they were. Took them long enough to get there, but I did notice that. Better than kioslaves? I'm dubious but I admit I don't actually know. Early gnome-vfs left a bad taste in my mouth. Oh, and how about some tabs in Nautilus so I don't have to open fifteen windows?
Burning CDs/DVDs is extremely easy
Easy if you want to do one specific thing. Frustrating as hell if you're trying to do anything other than drag a few files into a window and burn them to a disc. I like K3B a lot better. And Nautilus could really use tabbed-navigation.
drag'n'drop works beautifully across different GNOME apps
I should hope so. That is after all what this whole pointy-clicky thing is all about. Just open up a tab and... Oh, wait...
Also, the spatial mode hasn't been the default since 2.12
If that's the case, then it took them six releases to do that. What, should we give them a medal? They had it right the first time, and we have known this since Windows 95. To think of all the time they wasted when they could have been implementing tabs in Nautilus! I find the GNOME people are very clearly on the ball in terms of providing power users what the want
Admittedly, I wouldn't know. I gave up on GNOME 'long about the time Konqueror got tabs.
Yes, like most of GNOME's new obstacles, there are workarounds. I knew about that, but it's really not good enough. I don't mind so much that it's a non-obvious solution. If something like that bugs me enough I will research it and once I've learned it, I've learned it. The extra step bugs me, and the overall reduced functionality bugs me. That location bar is better than nothing, but it still sucks. It behaves in an unintuitive way all its own. Example, start typing a location, then get halfway through it and press the down arrow a couple of times like you've been conditioned to do by every single other app that has that type of input method. Nothing. That means you have to remember the path or at least the first few letters of everything. Have to remember whether or not that name is capitalized, etc. So you just press enter halfway through what you were doing, find the right name, and either click, click, click, click or press ctrl-L again to get back to what you were doing. Why did they do that? Sometimes I think they do weird crap like that just to be different, not better... Stuff like swapping the OK and Cancel buttons around on everything. What purpose could that have possibly served? Standardize the apps, sure, but at least look to the de facto. Software should stand apart from the herd because it's better, not because its UI guidelines are completely different just for the sake of being different.
At least they got their branding down. I definitely know a GNOME-ism when I see it. The one big, black mark on Kubuntu is all of that GNOME weirdness that filtered down into the Firefox package.
Spatial mode was just one of many nails. The file dialog changes were another big one. The whole spatial really thing breaks down when I want to move to a place several directories up or down. Opening a bunch of new windows does not help usability in my opinion, and I think a lot of people would agree with me, since the tabs in Firefox are wildly popular even to the point that the next IE will have them.
The address bar being gone by default from Nautilus and the file dialogs is also infuriating. What if I don't want to take my hands of the keyboard and click a mouse a bunch of times times, scrolling and closing windows behind me all the while when I could have gone to the address bar and typed "/etc/httpd/conf" in about four keystrokes with auto-completion? I'm sorry if that means people have to learn something to take advantage of it, but why remove it when it works so much better for the people who have a little practice?
Did you ever really love GNOME? Judging from your comment history, you seem to be promoting KDE rather frequently. I am not saying that you are a KDE troll, but at least some of your comments look suspicious.
Really, I did love GNOME. I felt like KDE was too bloated, GNOME seemed faster, didn't load me down with stuff I'd never use. And KDE frankly was the gayest looking thing I'd ever seen with it's old default "Keramik" theme and putrid default colors. Thankfully somebody recognized this, and you may or may not like Plastik or Lipstik, but I think it beats the old stuff. No, GNOME was clean and polished at 2.4, KDE was buggy and all fluff at 3.1. The reason you don't see me embracing GNOME in my comment history is that I fully defected to KDE with the release of GNOME 2.6 a couple of years ago. Really it seemed like GNOME just kept getting worse while each thing I didn't like about KDE got fixed. I'm really picky about having an optimal user interface tailored to my habits and needs, and KDE has infinitely configurable behavior. GNOME seems afraid that configurability, versatile UI's and usable file dialogs, will somehow confuse and frighten their users... But come on... These are Linux users. Most of these people are somewhat technical, or at least interested in computers enough to have installed their own operating system. There are exceptions, but for the most part a person with linux on their computer has USED a friggin' computer before and does not need his or her hand held to that degree. People don't switch to Linux for the same reason they switch to Mac. A typical Linux user didn't become one because Windows wasn't easy enough to use and he was afraid of viruses. He switched because he wanted to do more with his computer and the learning curve didn't scare him. That guy is well past the "problems" that GNOME started addressing after 2.4.
Every time I'd upgrade GNOME, I'd comb the system hunting down ways to re-enable what they took out. New features were scarce and it was all about gutting the ones it had. When I install a new KDE, I eagerly comb the system looking for features and improvements and I'm never disappointed. There for a while I was expecting Clippy to show up in the next version of GNOME, but
I think Nautilus is cool for what it is, but it was a lot cooler before we got sent on a trip back to 1995 with the infuriating "spatial" default mode. I think that was the nail in GNOME's coffin for me personally. And when they did that, it also coincided with the release of KDE 3.2, which (imho) finally brought Konqueror to a mature enough state to use as a browser. It was already a kickass file manager, and the main reason for that, aside from its file system transparency, (kioslaves - FTP, NFS, SMB, SSH... All treated just like a folder on a hard drive, and now in tabs too!) is that it doesn't make assumptions about my intelligence. It's built to be simple enough for the majority of users, yet manages not to compromise any of its convenience and power for more advanced users. I really hate it when a tool I like gets dumbed-down for the masses and becomes less functional for me. I used to be a GNOME guy, but because of the very counter-productive "usability" campaign and mass removal/hiding of features, 2.4 was the last great GNOME and everything since then (while I was still bothering to look) has sucked. Konqueror owns Nautlius, and only the rate at which KDE improves its feature set can match the rate at which GNOME reduces theirs. It's really quite sad, 'cause I used to love GNOME.
Farraday cage is a much better idea than the one I had. Whatever you do, I suggest not trying to shield your subwoofer box with aluminum foil. That was a stroke of pure genius right there. No more buzzing sounds... As long as I didn't turn on the speaker...
Ah, damn my eyes. I see now that there is a link at the top of that page mentioning the protests. There goes my conspiracy...
See what you get when you click the Tell me about: Tiananmen link at the top of that search. I'll bet that's the kind of thing a Chinese IP gets when they search for it.
Disclaimer: it was a warranty replacement, so I don't know whether or not it's easy to get these from Dell, but here's documentation that it's a replaceable, upgradeable component. On that laptop chassis, which consists of the Inspiron 8500, 8600, the Precision M60, and some others... D810 I think, M10... There are a few optional video cards you can order with the machine. More on the procedure here.
MacBook may be running a lot of those tests in Rosetta
...But it's not, sorry. TFA said the benchmarks were Universal Binary.
The video card, for one thing. Personally done it on a Dell Precision M60.
You're right about one thing, certainly. If you take two identical cars and put a turbo on one of them, the fuel economy on the turbocharged car would go down while the excess engine output would go up. If the cars remain identical, then the turbo car would accellerate faster while the naturally-aspirated car would be more fuel efficent. But when you're talking about the efficiency of an engine by itself, and not the car as a system, it purely means input to output ratio, in which case the turbocharged engine is most definitey more efficient. Slightly more fuel, a lot more power. When you're talking about the efficiency of the car as a whole, other things have to be considered. Totally depends on the intended purpose of the system. Those two identical Mazdas might have the same gear ratios in the transmission and differentials, or if they're different then the turbo car is geared lower if anything. Why would they put taller gears in a car they're trying to sell on speed? But if they were to gear up that turbo car to the point where its acceleration matched its NA brother, then the "zoom-zoom" wouldn't be there anymore but the fuel efficiency would be greatly improved.* *Assuming a smaller turbine on the exhaust side, so that the the turbo can spool up at lower RPMs. But that doesn't help your peak horsepower, just low-end torque. Again, it's all about the intended purpose and the resulting design.
If you have to ask that question, then the answer can't be explained to you.
You are forgetting that the car can actually do something with that added horsepower and torque besides just accelerate faster. The additional horsepower means that, when geared accordingly, you can turn fewer RPMs at highway speeds with little or no loss in performance. You may be burning more fuel per revolution of the crankshaft, but power gains from forced induction and proper gearing can enable to you to turn far fewer RPMs to move a given distance.
That's GNOME's dumbassery, not Gentoo's. Several versions ago GNOME was a feature-rich, robust desktop. But that was apparently too much for people and so they made it act kinda like Windows ME for a while. Now it's Windows 95, and in a few months they'll have it stabilized somewhere around MacOS 6 while they work on GNOME-NG which will finally achieve the roadmap goal of a revolutionary user experience that you guys will probably recognize as "Windows 3.1"
Competition from foreign car manufacturers. Up until maybe the late 80's, we used cubic inches, but it's easier to compare apples to apples when you're deciding between a Chevy and a Suzuki.
I've used Toolbook before for stuff like this. It's not Free, but it's good software and I believe it meets all of the requirements you listed.
Okay, replace "hill" with "hick" and assume the car doing 10mph is a moron who got onto the highway without looking. Or assume it's a deer jumping into the road. Or a couch that just flew off the back of a pickup truck. The vehicle in front of you hydroplanes and spins out. A tree falls. Rock slide. Or a meteor fell in front of you, whatever. My only point is that sometimes being able to haul ass can save your life. I would most certainly have had a horrible wreck in that situation if I'd been driving an underpowered car, let alone one that babysits the driver.
I've had to accelerate out of trouble. Imagine you're in the right lane of a four-lane highway, traffic is heavy, you top a hill or round a curve and you come upon a vehicle in front of you who is going maybe 10 mph. Stalled, stupid, whatever the reason, it's there, and it takes a moment to sink in because there are no brake lights. Traffic is moving at about 65 mph. You will not brake in time, and if you do, the guy behind you probably won't. Let's make it more interesting - you just got onto a bridge with no usable shoulder. The only place you can go is the left lane, but traffic is coming up FAST and CLOSE. At this point you can either chance it with the brakes, or chance it with the gas... I was in this situation and the only thing that saved my ass was the old-school gas-guzzling, tire-smoking, eco-terrorist V8 I was driving. Had my speed been physically limted by a stupid and uninformed computer, or had my acceleration been hindered by traction control or proximiy sensors, I would probably by typing this from a wheelchair with a pencil in my teeth. I love computers, but keep the damned things out of my car.
I've always wanted an alarm clock with electrodes. I've had several ideas for how to build one, thought about it for a long time, but haven't actually tried it yet. My reasoning is this: I have never, ever, had a good hard jolt of electricity and felt sleepy afterwards. Ever. I figure a capacitor from a camera flash ought to do it, or maybe a transformer from an electric fence controlled by a relay attached to the alarm clock's speaker. Maybe a small automotive coil... Attach the electrodes to some place sensitive but not near any vital organs, perhaps the feet. Maybe inside some specially-made socks. Any alarm clock that only uses sound, I will be fully immune to its effects within a week.