There is one good reason: American car companies donate large sums to our representatives.
Technologically? No, there's no reason we can't get better MPG in our cars and trucks. Politically? There are millions of reasons. They all are colored the same green color as our money.
And that there is part of the problem - not that Toyota had some problems, the fact that it got so much (potentially domestic car company funded) press! There were something on the order of 26 reports of run-away accelerations per year on a MILLION PLUS CARS!!!
If my chance of winning the lottery was 26 in a million, I still wouldn't buy a ticket. It blows my mind that Toyota got so much bad press for so little.
I'm hoping that 11 years later, we have the technology to exceed that. The fact that we're shooting for what's possible FIVE YEARS AGO is ridiculous.
And it's not a small car either! My Corolla is taller than a lot of other sedans, and it pretty comfortably seats 5. (Well, with 3 non-fatasses in the back.)
I just don't understand why the bar is set so low.
But the issue is that this is a low, low target. Yes, it's a fleet average. But my 2005 Corolla gets 35 mpg even around town, and my mom's 2008 Prius gets at least 45 mpg. We're talking about cars, on average, with a DECADE more technology than these ones. And the CAFE for Toyota is already 30 mpg.
This bar has been set really, really low, EVEN for a fleet average! It's pretty pathetic, really.
Worse, my 2005 Toyota Corolla gets BETTER gas mileage than this.
Seriously, WTF? By the time this goes into effect, my ELEVEN YEAR OLD CAR will still beat the requirement for NEW cars!! I get 40mpg on the highway, and 35-36 or so around town.
We have the technology to do at least 5mpg more than this in 6 years. I wouldn't be surprised if we could do 10mpg more than this.
I wish we could actually enact a law with some value, instead of it being neutered by special interests. We have the technical expertise to do so much more. It's sad that we lack the political will to do so.
You hit the nail on the head. I just moved out of teaching HS science after 5 years, due in part to that problem.
I could toss a kid from class for being a disruptive prick, write up a discipline report, and a week later I would get it back with the vice-principal's scribble on it, "Spoke with student." That was it. Did the behavior stop? Nope. If I'd complain, I'd be asked, "Did you contact his parents?" Since the worst kids usually have the least responsive parents, the answer was usually, "No. I left a couple of messages, but they never got back to me." His response would be to tell me to keep trying.
The lack of discipline from the administration was a twisted joke among the teachers in my school. I might have kept teaching if I could have actually done my job well. The inability to find permanent solutions for disruptive students was one of the reasons I left teaching high school. A bigger one was missing actually doing science.
I often joked to my co-workers that we should just expel one kid per month. Take the biggest pain in the ass, and kick them out for good. Do it in an assembly, so everyone could see. That would have a bunch of kids looking over their shoulder, wondering where they stood in that line.
But both that and my idea to have students fighting with each other put into a ring and forced to box/kickbox 3 5-minute rounds got shot down. The lack of creative discipline in HS is quite depressing.
Um, this is a fantastic example of why I stopped buying EA games 7-8 years ago. I remain amazed that the rest of the world still gives them money.
I started playing C&C with RA in 1996-1997. I loved the game. But once the games got an EA sticker on them, I haven't played any of the new ones. Don't pay EA to kick you in the balls. It's not worth it.
My strategy is to have a couple of those "answers" in a text file on my computer. Sure, if someone gained access to my machine, they might stumble upon it, and randomly try it as a password. But unlikely they'll use a random phrase with special characters it in the "what school did you graduate from" field.
I only have a couple of such phrases, one with special characters and one without. It's the only method I've come up with which doesn't put my account at more risk.
People aren't getting smarter as time goes on. We've had roughly the same spread of IQ for hundreds to thousands of years now. (Some claims of thousands to a million, but I'm not sure I totally believe the methods there.)
I taught high school for 5 years. I saw lots and lots of kids who grew up with computers do amazingly stupid shit. $400 phone bills for signing up for ringtones and wallpapers and not realizing that they were signing up for $10/month continuous billing rip-offs. Lots of malware from limewire and bearshare, years and years after all the "computer literate" moved on to bit torrent. Lots of issues with sharing waaaaay too much information on the internet, including the ever-popular "share my entire hard drive" method. Lots of clicking on ANYTHING that looked naughty, interesting, or blinked.
Put an.exe in the mailbox of a teenage boy labeled "boobies", and it will get run. No questions asked, 90% of the time. Will they eventually grow up to be smarter? Some of them, of course. Some never will.
I don't think there's a long-term solution. Just because people can use a computer doesn't make them smart enough to avoid shit like this. Just look at all the non-computer scams that still happen. Those people, using a computer, will still get scammed.
I type vastly different on my home system than I do at work (on a mac) or on my netbook. Hell, I type differently now at work than I usually do, as I've got a stack of books under my left elbow that I'm supposed to be reading.
The speeds are different, the mistakes are different, the key-presses a different strength, the mousing and clicking are different, etc. I really don't see that this is more than an attempt to get funding by waving the pedo flag.
And I don't even know why they ripped the wings off! I mean, just bolt them on upside down, if you're having trouble staying on the ground. If the wings provide enough lift to keep the plane in the air while supersonic, they should provide enough downforce mounted upside down to keep it on the ground!
The next major "gold rush" will probably be in a hundred years or so, when the concentrations of valuable minerals and oils in landfills is higher than what can be found in nature.
Even better, I bet a mining company wouldn't have to do as much paperwork to mine a landfill.
I've got one from my credit union. There are no fees. The intrest rate (not that it often applies to me) is reasonable. I have my paycheck direct deposited, and have the option to automatically funnel some amount of money to my card every month. (Since I pay it off every month, I don't.) When I want to pay, it's three clicks and done.
And there are no fees. For anything but overdrafts.
Stop banking with criminals and thieves. It's stupid.
The theory is that if someone cracks your password, if you're forced to change it every month, they'll only have, on average, 2 weeks to exploit it.
In reality, you're correct that it's not so useful. In the case of a non-admin account, with enough auditing and proper permissions so that it's not possible to insert a keylogger nor take control of the machine, this works well. It works against a "got a temp job as a night janitor and walked around writing down passwords taped to monitors" or a "ran a dictionary attack against all the logins" under the previous scenario. But that's a very, very small subset of computer setups.
So you're incorrect that such a requirement means that "you're dealing with someone incompetent"; there are valid reasons for such a policy. In practice, you're correct, as it's likely not a useful policy, and you're likely dealing with someone incompetent.
It's been 10 years since my undergraduate degree, and I've finally found what I love. But going into a graduate program, they won't teach me the basics of it. But I can't get a bachelor's degree, because I already have one from a decade ago, and a MA from 4 years ago. Most colleges refuse to accept you for a BS after you already have one. At the same time, most graduate programs will take you, even if your BS doesn't have to do with what you're getting a PhD in.
So I, and a couple of other people, are dropped into a graduate program, doing what we LOVE, but we don't have a Bachelor's degree in the subject. Our backgrounds mean we're woefully unprepared for this, yet there's no other way to do it.
I'd LOVE to be in a condensed undergraduate degree this first year. Instead, there are a couple of us who are pretty much being set up to fail. We were accepted despite lacking a lot of background information. Then we were expected to have a BS in our field, and pretty much failed the first semester because we didn't.
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I'll assume you're not a retard and give you the benefit of the doubt:
What the fuck were you trying to say?
Indeed. It's like we're setting goals for the Special Olympics for regular Olympians here..
There is one good reason: American car companies donate large sums to our representatives.
Technologically? No, there's no reason we can't get better MPG in our cars and trucks. Politically? There are millions of reasons. They all are colored the same green color as our money.
And that there is part of the problem - not that Toyota had some problems, the fact that it got so much (potentially domestic car company funded) press! There were something on the order of 26 reports of run-away accelerations per year on a MILLION PLUS CARS!!!
If my chance of winning the lottery was 26 in a million, I still wouldn't buy a ticket. It blows my mind that Toyota got so much bad press for so little.
I'm hoping that 11 years later, we have the technology to exceed that. The fact that we're shooting for what's possible FIVE YEARS AGO is ridiculous.
And it's not a small car either! My Corolla is taller than a lot of other sedans, and it pretty comfortably seats 5. (Well, with 3 non-fatasses in the back.)
I just don't understand why the bar is set so low.
But the issue is that this is a low, low target. Yes, it's a fleet average. But my 2005 Corolla gets 35 mpg even around town, and my mom's 2008 Prius gets at least 45 mpg. We're talking about cars, on average, with a DECADE more technology than these ones. And the CAFE for Toyota is already 30 mpg.
This bar has been set really, really low, EVEN for a fleet average! It's pretty pathetic, really.
Worse, my 2005 Toyota Corolla gets BETTER gas mileage than this.
Seriously, WTF? By the time this goes into effect, my ELEVEN YEAR OLD CAR will still beat the requirement for NEW cars!! I get 40mpg on the highway, and 35-36 or so around town.
We have the technology to do at least 5mpg more than this in 6 years. I wouldn't be surprised if we could do 10mpg more than this.
I wish we could actually enact a law with some value, instead of it being neutered by special interests. We have the technical expertise to do so much more. It's sad that we lack the political will to do so.
You hit the nail on the head. I just moved out of teaching HS science after 5 years, due in part to that problem.
I could toss a kid from class for being a disruptive prick, write up a discipline report, and a week later I would get it back with the vice-principal's scribble on it, "Spoke with student." That was it. Did the behavior stop? Nope. If I'd complain, I'd be asked, "Did you contact his parents?" Since the worst kids usually have the least responsive parents, the answer was usually, "No. I left a couple of messages, but they never got back to me." His response would be to tell me to keep trying.
The lack of discipline from the administration was a twisted joke among the teachers in my school. I might have kept teaching if I could have actually done my job well. The inability to find permanent solutions for disruptive students was one of the reasons I left teaching high school. A bigger one was missing actually doing science.
I often joked to my co-workers that we should just expel one kid per month. Take the biggest pain in the ass, and kick them out for good. Do it in an assembly, so everyone could see. That would have a bunch of kids looking over their shoulder, wondering where they stood in that line.
But both that and my idea to have students fighting with each other put into a ring and forced to box/kickbox 3 5-minute rounds got shot down. The lack of creative discipline in HS is quite depressing.
So is gravity. Coincidently, they're using the theory of gravity to support the theory of dark matter.
Ha ha ha ha. You dumb bastard. It's not a unicorn... it's a magical horse.
Um, this is a fantastic example of why I stopped buying EA games 7-8 years ago. I remain amazed that the rest of the world still gives them money.
I started playing C&C with RA in 1996-1997. I loved the game. But once the games got an EA sticker on them, I haven't played any of the new ones. Don't pay EA to kick you in the balls. It's not worth it.
My strategy is to have a couple of those "answers" in a text file on my computer. Sure, if someone gained access to my machine, they might stumble upon it, and randomly try it as a password. But unlikely they'll use a random phrase with special characters it in the "what school did you graduate from" field.
I only have a couple of such phrases, one with special characters and one without. It's the only method I've come up with which doesn't put my account at more risk.
People aren't getting smarter as time goes on. We've had roughly the same spread of IQ for hundreds to thousands of years now. (Some claims of thousands to a million, but I'm not sure I totally believe the methods there.)
.exe in the mailbox of a teenage boy labeled "boobies", and it will get run. No questions asked, 90% of the time. Will they eventually grow up to be smarter? Some of them, of course. Some never will.
I taught high school for 5 years. I saw lots and lots of kids who grew up with computers do amazingly stupid shit. $400 phone bills for signing up for ringtones and wallpapers and not realizing that they were signing up for $10/month continuous billing rip-offs. Lots of malware from limewire and bearshare, years and years after all the "computer literate" moved on to bit torrent. Lots of issues with sharing waaaaay too much information on the internet, including the ever-popular "share my entire hard drive" method. Lots of clicking on ANYTHING that looked naughty, interesting, or blinked.
Put an
I don't think there's a long-term solution. Just because people can use a computer doesn't make them smart enough to avoid shit like this. Just look at all the non-computer scams that still happen. Those people, using a computer, will still get scammed.
That's a pretty astute point. Expect them to knock on your door for figuring that out....
I type vastly different on my home system than I do at work (on a mac) or on my netbook. Hell, I type differently now at work than I usually do, as I've got a stack of books under my left elbow that I'm supposed to be reading.
The speeds are different, the mistakes are different, the key-presses a different strength, the mousing and clicking are different, etc. I really don't see that this is more than an attempt to get funding by waving the pedo flag.
You were....yesterday.
None! But since I removed them, my neighbors have painted the ones of theirs that face me black and covered them with plywood.
Not just that - it's getting fanboys to pay to be beta testers.
EA has been off my list of companies to purchase from for years and years now. Shit like this does nothing to get them back on my list.
And I don't even know why they ripped the wings off! I mean, just bolt them on upside down, if you're having trouble staying on the ground. If the wings provide enough lift to keep the plane in the air while supersonic, they should provide enough downforce mounted upside down to keep it on the ground!
I've seen People of Wallmart. I know they can be wrong. Very, very wrong....
I've been saying this for a long time now.
The next major "gold rush" will probably be in a hundred years or so, when the concentrations of valuable minerals and oils in landfills is higher than what can be found in nature.
Even better, I bet a mining company wouldn't have to do as much paperwork to mine a landfill.
You need a better credit card.
I've got one from my credit union. There are no fees. The intrest rate (not that it often applies to me) is reasonable. I have my paycheck direct deposited, and have the option to automatically funnel some amount of money to my card every month. (Since I pay it off every month, I don't.) When I want to pay, it's three clicks and done.
And there are no fees. For anything but overdrafts.
Stop banking with criminals and thieves. It's stupid.
You're wrong, actually.
The theory is that if someone cracks your password, if you're forced to change it every month, they'll only have, on average, 2 weeks to exploit it.
In reality, you're correct that it's not so useful. In the case of a non-admin account, with enough auditing and proper permissions so that it's not possible to insert a keylogger nor take control of the machine, this works well. It works against a "got a temp job as a night janitor and walked around writing down passwords taped to monitors" or a "ran a dictionary attack against all the logins" under the previous scenario. But that's a very, very small subset of computer setups.
So you're incorrect that such a requirement means that "you're dealing with someone incompetent"; there are valid reasons for such a policy. In practice, you're correct, as it's likely not a useful policy, and you're likely dealing with someone incompetent.
I can bring a different prospective to that:
It's been 10 years since my undergraduate degree, and I've finally found what I love. But going into a graduate program, they won't teach me the basics of it. But I can't get a bachelor's degree, because I already have one from a decade ago, and a MA from 4 years ago. Most colleges refuse to accept you for a BS after you already have one. At the same time, most graduate programs will take you, even if your BS doesn't have to do with what you're getting a PhD in.
So I, and a couple of other people, are dropped into a graduate program, doing what we LOVE, but we don't have a Bachelor's degree in the subject. Our backgrounds mean we're woefully unprepared for this, yet there's no other way to do it.
I'd LOVE to be in a condensed undergraduate degree this first year. Instead, there are a couple of us who are pretty much being set up to fail. We were accepted despite lacking a lot of background information. Then we were expected to have a BS in our field, and pretty much failed the first semester because we didn't.
Don't worry about the noises you hear this evening little Alan. That's just mommy and daddy saying that they still love each other.