Any decent navigation system shouldn't require you to look at the screen, instead it should provide unambiguous voice instructions. Both nav-systems I've used (several TomTom models and the Professional system built into BMW cars) do this very well.
Like you're going to hear that when doing 200 with the top down.
That's the most retarded argument I've ever heard.
If we (US and EU) don't cut our emissions, what right have we to demand that they (China and India) do the same thing? Do you seriously expect developing nations to take the first step that the real polluters (us) refuse to take?
Cut our own emissions first, then ask them to do the same.
The problem with the tires is, that they are f***ing expensive. Around 4.000 Euros (> 5.000 Dollars) per set.
So what? The car itself is $2.1 million. It's not meant for people who worry about burning a few thousand dollar. It's an "if you have to ask what it costs, it's not for you" car. If you've already got a fleet of private jets, a 1000-foot yacht and a private island and you still have more money left than you can count, then you buy this car. And you'll probably never use it.
It comes with Windows Mobile on the navigation system.
Which probably wouldn't be much of an issue if it worked properly, but if I understand TFA correctly, the billionaires need to buy an outdated PDA to use it, and on a sunny day with the top down, they still can't see where they need to go.
If I paid $2.1 million for a car, at the very least I'd want to be able to program the nav system from my high-end smart phone, and directions should be projected HUD-style in the front window, with brightness automatically adjusted according to how sunny it is and whether the top is down. That's not too much to ask, is it?
I guess I'll just wait for Bugatti's next attempt to get it right.
Well, I'm sorry, but Rogue-like games definitely give the impression of letting you make some kind of progress. I mean, you all start out in roughly the same position, you're going to some destination or goal, and you have concrete ways of measuring your progress as you increase in power (levels & treasure). All of this gives the (perhaps false) impression that you're actually trying to accomplish something.
Of course you're trying to accomplish something. That's part of the premise behind the game. But trying is not at odds with having fun. You seem to suggest it is.
I play games to relax and not to stress out over whether I'm going to lose hours of work;
It's a game. It shouldn't be work. If it's work for which you expect to be rewarded, then stop immediately and try to find something that you do enjoy. Playing a game should be its own reward.
It's not just JRPGs that aren't really RPGs, it's all CRPGs. You don't have a GM, you can't improvise, and most of all, you don't play a role. Either the protagonist is a faceless bunch of stats and irrelevant to the story, or he really is the protagonist of the story but his role in the story is entirely played by the scripted plot rather than the player.
The only CRPG that comes close is Planescape: Torment.
It doesn't take 10 years before it becomes fun. It's fun right form the start. If you're not having fun playing the game, you're playing the wrong game. If you only derrive fun out of winning a game, you'd better stick to playing something trivially easy.
Are you saying only obsessives are capable of enjoying the same game for 20 years? Because, well, my father has been an avid chess players for most of his life. And he's still no grand master.
Grinding too long will kill you via corruption. It's advance in the game or have no chance at success.
In other words, it's a game where if you work hard to avoid the a Rogue-like's traditional punishment of "you just wasted all that time, start over," it punishes you for it.
What do you mean: you wasted all that time? Are you saying you don't enjoy playing games, and are only looking fo rthe accomplishment of having finished something trivial? Because then roguelikes are definitely not for you.
I've played several roguelikes and enjoyed them immensely, despite never having finished any of them (except adom once through cheating). They're games that are meant to be played rather than finished.
Saying "cars are the scourge of the roads" is like saying "packets are the scourge of the interwebs": ignorant and ill-informed.
Maybe it's more like "spam transporting packets are the scourge of the internet". Or maybe it's youtube or bittorrent. Whatever the case, there's a lot of different kinds of traffic, and some of it takes up more space than others.
If everybody was using only usenet, email and other text-based services, we'd have a lot more room on the Net.
Here's a hint: there's a reason why engineers design roadways (all of them) for motor vehicle traffic.
All new ones, but a lot of roads are older than the invention of cars. A lot of cities simply don't have enough room for all the cars that people want to bring into them. Encouraging people to use bicycles instead keeps traffic flowing smoothly.
Another hint: cyclists tend to get along fine in Asia, despite the significantly-crazier drivers. Maybe it's because cyclists there tend to have to be a) agile and b) defensive, instead of assuming they own the road?
Chances are it's because there are less cars there. In India and China only a very small percentage of the population owns a car. Everybody else uses bicycles and cheap motorbikes.
Where in the world is it more 'tolerant' for these self-righteous cyclists? Pretty sure it's "nowhere", and you've just got something against those big, evil, metal gas-guzzlers.
You're accusing me of bias? Please read what you wrote. You're assuming all bikers are self-righteous and assume they own the road. Most bikers aren't like that at all. While there's definitely a number of irresponsible bikers out there, many do ride defensively. You just notice the few jerks, just like bikers notice the jerks among car drivers more.
There's a reason Toyota 70 series LCs pretty much own the where-the-road-ends market.
It's true. When I went to Tumbuktoo (not reachable by any road), we only encountered LandCruisers. They never break down, and if they do, rumour has it you can even buy parts in the middle of the desert. So what if they're ugly? They're unstoppable.
OVer here they're not stickers. They're attached by the manufacturer.
Well, on tires they can still be stickers, and they sometimes come loose a bit. In the case of rims, I think they're part of the rim, and you can't tell there's anything special about it during daylight. No idea what it adds to the price, but compared to the cost of the rims themselves, I doubt it's much.
the thing city bikes REALLY need is regenerative breaking - compared to cars, bikes suck at acceleration,
That depends entirely on who's riding the bike. I've never met a car that can accellerate faster than I can (although motorbikes are usually a lot faster).
I agree that saving my kinetic energy when braking would be really cool, though.
That's because you live in a densely populated area, where nobody could go more than 5 mph even if they wanted to.
With less cars, there's plenty of room for everybody else to go faster than that. When city centers clog up, it's cars that get banned, because they take up most of the space. Put all those people on bikes, and there's no problem.
Except in China of course, where they ban bikes. The bikers can't afford cars, so banning them leaves the streets free for the elite.
FYI - it's social. It's much more pleasant to ride & chat.
Which is wonderful when there's room to do so, but a really stupid idea when there isn't. On busy roads where bikes need to share the lane with cars, bikes should ride only one abreast. Over here, riding two abreast is perfectly legal as long as it is safe to do so. Riding three abreast is always illegal (but it's still very popular, especially among teenagers).
I took the wheel ones off my bike (they aren't a requirement in the UK) because a) Someone said they were only visible from the side anyway, which was too late and no use
Being visible from the side is extremely important. Visibility from the rear is generally accomplished by a big rear reflector and a rear light. Pedals also often have small reflectors. Nothing to the side, though.
b) They slow down the wheels (removing weight from the wheels is much more useful than removing weight from the frame, because of the angular momentum or whatever it is).
You've got detachable reflectors on your wheels? I can imagine that adds some weight. In Netherland, they're standard on rims, and optional on the side of tires. It's just a thin strip, and doesn't add a lot of weight.
I commute everyday via a highway, and bikes are supposed to not use the highway, but every few weeks I'll have to decelerate from 65 mph down to 35 mph just so I can pass the bikes safely.
I admit, that's something that really amazes me in some of the comments here: bikes on highways. I admit I'm not entirely sure what constitutes a highway in the US, but I'd always assumed it's aproximately the same thing as English motorways, German Autobahns or Dutch snelwegen (speed limits of 100 kph and up), which is not a place where bikes belong.
If you want to cycle to where the motorway leads, there always is (or should be) a seconday road (slightly less direct and leading through every town in the vicinity no doubt) that bikes could take.
Now these bikers if they are just trying to get exercise (which is what it looks like to me)
That's probably another difference between bicycles in the US and in Netherland: we use bikes for transportation. When I was in school, I used the bike to get to school (10 km along straight polder roads), when I went to university I went by bike, when I got a job I went there by bike.
I once saw a site by a biker from San Francisco who'd visited Amsterdam and was amazed by how bikes were used here. Seeing a mother in long skirt with a young child in front of her and a slightly older one on the back of the bike seemed extremely dangerous to him, but that's probably because of the hazardous biking conditions in the US.
Also, nbody wears a helmet hear, except some children (and that's a relatively recent development).
People just don't get killed by bicycles often.
The first time I rode a heavy cargo bike, the rental forgot to tell me I should keep my hand on the brake at all times. Those things tend to lose control when they go faster than 10 kph, and I imagine a few hundred pounds of steel out of control down hill can be rather painful. I didn't kill anyone, fortunately, and quickly learned to brake constantly.
Leaving the designated bike lane, not wearing helmets etc.
Nobody does that here. But then, our bikers sound slightly less suicidal than yours.
Not having proper reflective gear.
The number of bikes with broken lights in Amsterdam is amazing. Every year the police cracks down hard on it, but it only helps temporarily. The ciy is mostly well-lit, fortunately, but outside the city limits at night, you really need some good lighting.
So, wouldn't it be your responsiblity to decide that its not safe enough to bike under those circumstances? I mean at some point you say the environment is too unsafe in which to drive (say in a blizzard)..
I was in highschool, and I still needed to get home somehow. And I've been through worse: a force 11 gale passing over the country. A whole line of bikers was lying flat on the bike path and if you stuck your head up, you risked getting blown into the canal.
It's just one of those risks you need to survive in highschool.
You make it sound like it's new technology, but it's really very, very old. And the old generators add quite a bit of resistance. Modern ones are a lot lighter, though. And modern lights often have a capacitor so your lights remain on for a minute even after you stopped.
Personally, I just prefer a good battery powered led, though.
I shouldn't have to point out the obvious differences but...
Cars are required to have their headlights on in that situation.
I know that. Doesn't mean it's not fucking annoying at times, though. I even find car headlights annoying when I'm in a car. I guess I have very sensitive eyes or something.
I need to learn to look at the preview. Here's what that reply is supposed to look like:
What the hell are you doing overtaking traffic ON A BLIND CURVE, you dangerous loon?
The bike is NOT traffic. It's just a bike.
Then the law where you live is quite a bit different than it is here. Over here, even a pedestrian is traffic. A pedestrian is not a driver or a vehicle, but a bicycle is.
According to the law, drivers include people leading horses (even small ponies, but not large dogs), bicycles, horse-drawn buggies, people pushing large hand-carts and lots of other stuff that you'd rather not be stuck behind. Many of these are vechicles (bikes definitely are), but not motor vehicles. Only cars and motorbikes are motor vehicles (unlike small scooters, small cars for disabled people, segways and motorised stuff like that).
There are a few ways where the law doesn't quite work: inline skaters, for example, despite going with bicycle speeds and needing a smooth bicycle surface, count as pedestrians.
All of the above, however are traffic according to the law here. But apparently your local law is quite a bit different.
What the hell are you doing overtaking traffic ON A BLIND CURVE, you dangerous loon?
The bike is NOT traffic. It's just a bike.
Then the law where you live is quite a bit different than it is here. Over here, even a pedestrian is traffic. A pedestrian is not a driver or a vehicle, but a bicycle is.
According to the law, drivers include people leading horses (even small ponies, but not large dogs), bicycles, horse-drawn buggies, people pushing large hand-carts and lots of other stuff that you'd rather not be stuck behind. Many of these are vechicles (bikes definitely are), but not motor vehicles. Only cars and motorbikes are motor vehicles (unlike small scooters, small cars for disabled people, segways and motorised stuff like that).
There are a few ways where the law doesn't quite work: inline skaters, for example, despite going with bicycle speeds and needing a smooth bicycle surface, count as pedestrians.
All of the above, however are traffic according to the law here. But apparently your local law is quite a bit different.
Slashdot Mirror
You can change the black background where the apps are and the app icons using an app named winterboard. (http://www.saurik.com/id/9)
Wasn't winterboard the app that makes iPhone glacially slow?
Any decent navigation system shouldn't require you to look at the screen, instead it should provide unambiguous voice instructions. Both nav-systems I've used (several TomTom models and the Professional system built into BMW cars) do this very well.
Like you're going to hear that when doing 200 with the top down.
That's the most retarded argument I've ever heard.
If we (US and EU) don't cut our emissions, what right have we to demand that they (China and India) do the same thing? Do you seriously expect developing nations to take the first step that the real polluters (us) refuse to take?
Cut our own emissions first, then ask them to do the same.
I mean for some even a single ferrari 599 would be waste.
For some? I'd say for the vast, vast majority of people.
The problem with the tires is, that they are f***ing expensive. Around 4.000 Euros (> 5.000 Dollars) per set.
So what? The car itself is $2.1 million. It's not meant for people who worry about burning a few thousand dollar. It's an "if you have to ask what it costs, it's not for you" car. If you've already got a fleet of private jets, a 1000-foot yacht and a private island and you still have more money left than you can count, then you buy this car. And you'll probably never use it.
It comes with Windows Mobile on the navigation system.
Which probably wouldn't be much of an issue if it worked properly, but if I understand TFA correctly, the billionaires need to buy an outdated PDA to use it, and on a sunny day with the top down, they still can't see where they need to go.
If I paid $2.1 million for a car, at the very least I'd want to be able to program the nav system from my high-end smart phone, and directions should be projected HUD-style in the front window, with brightness automatically adjusted according to how sunny it is and whether the top is down. That's not too much to ask, is it?
I guess I'll just wait for Bugatti's next attempt to get it right.
Well, I'm sorry, but Rogue-like games definitely give the impression of letting you make some kind of progress. I mean, you all start out in roughly the same position, you're going to some destination or goal, and you have concrete ways of measuring your progress as you increase in power (levels & treasure). All of this gives the (perhaps false) impression that you're actually trying to accomplish something.
Of course you're trying to accomplish something. That's part of the premise behind the game. But trying is not at odds with having fun. You seem to suggest it is.
I play games to relax and not to stress out over whether I'm going to lose hours of work;
It's a game. It shouldn't be work. If it's work for which you expect to be rewarded, then stop immediately and try to find something that you do enjoy. Playing a game should be its own reward.
It's not just JRPGs that aren't really RPGs, it's all CRPGs. You don't have a GM, you can't improvise, and most of all, you don't play a role. Either the protagonist is a faceless bunch of stats and irrelevant to the story, or he really is the protagonist of the story but his role in the story is entirely played by the scripted plot rather than the player.
The only CRPG that comes close is Planescape: Torment.
It doesn't take 10 years before it becomes fun. It's fun right form the start. If you're not having fun playing the game, you're playing the wrong game. If you only derrive fun out of winning a game, you'd better stick to playing something trivially easy.
Are you saying only obsessives are capable of enjoying the same game for 20 years? Because, well, my father has been an avid chess players for most of his life. And he's still no grand master.
Grinding too long will kill you via corruption. It's advance in the game or have no chance at success.
In other words, it's a game where if you work hard to avoid the a Rogue-like's traditional punishment of "you just wasted all that time, start over," it punishes you for it.
What do you mean: you wasted all that time? Are you saying you don't enjoy playing games, and are only looking fo rthe accomplishment of having finished something trivial? Because then roguelikes are definitely not for you.
I've played several roguelikes and enjoyed them immensely, despite never having finished any of them (except adom once through cheating). They're games that are meant to be played rather than finished.
Saying "cars are the scourge of the roads" is like saying "packets are the scourge of the interwebs": ignorant and ill-informed.
Maybe it's more like "spam transporting packets are the scourge of the internet". Or maybe it's youtube or bittorrent. Whatever the case, there's a lot of different kinds of traffic, and some of it takes up more space than others.
If everybody was using only usenet, email and other text-based services, we'd have a lot more room on the Net.
Here's a hint: there's a reason why engineers design roadways (all of them) for motor vehicle traffic.
All new ones, but a lot of roads are older than the invention of cars. A lot of cities simply don't have enough room for all the cars that people want to bring into them. Encouraging people to use bicycles instead keeps traffic flowing smoothly.
Another hint: cyclists tend to get along fine in Asia, despite the significantly-crazier drivers. Maybe it's because cyclists there tend to have to be a) agile and b) defensive, instead of assuming they own the road?
Chances are it's because there are less cars there. In India and China only a very small percentage of the population owns a car. Everybody else uses bicycles and cheap motorbikes.
Where in the world is it more 'tolerant' for these self-righteous cyclists? Pretty sure it's "nowhere", and you've just got something against those big, evil, metal gas-guzzlers.
You're accusing me of bias? Please read what you wrote. You're assuming all bikers are self-righteous and assume they own the road. Most bikers aren't like that at all. While there's definitely a number of irresponsible bikers out there, many do ride defensively. You just notice the few jerks, just like bikers notice the jerks among car drivers more.
There's a reason Toyota 70 series LCs pretty much own the where-the-road-ends market.
It's true. When I went to Tumbuktoo (not reachable by any road), we only encountered LandCruisers. They never break down, and if they do, rumour has it you can even buy parts in the middle of the desert. So what if they're ugly? They're unstoppable.
OVer here they're not stickers. They're attached by the manufacturer.
Well, on tires they can still be stickers, and they sometimes come loose a bit. In the case of rims, I think they're part of the rim, and you can't tell there's anything special about it during daylight. No idea what it adds to the price, but compared to the cost of the rims themselves, I doubt it's much.
the thing city bikes REALLY need is regenerative breaking - compared to cars, bikes suck at acceleration,
That depends entirely on who's riding the bike. I've never met a car that can accellerate faster than I can (although motorbikes are usually a lot faster).
I agree that saving my kinetic energy when braking would be really cool, though.
That's because you live in a densely populated area, where nobody could go more than 5 mph even if they wanted to.
With less cars, there's plenty of room for everybody else to go faster than that. When city centers clog up, it's cars that get banned, because they take up most of the space. Put all those people on bikes, and there's no problem.
Except in China of course, where they ban bikes. The bikers can't afford cars, so banning them leaves the streets free for the elite.
Well-designed bike paths have well-designed intersections with good visibility.
often 2 abreast for no reason
FYI - it's social. It's much more pleasant to ride & chat.
Which is wonderful when there's room to do so, but a really stupid idea when there isn't. On busy roads where bikes need to share the lane with cars, bikes should ride only one abreast. Over here, riding two abreast is perfectly legal as long as it is safe to do so. Riding three abreast is always illegal (but it's still very popular, especially among teenagers).
I took the wheel ones off my bike (they aren't a requirement in the UK) because
a) Someone said they were only visible from the side anyway, which was too late and no use
Being visible from the side is extremely important. Visibility from the rear is generally accomplished by a big rear reflector and a rear light. Pedals also often have small reflectors. Nothing to the side, though.
b) They slow down the wheels (removing weight from the wheels is much more useful than removing weight from the frame, because of the angular momentum or whatever it is).
You've got detachable reflectors on your wheels? I can imagine that adds some weight. In Netherland, they're standard on rims, and optional on the side of tires. It's just a thin strip, and doesn't add a lot of weight.
I commute everyday via a highway, and bikes are supposed to not use the highway, but every few weeks I'll have to decelerate from 65 mph down to 35 mph just so I can pass the bikes safely.
I admit, that's something that really amazes me in some of the comments here: bikes on highways. I admit I'm not entirely sure what constitutes a highway in the US, but I'd always assumed it's aproximately the same thing as English motorways, German Autobahns or Dutch snelwegen (speed limits of 100 kph and up), which is not a place where bikes belong.
If you want to cycle to where the motorway leads, there always is (or should be) a seconday road (slightly less direct and leading through every town in the vicinity no doubt) that bikes could take.
Now these bikers if they are just trying to get exercise (which is what it looks like to me)
That's probably another difference between bicycles in the US and in Netherland: we use bikes for transportation. When I was in school, I used the bike to get to school (10 km along straight polder roads), when I went to university I went by bike, when I got a job I went there by bike.
I once saw a site by a biker from San Francisco who'd visited Amsterdam and was amazed by how bikes were used here. Seeing a mother in long skirt with a young child in front of her and a slightly older one on the back of the bike seemed extremely dangerous to him, but that's probably because of the hazardous biking conditions in the US.
Also, nbody wears a helmet hear, except some children (and that's a relatively recent development).
People just don't get killed by bicycles often.
The first time I rode a heavy cargo bike, the rental forgot to tell me I should keep my hand on the brake at all times. Those things tend to lose control when they go faster than 10 kph, and I imagine a few hundred pounds of steel out of control down hill can be rather painful. I didn't kill anyone, fortunately, and quickly learned to brake constantly.
Leaving the designated bike lane, not wearing helmets etc.
Nobody does that here. But then, our bikers sound slightly less suicidal than yours.
Not having proper reflective gear.
The number of bikes with broken lights in Amsterdam is amazing. Every year the police cracks down hard on it, but it only helps temporarily. The ciy is mostly well-lit, fortunately, but outside the city limits at night, you really need some good lighting.
So, wouldn't it be your responsiblity to decide that its not safe enough to bike under those circumstances? I mean at some point you say the environment is too unsafe in which to drive (say in a blizzard)..
I was in highschool, and I still needed to get home somehow. And I've been through worse: a force 11 gale passing over the country. A whole line of bikers was lying flat on the bike path and if you stuck your head up, you risked getting blown into the canal.
It's just one of those risks you need to survive in highschool.
You make it sound like it's new technology, but it's really very, very old. And the old generators add quite a bit of resistance. Modern ones are a lot lighter, though. And modern lights often have a capacitor so your lights remain on for a minute even after you stopped.
Personally, I just prefer a good battery powered led, though.
I shouldn't have to point out the obvious differences but...
Cars are required to have their headlights on in that situation.
I know that. Doesn't mean it's not fucking annoying at times, though. I even find car headlights annoying when I'm in a car. I guess I have very sensitive eyes or something.
I need to learn to look at the preview. Here's what that reply is supposed to look like:
What the hell are you doing overtaking traffic ON A BLIND CURVE, you dangerous loon?
The bike is NOT traffic. It's just a bike.
Then the law where you live is quite a bit different than it is here. Over here, even a pedestrian is traffic. A pedestrian is not a driver or a vehicle, but a bicycle is.
According to the law, drivers include people leading horses (even small ponies, but not large dogs), bicycles, horse-drawn buggies, people pushing large hand-carts and lots of other stuff that you'd rather not be stuck behind. Many of these are vechicles (bikes definitely are), but not motor vehicles. Only cars and motorbikes are motor vehicles (unlike small scooters, small cars for disabled people, segways and motorised stuff like that).
There are a few ways where the law doesn't quite work: inline skaters, for example, despite going with bicycle speeds and needing a smooth bicycle surface, count as pedestrians.
All of the above, however are traffic according to the law here. But apparently your local law is quite a bit different.
What the hell are you doing overtaking traffic ON A BLIND CURVE, you dangerous loon?
The bike is NOT traffic. It's just a bike.
Then the law where you live is quite a bit different than it is here. Over here, even a pedestrian is traffic. A pedestrian is not a driver or a vehicle, but a bicycle is.
According to the law, drivers include people leading horses (even small ponies, but not large dogs), bicycles, horse-drawn buggies, people pushing large hand-carts and lots of other stuff that you'd rather not be stuck behind. Many of these are vechicles (bikes definitely are), but not motor vehicles. Only cars and motorbikes are motor vehicles (unlike small scooters, small cars for disabled people, segways and motorised stuff like that).
There are a few ways where the law doesn't quite work: inline skaters, for example, despite going with bicycle speeds and needing a smooth bicycle surface, count as pedestrians.
All of the above, however are traffic according to the law here. But apparently your local law is quite a bit different.