Why should gambling be regulated at all? Cheating is fraud, that's already illegal.
Money Laundering. Oddly enough, I always lose when I play my dealer / loanshark.
Given a free and open market you don't need regulation, since the free market will clean it up. However, the whole point of gambling is working on limited and hidden information. Hence its inherently impossible to have a free market in gambling. Hence we need regulation.
when they should be focusing on crimes with actual victims (if you voluntarily take part in something, by definition you cannot be a victim)
Two problems:
1) Best contemplate "malpractice" and "restaurant/grocery food safety laws" before making a victim definition. Also unless you were forced at gunpoint to drive, a drunk driver could not be responsible for your death because you were voluntarily driving.
2) The problem in your situation is the cops confusing "private poker rooms" as being the evil to be eradicated, being unable to punish the "private poker room" itself, so they just lash out at whomever is nearby, such as the people in attendance. Its similar to the gun control problem, where some morons think the problem is the inanimate object itself so they lash out at the innocent people nearby it, such as the law abiding citizen whom purchased the object (gun). Classic "to save the village we had to destroy the village" thinking.
Two serious problem areas with defining internet gambling:
1) Yahoo, etc, used to have online gaming for various games of chance. If you let people select their opponents, I have no idea how you prevent people from playing for money. Example is a bunch of coworkers figure out how to play each other and settle up the cash later. I have been involved in this general class of activity, more than a decade ago. Major hint: If your screen name is obviously a dude people leave you alone, and if your screen name is obviously a female then people will never leave you alone (constant invites to join game, requests for pics, etc).
2) What about intrade.com? Instead of betting on who has a pair of kings or whatever, you bet on futures contracts for "will avatar (aka dances with smurfs) win an oscar"? This is another area of online gambling I've been involved in. Not much different than financial futures trading, which is legal.
3) I have no idea how to prevent collusion and back channel communication in online gambling. Playing partner-type games online for free my wife and I got several angry accusations about this, because our screen names made it obvious we lived together. We didn't cheat, because why cheat in a "free" game, but everyone else sure thought we did. Of course the real cheaters would not do something that obvious. Even in non-partner games it can be an immense strategic gain to share "secret" data.
It's harder to regulate, and easier for people to get addicted and gamble away all their assets at home.
So, are you trying to ban etrade.com and "flipping houses"? Or is risk taking in general ok, and you just want to impose your peculiar morality about playing cards on others?
I'm not sure how its easier to get addicted to gambling at home. I can tell you don't have a spouse, house, and little kids, as god knows I can't accomplish any tasks at home anymore. Back in the bachelor apartment days, well yeah, maybe, and in addition to spare time, I also had more available cash to "gamble". D-n-D, watching sports, and MMORPGs suffer the same fate.
Notes should not be taken during lectures. Take notes while you do the readings. All you have to do is note any interesting anecdotes, and record examples, as they often appear on the tests with little change.
Decades later, I still remember watching my classmates furiously scribbling stuff in calc class as though they'd never heard of this stuff until moments ago, while I sat back, relaxed, yet confused... And then suddenly realizing, they probably had never heard of this stuff, because they did not read their textbook...
Even in those fluffy politically correct liberal arts classes, you can pretty much guess what the lecturer is going to talk about.
Most comments seem to be from the outside looking in, looking from the big picture to the small.
Try a different strategy. Look at the small picture and imagine it replicated a zillion times.
So, the wife and I serve the evil empire at our corporate jobs. Due to gender quotas, etc, she's pretty much untouchable at a big enough corporation in her technical field. The only way it could be better for my wife, is if she were a minority. Me, I'm just another off the shelf white male tech dude. Which of us should stay in the corporate world to haul down some cash and (more importantly) health insurance? The replaceable cog in the machine man, or the quota'd fire-proof woman? Obviously the least risky solution is she keeps her day job, he forms the new company.
Multiply by roughly 10000x and you get the reported numbers. No great surprise, really.
Re:bleach is great but focus on antibiotics
on
Spray-On Liquid Glass
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· Score: 4, Informative
we pour a gallon of that crud down the sink to kill 16 germs. not that a strong base like bleach is great for mother earth either.
Uh... OK.
So, first of all, silicon dioxide (the subject of the article) is soluble in strong bases. So it won't take long for your "strong base" to dissolve this stuff away. Or any strong base. Heck bird poop would probably suffice.
Secondly, bleach is primarily an oxidizer, secondarily it is somewhat basic but not impressively so. Perhaps you're thinking of some other strongly basic solution you pour down the drain, like, maybe lye based drain cleaner?
Thirdly as far as mother earth vs sodium hypochlorite, its ridiculously unstable and decomposes away before it even hits the sewage treatment plant. I suppose that by Environmentalist Religion "original sin" doctrine it is bad, in that everything any human does is always inherently bad. But compared to most things poured down drains, bleach is rather harmless. You can drink it when highly diluted as a water purifier.
It "sounds good", but it indicates a lot of weird ideas about basic chemistry (basic, get that pun?)
But what if both your gear shift and iginition push button are software controlled, and the software is the problem?
Thats a design error.
My daily driver has one computer for the transmission based on a 68hc11 design, and a completely separate system for the engine/ignition/fuel injectors using I believe a different microcontroller architecture.
If the transmission crashes, it'll need major hardware repair, but at least you'll have power brakes/steering/etc as you stop. If the engine crashes, you'll smoothly downshift, glide to a stop, and put it in park.
The general automotive trend has been to include more and more specialized microcontrollers, rather than just one big ole central processing unit. The back seat DVD player is almost certainly not sharing a processor with the ABS braking controller.
So yeah, I believe this man could have saved his own life and failed to do so. He and the 3 others could be alive today.
With regards to the dead cop, look at the death by suicide rates for cops. I'm not implying anything about one specific instance, but the suicide rate is high enough that its a legitimate area of inquiry. Just saying that a lot of cops try to go out using tools from their job, like guns... cars...
The vehicle was push button and pushing the button while driving doesn't do anything. Computer users may be inclined to hold the power button down for a few seconds but a computer illiterate person may not think of that.
I've always wondered how many engine starter motors have burned out because people crank away for two minutes when the engine simply is not going to start (empty gas tank, etc).
Not being an idiot, its hard to predict what they do, but killing starter motors is some evidence they'll just keep on doing what doesn't work. Also see locking up brakes (pre ABS era), various poor driving judgment decisions especially relating to alcohol consumption, prayer, voting for either of the two major parties, most long term financial / educational / vocational decisions, etc.
The foam is made by filling a mold with hollow steel spheres and then filling the gaps with molten aluminum. VERY scalable.
Well, yeah, if you assume hollow steel spheres are "off the shelf". Kind of like saying starships are very scalable, you just make them with warp drives, problem solved.
I have cast aluminum and have had porosity problems. Basically some gasses dissolve better in hot aluminum and bubble out as it cools. Preventing porosity in castings is very old technology. I always assumed metal foams did the opposite of preventing porosity, and tried to supersaturate molten metal with hydrogen or argon or something under pressure and then froze it at a rate that grew the bubbles to just the right size. Metallurgists have no problem doing all kinds of complicated heat treatments and all kinds of weird alloys, so I figured the limitation was dissolving enough "whatever" in the metal to make it work.
And where people tend to upgrade their phones more or less as often as they change underwear,
And that, slashdotters, is why you have trouble getting a date. The only thing less likely to get you a woman than showing off your 'leet original motorola startac clamshell phone from 1996, is only changing your underwear when you upgrade.
That also has interesting attire implications for people whom don't own a cellphone. How does that joke go: "So... there's no cellphone worn under your kilt?" or something like that?
the Superbowl has a simple yet fatal weakness when it comes to the common human nipple.
I haven't watched a football game since 2004, but back then, it seemed mandatory at the start or end of at least one commercial break to have a camera zoomed in on a fat topless man spray painted with one teams colors holding a beer in each hand and bellowing. The, uh, man on tv I mean, not myself. So I'll correct your statement:
the SuprBowel has a simple yet fatal weakness when it comes to the common human FEMALE nipple
One thing I've never understood about the US system: Why do you people think kids have to learn to read at such a young age?
There is a lot of money to be made, "fixing" the "broken" children.
Once kids are a bit bigger, you can grade inflate it so everyone gets an "A" and a participation trophy. But with learning to read, there is no way to falsify the results. Inevitably the first 10% of the kids to learn are going to be measurably and obviously ahead of the remaining 90% whom will be declared "broken" in need of "fixing", because they are all supposed to have equality of results, everyone gets an "A", etc.
It is also a guilt thing, with various made up statistics claiming only 40% of adults have read a book since graduation or whatever, the belief is the kids must do better than I did, so the sooner the better.
Finally American education does not have stages like a real education system. If a 17 year old kid is supposed to be on the sports team, wear sexually suggestive clothing, read books, ride a bus, watch cartoons, and do homework, then a 4 year old big toddler is supposed to play in the kiddie league, wear provocative clothing, read books, ride a bus, watch cartoons, and do homework just like the almost-adults. That game continues until dropout, age 18, or graduation, whichever comes last, and the switch is instantly flipped to full adulthood, of course many don't survive the transition, or navigate it very poorly, in which case we just blame the parents and then its all good.
Did anyone every stop to consider that language is evolving and that it is the traditional grammar which is failing to keep up with modern society?
Its my experience that people whom can not learn the proper tools to express themselves, coincidentally also have nothing useful inside themselves to express. Just a coincidence, and correlation does not imply causality, but it is a useful predictor that is almost never wrong. Think of it as a filter, kind of like a website with flash navigation is probably utterly useless, not because it uses flash, but because using flash for navigation indicates a certain stupidity that probably extends far beyond mere inability to create a properly navigable website.
Swearing is another example. Its not that the words are inherently in and of themselves wrong because some clown declared them wrong, it's that it shows a smallness of vocabulary, an inability to express complicated ideas, a distinct lack of intelligent contemplation.
So it's no shock that these kids, of which very little was ever demanded or expected of them, should suddenly find themselves failing college once the gloves come off.
Well, there is a simple cure for that, dumb down college and inflate college grades! Err, wait, we're already doing that.
I have a degree in Electronics Engineering... just recently I managed to learn ski from total newbie to intermediate/advanced level in 1 week
You are confusing #2 as being the result of #1, when in reality both are the result of already being intelligent.
The diploma itself was only usefull in getting me my first job: from then onwards my CV and the knowledge I display in interviews have been the things that matter.
Blatantly false. Trust me, when you have a stack of resumes, the first thing you do is toss out the simple demographic ones like no degree. Because of HR, there is literally no way Linus could possible be hired as a Linux sysadmin or Linux developer at 99% of companies in the US, unless he has a degree (which luckily for him, he does). Doesn't matter what you write in the experience section, if they toss the resume out because of the education section first. I know I went from unemployable to easy street when I finally got my degree...
I daily see the difference in perspective my degree has given me - I'm thinking a different way to most of my colleagues who just 'sort of ended up' in IT.
OK so your testimony below is that something broadens your horizons, and your statement above is that its degrees that do it. My experience on the job is the primary way to broaden my horizons has been certifications over time, not a one time degree.
For example, I was doing a lot of BGP and OSPF work. When I went for my CCNP in the early 00s, I didn't really even study for the routing/BGP tests because I didn't have to (other than studying ISIS and CLNP, does anyone actually use that in production?), but I learned a heck of a lot from studying for the switching test because I'd never professionally done much layer 2 stuff.
Another example, I had a coworker going for one of cisco's VOIP certs that required a MCSE. He was a pretty much linux/unix dude, and the workplace was strictly linux/solaris. He certainly broadened his horizons by doing the MCSE thing.
Reread your story below and ask yourself if there's anything in there that isn't better covered by certs and continuing education, rather than a degree.
But there's a lot of stuff that's been indirectly relevant - communication theory kicks in when you start talking about protocols. Database design lets you slap people upside the head for using a spreadsheet for server configurations. Assembly and embedded processor programming gives you a handle on performance analysis for 'black box' devices.
A rental RWD diesel car in Ireland of very questionable parentage and roughly 90s vintage.
I otherwise enjoyed it greatly, as it was like a miniature luxury car, fancy interior with wood trim, a couple cows worth of leather everything, nice sound system, very comfortable seats, etc. It was kind of like a "caddy" but the size of a "smart fourtwo". I fail to see the point of a luxury car in a country where you can drive from one coast to the opposite coast in about the duration of two music CDs, but whatever. Back in the states, although I'd like one, you can not buy a small luxury car, its a binary choice of small rattly technicolor plastic interior about as comfortable as sitting on an overturned 5 gallon bucket, or an unpleasantly obese land barge with a civilized comfortable interior.
It must have one hell of a parking brake.
Yes I should have made that disclaimer. I had an 80s era plymouth horizon where the parking brake could be mal-adjusted such that the actuator could be engaged all the way while barely engaging the brakes. It was pretty easy to properly adjust although I don't remember how I did it. On the other hand, the thing I rented in Ireland was somewhat maladjusted in the opposite direction such that the slightest touch on the parking brake actuator locked the wheels up, so slight that the brake light wasn't even on. And then there are the people that never use their parking brake/e-brake, so they have no idea if it works, or in some bad cases, how to use it.
In a way its not much of a disclaimer, because there is little point in debating the infinite number of scenarios with multiple broken components/systems. Even the worlds safest designed car will crash, if you jam the throttle, crash the transmission computer, rust out the parking brake cable, short out the fuel pump fuse in the fusebox, drain both independent hydraulic brake systems, engine vacuum failure, and glaze all eight brake pads, simultaneously.
What is with all these crazy people suggesting that you should shift into neutral? With a floored accelerator, that's a great way to completely destroy the engine
The last carburetor fueled car was sold in the USA in 1990. Thats 20 years ago. It was possible to buy odd trucks here and there up to "merely" 16 years ago with a carb. Probably if your car is less than a quarter century old, its fuel injected.
Every fuel injected car I've ever heard of has a rev limiter, above which it refuses to run. You could look up your car's rev limiter setting in your owners manual which is probably suspiciously near the "red line" of the engine, or you could just post to slashdot that you'll "completely destroy your engine", whichever works for you.
I had a carb car in the 80s where the ancient and crude engine computer would shut off the fuel pump if you exceeded "x" RPM, on the assumption that the tires in top gear are not rated for 120 MPH. So at least some later year carb cars were rev limited anyway, although not as well as fuel injected cars.
Also, the failure mode of ancient carb engines was pretty variable. Some were rev limited by, say, the head separating from the block, or by launching a piston thru the head or a rod thru the oil pan, which is a bit drastic. Lots of others were rev limited by the valve springs not being able to operate quickly enough and/or setting up a weird resonance. Those engines generally don't sustain much damage. Not that I'd recommend trying it.
Regardless, I'm not aware of any engine over-rev failure mode thats worse than a 150 MPH crash. Given the choice of needing a new engine, or fiery death, I guess some folks would chose death, oh well, hope they don't take innocent bystanders with them.
why a function that critical didn't get a ball bearing.
Do not want a ball bearing in a safety critical application. Crud gets in between the ball and race, corrosion jams them like crazy, and traditionally they over-harden the metal to get a long service life (like billions of revolutions), so the race and/or ball inevitably fractures and jams. Being composed of partially sealed little moving parts, you can't look at one and tell if its going to jam or otherwise fail. Also traditionally you purchase ball bearings from a 3rd party whom may supply one over or under size, resulting in the assembly falling apart or binding, you can work around that by very expensive QA/QC but its best avoided. Trust me, you want to use a bushing for a throttle bearing.
Ball bearings are OK for something like an engine crankshaft, because you REALLY need the lower friction even if they are less reliable, and if they fail, no one dies (well, General Aviation and marine diesels excepted, etc etc). Also they can last awhile if continuously bathed in a flow of filtered motor oil, which is unlikely for a throttle sensor unless you have a major leak.
BB are more expensive than bushings, which is the only requirement to appeal to the carbon fiber door handle and audiophile crowd. But that does not mean they'd be good engineering practice.
On Toyota's with this button you have to hold it down for 3 seconds before it turns off the car.
Not on my wife's 2005-ish era Toyota Prius. Tap the power switch and its instantly off. I'm not making this up, I shut that car off a couple times per week and there is no "hold the switch for 5 seconds" foolishness or whatever.
Also, at least on a 2005-ish era Toyota Prius, you can not shut off the headlights by shutting off the engine. I believe there is a law that prevents manufacturers from selling a car where the lights are shut off when the engine shuts off, probably to make the totally made up GP post scenario possible.
I do not drive my wife's car enough to be certain, but I believe the steering-stalk mounted headlight switch is at least a foot away from the completely separate power switch.
I have never seen, been inside, or driven an unmodified car that shuts off the headlights when the key is removed or shut off. It is probably possible to make an aftermarket modification to do this.
Slashdot Mirror
Why should gambling be regulated at all? Cheating is fraud, that's already illegal.
Money Laundering. Oddly enough, I always lose when I play my dealer / loanshark.
Given a free and open market you don't need regulation, since the free market will clean it up. However, the whole point of gambling is working on limited and hidden information. Hence its inherently impossible to have a free market in gambling. Hence we need regulation.
when they should be focusing on crimes with actual victims (if you voluntarily take part in something, by definition you cannot be a victim)
Two problems:
1) Best contemplate "malpractice" and "restaurant/grocery food safety laws" before making a victim definition. Also unless you were forced at gunpoint to drive, a drunk driver could not be responsible for your death because you were voluntarily driving.
2) The problem in your situation is the cops confusing "private poker rooms" as being the evil to be eradicated, being unable to punish the "private poker room" itself, so they just lash out at whomever is nearby, such as the people in attendance. Its similar to the gun control problem, where some morons think the problem is the inanimate object itself so they lash out at the innocent people nearby it, such as the law abiding citizen whom purchased the object (gun). Classic "to save the village we had to destroy the village" thinking.
We already have internet gambling. I gu
Well, I can't argue with that.
Two serious problem areas with defining internet gambling:
1) Yahoo, etc, used to have online gaming for various games of chance. If you let people select their opponents, I have no idea how you prevent people from playing for money. Example is a bunch of coworkers figure out how to play each other and settle up the cash later. I have been involved in this general class of activity, more than a decade ago. Major hint: If your screen name is obviously a dude people leave you alone, and if your screen name is obviously a female then people will never leave you alone (constant invites to join game, requests for pics, etc).
2) What about intrade.com? Instead of betting on who has a pair of kings or whatever, you bet on futures contracts for "will avatar (aka dances with smurfs) win an oscar"? This is another area of online gambling I've been involved in. Not much different than financial futures trading, which is legal.
3) I have no idea how to prevent collusion and back channel communication in online gambling. Playing partner-type games online for free my wife and I got several angry accusations about this, because our screen names made it obvious we lived together. We didn't cheat, because why cheat in a "free" game, but everyone else sure thought we did. Of course the real cheaters would not do something that obvious. Even in non-partner games it can be an immense strategic gain to share "secret" data.
It's harder to regulate, and easier for people to get addicted and gamble away all their assets at home.
So, are you trying to ban etrade.com and "flipping houses"? Or is risk taking in general ok, and you just want to impose your peculiar morality about playing cards on others?
I'm not sure how its easier to get addicted to gambling at home. I can tell you don't have a spouse, house, and little kids, as god knows I can't accomplish any tasks at home anymore. Back in the bachelor apartment days, well yeah, maybe, and in addition to spare time, I also had more available cash to "gamble". D-n-D, watching sports, and MMORPGs suffer the same fate.
Notes should not be taken during lectures. Take notes while you do the readings. All you have to do is note any interesting anecdotes, and record examples, as they often appear on the tests with little change.
Decades later, I still remember watching my classmates furiously scribbling stuff in calc class as though they'd never heard of this stuff until moments ago, while I sat back, relaxed, yet confused... And then suddenly realizing, they probably had never heard of this stuff, because they did not read their textbook...
Even in those fluffy politically correct liberal arts classes, you can pretty much guess what the lecturer is going to talk about.
Most comments seem to be from the outside looking in, looking from the big picture to the small.
Try a different strategy. Look at the small picture and imagine it replicated a zillion times.
So, the wife and I serve the evil empire at our corporate jobs. Due to gender quotas, etc, she's pretty much untouchable at a big enough corporation in her technical field. The only way it could be better for my wife, is if she were a minority. Me, I'm just another off the shelf white male tech dude. Which of us should stay in the corporate world to haul down some cash and (more importantly) health insurance? The replaceable cog in the machine man, or the quota'd fire-proof woman? Obviously the least risky solution is she keeps her day job, he forms the new company.
Multiply by roughly 10000x and you get the reported numbers. No great surprise, really.
Where does the grounding clamp attach?
we pour a gallon of that crud down the sink to kill 16 germs. not that a strong base like bleach is great for mother earth either.
Uh... OK.
So, first of all, silicon dioxide (the subject of the article) is soluble in strong bases. So it won't take long for your "strong base" to dissolve this stuff away. Or any strong base. Heck bird poop would probably suffice.
Secondly, bleach is primarily an oxidizer, secondarily it is somewhat basic but not impressively so. Perhaps you're thinking of some other strongly basic solution you pour down the drain, like, maybe lye based drain cleaner?
Thirdly as far as mother earth vs sodium hypochlorite, its ridiculously unstable and decomposes away before it even hits the sewage treatment plant. I suppose that by Environmentalist Religion "original sin" doctrine it is bad, in that everything any human does is always inherently bad. But compared to most things poured down drains, bleach is rather harmless. You can drink it when highly diluted as a water purifier.
It "sounds good", but it indicates a lot of weird ideas about basic chemistry (basic, get that pun?)
But what if both your gear shift and iginition push button are software controlled, and the software is the problem?
Thats a design error.
My daily driver has one computer for the transmission based on a 68hc11 design, and a completely separate system for the engine/ignition/fuel injectors using I believe a different microcontroller architecture.
If the transmission crashes, it'll need major hardware repair, but at least you'll have power brakes/steering/etc as you stop. If the engine crashes, you'll smoothly downshift, glide to a stop, and put it in park.
The general automotive trend has been to include more and more specialized microcontrollers, rather than just one big ole central processing unit. The back seat DVD player is almost certainly not sharing a processor with the ABS braking controller.
So yeah, I believe this man could have saved his own life and failed to do so. He and the 3 others could be alive today.
With regards to the dead cop, look at the death by suicide rates for cops. I'm not implying anything about one specific instance, but the suicide rate is high enough that its a legitimate area of inquiry. Just saying that a lot of cops try to go out using tools from their job, like guns ... cars ...
The vehicle was push button and pushing the button while driving doesn't do anything. Computer users may be inclined to hold the power button down for a few seconds but a computer illiterate person may not think of that.
I've always wondered how many engine starter motors have burned out because people crank away for two minutes when the engine simply is not going to start (empty gas tank, etc).
Not being an idiot, its hard to predict what they do, but killing starter motors is some evidence they'll just keep on doing what doesn't work. Also see locking up brakes (pre ABS era), various poor driving judgment decisions especially relating to alcohol consumption, prayer, voting for either of the two major parties, most long term financial / educational / vocational decisions, etc.
The foam is made by filling a mold with hollow steel spheres and then filling the gaps with molten aluminum. VERY scalable.
Well, yeah, if you assume hollow steel spheres are "off the shelf". Kind of like saying starships are very scalable, you just make them with warp drives, problem solved.
I have cast aluminum and have had porosity problems. Basically some gasses dissolve better in hot aluminum and bubble out as it cools. Preventing porosity in castings is very old technology. I always assumed metal foams did the opposite of preventing porosity, and tried to supersaturate molten metal with hydrogen or argon or something under pressure and then froze it at a rate that grew the bubbles to just the right size. Metallurgists have no problem doing all kinds of complicated heat treatments and all kinds of weird alloys, so I figured the limitation was dissolving enough "whatever" in the metal to make it work.
Place this behind an existing body armor compound (one that stops the bullet) and use the foam to absorb the remaining shock.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spalling
Probably would make a nice spall liner for tanks.
And where people tend to upgrade their phones more or less as often as they change underwear,
And that, slashdotters, is why you have trouble getting a date. The only thing less likely to get you a woman than showing off your 'leet original motorola startac clamshell phone from 1996, is only changing your underwear when you upgrade.
That also has interesting attire implications for people whom don't own a cellphone. How does that joke go: ... there's no cellphone worn under your kilt?" or something like that?
"So
the Superbowl has a simple yet fatal weakness when it comes to the common human nipple.
I haven't watched a football game since 2004, but back then, it seemed mandatory at the start or end of at least one commercial break to have a camera zoomed in on a fat topless man spray painted with one teams colors holding a beer in each hand and bellowing. The, uh, man on tv I mean, not myself. So I'll correct your statement:
the SuprBowel has a simple yet fatal weakness when it comes to the common human FEMALE nipple
Awesome! How about some more anagrams....
Blowers Up
Bowlers Up
On honor of our dear departed suprnova, I've been calling it the "supr bowel" for years.
One thing I've never understood about the US system: Why do you people think kids have to learn to read at such a young age?
There is a lot of money to be made, "fixing" the "broken" children.
Once kids are a bit bigger, you can grade inflate it so everyone gets an "A" and a participation trophy. But with learning to read, there is no way to falsify the results. Inevitably the first 10% of the kids to learn are going to be measurably and obviously ahead of the remaining 90% whom will be declared "broken" in need of "fixing", because they are all supposed to have equality of results, everyone gets an "A", etc.
It is also a guilt thing, with various made up statistics claiming only 40% of adults have read a book since graduation or whatever, the belief is the kids must do better than I did, so the sooner the better.
Finally American education does not have stages like a real education system. If a 17 year old kid is supposed to be on the sports team, wear sexually suggestive clothing, read books, ride a bus, watch cartoons, and do homework, then a 4 year old big toddler is supposed to play in the kiddie league, wear provocative clothing, read books, ride a bus, watch cartoons, and do homework just like the almost-adults. That game continues until dropout, age 18, or graduation, whichever comes last, and the switch is instantly flipped to full adulthood, of course many don't survive the transition, or navigate it very poorly, in which case we just blame the parents and then its all good.
Did anyone every stop to consider that language is evolving and that it is the traditional grammar which is failing to keep up with modern society?
Its my experience that people whom can not learn the proper tools to express themselves, coincidentally also have nothing useful inside themselves to express. Just a coincidence, and correlation does not imply causality, but it is a useful predictor that is almost never wrong. Think of it as a filter, kind of like a website with flash navigation is probably utterly useless, not because it uses flash, but because using flash for navigation indicates a certain stupidity that probably extends far beyond mere inability to create a properly navigable website.
Swearing is another example. Its not that the words are inherently in and of themselves wrong because some clown declared them wrong, it's that it shows a smallness of vocabulary, an inability to express complicated ideas, a distinct lack of intelligent contemplation.
So it's no shock that these kids, of which very little was ever demanded or expected of them, should suddenly find themselves failing college once the gloves come off.
Well, there is a simple cure for that, dumb down college and inflate college grades! Err, wait, we're already doing that.
I have a degree in Electronics Engineering ... just recently I managed to learn ski from total newbie to intermediate/advanced level in 1 week
You are confusing #2 as being the result of #1, when in reality both are the result of already being intelligent.
The diploma itself was only usefull in getting me my first job: from then onwards my CV and the knowledge I display in interviews have been the things that matter.
Blatantly false. Trust me, when you have a stack of resumes, the first thing you do is toss out the simple demographic ones like no degree. Because of HR, there is literally no way Linus could possible be hired as a Linux sysadmin or Linux developer at 99% of companies in the US, unless he has a degree (which luckily for him, he does). Doesn't matter what you write in the experience section, if they toss the resume out because of the education section first. I know I went from unemployable to easy street when I finally got my degree...
I daily see the difference in perspective my degree has given me - I'm thinking a different way to most of my colleagues who just 'sort of ended up' in IT.
OK so your testimony below is that something broadens your horizons, and your statement above is that its degrees that do it. My experience on the job is the primary way to broaden my horizons has been certifications over time, not a one time degree.
For example, I was doing a lot of BGP and OSPF work. When I went for my CCNP in the early 00s, I didn't really even study for the routing/BGP tests because I didn't have to (other than studying ISIS and CLNP, does anyone actually use that in production?), but I learned a heck of a lot from studying for the switching test because I'd never professionally done much layer 2 stuff.
Another example, I had a coworker going for one of cisco's VOIP certs that required a MCSE. He was a pretty much linux/unix dude, and the workplace was strictly linux/solaris. He certainly broadened his horizons by doing the MCSE thing.
Reread your story below and ask yourself if there's anything in there that isn't better covered by certs and continuing education, rather than a degree.
But there's a lot of stuff that's been indirectly relevant - communication theory kicks in when you start talking about protocols. Database design lets you slap people upside the head for using a spreadsheet for server configurations. Assembly and embedded processor programming gives you a handle on performance analysis for 'black box' devices.
What manual were you driving?
A rental RWD diesel car in Ireland of very questionable parentage and roughly 90s vintage.
I otherwise enjoyed it greatly, as it was like a miniature luxury car, fancy interior with wood trim, a couple cows worth of leather everything, nice sound system, very comfortable seats, etc. It was kind of like a "caddy" but the size of a "smart fourtwo". I fail to see the point of a luxury car in a country where you can drive from one coast to the opposite coast in about the duration of two music CDs, but whatever. Back in the states, although I'd like one, you can not buy a small luxury car, its a binary choice of small rattly technicolor plastic interior about as comfortable as sitting on an overturned 5 gallon bucket, or an unpleasantly obese land barge with a civilized comfortable interior.
It must have one hell of a parking brake.
Yes I should have made that disclaimer. I had an 80s era plymouth horizon where the parking brake could be mal-adjusted such that the actuator could be engaged all the way while barely engaging the brakes. It was pretty easy to properly adjust although I don't remember how I did it. On the other hand, the thing I rented in Ireland was somewhat maladjusted in the opposite direction such that the slightest touch on the parking brake actuator locked the wheels up, so slight that the brake light wasn't even on. And then there are the people that never use their parking brake/e-brake, so they have no idea if it works, or in some bad cases, how to use it.
In a way its not much of a disclaimer, because there is little point in debating the infinite number of scenarios with multiple broken components/systems. Even the worlds safest designed car will crash, if you jam the throttle, crash the transmission computer, rust out the parking brake cable, short out the fuel pump fuse in the fusebox, drain both independent hydraulic brake systems, engine vacuum failure, and glaze all eight brake pads, simultaneously.
What is with all these crazy people suggesting that you should shift into neutral? With a floored accelerator, that's a great way to completely destroy the engine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carburetor
The last carburetor fueled car was sold in the USA in 1990. Thats 20 years ago. It was possible to buy odd trucks here and there up to "merely" 16 years ago with a carb. Probably if your car is less than a quarter century old, its fuel injected.
Every fuel injected car I've ever heard of has a rev limiter, above which it refuses to run. You could look up your car's rev limiter setting in your owners manual which is probably suspiciously near the "red line" of the engine, or you could just post to slashdot that you'll "completely destroy your engine", whichever works for you.
I had a carb car in the 80s where the ancient and crude engine computer would shut off the fuel pump if you exceeded "x" RPM, on the assumption that the tires in top gear are not rated for 120 MPH. So at least some later year carb cars were rev limited anyway, although not as well as fuel injected cars.
Also, the failure mode of ancient carb engines was pretty variable. Some were rev limited by, say, the head separating from the block, or by launching a piston thru the head or a rod thru the oil pan, which is a bit drastic. Lots of others were rev limited by the valve springs not being able to operate quickly enough and/or setting up a weird resonance. Those engines generally don't sustain much damage. Not that I'd recommend trying it.
Regardless, I'm not aware of any engine over-rev failure mode thats worse than a 150 MPH crash. Given the choice of needing a new engine, or fiery death, I guess some folks would chose death, oh well, hope they don't take innocent bystanders with them.
why a function that critical didn't get a ball bearing.
Do not want a ball bearing in a safety critical application. Crud gets in between the ball and race, corrosion jams them like crazy, and traditionally they over-harden the metal to get a long service life (like billions of revolutions), so the race and/or ball inevitably fractures and jams. Being composed of partially sealed little moving parts, you can't look at one and tell if its going to jam or otherwise fail. Also traditionally you purchase ball bearings from a 3rd party whom may supply one over or under size, resulting in the assembly falling apart or binding, you can work around that by very expensive QA/QC but its best avoided. Trust me, you want to use a bushing for a throttle bearing.
Ball bearings are OK for something like an engine crankshaft, because you REALLY need the lower friction even if they are less reliable, and if they fail, no one dies (well, General Aviation and marine diesels excepted, etc etc). Also they can last awhile if continuously bathed in a flow of filtered motor oil, which is unlikely for a throttle sensor unless you have a major leak.
BB are more expensive than bushings, which is the only requirement to appeal to the carbon fiber door handle and audiophile crowd. But that does not mean they'd be good engineering practice.
On Toyota's with this button you have to hold it down for 3 seconds before it turns off the car.
Not on my wife's 2005-ish era Toyota Prius. Tap the power switch and its instantly off. I'm not making this up, I shut that car off a couple times per week and there is no "hold the switch for 5 seconds" foolishness or whatever.
Also, at least on a 2005-ish era Toyota Prius, you can not shut off the headlights by shutting off the engine. I believe there is a law that prevents manufacturers from selling a car where the lights are shut off when the engine shuts off, probably to make the totally made up GP post scenario possible.
I do not drive my wife's car enough to be certain, but I believe the steering-stalk mounted headlight switch is at least a foot away from the completely separate power switch.
I have never seen, been inside, or driven an unmodified car that shuts off the headlights when the key is removed or shut off. It is probably possible to make an aftermarket modification to do this.