Now, you may say "but those are more or less power tools that only a geek would want to set up" - but actually no.
My friend's mother decided to switch to Linux because she heard about Asterisk and thought it would be a great way to get rid of her answering machine and add a whole lot more functionality (call redirection, "answering machine" to email, etc). She installed Ubuntu on her own and had no problem with any "day to day" apps like Firefox, Thunderbird and so on (which she had already used on Windows previously from my advice). She EXPECTED Asterisk to be just as simple... you can imagine her frustration when she downloaded it and started to take a look! She still uses Ubuntu though and is pretty happy with it, but she's given up completely on Asterisk and is immediately scared off by anything that tells her that she has to edit a config file to get it going. The second example is Apache, which she considered since she has a static address from her DSL provider and thought it would be fun to learn HTML and have her very own webpage hosted from her very own computer - just like my Mac does. As soon as I told her she'd have to edit the Apache config files, she immediately gave up on the idea and started looking for hosting services instead. I'm now somewhat dreading the day she wants her youngest (my friend's little sister) to get online, as I'm sure she's going to want some kind of way to filter certain sites, and unless I'm mistaken, I don't know of any good way to do that without setting up a proxy server such as Squid and doing some more config file editing. (no, I doubt a Firefox plugin is acceptable to her - she'll want to filter the sites from everything, not just one app on one computer! (and maintaining the household computers individually isn't a reasonable expectation either))
I probably was being too unfair when I said "most apps", I'll definitely give you that. Most "day to day" apps do not require editing config files by hand, but as soon as you move away from them to anything even slightly outside the normal realm, it does seem to become pretty common and even the "basic users" are getting more and more savvy, wanting to do more and more advanced things.
For you and I yes... but for many people, they'd rather have the "layers of dialogs and wizards" (as long as they're well designed of course). The main problem for these people is that the very IDEA of opening one program (a text editor) to change the settings of another program is completely alien and makes no sense to them.
In my more cynical moments, I'm quite happy to simply call these people idiots and say that they need to learn because it's REALLY not that hard, but realistically, they won't. So, if we want them as users (which is another question entirely!), then we need to cater for their needs, no matter how stupid we think those needs are.
Wow, that's pretty messed up. Does anyone collect statistics on ACTUAL poverty in the US? Or is income the only metric that ever gets used? If so, it's a shame, because it makes it really hard to judge.
I was actually homeless once - and I've managed to go from literally living under a bridge to having a good job, nice car, and all that. If the US is going to do anything about poverty problems, I think it really needs a better definition of it first - it's hard to solve an undefined problem!
Very true, and to add to it for those who didn't quite get it from your post - once spam is "hard enough" (as in, gets less return than the admittedly minimal cost), the spammers WILL just give up and move to some other way to bother you. Spam is, after all, a business - so once it costs more to run than it brings in, it will die (note that running costs includes the spammer's own perception of the value of their time)
Spam being "hard enough" to do CAN be achieved through SMTP Auth + SPF as the parent points out.
I'm about the same. I'm 28 and the only snail mail I've ever sent is forms and things like that in those "postage paid" reply envelopes to crappy businesses that don't have an online presence for such activities (which thankfully is very few these days). I've certainly never bought stamps or tried to figure out any of the finer details other than "I put the letter in the box down the street where it says to put envelopes" (which, the first time I did it I had to ask about, since there were two slots and I couldn't decipher which one my postage paid envelope was supposed to go in (the one marked "Priority" or the one marked "Air"? Neither seemed right...)).
If I actually had to create a letter by hand, purchase an envelope, purchase a stamp, put the letter in the envelope, affix the stamp to the envelope and send it, I'd be quite freaked out about it to be honest (the steps of purchasing envelopes and stamps would confuse me, since I have NO idea where to do that, and what kind of questions I'd need to ask about pricing)
I haven't owned a TV in MANY years... loving it that way. I actually still watch quite a bit of TV - through the magic of bittorrent of course. The difference is that I get to choose exactly what and when without the hassle of actual broadcast reaching me. (yes, I'm well aware that it requires to be broadcast to SOMEONE for me to get this service, and my model makes no sense on a larger scale (if more people do it, it'll stop working), but right now, and for the past several years, it's worked well for ME).
So, what IS the actual definition of "poor" then? If these statistics are all true, then I think something is seriously wrong with the way the Census Bureau classifies people as poor!
the reality is most grand parents don't use a computer
If you're talking "worldwide", I'll agree with you (because most PEOPLE worldwide don't use a computer). However, if you're talking "in developed western countries", I'd say you're probably wrong these days. 20 years ago, it was probably true... however, there's plenty of "young grandparents" these days that DEFINITELY fall in to the age group that use computers a great deal. My parents probably should be grandparents by now (but both my brother and I are being slack at settling down with our girlfriends) and they're definitely highly computer literate. My step-father taught me to code.
I'll readily admit that my step-father isn't common for his age group, but only by virtue of the fact that he's highly computer literate - I think most people his age are at least "somewhat" computer literate and are regular computer users.
email has become a crutch for many folks who lack the ability to confidently and effectively communicate with others in a professional work environment
Somewhat agree, but I think "many folks" is perhaps pushing it a bit far. "Some folks" is probably more accurate.
There simply is no replacement for a real conversation.
On this, I have to strongly disagree. In a conversation, you might think of a critical point later than it was being discussed, so have to backtrack the conversation or miss out (whereas with email, you can get ALL of your ideas/thoughts down before the other person interjects or moves on to another point); It's hard to be coherent when talking about very complex subjects (whereas in email, you can edit, edit, and edit some more to get the level of clarity you want before you send); It's hard to have a "conversation" with 10 people at once - unless you want to have a "meeting" which is even worse! (whereas with email, you can effectively communicate with any number of people); And many more points!
Simply put, if I had to TELL you what I have written here, I could not have been able to do so clearly or succinctly. I do not attribute this to being a poor conversationalist, but rather to the fact that conversation is a poor medium for expression of ideas.
Agreed wholeheartedly... I'm primarily a MacOS X user these days, but my secondary system is Ubuntu, and I use it fairly regularly (and have been using Linux distros since the days of Debian hamm or so).
My main complaint with most apps on Linux these days is being forced to use a text editor where I shouldn't have to. Making a configuration program that writes these text based config files is about the most trivial GUI development task one can imagine. Is it only because it's so easy that no-one wants to do it?
(my personal reason for not doing it is that I spend most of my time working on "bigger" projects - perhaps that's also the reason no-one else does, but perhaps we can find some newbies that want to cut their teeth on a GUI toolkit, and assign tasks to them to make config programs?)
How do you get the world's finest developers when the reward for winning is smaller than the paycheck of a typical good developer (at least in the US)?
According to TFA, the competition is 2 days, and the prize is $7000 (in stuff, not actual cash)
Does a typical good developer in the US REALLY get $3500 a day? Somehow I doubt it... (although if it's true, I'm packing up my bags and moving there tomorrow!)
Explain to me how you believe that someone agrees to allow Bell to shape their traffic without having signed a contract with Bell.
I agree that Bell are the scumbags in this story, but there may unfortunately be a problem... They may be able to pass at least some of the blame on to people that don't really deserve it - the downstream smaller ISPs.
1) Person looks at Bell's contract and decides he doesn't want his traffic shaped. 2) He then goes to a smaller ISP ('Small ISP Co') and sees that according to their contract, his traffic won't be shaped. 3) He signs up with them. 4) His traffic gets shaped by the upstream provider (i.e. Bell) of that small ISP. 5) Person complains about his traffic being shaped, when his contract said it wouldn't be. 6) Bell says "well, your contract is with 'Small ISP Co', take it up with them". 7) Person sues 'Small ISP Co' for breach of contract.
In the above scenario it doesn't matter that 'Small ISP Co' didn't shape traffic. They offered an unshaped service, and didn't provide it. The burden was on them to provide an unshaped service, and when Bell began shaping their customers, should have moved to another upstream provider that doesn't.
Of course, the entire scenario outlined above is ridiculous - 'Small ISP Co' has no choice in their upstream provider, and so were completely unable to fulfil the promise of their contract no matter how much they wanted to. What this means, is that there is a monopoly, and that that monopoly may be abusing its power. The action taken (ordering them to prove they need to shape traffic) seems entirely sensible to me given that if they are unable to prove it, they must immediately stop doing it (and preferably make reparation to companies or individuals that have been hurt by it, but I unfortunately can't see that happening)
Now, here's an interesting question... sure, Bell are scumbags, but exactly how MUCH is 'Small ISP Co' to blame as well? I think a lot of that depends on their contract with Bell as an upstream provider. If Bell MAY shape traffic according to that contract, then the promise made from 'Small ISP Co' to the customer for unshaped traffic is not a promise that they have any way to keep. This is quite illegal in most countries I know of (I don't KNOW if it is in Canada, but I guess it is)
And lastly, the usual disclaimer at the end here: IANAL, so I might just be talking out my arse.
I've given the idea a bit of thought before, but I don't see how it could work.
The problem is that there really is an "actual cap" on cost of living. I'm quite sure that losing "50% of one's income" is a lot more painful to an individual that earns $30000 a year compared to one that earns $5000000 a year.
Were I to earn $5000000 a year, I'd certainly live nicer than I do now on a little over 1/50th of that, but I really do NOT think I'd spend 50 times as much on normal life. A great deal would go in to "large" investments and the rest would probably just get invested by whoever I hired to look after my finances. Losing half of it would make me annoyed, but wouldn't greatly affect my lifestyle.
No, no, no! The ONLY way to correctly eat a Mars bar is deep fried, at which point the outer covering (not counting the batter, which should not be considered a part of the bar itself) is equally as soft and gooey as the centre.
Although, as I grew up in a more civilised part of the world, I do prefer deep fried Moro bars instead.
I know you said you don't code C#, but really that's no excuse for missing a close bracket at the end of the ForEach statement (which, just FYI, should be "foreach" in C#, this isn't VB.net!)
Anyway, I laughed, and if I'd had mod points, you'd have got a "Funny" from me.
Bingo! However, it wasn't really hard - I don't know of any other country featuring no general speed limit...
Technically, Australia has no general speed limit, as the limits are set by each state/territory. For a while in the Northern Territory of Australia, some outback roads had no speed limit, but I really don't know if that's still the case or not.
But yeh, Germany's the obvious one.
I wasn't aware that they are not interchangeable. I never had a problem but I was just driving in Australia as a tourist with an international license - and I was sweating blood and tears back then because I'm not used to drive on "the wrong side". Might be a different story if you plan to stay for more than 3 months...
Actually, it's a pretty nasty one-way street. If you, with a German license, want to emigrate to Australia, there's no problem with doing an exchange. It's the other way that's the problem... There are apparently plans to rectify this in the coming year or so, but it doesn't help me right now, so I still have to go through all the trouble.
About your observation regarding alcohol related accidents I must mention that Germany was just ranked 2nd in an EU-wide study regarding drunk drivers.
That's true, but that's EU wide... the number is still much lower than many non-EU countries. Which was pretty much my point.
One side of me says it can't be good that a huge percentage of drivers is piss drunk at any time
Actually, that's a statistic I wish they'd collect - how MUCH over the legal limit was someone when they were caught. While any driving while under the influence is bad, I don't think it's fair to say it's all equally as bad - someone that's had 2 beers and is over the limit by a small amount is still dangerous, yes, but they're safer that someone who can't see straight. It's only a "feeling", but I'd guess that here in Germany, most people caught over the limit are not actually "piss drunk", unlike (for example) rural Australia, where the pub may be quite far from the town and there's no travel options, so people who can barely stand upright will still jump in their cars and attempt the drive home.
Ooops... my last reply was somewhat of a misunderstanding of what you meant... I thought you meant doing that WHILE driving... Re-reading, I see you meant that doing that would be "like" driving. And actually, if you have a good enough imagination, probably!
The one time I did drive on acid though, it wasn't for the fun of it - it was because I dropped the acid at the beach and really needed to get home, but the trip was lasting longer than I expected (I generally expect 10 to 14 hours, but it was still going pretty strong at the 11 hour mark, when it should've just been residual effects by then)
I had no idea who Danica Patrick is, so I did a Google search. Moderately attractive, but not really my style. Also, I really have no interest in Indy cars.
But anyway, driving on hallucinogens is nothing like that - it's just the time distortion, depth perception and "visual glitches" (like the lines in the middle of the road slithering around like snakes) that messes with you to the point of making it ridiculously dangerous.
That's a pretty extreme case, but okay, I guess I can accept it.
It's still only 742km though according to Google Maps - are you saying your old VW bus can't do more than 75km/hr average? That has GOT to annoy other Autobahn drivers (especially on the A9!)
When I was around 8 or so, I was in the back seat of our family car with my brother while my stepfather was driving. My brother and I began to argue and fight, as children do. My stepfather pulled the car over and explained to us how difficult driving is, and how he needed to concentrate, so we should stop fighting, which was a distraction. 5 minutes later, we were fighting again. So, again my step-father pulls the car over. At this point, we were on a quiet southern New Zealand country road, with no other traffic around and no serious dangers. As I was the instigator of the fighting, he got me to drive the next 5km or so. After that, I NEVER distracted him again!
The obvious solution: learn a second language after you learn to drive, and use that second language while driving.
Awwww... but I already learned 3 languages before learning to drive... I'm learning a new one now, but do I really have to use it while driving?
I know your post was humour (as is the sentence above this one), but you do actually raise an interesting point. I am quite certain that if I tried to speak any language other than my first while driving, it'd impact my driving ability a great deal more than my first would. Which pretty much points to the idea that the order in which skills are learned has very little to do with the brain's prioritisation of those skills.
Your sig saddens me... New Zealand always used to be a country of sense and reason. I am honestly shocked to see a climate change denier website based in NZ.
Slashdot Mirror
Examples: Asterisk, Apache, Squid.
Now, you may say "but those are more or less power tools that only a geek would want to set up" - but actually no.
My friend's mother decided to switch to Linux because she heard about Asterisk and thought it would be a great way to get rid of her answering machine and add a whole lot more functionality (call redirection, "answering machine" to email, etc).
She installed Ubuntu on her own and had no problem with any "day to day" apps like Firefox, Thunderbird and so on (which she had already used on Windows previously from my advice). She EXPECTED Asterisk to be just as simple... you can imagine her frustration when she downloaded it and started to take a look!
She still uses Ubuntu though and is pretty happy with it, but she's given up completely on Asterisk and is immediately scared off by anything that tells her that she has to edit a config file to get it going.
The second example is Apache, which she considered since she has a static address from her DSL provider and thought it would be fun to learn HTML and have her very own webpage hosted from her very own computer - just like my Mac does. As soon as I told her she'd have to edit the Apache config files, she immediately gave up on the idea and started looking for hosting services instead.
I'm now somewhat dreading the day she wants her youngest (my friend's little sister) to get online, as I'm sure she's going to want some kind of way to filter certain sites, and unless I'm mistaken, I don't know of any good way to do that without setting up a proxy server such as Squid and doing some more config file editing. (no, I doubt a Firefox plugin is acceptable to her - she'll want to filter the sites from everything, not just one app on one computer! (and maintaining the household computers individually isn't a reasonable expectation either))
I probably was being too unfair when I said "most apps", I'll definitely give you that. Most "day to day" apps do not require editing config files by hand, but as soon as you move away from them to anything even slightly outside the normal realm, it does seem to become pretty common and even the "basic users" are getting more and more savvy, wanting to do more and more advanced things.
For you and I yes... but for many people, they'd rather have the "layers of dialogs and wizards" (as long as they're well designed of course). The main problem for these people is that the very IDEA of opening one program (a text editor) to change the settings of another program is completely alien and makes no sense to them.
In my more cynical moments, I'm quite happy to simply call these people idiots and say that they need to learn because it's REALLY not that hard, but realistically, they won't. So, if we want them as users (which is another question entirely!), then we need to cater for their needs, no matter how stupid we think those needs are.
Wow, that's pretty messed up. Does anyone collect statistics on ACTUAL poverty in the US? Or is income the only metric that ever gets used? If so, it's a shame, because it makes it really hard to judge.
I was actually homeless once - and I've managed to go from literally living under a bridge to having a good job, nice car, and all that. If the US is going to do anything about poverty problems, I think it really needs a better definition of it first - it's hard to solve an undefined problem!
Very true, and to add to it for those who didn't quite get it from your post - once spam is "hard enough" (as in, gets less return than the admittedly minimal cost), the spammers WILL just give up and move to some other way to bother you. Spam is, after all, a business - so once it costs more to run than it brings in, it will die (note that running costs includes the spammer's own perception of the value of their time)
Spam being "hard enough" to do CAN be achieved through SMTP Auth + SPF as the parent points out.
I'm about the same. I'm 28 and the only snail mail I've ever sent is forms and things like that in those "postage paid" reply envelopes to crappy businesses that don't have an online presence for such activities (which thankfully is very few these days). I've certainly never bought stamps or tried to figure out any of the finer details other than "I put the letter in the box down the street where it says to put envelopes" (which, the first time I did it I had to ask about, since there were two slots and I couldn't decipher which one my postage paid envelope was supposed to go in (the one marked "Priority" or the one marked "Air"? Neither seemed right...)).
If I actually had to create a letter by hand, purchase an envelope, purchase a stamp, put the letter in the envelope, affix the stamp to the envelope and send it, I'd be quite freaked out about it to be honest (the steps of purchasing envelopes and stamps would confuse me, since I have NO idea where to do that, and what kind of questions I'd need to ask about pricing)
I haven't owned a TV in MANY years... loving it that way. I actually still watch quite a bit of TV - through the magic of bittorrent of course. The difference is that I get to choose exactly what and when without the hassle of actual broadcast reaching me. (yes, I'm well aware that it requires to be broadcast to SOMEONE for me to get this service, and my model makes no sense on a larger scale (if more people do it, it'll stop working), but right now, and for the past several years, it's worked well for ME).
So, what IS the actual definition of "poor" then? If these statistics are all true, then I think something is seriously wrong with the way the Census Bureau classifies people as poor!
If you're talking "worldwide", I'll agree with you (because most PEOPLE worldwide don't use a computer). However, if you're talking "in developed western countries", I'd say you're probably wrong these days. 20 years ago, it was probably true... however, there's plenty of "young grandparents" these days that DEFINITELY fall in to the age group that use computers a great deal. My parents probably should be grandparents by now (but both my brother and I are being slack at settling down with our girlfriends) and they're definitely highly computer literate. My step-father taught me to code.
I'll readily admit that my step-father isn't common for his age group, but only by virtue of the fact that he's highly computer literate - I think most people his age are at least "somewhat" computer literate and are regular computer users.
(for reference: He'll be 59 this year)
Somewhat agree, but I think "many folks" is perhaps pushing it a bit far. "Some folks" is probably more accurate.
There simply is no replacement for a real conversation.On this, I have to strongly disagree.
In a conversation, you might think of a critical point later than it was being discussed, so have to backtrack the conversation or miss out (whereas with email, you can get ALL of your ideas/thoughts down before the other person interjects or moves on to another point);
It's hard to be coherent when talking about very complex subjects (whereas in email, you can edit, edit, and edit some more to get the level of clarity you want before you send);
It's hard to have a "conversation" with 10 people at once - unless you want to have a "meeting" which is even worse! (whereas with email, you can effectively communicate with any number of people);
And many more points!
Simply put, if I had to TELL you what I have written here, I could not have been able to do so clearly or succinctly. I do not attribute this to being a poor conversationalist, but rather to the fact that conversation is a poor medium for expression of ideas.
Agreed wholeheartedly... I'm primarily a MacOS X user these days, but my secondary system is Ubuntu, and I use it fairly regularly (and have been using Linux distros since the days of Debian hamm or so).
My main complaint with most apps on Linux these days is being forced to use a text editor where I shouldn't have to. Making a configuration program that writes these text based config files is about the most trivial GUI development task one can imagine. Is it only because it's so easy that no-one wants to do it?
(my personal reason for not doing it is that I spend most of my time working on "bigger" projects - perhaps that's also the reason no-one else does, but perhaps we can find some newbies that want to cut their teeth on a GUI toolkit, and assign tasks to them to make config programs?)
According to TFA, the competition is 2 days, and the prize is $7000 (in stuff, not actual cash)
Does a typical good developer in the US REALLY get $3500 a day? Somehow I doubt it... (although if it's true, I'm packing up my bags and moving there tomorrow!)
But would you be equally as pissed off as the guy making $30000, who had to take a $15000 hit? That's sort of the point...
I agree that Bell are the scumbags in this story, but there may unfortunately be a problem... They may be able to pass at least some of the blame on to people that don't really deserve it - the downstream smaller ISPs.
1) Person looks at Bell's contract and decides he doesn't want his traffic shaped.
2) He then goes to a smaller ISP ('Small ISP Co') and sees that according to their contract, his traffic won't be shaped.
3) He signs up with them.
4) His traffic gets shaped by the upstream provider (i.e. Bell) of that small ISP.
5) Person complains about his traffic being shaped, when his contract said it wouldn't be.
6) Bell says "well, your contract is with 'Small ISP Co', take it up with them".
7) Person sues 'Small ISP Co' for breach of contract.
In the above scenario it doesn't matter that 'Small ISP Co' didn't shape traffic. They offered an unshaped service, and didn't provide it. The burden was on them to provide an unshaped service, and when Bell began shaping their customers, should have moved to another upstream provider that doesn't.
Of course, the entire scenario outlined above is ridiculous - 'Small ISP Co' has no choice in their upstream provider, and so were completely unable to fulfil the promise of their contract no matter how much they wanted to. What this means, is that there is a monopoly, and that that monopoly may be abusing its power. The action taken (ordering them to prove they need to shape traffic) seems entirely sensible to me given that if they are unable to prove it, they must immediately stop doing it (and preferably make reparation to companies or individuals that have been hurt by it, but I unfortunately can't see that happening)
Now, here's an interesting question... sure, Bell are scumbags, but exactly how MUCH is 'Small ISP Co' to blame as well? I think a lot of that depends on their contract with Bell as an upstream provider. If Bell MAY shape traffic according to that contract, then the promise made from 'Small ISP Co' to the customer for unshaped traffic is not a promise that they have any way to keep. This is quite illegal in most countries I know of (I don't KNOW if it is in Canada, but I guess it is)
And lastly, the usual disclaimer at the end here: IANAL, so I might just be talking out my arse.
I've given the idea a bit of thought before, but I don't see how it could work.
The problem is that there really is an "actual cap" on cost of living. I'm quite sure that losing "50% of one's income" is a lot more painful to an individual that earns $30000 a year compared to one that earns $5000000 a year.
Were I to earn $5000000 a year, I'd certainly live nicer than I do now on a little over 1/50th of that, but I really do NOT think I'd spend 50 times as much on normal life. A great deal would go in to "large" investments and the rest would probably just get invested by whoever I hired to look after my finances. Losing half of it would make me annoyed, but wouldn't greatly affect my lifestyle.
No, no, no! The ONLY way to correctly eat a Mars bar is deep fried, at which point the outer covering (not counting the batter, which should not be considered a part of the bar itself) is equally as soft and gooey as the centre.
Although, as I grew up in a more civilised part of the world, I do prefer deep fried Moro bars instead.
But... but... she's already labelled pretty clearly!
I know you said you don't code C#, but really that's no excuse for missing a close bracket at the end of the ForEach statement (which, just FYI, should be "foreach" in C#, this isn't VB.net!)
Anyway, I laughed, and if I'd had mod points, you'd have got a "Funny" from me.
Technically, Australia has no general speed limit, as the limits are set by each state/territory. For a while in the Northern Territory of Australia, some outback roads had no speed limit, but I really don't know if that's still the case or not.
But yeh, Germany's the obvious one.
I wasn't aware that they are not interchangeable. I never had a problem but I was just driving in Australia as a tourist with an international license - and I was sweating blood and tears back then because I'm not used to drive on "the wrong side". Might be a different story if you plan to stay for more than 3 months...Actually, it's a pretty nasty one-way street. If you, with a German license, want to emigrate to Australia, there's no problem with doing an exchange. It's the other way that's the problem... There are apparently plans to rectify this in the coming year or so, but it doesn't help me right now, so I still have to go through all the trouble.
About your observation regarding alcohol related accidents I must mention that Germany was just ranked 2nd in an EU-wide study regarding drunk drivers.That's true, but that's EU wide... the number is still much lower than many non-EU countries. Which was pretty much my point.
One side of me says it can't be good that a huge percentage of drivers is piss drunk at any timeActually, that's a statistic I wish they'd collect - how MUCH over the legal limit was someone when they were caught. While any driving while under the influence is bad, I don't think it's fair to say it's all equally as bad - someone that's had 2 beers and is over the limit by a small amount is still dangerous, yes, but they're safer that someone who can't see straight. It's only a "feeling", but I'd guess that here in Germany, most people caught over the limit are not actually "piss drunk", unlike (for example) rural Australia, where the pub may be quite far from the town and there's no travel options, so people who can barely stand upright will still jump in their cars and attempt the drive home.
Ooops... my last reply was somewhat of a misunderstanding of what you meant... I thought you meant doing that WHILE driving... Re-reading, I see you meant that doing that would be "like" driving. And actually, if you have a good enough imagination, probably!
The one time I did drive on acid though, it wasn't for the fun of it - it was because I dropped the acid at the beach and really needed to get home, but the trip was lasting longer than I expected (I generally expect 10 to 14 hours, but it was still going pretty strong at the 11 hour mark, when it should've just been residual effects by then)
I had no idea who Danica Patrick is, so I did a Google search. Moderately attractive, but not really my style. Also, I really have no interest in Indy cars.
But anyway, driving on hallucinogens is nothing like that - it's just the time distortion, depth perception and "visual glitches" (like the lines in the middle of the road slithering around like snakes) that messes with you to the point of making it ridiculously dangerous.
That's a pretty extreme case, but okay, I guess I can accept it.
It's still only 742km though according to Google Maps - are you saying your old VW bus can't do more than 75km/hr average? That has GOT to annoy other Autobahn drivers (especially on the A9!)
When I was around 8 or so, I was in the back seat of our family car with my brother while my stepfather was driving. My brother and I began to argue and fight, as children do. My stepfather pulled the car over and explained to us how difficult driving is, and how he needed to concentrate, so we should stop fighting, which was a distraction. 5 minutes later, we were fighting again. So, again my step-father pulls the car over. At this point, we were on a quiet southern New Zealand country road, with no other traffic around and no serious dangers. As I was the instigator of the fighting, he got me to drive the next 5km or so. After that, I NEVER distracted him again!
Whether that's metric or imperial, that's a bloody big vehicle. My car, which I'd call "about average" size is 1300kg.
Awwww... but I already learned 3 languages before learning to drive... I'm learning a new one now, but do I really have to use it while driving?
I know your post was humour (as is the sentence above this one), but you do actually raise an interesting point. I am quite certain that if I tried to speak any language other than my first while driving, it'd impact my driving ability a great deal more than my first would. Which pretty much points to the idea that the order in which skills are learned has very little to do with the brain's prioritisation of those skills.
Your sig saddens me... New Zealand always used to be a country of sense and reason. I am honestly shocked to see a climate change denier website based in NZ.