"Everyone I've ever watched touch a control in the center console turned and looked at it. Ride with someone. Watch their eyes"
Probably yes.
But the difference is, as a parent poster said, with physical knobs/buttons, people look at the controls just an instant, enough to reach it and then operate it without look at it. With touchscreens you need to look at them for the whole process. Ride with someone. Watch their eyes.
"The energy of a collision is proportional to mv^2. The 'softness' of the mass doesn't really matter, in fact it can aid in energy transfer."
So you yourself are contradicting. Yes, the energy of a collision doesn't depend on the elasticity of involved materials but who takes the biggest hit (how that energy gets absorbed and dissipated), of course yes.
"A lot legal systems in democratic societies include a concept called "Honest but mistaken belief" [...] Excuse all the negatives, but if the judge/jury has less than 51% certainty that a defendant did not have honest but mistaken belief that they were consented to do X then they cannot be found guilty of doing X."
Review your sources. On one hand, the 'in dubio pro reo' thingie is for criminal offenses, not civil, which are much more about who pays the broken dishes (i.e. culpa lata dolo aequiparatur). On the other hand, even in criminal cases, lacking 'dolo' or 'mala fides' (willful misconduct) still leaves intact 'culpa lata' (the damage itself) which you should pay for. In other words: if the case arise you'll be charged for manslaughter even if you honestly didn't thought of killing anyone (or at least you would, on most civilized countries: looking at the ways the stand-your-ground laws have gone in USA I have serious doubts about it to be on the "civilized" side anymore).
"The fact is, at speeds and scales perceptible to the human animal, Newton's Laws of Motion are clearly right."
No. They aren't. Classical Physics is not about bringing the proper numbers but bringing the proper arguments -that, in turn, lead to mathematical expressions that can be tested against experiments. That's why Ptolemaic astronomists were wrong while Copernicus was right despite of the results of the formers being more accurate than those of the latter (it was not till Kepler proposed using ellipses instead of circles that Copernicus' astronomy would render better results).
In Newton's case, the numbers are pretty close, but laws missed the target by a far stretch (the fact that the numbers were so close is what made people think for the laws to be right for so long): there's no such a thing as an absolute reference framework and its nonexistence offers a completely different vision of our universe.
"For you to so cavalierly dismiss Newton"
This is neither football nor politics so it's not about which team wins the match. Newton was an utter genius and no amount or further research will ever deny that. It's only he was wrong as much as was Ptolemy, but they both failed in a most honorable manner that paved our way to further knowledge.
"I find it kind of weird how they tie data caps to speeds but not speeds to data caps."
What's weird about it? They want to falsely advertise what they offer from the very beginning and they use the system that makes their false advertisement more palatable for their victi^H^H customers.
"for airline pilots who couldn't exactly go out in the 747 and so spins and stalls the class 4 simulator was legally considered to be flying."
Yes, but only if you already were certified for that plane.
"Thus, in theory, a student could start on an airline simulator and get their private pilot's licence without ever leaving the ground."
No, in theory, he can't. Flight licenses are interdependant. In order for you to legally fly your 747, that means (roughly): single engine visual -> s.e. instrumental -> multi engine -> commercial -> passengers -> 747. AFAIK it was only the certified-for-a-given-plane step the one that allowed to sum up hours in the simulator. Don't know if that changed nowadays.
"WeI support around 500 VMs but they're all hosted in our own datacenters so we're just using VMWare vMotion and stuff"
So you are locked to one provider (your own infrastucture). Now, if the need arise, try to move your 500 VMs (a candy, I dealt with x10 that number) to another provider. Then you'll understand what we are talking here.
"I'm European and that has been the situation here for decades."
I'm European too and, not it hasn't. My anecdotary example: I own a second hand Merc SLK 320 from 2001. I explicitly bought that one because I wanted a more or less sportive roadster with manual gearbox. So much I wanted a manual gearbox that I would have bought the better valued SLK 32AMG were it not the case that AMG means automatic gearbox or nothing, not only because they were automatic but because automatics, back then, were crap.
Back then you could make your choice. If it were today, neither AMG (of course) nor SLK 250, 350 offer manual gearboxes. The same goes with Audi and most BMW (which are the last of the Mohicans in this respect). The evolution has come to a point that not only there's not the choice but that, even if it were, a 7G or 9G generation are now good enough to compete with manuals both in consumption (that's for sure) but in ability too. And we are not even talking here about top of the line double-clutch automatics that are now only on luxury cars but will be on trend-mills in a decade.
"What I do think will make driving a manual a deprecated skill is electric cars."
Yes. It is a matter of timing. If (a big if because of the behemoth collateral infrastucture it requires) electrics make their way before petrol/diesel convert to automatic in the next decade, it will be electrics the ones that will bring it to the table. But, nevertheless, I was talking about the gearbox, not the juice that makes the engine move. One case or the other, cars are doomed to become automatic gearbox in (most) ten years, even in old Europe. In twenty years, driving a manual will be a lost art for the most part.
"Also note that here if you drive a manual in the test when you get your licence, your licence will limit you to only driving automatics."
Well, also note that if you drive an under a 3500Kg MAM car in the test when you get your licence, your licence will limit you to only driving under 3500Kg MAM automoviles. This doesn't seem to limit most of the tests to be for the B license. Given that as many as 1/3 of classes towards the license are somehow related to the added complication of operating a manual gearbox car, it is a matter of critical mass that people will favour current Bauto over B when enough autos are on the road and the test gets (overall) cheaper as today they are choosing B over Cs and beyond on the perspective of never having the need of driving one of those allowed by those licenses.
"And I'd certainly choose computer over human for bringing my car to a safe stop when it has to deal with aquaplaning."
No dose of software can overcome physic laws....but, on the other hand, it can infuse a dose of common sense so it has not to deal with aquaplaning by avoiding it instead.
"That is only a problem in the US. Manual's are still preferred in most of the rest of the world."
Not for much longer. See the trend on luxury cars? the don't even give you the manual option anymore. It won't take longer for that to percolate down mass vehicles.
"and a 2015 Honda that requires you to bring it to the service station once every couple months for routine service, but lasts for 150k miles."
Well, I choose my year 2000 Merc then, which already went over those 150k miles with only requiring me to bring it up to the service station once every year and a half. And given I saw the last time I went to the service station my exact model only with over 350k miles in the odometer, I think it still has some more years churning around in front of it.
"The good old days weren't as good, reliable, or safe as you seem to be saying, friend."
True. But current situation seems to be quite beyond the sweet spot. Modern cars could be much simpler and reliable were not for the programmed obsolescency engineered in them.
"It's actually kind of unnerving at how fast I came to rely on the car to do these tasks for me."
That's more or less what I thought when reading "if this technology becomes pervasive, the skill of operating a vehicle will be lost" as it weren't already true: how many Americans have lost the ability to drive (or never got it) a manual transmision car? What do you think it happens when a 99% highway driver enters a two directions road?
"not a system where the units are arbitrarily defined."
Yes: surely a pint is a pint and a mile is a mile, nothing arbitrary there!
But then, there's the minor problem about explaining why a British pint is 568 ml while the US pint is only 551 ml. Oh, wait! that's the *dry* pint, because, as everybody knows, the *liquid* pint is a mere 473 ml.
But those are volumes; distances surely will be much better: like a mile, everybody knows its 1609,34 meters. Well... everybody but seamen and pilots: they naively think a mile's proper and non-arbitrary length must be 1852 meters.
No, they really are not arbitrary units.
And now, please make yourself a favour and look for Asimov's essay "Forget It!"
"Lots of people do it for Religious reasons, for instance, Adventists."
The kind of Pharisees... Why don't they eat meat? Why do they think it tastes good?
"when I first walked into her local grocery store - there was aisle after aisle after aisle of stuff pretending to be meat."
So they want to stay by the letter of the law but they don't mind treasoning its spirit (they must think their god is stupid, too). The very definition of Pharisee.
"Force them to adopt English as their national language and you'd have riots and pandemonium."
But we are talking here about simple measures, nothing as complex as a natural language.
And regarding numbers, even French went not so long ago from Francs to Euros, having to change all their money-related devices, as did much of Europe, without too many riots and pandemonium. So no, forcing a language is not like to change their language of measurement for the common man.
Now, you are right in that being familiar is a very strong force, and that's why it won't happen unless there's a legal pressure to do so, just like Euro in EU.
"In the US system the goal is to make dealing with the physical objects easy -- to get from one size to the next larger one most of the time you double something."
I get it, I get it!
So that explains why a foot is two inches, a yard two feet, a mile two yards and, then, two fluid ounces make a cup, two pints a quart and two quarts a gallon.
How cute, isnt' it?
"To go from one meter to one centimeter you need to cut the length into 100 equally sized pieces...this is hard!"
Yeah, well, and to go from a mile to a foot you need to cut the lenght by... how many it was, again? 5.800? Now, that certainly seems so much easy.
From my part, I wouldn't be too surprised if some public servant's bribes are find to be involved*1. That the car industry was (and are) "cheating" the tests (both lobbying the laws in their favour and pushing the limits on the certifications) is such a well-known secret that the almost hysterical reaction to this VW case (maybe the fact that it is not an American company helps too) remembers me Captain Renault's quote from Casablanca: "I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!"
So the real outcome of this scandal-of-the-week will very much depend on how much shit is below the carpet and how well each party plays its cards.
*1 If only, just think on the people accepting the numbers for the certification: "Hey! I'm an automotive engineer, I got the data from Mercedes, from BMW and other companies so I know what to expect. I know how these VAG motors are engineered as well as those from their competition, but I don't have any suspicions on how they can get within limits where all the others can't, no, no suspicions at all."
"The previous events seem to point towards a problem in the company's culture"
Back in the late 80's VW was just another (albeit quite important) car company in Europe. Then they bought Audi, and SEAT, and Skoda, and Porsche, and Ducati, and Bentley, and Lamborghini, and Scania, and MAN, and they even revived Bugatti.
Do you think that the executive board that made the transition from VolksWagen to VAG Group might had a different mindset than the old engineers' company aimed to build good Cars for the People? Do you think the kind of mentality required from such an executive board is the one with the kind of ethics that makes unthinkable to blame the minions when shit hits the fan?
"I was calculating based on the report that the average affected VW was polluting over 40 times more than the maximum allowed for a car"
The cue here is that your numbersare, unluckily, an apples to oranges case: what has been discovered is that those VW were polluting *when driving* 40x more than they should *at the test*. It is a given that *all* cars pollute more in real conditions than in the test, but they don't tell us exactly how much.
Slashdot Mirror
"I'm guessing a lot of American dollars will also head that way since Spain is pretty much insolvent"
Debt-to-GDP ratio:
USA: 101.33%
Spain: 97.70%
If Spain is "pretty much insolvent" what does that make for USA?
"The first and foremost "failed prediction" was that time travel would be invented in 1985."
It's not a failed prediction. It happens that someone came from 2025 and hid the issue.
"Everyone I've ever watched touch a control in the center console turned and looked at it. Ride with someone. Watch their eyes"
Probably yes.
But the difference is, as a parent poster said, with physical knobs/buttons, people look at the controls just an instant, enough to reach it and then operate it without look at it. With touchscreens you need to look at them for the whole process. Ride with someone. Watch their eyes.
"Isn't it wonderful that Spain appreciates that we kept a certain person from waltzing through France and down the Iberian peninsula"
Are you aware who were firsts entering Paris for its liberation? Please read about Amado Granell and "La Nueve".
"The energy of a collision is proportional to mv^2. The 'softness' of the mass doesn't really matter, in fact it can aid in energy transfer."
So you yourself are contradicting. Yes, the energy of a collision doesn't depend on the elasticity of involved materials but who takes the biggest hit (how that energy gets absorbed and dissipated), of course yes.
"A lot legal systems in democratic societies include a concept called "Honest but mistaken belief" [...] Excuse all the negatives, but if the judge/jury has less than 51% certainty that a defendant did not have honest but mistaken belief that they were consented to do X then they cannot be found guilty of doing X."
Review your sources. On one hand, the 'in dubio pro reo' thingie is for criminal offenses, not civil, which are much more about who pays the broken dishes (i.e. culpa lata dolo aequiparatur). On the other hand, even in criminal cases, lacking 'dolo' or 'mala fides' (willful misconduct) still leaves intact 'culpa lata' (the damage itself) which you should pay for. In other words: if the case arise you'll be charged for manslaughter even if you honestly didn't thought of killing anyone (or at least you would, on most civilized countries: looking at the ways the stand-your-ground laws have gone in USA I have serious doubts about it to be on the "civilized" side anymore).
"The fact is, at speeds and scales perceptible to the human animal, Newton's Laws of Motion are clearly right."
No. They aren't. Classical Physics is not about bringing the proper numbers but bringing the proper arguments -that, in turn, lead to mathematical expressions that can be tested against experiments. That's why Ptolemaic astronomists were wrong while Copernicus was right despite of the results of the formers being more accurate than those of the latter (it was not till Kepler proposed using ellipses instead of circles that Copernicus' astronomy would render better results).
In Newton's case, the numbers are pretty close, but laws missed the target by a far stretch (the fact that the numbers were so close is what made people think for the laws to be right for so long): there's no such a thing as an absolute reference framework and its nonexistence offers a completely different vision of our universe.
"For you to so cavalierly dismiss Newton"
This is neither football nor politics so it's not about which team wins the match. Newton was an utter genius and no amount or further research will ever deny that. It's only he was wrong as much as was Ptolemy, but they both failed in a most honorable manner that paved our way to further knowledge.
"I find it kind of weird how they tie data caps to speeds but not speeds to data caps."
What's weird about it? They want to falsely advertise what they offer from the very beginning and they use the system that makes their false advertisement more palatable for their victi^H^H customers.
"for airline pilots who couldn't exactly go out in the 747 and so spins and stalls the class 4 simulator was legally considered to be flying."
Yes, but only if you already were certified for that plane.
"Thus, in theory, a student could start on an airline simulator and get their private pilot's licence without ever leaving the ground."
No, in theory, he can't. Flight licenses are interdependant. In order for you to legally fly your 747, that means (roughly): single engine visual -> s.e. instrumental -> multi engine -> commercial -> passengers -> 747. AFAIK it was only the certified-for-a-given-plane step the one that allowed to sum up hours in the simulator. Don't know if that changed nowadays.
"WeI support around 500 VMs but they're all hosted in our own datacenters so we're just using VMWare vMotion and stuff"
So you are locked to one provider (your own infrastucture). Now, if the need arise, try to move your 500 VMs (a candy, I dealt with x10 that number) to another provider. Then you'll understand what we are talking here.
"I'm European and that has been the situation here for decades."
I'm European too and, not it hasn't. My anecdotary example: I own a second hand Merc SLK 320 from 2001. I explicitly bought that one because I wanted a more or less sportive roadster with manual gearbox. So much I wanted a manual gearbox that I would have bought the better valued SLK 32AMG were it not the case that AMG means automatic gearbox or nothing, not only because they were automatic but because automatics, back then, were crap.
Back then you could make your choice. If it were today, neither AMG (of course) nor SLK 250, 350 offer manual gearboxes. The same goes with Audi and most BMW (which are the last of the Mohicans in this respect). The evolution has come to a point that not only there's not the choice but that, even if it were, a 7G or 9G generation are now good enough to compete with manuals both in consumption (that's for sure) but in ability too. And we are not even talking here about top of the line double-clutch automatics that are now only on luxury cars but will be on trend-mills in a decade.
"What I do think will make driving a manual a deprecated skill is electric cars."
Yes. It is a matter of timing. If (a big if because of the behemoth collateral infrastucture it requires) electrics make their way before petrol/diesel convert to automatic in the next decade, it will be electrics the ones that will bring it to the table. But, nevertheless, I was talking about the gearbox, not the juice that makes the engine move. One case or the other, cars are doomed to become automatic gearbox in (most) ten years, even in old Europe. In twenty years, driving a manual will be a lost art for the most part.
"Also note that here if you drive a manual in the test when you get your licence, your licence will limit you to only driving automatics."
Well, also note that if you drive an under a 3500Kg MAM car in the test when you get your licence, your licence will limit you to only driving under 3500Kg MAM automoviles. This doesn't seem to limit most of the tests to be for the B license. Given that as many as 1/3 of classes towards the license are somehow related to the added complication of operating a manual gearbox car, it is a matter of critical mass that people will favour current Bauto over B when enough autos are on the road and the test gets (overall) cheaper as today they are choosing B over Cs and beyond on the perspective of never having the need of driving one of those allowed by those licenses.
"Do the math. show me your stress cycle fatigue curves. The wear rates on even the hardest alloys and expected lifetime wear. "
And then just have a look at what really makes the cars going to the scrapping field: most of the time it is the silicon, not the steel.
"And I'd certainly choose computer over human for bringing my car to a safe stop when it has to deal with aquaplaning."
No dose of software can overcome physic laws. ...but, on the other hand, it can infuse a dose of common sense so it has not to deal with aquaplaning by avoiding it instead.
"That is only a problem in the US. Manual's are still preferred in most of the rest of the world."
Not for much longer. See the trend on luxury cars? the don't even give you the manual option anymore. It won't take longer for that to percolate down mass vehicles.
"and a 2015 Honda that requires you to bring it to the service station once every couple months for routine service, but lasts for 150k miles."
Well, I choose my year 2000 Merc then, which already went over those 150k miles with only requiring me to bring it up to the service station once every year and a half. And given I saw the last time I went to the service station my exact model only with over 350k miles in the odometer, I think it still has some more years churning around in front of it.
"The good old days weren't as good, reliable, or safe as you seem to be saying, friend."
True. But current situation seems to be quite beyond the sweet spot. Modern cars could be much simpler and reliable were not for the programmed obsolescency engineered in them.
"Driving is fun. You have an algorithm for that?"
Oh, but they also took that into account: driving is less fun each day it passes.
"It's actually kind of unnerving at how fast I came to rely on the car to do these tasks for me."
That's more or less what I thought when reading "if this technology becomes pervasive, the skill of operating a vehicle will be lost" as it weren't already true: how many Americans have lost the ability to drive (or never got it) a manual transmision car? What do you think it happens when a 99% highway driver enters a two directions road?
"Oh so it's just for shuffling VMs around."
You haven't been in the need of shuffling VMs around lately or you wouldn't be using "just" to qualify the effort.
"not a system where the units are arbitrarily defined."
Yes: surely a pint is a pint and a mile is a mile, nothing arbitrary there!
But then, there's the minor problem about explaining why a British pint is 568 ml while the US pint is only 551 ml. Oh, wait! that's the *dry* pint, because, as everybody knows, the *liquid* pint is a mere 473 ml.
But those are volumes; distances surely will be much better: like a mile, everybody knows its 1609,34 meters. Well... everybody but seamen and pilots: they naively think a mile's proper and non-arbitrary length must be 1852 meters.
No, they really are not arbitrary units.
And now, please make yourself a favour and look for Asimov's essay "Forget It!"
"Lots of people do it for Religious reasons, for instance, Adventists."
The kind of Pharisees... Why don't they eat meat? Why do they think it tastes good?
"when I first walked into her local grocery store - there was aisle after aisle after aisle of stuff pretending to be meat."
So they want to stay by the letter of the law but they don't mind treasoning its spirit (they must think their god is stupid, too). The very definition of Pharisee.
"Force them to adopt English as their national language and you'd have riots and pandemonium."
But we are talking here about simple measures, nothing as complex as a natural language.
And regarding numbers, even French went not so long ago from Francs to Euros, having to change all their money-related devices, as did much of Europe, without too many riots and pandemonium. So no, forcing a language is not like to change their language of measurement for the common man.
Now, you are right in that being familiar is a very strong force, and that's why it won't happen unless there's a legal pressure to do so, just like Euro in EU.
"In the US system the goal is to make dealing with the physical objects easy -- to get from one size to the next larger one most of the time you double something."
I get it, I get it!
So that explains why a foot is two inches, a yard two feet, a mile two yards and, then, two fluid ounces make a cup, two pints a quart and two quarts a gallon.
How cute, isnt' it?
"To go from one meter to one centimeter you need to cut the length into 100 equally sized pieces...this is hard!"
Yeah, well, and to go from a mile to a foot you need to cut the lenght by... how many it was, again? 5.800? Now, that certainly seems so much easy.
"VW is going to get fined a couple of billion"
We'll see in due time.
From my part, I wouldn't be too surprised if some public servant's bribes are find to be involved*1. That the car industry was (and are) "cheating" the tests (both lobbying the laws in their favour and pushing the limits on the certifications) is such a well-known secret that the almost hysterical reaction to this VW case (maybe the fact that it is not an American company helps too) remembers me Captain Renault's quote from Casablanca: "I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!"
So the real outcome of this scandal-of-the-week will very much depend on how much shit is below the carpet and how well each party plays its cards.
*1 If only, just think on the people accepting the numbers for the certification: "Hey! I'm an automotive engineer, I got the data from Mercedes, from BMW and other companies so I know what to expect. I know how these VAG motors are engineered as well as those from their competition, but I don't have any suspicions on how they can get within limits where all the others can't, no, no suspicions at all."
"The previous events seem to point towards a problem in the company's culture"
Back in the late 80's VW was just another (albeit quite important) car company in Europe. Then they bought Audi, and SEAT, and Skoda, and Porsche, and Ducati, and Bentley, and Lamborghini, and Scania, and MAN, and they even revived Bugatti.
Do you think that the executive board that made the transition from VolksWagen to VAG Group might had a different mindset than the old engineers' company aimed to build good Cars for the People? Do you think the kind of mentality required from such an executive board is the one with the kind of ethics that makes unthinkable to blame the minions when shit hits the fan?
"I was calculating based on the report that the average affected VW was polluting over 40 times more than the maximum allowed for a car"
The cue here is that your numbersare, unluckily, an apples to oranges case: what has been discovered is that those VW were polluting *when driving* 40x more than they should *at the test*. It is a given that *all* cars pollute more in real conditions than in the test, but they don't tell us exactly how much.