Painful is trying to use a standard mouse for manipulating a 3D environment (Catia, I'm looking at you). Catia really hurts; center click pans, center held down and right held down rotates (in a very awkward, non-intuitive fashion), but if you release the right button, then it becomes zoom. What ends up happening is that, to look at a separate part of your assembly from a different angle, you make something like eight repetitive mouse motions and about thirty clicks. You want carpal tunnel?
The answer, of course, is the spacemouse. You do all the view manipulation with a 6-dof "puck" leaving the mouse free to select graphical objects. Result is faster, less frustrating, and more precise work. And your wrist doesn't kill you at the end of the day.
The interface in Rhino isn't as bad; you can program keyboard shortcuts, and repeated commands can be issues
I just graduated with AE from Georgia Tech this past May. During the five years I was there, I saw a lot of people come into the AE program because "it sounded cool" or, no offense, it was the first one on the list. 90% of them changed majors, or dropped out of Tech entirely. The department is a little more insular than the others, and seems to have a lot of old grouchy guys who just want to be doing research. They seem downright sadistic sometimes, and some of the professors are so old-school that they won't allow the use of any 3D CAD programs during senior design. They want everything hand-drawn, and don't allow unconventional designs. I think they're bitter that they had to use slide rules and draw by hand, and would make the students do that too, if they could get away with it.
I tell a lot of freshmen coming in that, unless they have been living and breathing airplanes or spacecraft for most of their lives, and know that they won't want to work in any other field besides AE, they should just go ahead and change majors.
A lot of the reason why international students have such a hard time finding positions at aerospace companies is due to ITAR (arms trade regulations) requirements. Doesn't matter if something is actually a weapon system or not, ITAR affects almost everything in the aerospace field, and electronics/IT too.
Many companies also do a lot of work for government/military projects, nearly all of which are restricted to US nationals due to security concerns. Hiring foreign nationals means they are less flexible and can't readjust their work force as easily.
If only you could just re-route it without having those little yellow "pause" balloons popping up and making the direction printout screwy. I'm not putting in extra destinations, just changing the route to avoid all the nasty traffic
US phone companies make text messaging far too costly. Each message is usually 10 cents, each way (sending OR receiving), or you can pay $10 for an unlimited plan. And what's worse, they're getting MORE expensive, not less. You would think that the price would be going down, and that such things would be far cheaper than the actual voice calls (each message probably uses what, 1k at the most?) in terms of load on the network.
But, as others have pointed out, they're milking the market of younger teenagers whose parents pay the phone bills. SMS is the goose that lays gold, silver, and platinum eggs for the phone companies.
The last pure VCR we bought had that feature... if you turned the VCR on from the button on the front panel, the remote started beeping. It was great, till we realized it would eat through a set of batteries in about a week. After that, we just programmed the universal remote, and kept the original nearby (sans batteries) in case it was needed.
In my experience, with the phone on vibrate the music player turns on, but doesn't play out loud unless you mess with the volume buttons too. The best solution I found was to not keep anything else in my pocket.
My old samsung (SGH-E365?) was worse; the camera button was on the outside and I took about 12 shots of the inside of my pocket every week. And the menus sucked. And the alarm function. And the reception. Hell, the whole thing sucked. I took it up in an airplane and dropped it into a lake from 3000 feet up.
The suckiest technological "feature" is, IMO, text messaging... at least, when implemented like US phone companies do. The advanced programmability features on my saitek X-52 don't quite work as advertised. I've resorted to using it as-is (and it's still a good setup, just not as many features as I'd like).
You'd think that all of the improvements from car engines (electronic ignition, throttle-by-wire, fuel injection, etc.) would have made it into wide-scale use on airplanes... but the litigation-happy environment has really jacked up the costs, which means less people can afford to fly, and low production means adding innovations won't produce a return, because you won't sell enough of them. The vast majority of general-aviation engines are still carbureted with manual mixture adjustment, and are basically 60-year-old designs. It's hard to get all the "goodies" unless you fly a homebuilt.
Come to think of it, I know of few other industries which pride themselves on 60-year-old products.
Actually, an easier solution: Given that any ship we could make in the forseeable future (barring huge advances in physics) will take decades, if not a century or two to get there, we could slowly increase the artifical gravity (spinning) up to 2.25 g by the end of the mission. When you consider it would very likely be a generation ship (with 2-3 or more generations being born en route), the generation that actually lands will be perfectly comfortable in 2.25 g. They may also be built like tanks, but that just means if they ever experience 1 g, they'd make a hell of a football team.
We don't propose abandoning Earth like a "foreclosed duplex"--and we certainly don't advocate letting things go to hell here while we look for a new place to trash. The idea is survival--colonizing other planets helps ensure survival of the species. We could go completely green and make Earth a complete paradise--and then some rock could come along and kill all of us.
And, chances are, the knowledge we would gain just from trying to build a "slowboat" colony ship (one that does not travel at an appreciable fraction of c) would be of immense value in helping preserve Earth's environment. Such a ship would be an entire self-contained, self-sufficient ecosystem, having to last hundreds, if not thousands, of years with no resupply and no dependable external power source. Creating such a system would lead to incredibly-efficient systems, and the lessons could be transferred to everyday engineering projects and other systems. Think water reclamation, ultra-efficient farming and food production techniques (solves hunger problems too!), clean, efficient sources of energy...
That's pretty close for a star. I suppose the biggest question is whether or not humanity as a whole will have the drive (and the balls) to try and colonize other solar systems--or even our own.
Re:Social hack - use "bullfight" for "speed trap".
on
Is Your GPS Naive?
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· Score: 1
That's not the point... the point is that, if the goal of speed enforcement is to make everyone slow down (ie, safety), then just sitting in plain view accomplishes that. However, if their goal is to _catch_ people (ie, make money) they have to hide.
Re:Social hack - use "bullfight" for "speed trap".
on
Is Your GPS Naive?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Training should be something like what you go through to be a pilot--you aren't allowed full privileges until you've proven you know how to handle things. Granted, there are still stupid pilots out there, but the percentage is much lower than for drivers.
I think the reason so many people get short fused when driving is that they get nervous. And they get nervous because they can't process things fast enough, or multitask well enough. They lose situational awareness (SA), which is essentially the knowledge of what's going on around you (or they never develop any SA to begin with). Any fighter pilot will tell you that losing SA in combat will get you killed--quickly. Losing it on the road can do that, too. And to top it off, many people just don't have the coordination or reflexes to handle machinery like this. They have to consciously think about controlling the car, modulating their pedal inputs, and basic driving.
To jump back to the flying example: When I started flying, I could only keep track of a few things at a time. I sometimes missed things, and probably survived a couple things just by luck. Just making the airplane go where I wanted it to was a conscious effort. Even getting to this point took 45 hours of instruction, practice, and studying. I got the license, but didn't do much flying on my own for a while.
Then, my dad and I finished building our airplane. It was a much higher-performance model than what I was flying before (think tuned sports car vs. a Camry), but there were some critical differences: our plane is more responsive, so it doesn't have to be manhandled around like the old Cessna did; it has a bubble canopy instead of car-like windows (easier to look around), and my "instructor" was much more experienced (my dad has 10k+ hours). I started flying with him every chance I got.
Then one day, something changed. I realized that I didn't have to consciously think about how to fly the plane any more. Instead I could just make the plane go where I wanted it to as an extension of myself, leaving my higher mental functions able to keep track of where all the _other_ airplanes were, where I was, and what was happening around me. Now, after 150 hours of flying, I can lead a four-ship formation around, handle the radio communications, navigate, and still fly the airplane. And even then, I'm required (like all other pilots) to have some form of recurrent training or examination at least once every two years (or more often, depending on what you fly). It's actually gotten to the point where I find flying easier than driving, and I have a lot more experience with the latter. There are fewer idiots in the air, because the system catches them and keeps them on the ground. Pilots don't fly in bad weather until they get the specific training and checkride that they need to do so (well, a few try, but the results are usually fatal).
The lesson applies to driving, too. It takes time and good instruction before someone is really capable of handling everything that comes at them on the road. Ideally, Unfortunately, the vast majority of people never get that instruction or experience, they don't learn from it, or they just physically can't handle it. And I guess therein lies the conundrum. Cars are nearly essential in this country, unless you live somewhere with good public transit, and making it harder to get a driver's license means a lot of people will be stuck with no way to get to work or the grocery store. On the other hand, making the driving test so lax that nearly anyone can pass also puts a lot of lives in jeopardy unnecessarily. Which one is more important to you? I certainly don't know.
Re:Social hack - use "bullfight" for "speed trap".
on
Is Your GPS Naive?
·
· Score: 1
"55mph seems a perfectly reasonable limit to protect such drivers from themselves."
Why don't we get them off the road entirely? Harder drivers' tests (current US ones are a joke, at best), mandatory driver's ed, etc.
Re:Social hack - use "bullfight" for "speed trap".
on
Is Your GPS Naive?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Slow drivers in the left lane probably cause more multi-car (ie, besides themselves) accidents than speeders do, because it forces so many people to slow down, dodge them, change lanes, etc. I've seen plenty of near-accidents caused by a slow person in the left lane, but I have never seen one caused by someone merely driving fast on a road that could support it (assuming they didn't do something stupid, like weave between traffic or cut someone off). I see no harm in letting someone going faster pass you on the left, but trying to take it on yourself to be a traffic enforcer may very well be putting your life in danger. I was once riding in a rear-facing station wagon seat when the driver decided to do the speed limit in the left lane in Atlanta, and I have never felt more scared in my life, seeing all of those cars fly at me and dodge at the last second.
I'd like to try something with people that insist the speed limit is always right. I'd like to take several minutes of video (shot from a driver's perspective) on different roads where traffic routinely exceeds the limit by a significant amount (10+). Black out the speed limit signs, and play it to those people. Ask them if they feel that traffic is moving too fast, or at a good speed. If they say it's moving at a decent speed, tell them the actual speed limit and see if they change their minds. (alternatively, cover the signs up, then have them drive the course and see how fast they go. this probably won't work if they're familiar with the area, though.)
As far as getting such things changed, many of us have tried to talk to the pertinent elected officials and such. However, it must be something in the water at the city council buildings (and I guess this is true of all governments, regardless of size), since once they get elected, the will of the populace that elected them seems to be completely forgotten. Very few city councils are going to want to raise speed limits to reasonable values because they don't want to give up the revenue stream.
I propose that all money from certain miscellaneous traffic offenses like speeding, seat belt violations (for adults only, not children), and red light cameras, be collected into a national- or state-level fund. The money would be held in an account, and only disbursed for certain good causes (disaster relief, maybe, or scholarships, or something like that). The idea is that we need to remove the financial incentive for local governments to issue such citations. The money needs to be placed completely out of their reach, with no possible way for them to get hold of it directly, or they just see it as a treasure chest. Maybe then, they will start enforcing for safety rather than revenue.
I've never been to Germany, but as I understand it, they don't have nearly as many problems with accidents on their autobahns, and their speed limits are much higher. Then again, in order to drive you have to actually prove that you can. Here, the driver's test is little more than "can you go around the block without hitting anything?" There are millions of people out driving in this country that really shouldn't be driving anything more than a bicycle, like the lady who was going down the highway behind me two weeks ago, _reading_a_book_ while she was driving. I'm thinking it's easier and cheaper (not to mention more lucrative) for governments here to set low limits for everyone, in the hope that the stupid drivers will survive their accidents, rather than make the driving standards tougher.
Re:Social hack - use "bullfight" for "speed trap".
on
Is Your GPS Naive?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I never said 100mph was safe or reasonable... but there are many, many places where the road can (and does, every day) handle traffic safely at 70-75 instead of the posted 55, or 45-50 instead of a posted 35 (excluding residential areas). Many of these restrictions are due to arbitrary laws that say, in essence, "speed limits must be X within Y miles of a city", with no regard to the actual road or what it could safely handle.
Look up the video sometime of when a bunch of college students lined up across I-285 in Atlanta and did the posted speed limit (55). Traffic backed up for MILES behind them.
A much bigger threat than pure speed is people who don't pay attention, and realize "Oh crap, that's my exit, four lanes away!" and proceed to cut across said four lanes. Or those who don't bother to check their blind spots when changing lanes, or don't realize that their lane is ending, or don't signal... or insist on driving slow in the left lanes.
And again... if the purpose of limits really was to promote safety, cops wouldn't have to hide. And there would be no penalty for warning others of a speed trap, either. They don't arrest you for saying to someone, "don't rob a bank, the police will get you!" so why should saying "don't drive fast, you'll get a ticket" be any different? Oh, wait, then the local government won't get its traffic fine revenue... and God forbid that the residents pay for their government themselves...
Re:Social hack - use "bullfight" for "speed trap".
on
Is Your GPS Naive?
·
· Score: 0, Troll
So unreasonably slow speed limits should be tolerated just because, well, some bureaucrat decided on some number? Because a town didn't want to have to fund its own operations, but wanted to catch revenue from out-of-state drivers instead?
We should put up with municipalities publicly announcing that they've lowered every speed limit in town because they were in a funding crunch? Multiple speed limit changes over short distances in order to catch people? Look, if the purpose of a speed limit was really to encourage safety, towns wouldn't be receiving income from the tickets. Cops wouldn't have to hide to catch people. There wouldn't be stupid restrictions like "speed limits must be X within Y miles of any town"; the limits would actually be set by the maximum safe speed for that road--not just some arbitrary number designed to raise revenue.
I've seen straight, flat, open 4-lane roads with speed limits of 40, in the middle of nowhere. No houses, no businesses, nothing. No logical reason, AT ALL, for that low of a speed limit... except for revenue generation. There are towns in Georgia where nearly half of their revenue comes from traffic fines.
If people should obey the law, the law first has to be fair and reasonable. It may be a bit of an extreme example, but should someone go along with "Jim Crow" laws (racial segregation laws, for those outside the US) just because, well, it's the law?
I'll obey the speed limit when the speed limit is reasonable, and the police don't enforce them just to raise revenue. Until then, fuck 'em.
Re:Social hack - use "bullfight" for "speed trap".
on
Is Your GPS Naive?
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
Or, they could make the speed limit reasonable, instead of setting it to nonsensically-low numbers just to raise revenue.
It would be nice if they brought back the "keep deleted cookies from being set again" checkbox from version 1. I didn't like having to add that flag through about:config.
Well, if we had a national sales tax, or some form of consumption tax... the money would get spent eventually. It doesn't do you any good to have the money if it doesn't get spent eventually.
"If any medical professionals refuse to, say, perform a procedure or give me some medication because they feel it is not in my best interest, well, screw them--give me all the relevant information about the risks and let me decide--I may still want the medicine/procedure."
You may be fine with that... but even with a waiver and discussion of risk and all that, should something bad happen, a large portion of the population would still turn right back around, sue for malpractice, and either (a) win, or (b) get a settlement just to avoid the trouble of a lawsuit. People are dumb, and we've seen too many cases of frivolous or otherwise stupid lawsuits not only going to court, but winning.
"There was not enough fuel in the orbiter to reach the only 'life boat' in space, the International Space Station, as they were in a much lower orbit than the station."
Sorry to nitpick... but it wasn't orbital _altitude_ that was a problem, it was the _inclination_. Plane changes are very expensive.
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I see a little bit of a difference... namely, that nobody is getting hurt when an X-box is smashed, or an iphone blended.
And laughing at those in pain is more excusable when the pain is caused by extraordinary stupidity.
For example, car accident = bad.
My friend falling down and getting road rash because he tried to "ski" down a hill on two razor scooters = funny.
Painful is trying to use a standard mouse for manipulating a 3D environment (Catia, I'm looking at you). Catia really hurts; center click pans, center held down and right held down rotates (in a very awkward, non-intuitive fashion), but if you release the right button, then it becomes zoom. What ends up happening is that, to look at a separate part of your assembly from a different angle, you make something like eight repetitive mouse motions and about thirty clicks. You want carpal tunnel?
The answer, of course, is the spacemouse. You do all the view manipulation with a 6-dof "puck" leaving the mouse free to select graphical objects. Result is faster, less frustrating, and more precise work. And your wrist doesn't kill you at the end of the day.
The interface in Rhino isn't as bad; you can program keyboard shortcuts, and repeated commands can be issues
I just graduated with AE from Georgia Tech this past May. During the five years I was there, I saw a lot of people come into the AE program because "it sounded cool" or, no offense, it was the first one on the list. 90% of them changed majors, or dropped out of Tech entirely. The department is a little more insular than the others, and seems to have a lot of old grouchy guys who just want to be doing research. They seem downright sadistic sometimes, and some of the professors are so old-school that they won't allow the use of any 3D CAD programs during senior design. They want everything hand-drawn, and don't allow unconventional designs. I think they're bitter that they had to use slide rules and draw by hand, and would make the students do that too, if they could get away with it.
I tell a lot of freshmen coming in that, unless they have been living and breathing airplanes or spacecraft for most of their lives, and know that they won't want to work in any other field besides AE, they should just go ahead and change majors.
A lot of the reason why international students have such a hard time finding positions at aerospace companies is due to ITAR (arms trade regulations) requirements. Doesn't matter if something is actually a weapon system or not, ITAR affects almost everything in the aerospace field, and electronics/IT too.
Many companies also do a lot of work for government/military projects, nearly all of which are restricted to US nationals due to security concerns. Hiring foreign nationals means they are less flexible and can't readjust their work force as easily.
If only you could just re-route it without having those little yellow "pause" balloons popping up and making the direction printout screwy. I'm not putting in extra destinations, just changing the route to avoid all the nasty traffic
US phone companies make text messaging far too costly. Each message is usually 10 cents, each way (sending OR receiving), or you can pay $10 for an unlimited plan. And what's worse, they're getting MORE expensive, not less. You would think that the price would be going down, and that such things would be far cheaper than the actual voice calls (each message probably uses what, 1k at the most?) in terms of load on the network.
But, as others have pointed out, they're milking the market of younger teenagers whose parents pay the phone bills. SMS is the goose that lays gold, silver, and platinum eggs for the phone companies.
Actually, it was Debt of Honor, and the plane hit the Capitol during a joint session of Congress.
The last pure VCR we bought had that feature... if you turned the VCR on from the button on the front panel, the remote started beeping. It was great, till we realized it would eat through a set of batteries in about a week. After that, we just programmed the universal remote, and kept the original nearby (sans batteries) in case it was needed.
In my experience, with the phone on vibrate the music player turns on, but doesn't play out loud unless you mess with the volume buttons too. The best solution I found was to not keep anything else in my pocket.
My old samsung (SGH-E365?) was worse; the camera button was on the outside and I took about 12 shots of the inside of my pocket every week. And the menus sucked. And the alarm function. And the reception. Hell, the whole thing sucked. I took it up in an airplane and dropped it into a lake from 3000 feet up.
The suckiest technological "feature" is, IMO, text messaging... at least, when implemented like US phone companies do.
The advanced programmability features on my saitek X-52 don't quite work as advertised. I've resorted to using it as-is (and it's still a good setup, just not as many features as I'd like).
You'd think that all of the improvements from car engines (electronic ignition, throttle-by-wire, fuel injection, etc.) would have made it into wide-scale use on airplanes... but the litigation-happy environment has really jacked up the costs, which means less people can afford to fly, and low production means adding innovations won't produce a return, because you won't sell enough of them. The vast majority of general-aviation engines are still carbureted with manual mixture adjustment, and are basically 60-year-old designs. It's hard to get all the "goodies" unless you fly a homebuilt.
Come to think of it, I know of few other industries which pride themselves on 60-year-old products.
Actually, an easier solution: Given that any ship we could make in the forseeable future (barring huge advances in physics) will take decades, if not a century or two to get there, we could slowly increase the artifical gravity (spinning) up to 2.25 g by the end of the mission. When you consider it would very likely be a generation ship (with 2-3 or more generations being born en route), the generation that actually lands will be perfectly comfortable in 2.25 g. They may also be built like tanks, but that just means if they ever experience 1 g, they'd make a hell of a football team.
We don't propose abandoning Earth like a "foreclosed duplex"--and we certainly don't advocate letting things go to hell here while we look for a new place to trash. The idea is survival--colonizing other planets helps ensure survival of the species.
We could go completely green and make Earth a complete paradise--and then some rock could come along and kill all of us.
And, chances are, the knowledge we would gain just from trying to build a "slowboat" colony ship (one that does not travel at an appreciable fraction of c) would be of immense value in helping preserve Earth's environment. Such a ship would be an entire self-contained, self-sufficient ecosystem, having to last hundreds, if not thousands, of years with no resupply and no dependable external power source. Creating such a system would lead to incredibly-efficient systems, and the lessons could be transferred to everyday engineering projects and other systems. Think water reclamation, ultra-efficient farming and food production techniques (solves hunger problems too!), clean, efficient sources of energy...
"Of course, it is a 20 light year journey."
That's pretty close for a star. I suppose the biggest question is whether or not humanity as a whole will have the drive (and the balls) to try and colonize other solar systems--or even our own.
That's not the point... the point is that, if the goal of speed enforcement is to make everyone slow down (ie, safety), then just sitting in plain view accomplishes that. However, if their goal is to _catch_ people (ie, make money) they have to hide.
Training should be something like what you go through to be a pilot--you aren't allowed full privileges until you've proven you know how to handle things. Granted, there are still stupid pilots out there, but the percentage is much lower than for drivers.
I think the reason so many people get short fused when driving is that they get nervous. And they get nervous because they can't process things fast enough, or multitask well enough. They lose situational awareness (SA), which is essentially the knowledge of what's going on around you (or they never develop any SA to begin with). Any fighter pilot will tell you that losing SA in combat will get you killed--quickly. Losing it on the road can do that, too. And to top it off, many people just don't have the coordination or reflexes to handle machinery like this. They have to consciously think about controlling the car, modulating their pedal inputs, and basic driving.
To jump back to the flying example: When I started flying, I could only keep track of a few things at a time. I sometimes missed things, and probably survived a couple things just by luck. Just making the airplane go where I wanted it to was a conscious effort. Even getting to this point took 45 hours of instruction, practice, and studying. I got the license, but didn't do much flying on my own for a while.
Then, my dad and I finished building our airplane. It was a much higher-performance model than what I was flying before (think tuned sports car vs. a Camry), but there were some critical differences: our plane is more responsive, so it doesn't have to be manhandled around like the old Cessna did; it has a bubble canopy instead of car-like windows (easier to look around), and my "instructor" was much more experienced (my dad has 10k+ hours). I started flying with him every chance I got.
Then one day, something changed. I realized that I didn't have to consciously think about how to fly the plane any more. Instead I could just make the plane go where I wanted it to as an extension of myself, leaving my higher mental functions able to keep track of where all the _other_ airplanes were, where I was, and what was happening around me. Now, after 150 hours of flying, I can lead a four-ship formation around, handle the radio communications, navigate, and still fly the airplane. And even then, I'm required (like all other pilots) to have some form of recurrent training or examination at least once every two years (or more often, depending on what you fly). It's actually gotten to the point where I find flying easier than driving, and I have a lot more experience with the latter. There are fewer idiots in the air, because the system catches them and keeps them on the ground. Pilots don't fly in bad weather until they get the specific training and checkride that they need to do so (well, a few try, but the results are usually fatal).
The lesson applies to driving, too. It takes time and good instruction before someone is really capable of handling everything that comes at them on the road. Ideally, Unfortunately, the vast majority of people never get that instruction or experience, they don't learn from it, or they just physically can't handle it. And I guess therein lies the conundrum. Cars are nearly essential in this country, unless you live somewhere with good public transit, and making it harder to get a driver's license means a lot of people will be stuck with no way to get to work or the grocery store. On the other hand, making the driving test so lax that nearly anyone can pass also puts a lot of lives in jeopardy unnecessarily. Which one is more important to you? I certainly don't know.
"55mph seems a perfectly reasonable limit to protect such drivers from themselves."
Why don't we get them off the road entirely? Harder drivers' tests (current US ones are a joke, at best), mandatory driver's ed, etc.
Slow drivers in the left lane probably cause more multi-car (ie, besides themselves) accidents than speeders do, because it forces so many people to slow down, dodge them, change lanes, etc. I've seen plenty of near-accidents caused by a slow person in the left lane, but I have never seen one caused by someone merely driving fast on a road that could support it (assuming they didn't do something stupid, like weave between traffic or cut someone off). I see no harm in letting someone going faster pass you on the left, but trying to take it on yourself to be a traffic enforcer may very well be putting your life in danger. I was once riding in a rear-facing station wagon seat when the driver decided to do the speed limit in the left lane in Atlanta, and I have never felt more scared in my life, seeing all of those cars fly at me and dodge at the last second.
I'd like to try something with people that insist the speed limit is always right. I'd like to take several minutes of video (shot from a driver's perspective) on different roads where traffic routinely exceeds the limit by a significant amount (10+). Black out the speed limit signs, and play it to those people. Ask them if they feel that traffic is moving too fast, or at a good speed. If they say it's moving at a decent speed, tell them the actual speed limit and see if they change their minds. (alternatively, cover the signs up, then have them drive the course and see how fast they go. this probably won't work if they're familiar with the area, though.)
As far as getting such things changed, many of us have tried to talk to the pertinent elected officials and such. However, it must be something in the water at the city council buildings (and I guess this is true of all governments, regardless of size), since once they get elected, the will of the populace that elected them seems to be completely forgotten. Very few city councils are going to want to raise speed limits to reasonable values because they don't want to give up the revenue stream.
I propose that all money from certain miscellaneous traffic offenses like speeding, seat belt violations (for adults only, not children), and red light cameras, be collected into a national- or state-level fund. The money would be held in an account, and only disbursed for certain good causes (disaster relief, maybe, or scholarships, or something like that). The idea is that we need to remove the financial incentive for local governments to issue such citations. The money needs to be placed completely out of their reach, with no possible way for them to get hold of it directly, or they just see it as a treasure chest. Maybe then, they will start enforcing for safety rather than revenue.
I've never been to Germany, but as I understand it, they don't have nearly as many problems with accidents on their autobahns, and their speed limits are much higher. Then again, in order to drive you have to actually prove that you can. Here, the driver's test is little more than "can you go around the block without hitting anything?" There are millions of people out driving in this country that really shouldn't be driving anything more than a bicycle, like the lady who was going down the highway behind me two weeks ago, _reading_a_book_ while she was driving. I'm thinking it's easier and cheaper (not to mention more lucrative) for governments here to set low limits for everyone, in the hope that the stupid drivers will survive their accidents, rather than make the driving standards tougher.
I never said 100mph was safe or reasonable... but there are many, many places where the road can (and does, every day) handle traffic safely at 70-75 instead of the posted 55, or 45-50 instead of a posted 35 (excluding residential areas). Many of these restrictions are due to arbitrary laws that say, in essence, "speed limits must be X within Y miles of a city", with no regard to the actual road or what it could safely handle.
Look up the video sometime of when a bunch of college students lined up across I-285 in Atlanta and did the posted speed limit (55). Traffic backed up for MILES behind them.
A much bigger threat than pure speed is people who don't pay attention, and realize "Oh crap, that's my exit, four lanes away!" and proceed to cut across said four lanes. Or those who don't bother to check their blind spots when changing lanes, or don't realize that their lane is ending, or don't signal... or insist on driving slow in the left lanes.
And again... if the purpose of limits really was to promote safety, cops wouldn't have to hide. And there would be no penalty for warning others of a speed trap, either. They don't arrest you for saying to someone, "don't rob a bank, the police will get you!" so why should saying "don't drive fast, you'll get a ticket" be any different? Oh, wait, then the local government won't get its traffic fine revenue... and God forbid that the residents pay for their government themselves...
So unreasonably slow speed limits should be tolerated just because, well, some bureaucrat decided on some number? Because a town didn't want to have to fund its own operations, but wanted to catch revenue from out-of-state drivers instead?
We should put up with municipalities publicly announcing that they've lowered every speed limit in town because they were in a funding crunch? Multiple speed limit changes over short distances in order to catch people? Look, if the purpose of a speed limit was really to encourage safety, towns wouldn't be receiving income from the tickets. Cops wouldn't have to hide to catch people. There wouldn't be stupid restrictions like "speed limits must be X within Y miles of any town"; the limits would actually be set by the maximum safe speed for that road--not just some arbitrary number designed to raise revenue.
I've seen straight, flat, open 4-lane roads with speed limits of 40, in the middle of nowhere. No houses, no businesses, nothing. No logical reason, AT ALL, for that low of a speed limit... except for revenue generation. There are towns in Georgia where nearly half of their revenue comes from traffic fines.
If people should obey the law, the law first has to be fair and reasonable. It may be a bit of an extreme example, but should someone go along with "Jim Crow" laws (racial segregation laws, for those outside the US) just because, well, it's the law?
I'll obey the speed limit when the speed limit is reasonable, and the police don't enforce them just to raise revenue. Until then, fuck 'em.
Or, they could make the speed limit reasonable, instead of setting it to nonsensically-low numbers just to raise revenue.
It would be nice if they brought back the "keep deleted cookies from being set again" checkbox from version 1. I didn't like having to add that flag through about:config.
Depends on the university...
What hydraulic fluid are you talking about? Pretty much every kind I've seen in the aviation field (from grandparent) is red/pink/purplish.
Well, if we had a national sales tax, or some form of consumption tax... the money would get spent eventually. It doesn't do you any good to have the money if it doesn't get spent eventually.
"If any medical professionals refuse to, say, perform a procedure or give me some medication because they feel it is not in my best interest, well, screw them--give me all the relevant information about the risks and let me decide--I may still want the medicine/procedure."
You may be fine with that... but even with a waiver and discussion of risk and all that, should something bad happen, a large portion of the population would still turn right back around, sue for malpractice, and either (a) win, or (b) get a settlement just to avoid the trouble of a lawsuit. People are dumb, and we've seen too many cases of frivolous or otherwise stupid lawsuits not only going to court, but winning.
"There was not enough fuel in the orbiter to reach the only 'life boat' in space, the International Space Station, as they were in a much lower orbit than the station."
Sorry to nitpick... but it wasn't orbital _altitude_ that was a problem, it was the _inclination_. Plane changes are very expensive.