"I've always taken jobs where I could either work remotely or walk / cycle less than 10 minutes each way. I wouldn't consider working somewhere where I'd need to drive to work, or where I'd spend more than 10 minutes commuting, and I'm always amazed at people in the US who are happy to spend more than the equivalent of one working day a week just getting to and from work"

I'm pleased for you. But if both you and your spouse have specialised careers with limited numbers of possible job locations AND you've got children that are already settled in their current schools, then this isn't necessarily easy. Finding jobs and housing becomes an optimisation problem (limit the amount of commute and school travel for 3+ people, taking roads, public transport and obstacles into account) which rarely have a particularly fantastic minima.

So was Windows XP, given that it wasn't released until the autumn of 2001. Linux was already really quite mature in 2001 and pushed by some of the world's largest companies. You could get paid support from IBM for instance. The rest of your post is a buzzword-laden mess with handwaving and conclusions you completely lack the knowledge to make ... apart from the "not fixing what isn't broken"-part... that part is fair.

A different matter altogether and not the point I was making.

That is not a "key feature" of a monitor. I doubt you will find any reputable definiton of monitor that includes that in its description. The key feature of a monitor is displaying information. If your DVD-playing LCD screen was semi-transparent you still wouldn't be allowed to keep it over your windscreen while driving because it is distracting. There are actual semi-transparent monitors out there, and guess what, they are still called "monitors".

But the important part is that it is not up to the individual driver to decide whether a HUD is distracting. As long as the technology has not been whitelisted (a listed exception to the monitor rule) it is illegal to use on the road according to the California law stated elsewhere. If you want to use Google Glass while driving, ask your local road authorities to consider it for road purposes. They will most likely turn you down.

No. As stated by others, there are laws against monitors while driving on a public road. There are specific exemptions (essentially a whitelist) when they have been tested and considered safe. Google Glass (or any wearable HUD-type tech) has not yet been tested and approved for driving but she decided to use it anyway. She is a douche and endangering others and should be prosecuted as such.

The most important consideration about driving: driving on public roads is a privilege, not a right. Driving on them comes with conditions set and enforced by the public. This should be kept in mind when discussing "driver's rights". Whenever Slashdot discusses things like random breathalyzer tests someone always brings up the constitution and inaliable rights. Surely the consitution says nothing about rights of access to public highways? If you refuse to take a breathalyzer test, I'm sure the state could ban you from driving on its roads without breaking any amendment.

No. It does not. It suggests that a certain level of societal bias has helped you along. That your 95% dedication wasn't quite enough, but 5% privilege was also necessary. This idea is vehemently opposed by people who have their whole self-image built upon the idea that everything in life is their whole doing. They also assert that every story about discrimination is wrong with no first hand knowledge of anything but success after their hard work despite lots of examples of people who have failed after a very similar series of hard work. They still maintain that everything is due to them, despite the fact that if you were the daughter of child-beating and molesting parents from the favelas (I'm just adding up bad things, not saying people from favelas are molestors) you would be extremely unlikely get as far with your hard work as some male kid from decent parents from a lower-middle-class background from the US.

Succeeding in life is not a simple matter of privilege or hard work. It is a series of factors including (but not limited to) genetics, social privilege and hard work which affects your probability of success.

You would at least be given the chance to fail. Instead of being assigned to 'write the documentation' in a University project, you would get a decent task which you may actually learn something from. By the time you get to a real job you may actually know what you are talking about.

Really? They performed experiments with syncronised flapping wings in a homemade wind tunnel? They actually timed real birds wing flapping to confirm the hypothesis? I call bullshit on this one. It is very typically Slashdot "stupid science / is this new??" kneejerk reaction and as usual there is no fucking evidence. I suspect the experiments you are talking about was with fixed wings.

In any case, aerodynamics with fixed wings is obviously pretty ancient by now, but sensible modelling of flapping wings is far more recent.

And neither does the media-consuming public. Most would totally ignore your measure of precision regardless of whether you call it standard deviation or mean absolute deviation. For them your average is absolute and if any values aren't at all near it something is terribly wrong. They will also not rest until every school performs above average and nothing in your work will convince them otherwise. The public doesn't like uncertainty and will assume every outcome is for a special reason, and this even goes for the non-religious ones. The idea that some things aren't absolute and are actually uncertain and variable terrifies them.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in sports. Everything there is always "written in the stars" or "destiny" and if you win it always proves beyond doubt your are better than your opposition (or you were 100% cheated by the refs). Hell, journalists may have had a full article written up 2 minutes before the end of a game and then completely change everything to be about one team's dogged determination because chance would have it they scored in the last minute. I love football (soccer), but discussing it can be frustrating.

If you still believe you can convince them, use mean absolute deviation in your "executive summary" or press release and leave the standard deviation as is in your actual paper. The only ones that actually read the paper are scientists anyway. The typical journalist reading your actual paper is likely to misunderstand something in every paragraph anyway. Changing real science to pander to the masses is a fucking huge mistake.

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It goes both ways! A positive feedback cycle; treat your employees well and give them ownership and most tend to be happy and perform better and you tend to do better and you can thus treat them even better.

Although, to be fair, it is probably easier to do this in an upmarket retailer than in Tesco, where absolutely ever penny counts and margins are razor thin.

The John Lewis Partnership, the most upmarket of any widespread retailer (Waitrose and John Lewis brands) in the UK is employee owned. Their wages are good, they are profitable (with a strongly positive trend) and typically pay out two months salary as a yearly staff bonus.

For 99% of all people that is also a specious argument, since their cars are never used on private roads where it is possible to break the speed limit. Their venture onto private ground is limited to their driveway and private carparks, neither of which could remotely sustain a 150 km/t speed.

Also there is nothing wrong with the public saying that you are fine having a non-speed-limited car (we won't interfere with you privately owned possession), but we won't allow you to drive on our public roads, because that is actually a privilege and not a right and we get (through democracy) get to chose who drives on it. We already refuse plenty of people/cars.

This highlights exactly what is wrong with our current social structures. You kick the child out of a school because their parents don't volunteer enough? What the fuck? It is simply morally wrong to punish the child for the parent's failings. They already have a shitty lot in life due to uncaring parents and you are applauding making life even shittier for them?

If you kick out a child because their parents don't volunteer or you set the bar of entry so that you ATTRACT parents who are involved, you don't punish the uncaring and uninvolved parents, you punish their children. How can you possibly justify this?

"What you just described, was hard work on the part of yourself and your parents."

He didn't chose his parents and so the hard work done by his parents was from the poster's point-of-view; luck. Furthermore, his attitude of hard work was probably due to learning the same attitudes from his parents. So he was doubly lucky to have less constraints put upon him than peers with shitty parents.

Unless you find a way of chosing parents better, your start in life and your constraints in life are usually set for you. It is very, very rare to overcome poor, lazy, uneducated, uncaring and abusive parents AND school and reach university.