You're presuming that legalising under-age drinking is the same as legalising under-age over-consumption & drunkeness.

In Germany, 14 year-olds are allowed to drink with their guardians. It actually encourages responsible drinking: I've heard of German 18 year olds visiting other countries and being astounded at the binge-drinking cultures that exist, because as teens those cultures haven't been taught responsible drinking - they hit 18 and go wild.

You can bet in jurisdictions where 14-year olds are allowed to drink that their parents would still get prosecuted if they allowed their kids to get wasted.

They don't need multi-speed gear boxes, but may still need a single-speed transmission to change the ratio of motor output RPM to desired axle RPM, and/or offset the shaft axes for mounting/layout reasons. They also still need differentials.

i SuBmIt ThAt YoU'vE oNlY uSeD iT oNcE. nOw Me, OtOh...

So you're familiar with it. This kind of system would be entirely appropriate for somewhere that gets frozen-road conditions only a few days of the year, or areas that experience high amounts of traffic from out-of-towners.

This is for the visitors - the kind of idiot who follows his GPS into a lake - not the locals.

Then you "box" the paint. Pick up sufficient paint to do the whole job, and if they are in several smaller tins you simply mix them all together in one big pail. Return to the smaller tins for convenience (certainly at least one tin, for later touch-ups).

Even when buying new, if you are obtaining several tins of the supposedly-same shade you should still box them.

You can still fly direct to NZ from numerous ports in Asia, USA or Canada. You don't need to fly via Australia.

> I just hope that Aotearoa remains a bastion of pacific sanity.
Sadly the writing is on the wall. We (NZ) used to have the stones to stand up for ourselves on the international stage, but our current Prime Minister just wants to please everyone and I can't see him saying No to increased pressure from the States - he'd much rather smile and get Obama's handshake on his résumé. We've already brought in a guilty-till-proven-innocent three-strikes law for filesharing - that was completely embarrassing to see our politicians demonstrate a complete lack of grasp on the issue.

Australia and the USA are our #1 and #2 export markets so we tend to succumb when they start tightening the screws.

Full-body scanners are currently illegal in NZ, but I'm not sure if that only applies to nudie ones (it might be this aspect which makes them illegal; I'm not sure). I fear it's only a matter of time before that piece of legislation gets removed, or some loophole is found to bring two half-body scanners in - one for the upper body immediately followed by one for the lower half...

Just off the top of my head, you could fly to NZ via Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, San Francisco, Los Angeles or Vancouver. I think also Dallas.

They've been compulsorily fitted to taxis in New Zealand since August. Taxi companies fitted them at their own expense. Drivers are saying they feel safer, and the industry is claiming the amount of abuse against drivers have dropped and the cameras have directly led to arrests, including for several very serious incidents. Despite the camera systems costing upwards of $1000 per vehicle, the drivers are saying it's money well-spent.

So please ignore the cynicism of the Slashdot submitter & editor - they evidently do improve driver safety.

Not realistic with current capacitor tech. At best, caps can currently store about 1/5th of the capacity of a battery of similar mass. The best production ultracaps are around 30Wh/kg, whereas LiPo batteries are well over 100Wh/kg, and can exceed 200Wh/kg for certain variants.

Well, it's not efficiency for starters, it's efficacy. And "output"/"input" is all a matter of perspective: I don't put a fixed amount of fuel in my car and then want to know how far I can drive. I know how far I must drive, so L/100km gives me consumption and therefore fuel cost of my commute. Hence I can readily estimate weekly, monthly, or yearly fuel cost.

It's also linear: 12L/100km is 20% worse than 10L/100km, and 8L/100km is 20% better, for a known distance that needs to be travelled. 8.33km/L -> 10km/L -> 12.5km/L is not linear. Whether you prefer a linear-proportional scale or inversely-proportional scale in this matter is up to you.

Consider that distance travelled is fixed (it is for me) and therefore distance is the "input", and fuel consumption (or cost) is the "output" - albeit a negative output - and then it makes perfect sense.