I live in the middle of nowhere so I can get away with it to some extent but I still am much more attentive and even tend to change my driving position before doing so.
that's why these cars have three or four seating positions, right? One for me, one more for me, and if there's any left then maybe I'll let someone else have one... but I'm going to also need a backup of my primary settings in case someone craps on them
Even the multi-function displays in the middle of the instrument panels on *all* cars made in the last three or four years is too much.
The MFD in the middle of my 1997 Audi A8 (from which all other MFDs today are descended, it seems... esp. in VAG-land) is no more distracting than the MFD which was in the middle of my 1980 280ZX, but it's actually useful because it does more than just show me system status during the POST. It then provides the trip computer. If I had infotainment then it would show me tracks. If I used FM it would show me radio stations. But since I don't do either it only shows me driving-related information; MPG and the like.
I only find the center MFD design to be stupid for sports cars. The tacho belongs there, damn it! But they could still have a MFD off to the side opposite the speedo.
I hate dial meters. I wish they'd die a horrible, gruesome death.
That's because you're not a driver. You're a passenger behind the wheel. If you were a driver, you'd like dials. Maybe not so much for the speedo; you don't need to see how fast you're going faster than you can read a number. But in a driver's car, the front-and-center-mounted tachometer needle is absolutely critical. You can't function without it.
With that said, I like the idea of self-driving cars, and of being able to be a passenger myself. But as long as I'm driving, I like to really drive. Also, note that I have literally never owned a vehicle with a center-mounted tach. I did get a gauge cluster with that for my 240SX, but I never got the cabling to install it and then I sold the car. Still have the cluster, want to use it with my PC for racing sims. Sooner or later I'll figure out how to drive it, I have too many projects already. I've ticked off some minor ones recently, though, so there's hope.
The color bar tachs take up too much space. If you make them big enough to have any resolution worth mentioning, they are massive. That is stupid. One good-sized dial tach and a medium-sized digital speed off to the left of it is my ideal layout, obviously with oil pressure, water temperature, and a real live voltage gauge next to it, plus boost when applicable. That tells me everything I need to know, and right now.
A Nintendo-style controller would suit me fine.
No, no it would not. Nintendo games don't model the road. If you tried it, you would be very sad very quickly.
There is debate with chemical fact?
Facts are useless if you don't comprehend their relevance. While you drive down the road, it's normal for your night vision to be impaired anyway due to reflections, oncoming traffic, stationary light sources...
That is not up for debate; it is simple and pure chemistry.
The world is neither simple nor pure. If you wanted simplicity and purity, you should have become a theoretical mathematician. Applied arts feature complexities.
Only display that which needs immediate attention.
Yeah, Saab used to put a "night switch" into their cars to dim the lights. Saab who, you say?
In the UK, you can be fined huge amounts of money for a small excess of speed, so speed is important.
I like HUD, but I think that GPS-enabled cruise control (with camera backup) is the best way to handle avoiding excessive speed with technology. The hardware for that is in most cars now.
The question is, is it better than people at spotting small children running out from behind stationary buses?
That actually seems like a pretty easy thing for a computer to handle detecting, so the answer is probably yes. A lot of cars will now not only detect that but actually brake for you.
My car has the speedometer right below the windscreen, in the driver's eyeline when looking forwards.
You mean front, top and center? Well, that's just bad design, right there. There should be a tachometer there.
With the police using dodgy equipment and the proliferation of cameras you become obsessed with making sure I'm never even 1MPH over the limit
Blaming your speedometer for bad ticketing practices is like blaming cotton for slaves getting whipped.
Obsession with speed and limits makes the roads less safe.
That doesn't really reflect on the validity of the idea of a HUD, though.
but if they wanted to, they could require reviewers to "check in" at the business (using GPS locating to ensure the customer was actually at the business)
The right way to do it is reputation. Reviews on TripAdvisor are generally ignored if they are not attached to a human with good reputation. Nothing else matters but the web of trust. It's difficult and time-consuming to fake enough content to get a whole bunch of accounts good fake rep in such a system.
Are there any SBCs that don't cost twice as much as the equivalent ARM? And preferably, made by a company that knows that "minicomputer" already has a meaning?
Seems like ARM got cheaper than MIPS a long time ago, and the only reason MIPS is still hanging on is inertia
The awareness they are raising is that they want to waste our tax dollars on Yet Another Irrational Fear.
It became a rational fear when we began to get the technology to deal with it. If you can't do anything about it, then you just go about your business. Once you can, then it's worth worrying.
It's already illegal to intentionally make false statements in writing for the purpose of causing harm. It's called Libel, and it's not new. This is not an "on the internet" law, this is just a law.
There are many kinds of people, but for the purposes of this comment there are only two: those who went into programming because they love programming, and those who went into programming because they heard it paid well. Those people should go into management (or marketing) where they can do less damage.
Remind me why again it's also much better paid?
Well gee, I believe it's because management sets the salaries.
The easiest job in the building seems to be HR. You just act like a cancer, and they shower you with money. It's the American HR Society model.
Just keep in mind that in many areas, using an unlicensed engineer on certain projects is illegal. When is software engineering going to finally step up to the plate?
Not any time soon. This situation where it's difficult to prove whose fault it is benefits everyone but the consumer, which is why it won't change.
The one thing a 3D printed gun can do that a normal gun cannot: Not yet exist when authorities come to confiscate guns, and then exist once the authorities have departed.
Well, any hidden gun can do that. If you can't get your hands on an improperly licensed weapon, you must not live in the USA.
egrep -n '^[a-z].*\(' $ | sort -t':' +2.0
