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Comment Re:Putting on blinder (Score 1) 279

You can turn it off now, but eventually it will be like all of their auto-correction and paid-search result skewing: you won't be able to turn it off.

We do need tools to narrow things down, but not based on their bullshit, inaccurate view of my preferences. My search results bear little resemblance to my preferences, habits, or even what I'm most often searching for. If they use that data for my searches, I'm boned.

Comment Re:Please no (Score 1) 279

The anger comes because this isn't what I want when searching.

It does *NOT* provide a better search results when it tries to use my personal information, instead of searching for what I told it to search for. They already broke the engine by trying to guess what I meant instead of just taking my search strings as they are.

Comment Re:RSS as Fair Use (Score 1) 303

His assassination was not against US law. He was an enemy combatant regardless of his citizenship, and the US has from the beginning stated habeas corpus can be suspended for anyone engaging in war against the country, even a citizen.

What is illegal is blanket policy suspension of habeas corpus or denial of it to a US citizen by executive authority. That needs to be fought, but al-Awlaki's death wasn't illegal. Yes we could have captured him, but its not always feasible to do that.

Comment Re:Why is it the government's responsibility? (Score 1) 891

Good point. Why do we keep creating more criminal law when what is happen is already covered?

If our government wants to get involved, it should do so by encouraging alternatives, not trying to mandate morality or otherwise productive behavior. I've always noted that our (USA) government's positive propaganda has had a lot more positive effect than our trying to criminalize everything some lobbyist doesn't like).

Comment Re:Why is it the government's responsibility? (Score 1) 891

Because it's the government's job to strive for the betterment of the country as a whole, not just the individual. Individual actions may indeed serve the person better than actions that benefits the whole, but that's not the governments job. Indeed there are arguments to be made on where the line should be drawn for placing society above the individual or the individual above society, but when all is said and done the government (when functioning properly) should be striving the better the lives of its citizens through the betterment of the country as a whole.

In the USA, that's not true. Our government's founding documents are mostly limits on its power so that most betterment (assuming that happens) is done privately. That's the whole point of the America Republic. The areas where the government is allowed to do anything to "strive for the betterment..." is very limited. We have violated a lot of those rules and its caused a lot of our problems, but nevertheless that are the rules. I keep hoping one day we'll start following them.

Comment Re:HUH? (Score 1) 891

Also you have to account for how much fuel is burned with air transport when trains are more efficient, just because we've become used to being able to order anything on the planet and have it in a week or two.

According to local transportation studies, a single heavy truck is equivalent to 4900 cars, 8000 if it is fully loaded or overloaded.

Maybe we should tax them and try to get more of that on trains, and get our train system working well again. Its very efficient and carries a lot more per mile than trucks on interstate highways do.

Comment Re:Big cars suck (Score 1) 891

Of course, if safety is what you want, your argument could be used to recommend putting mandatory speed governors on every car. If the fastest speed limit in the nation is 75mph, why do we have cars that can go 108mph?

If the weekend racers want to go 100mph on the track, let them buy a special license plate with the key to unlock their speed governor. If they are caught speeding on a public street (or if anyone else has tampered with the speed governor), then give them mandatory jail time.

Speed itself has never been the big killer its been put out to be, so I don't follow the logic here at all. Most accidents are caused by bad drivers, bad roads, and differences in speed and occur well below highway speeds. No there is no reason for EXCESSIVE speed, but the current speed limits in much of the country have little to do with safety unless the area has a proactive traffic bureau. Unfortunately most local governments did away with those years ago.

I'm actually curious if there are or were traffic bureaus in police departments in countries outside the USA. My father used to run the local one for a few years, and they set speed limits specifically on observed and tested safe and unsafe conditions. Now its all about revenue, who lives where, etc. The cities in the area just abandoned the concept, and its not been a good move. No one even knows how to work accidents any more, for example.

As far as why do we have cars that can go faster than the speed limit... because you can't really engineer a car to only do the speed limit without either making it weak, or doing something really stupid like a nanny speed governor.

I rather see this kind of effort put into driver training, not some blind nanny which might well get me killed in some circumstances.

Comment Re:Nonsense. It's all to do with crash safety. (Score 1) 891

My 1980 Honda Accord was 2000 pounds, and was manual transmission, but otherwise nice. The 2012 is 3500 pounds. Yes some of that is radio and "toys", but it seems that of the 1500 pounds most of it is safety related. Many features don't really weigh that much. OEM radios generally sound OK, but they are pretty light and made as cheaply as they can get away with. Modern breaking systems are heavy even without the options, and the options are often only enabled: they are present even if you don't "buy" them. The stuff works as a system so it seems a lot of the price points are artificial, with just some small components removed or turned off and perhaps time saved in testing on the assembly line.

My 2009 Mazda 3 weighs around 2900 pounds, and has just as many features as the Honda, but its also a smaller car (though I can't really tell sitting in the two of them very much, and my Mazda holds more cargo). The older generations of Mazda 3 (Protege, etc) were quite a bit lighter but not quite as much contrast as I see in the Hondas. Maybe they are more proactive about trying to keep weight down, I don't know.

Again it would be nice if we could get a nice breakdown of component weight. I think we'll see most of it is safety equipment, but it would also allow us to compare different vehicles to see where they are "spending" their weight.

Its funny, but growing up I remember dad going over dozens of options, and the car was built after you ordered many times. When I bought my first non-used car 3 years ago, there were basically 3 options: sport, standard, GT trim, and not much weight difference between them. A lot of the "options" they dealer tried to sell were actually third parties. The manufacturers have reduced options so much that dealers frequently talk up local customization like they used to do manufacturer options.

Comment Re:electronic junk (Score 1) 891

It would be interesting to see an honest breakdown of what all that weighs.

Not sure you'd save all that much weight, as some things seem to weigh just as much even if manual. My standard seat actually weights MORE than my driver electric seat, not sure why. Electric windows, not sure they weight that much more than manual. Radio, most of the ones I've remove are light as a feather. OEM radios tend to be very heavily optimized, often the bulk of operation on a single IC. The one in my car is very light and the ones I'd rather have instead are even heavier. Of course, I really would prefer the option to not buy it.

That's the thing though: almost nothing is optional. Even if you do choose to forego something like TCS, you might find its still installed in your car, just not activated. My Mazda 3 is like that. The TCS system is only missing a single computer component and some minor bits, the whole thing is basically there. Mazda told me its all there but they cannot legally enable it after sale.

I think it would be informative to get a real breakdown on component weight so we could begin to give some feedback about this and get it out in the open. I'm not sure that most of the weight could be removed with current regulations, as I think most of it is safety equipment not "toys", but I still want the option.

Besides that, every little bit of weight reduction helps, and it might also lead to manufacturers seeing there is a market for it and strive to decrease weight even further.

Comment Re:Brought to you by: (Score 1) 412

I'm afraid you're terribly misinformed, and since you seemed to completely misunderstand what the GP said, your ignorance is understandable. You might want to practice paying attention when you read.

Ad-hominem with no substance. Bravo.

I read what he posted, and I am asking how a system which pays party A with the wages of party B is not entitlement. Its taking money from the public treasury. That's the very definition of entitlement and feeling entitled. In some cases its even OK if party B agrees and party A has a true need. I see too much of the opposite.

You missed PWORA, didn't you? Just to clue you in, welfare is no longer an entitlement. TANF is time-limited, 2 years in a row, 5 years lifetime. The 8% who are collecting unemployment aren't unemployed because they're lazy, they're unemployed because there aren't enough jobs.

I didn't miss it, I just have not seen it work.

PWORA might be a noble goal, forcing people to get out of the welfare cycle, but so far I've not seen it work. The local area where I live has thousands of jobs, but business has a hard time finding anyone to take them. There would be even more work if not for excessive taxation and regulation which especially hurt the small business that used to be the backbone of America.

LINK? You would let children and the elderly go hungry? What kind of fucking monster are you???

Medicaid? Just let a heart attack victim die? Again, your views are horrible and monstrous, and I sincerely hope you give some thought to your sociopathic political views.

Those are your words. I never suggested allowing a heart attack victim die or any such thing. I said that we should not help people who refuse to work or try at all to help themselves. Personally I think it is monstrous to create a system we can't afford and cripple out ability to help people, and destroy the foundations of our country.

Nope, it's because of the useless middleman, the insurance companies, both health and malpractice. Get the government to take over for the insurance companies like civilized countries do, and outlaw malpractice insurance so if a doctor amputates the wrong leg, the settolement comes out of his pocket. I'd be fine with fewer doctors if the ones who left the field were the ones being sued into bankruptcy court; I don't want an incompetent doctor cutting on ME.

So replace one middleman with another? Let the government decide who is competent even though it demonstrates it can't do that already? You can outlaw malpractice issues without going to a system that no one has been able to show we can afford.

Comment Re:Next step... (Score 1) 441

From what you have said, the OS is corrupted, and you need to re-install, or rather that's the least painful solution in Windows.

The same thing can happen to any OS, just most of them have better tools for fixing it. The main thing with Windows to me is how bloody awful administration is.

On a UNIX box when the OS becomes corrupted, there are tools to find the problems and replace parts of the system piecemeal as needed, and fix little details. Of course, sometimes its such a mess its just easier to re-install, but at least the tools are there.

The re-install option for Windows is popular precisely because its almost always easier than trying to screw around with Windows' horrible administrative interfaces.

Comment Re:ARRGHH!...Hit 'Submit' instead of 'Preview"... (Score 1) 528

I have always thought that we should not only cast votes for candidates, but also votes of approval.

The basic idea is this: you cast one vote for whom you want to win, and as much as one vote of approval for each candidate.

That way if someone wins a majority, but the majority do not approve of them, they don't automatically win.

Obviously this has holes in it, its just what I have come up with so far. The idea I'm trying to work out is how to ensure a voting system does not declare a winner where said winner is widely disliked. Originally this was for local club and small organization elections, and also a voting system in some software I wrote.

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