The fundamentals were there. The problem was that she had difficulty applying it to a car, and more specifically, the brakes. Some basic ideas like the relationship between weight and inertia had to explained in detail and not just referenced. In the end I never felt satisfied that she really understood everything because she refused to discuss it anymore.

I was on a long trip, going through the Rockies with a very loaded sedan, towing a trailer. It was her turn to drive and for some time I had been repeatedly admonishing her to increase her following distance, slow down, etc., because of the excess weight. As she continued to ignore me my explanations grew longer and more detailed, until finally she interrupted me with "What's inertia?"

When Monsanto and their "buy seeds from me till the end of time or we'll end you" business model are both long gone we can talk about GMO. Till then I am 100% against GMO ( because GMO == Monsanto ).

Precisely. The study asked a question that results in an expected answer 80% of the time. So why would such a study be conducted in the first place?

http://canola.okstate.edu/gmof...
^^ Big ole page-o-propaganda

Indie bundles.

Scary amount of crap thrown in with the one half-decent game you're after, for less than the price of a coffee.

If they'd been around when I was a kid, damn, I'd have played 100 times more games.

The problem is not the technology.

Like everything wrong with the article, the problem is crappy drivers.

Rear/side lights are there TO BE SEEN.
Headlights are there to SEE BY.

If you have a driver who doesn't know they have no rear-lights, they may not be seen by you. But if you have them without headlights IN THE FUCKING DARK, they are bad, stupid, dangerous drivers. This is not affected by whether they are running on DRL or sidelights or no lights at all. They are fucking dangerous and can't see where they are going and NOT NOTICING.

And if you're driving on a road and can't see the car in front of you, even in twilight, I suggest you put your fucking headlights on and/or stop driving until you've had your eyes checked.

DRL policy does not cause any danger that was not there previously. Many places in Europe have had DRL for decades.

Being a fucking idiot that's peering into the darkness and can't see the car in front, that's the problem.

See my post RIGHT below yours.

Not true.

I run school networks, and we have legacy software going back to the floppy-disk days.

I impose a 5-year limit after the manufacturer was last active because, after that, sometimes it's too much pissing about to run the program, if that's even possible.

Going to Windows 8 64-bit broke FOUR programs that work absolutely fine on Windows 8 32-bit. And I'm using images configured in exactly the same way and thus in a highly reproducible environment.

Some shit breaks on EVERY Windows update. I condemned 10 pieces of our software when we went from 7 to 8. I condemned even more in a previous XP -> 8 move. Fact is, most people just don't care in schools because 10 year old software is ten-years out of date on the curriculum side. But for sure there is NOTHING as simple as you suggest.

Fuck, when I move OS at a site, my rule is "All your software needs to be handed in, with original disks and proof of licence. Anything you want to work on the new network will have to come from those hand-ins AND be subject to testing". Every year, approximately 80% of the school's software estate disappears into the bin never to be seen again - either nobody cares about it after the salesman left the building, or it just plain doesn't work, or it's no longer any use compared to other resources.

But, fuck, "Windows programs just work anywhere"? No. Not even if you have a lot of funds and time to spend getting just one of them to work. I can assure you.

By comparison, Linux software may break briefly and then get diagnosed and pulled back in. But you can pretty much run a 20 year old copy of the primary shell with no problem, if that's what you want to do. You may have to pull in old version of the libc, etc. but it'll work on the modern kernels. There's not much on Linux that's EVER been broken, certainly nothing that a bit of tweaking won't fix.

And yet I can show you a software graveyard in my office of Windows stuff that breaks EVERY year. Fuck, some of the companies STILL SELL IT even though they know it doesn't work on anything past Vista or 7. They don't give a shit and no longer have the programmer on staff to do anything about it.

Man in charge of kernel fixes kernel when it breaks.

This isn't news. This is what happens.

And if only MS had a similar "never break userspace" rule that applied to even the most unbelievably "casual" of software too.

Hell, I broke four apps just going to 64-bit Windows 8 from... 32-bit Windows 8.

And, I agree. Steam has 1/3rd of my 800 games working on Linux already. If we're not using those as a test-case, then why not? Sure, some will just be multi-platform ports from the same source but likely a lot of code will literally be new ports added just for Linux.

Sad to say, there are probably more games in my Steam library that work natively on Linux now, then there are Windows games on there that'll work under Wine/Crossover/etc.

Hate antivirus, personally, only use it where I'm required to.

When people bring me a laptop to fix, one of the first things I ask is if I can uninstall McAffee / Norton for them. They almost universally agree as, even as a user, it just bugs them to shit and gets in their way.

There was a time I'd put AVG Free on instead but those days are long gone.

So I slap on Comodo. Free firewall, antivirus, etc. in an integrated suite, that you can turn shit off for, that you can uninstall easily if you do buy something else, you can pay to upgrade it to a full version if you want, and it just keeps out of your way for the most past.

I don't hear any complaints afterwards.

It doesn't matter.

Don't trust them? Encrypt your data with a private key before you upload it to them.

The point of encryption is that you can just give your encrypted data to people. Without the key, there's bugger-all they can do with it. You don't HAVE to trust them. You just have to ensure they don't have the key. And why would they need to?

Hence, don't trust them. Don't believe them. Who cares? Encrypt it yourself anyway, and it's game over.

And, if you want to get really pedantic, so long as you NEVER provide them with the public or private keys yourself, there's no way they can decrypt it. Now, they may be embedded in their software, or potentially accessible by their app, or whatever, but that's for you to determine. If they can't get your keys, it doesn't matter what happens on their end. That's the whole point of encryption.

And exactly why use of it has exploded. It's as simple as not giving Samsung, Google, Apple, etc. your actual KEYS but letting them hold your data.

Don't trust them, if you don't want to, because you have absolutely no need to do so in order to let them hold your (encrypted) data.

And as is my primary beef with MSCE etc.

Why does it matter where they are? Who cares? Anyone skilled in the use of the software - previous versions, similar programs, competitor's products - will know what they were after and once they have found it, they've found it "forever" in that version.

Rejigging the default isn't a problem. What's a problem is not having customisability. Why CAN'T I put the fucking mail-merge button into the toolbar I want, or assign it the keyboard shortcut I want? If you can't do those things, that's infinitely more annoying and important.

And who cares where you have to right-click to find the Enable Account for a user account in AD? It's not important, because you can google that bit. What's important is knowing that it's possible, what the impact might be, why you would do such a thing, and can you actually safely do it to THAT account.

That's the bit that people who run training courses miss, that people who set up training miss, that people who attend training miss, and that Microsoft really miss the ball on a lot.

Who cares if it's under File, Edit, Insert or the Home tab? Why can't I have an "Office 2003" compatibility button that makes it the same layout / hotkey as it used to be, even if it looks "old and shit"?

This is where MS falls down every time. Start Menus, Office toolbars, Metro, and even things like Server Manager. Separate design from function, and allow the design to be customisable. From that point on, nothing else matters.

The whole issue must boil down to a soundbyte and that ends it.
Monsanto eclipses everything you said, is so evil that any attempt to dilute the topic, or divert attention away from how evil they are, is evil. No threat to our food supply is a bigger threat than Monsanto.

If you WEREN'T FUCKING LOOKING as you crossed the road, it's your own fault.

In many countries, quite literally.

Your ears are no good for distance detection, nor at detecting noise from background without "obscuring" all noise (hence if you are in a loud place for a while, it doesn't SEEM loud because your ears are "dialling down" every volume, including that of the car beside you - that's why you have that "Shit, it was loud in there, hear how quiet it is now I'm out of that place!" moment). Your ears are easily deceived. Echoes can easily distort the origins of sounds.

If you're relying on your ears, in any way shape or form, to cross the road, you're going to get run over. That's why blind people need to have dogs who can hear, but deaf people can cross a road just fine on their own.

Look towards the traffic on your side of the road, look the other way, look BACK to the traffic on your side (the FIRST side that you are walking into and will kill you) as you step out, as you approach half-way and are about to cross over into that traffic's territory, check the other side again.

Sounds DO NOT play a part.

Mandating things like compulsory side-lights (like many European countries have 24/7 for all vehicles, no matter the weather conditions) does infinitely more for safety than fake noises on silent motors.

Fucking green-cross-code people (UK people, at least). The kind of thing you learned when you were five. Look, look the other way, look again, step out. Listening is merely a backup device in case some fucking nutter comes steaming down the road not seeing you and you need to dive out of the way. But, guess what, you'll turn your head to look at him first.

If I hear your engine noise, with you trying to rev louder? I think "You're a cock".

You might even have a nice car, but chances are you have some horrible shit modification to something quite mainstream. Either way, to have to rev it so I can hear? You're a cock.

If you have to have the sound inside to convince yourself it's fast? You're a cock.

Cars today are faster and more powerful than the Formula One vehicles of my father's days. You have no need to show off, you cock. Any fucking idiot can get to 120/130 mph in their car these days. Hell, I've seen a Fiat Panda 1000S get to 100mph. My 20-year-old, nothing-special, cheap-shit car did 130mph before I chickened out on an Autobahn.

There's nothing car-wise to show off about except how much money you've pissed away on it.

Loud music.
Loud exhaust sounds.
Revving the engine.
Removing badges.
Stupid fucking lighting systems to make your cheap shit car look like a Christmas ornament at great expense.
Adding crap like spoilers and twin exhausts to cars that aren't built with them.
Buying cars with crap like spoilers and twin exhausts and then driving them on a public road (fast or slow!).

You're a cock.

And, unfortunately for you, 99.9% of people on the road know it and think exactly the same.

If you want to quite literally BURN MONEY on shit like that, whether the car is genuinely "fast" or not, on a car that you have to drive behind old grannies, and slow down every mile for a speed camera, and wreck to shit on every speed bump, and still spend as much time sitting in traffic as I do, then feel free.

But really? If you buy a car BECAUSE it sounds meaty, then you're a cock.

Get off our lawn.