With a third of the people answering that Valentines has no meaning for them, my guess is that you are correct: They don't.

Age and number of jobs.

You are correct, of course, but you don't understand the effect of size. my state is bigger than England, Scotland, and Wales combined--with 10% of the population. And that's just one state. I can travel 400 miles inside my state from one city to another and I'm still in the same state. When I travel 400 miles in Europe, I'm in a different country with a different language.

The distance from London to Paris is a bit over 200 miles. Going from San Francisco to New York City is about 2500 miles. The scale is enormously different and comparisons that sound so cool in writing are in practical terms irrelevant.

Public transportation is great when you're not going all that far anyway. It's great that you can commute from Bath to London by train. That will get you from one end of Los Angeles County to the other. I'm not saying bigger is better here. It's a problem, and so are the comparisons.

You still don't get it. You've taken this thread off-topic. And THAT gets under MY skin! Look at the title of this thread. It's about liability. Lots of people, including you, are touting the advantage of driverless cars because they "drive better" than a human, at least according to you. One more time:

THAT - IS - NOT - THE - POINT

The POINT is, if a driverless car crashes, WHO is liable? Can you deal with that issue for a minute rather than extoll the virtues of an unproven technology? The fact that you think a driverless car can "do better" even the majority of the time is irrelevant the first time it screws up and kills somebody. If the person is the "driver's seat" is actually a passenger, how can you hold him liable?

Unless you think a driverless car will have perfect programs, perfect technology, perfect execution, etc.

in which case, you're delusional.

That's not the point, and it is decidedly not insightful. The point is liability. It's not that a driverless car can "do better" under certain circumstances, it's what happens when it doesn't.

Depends on the state, but there are generally at least two additional endorsements; One is for school busses and the like, called an "Intermediate License," and the other is for "combinations" called a "CDL" that entitles you drive semis (tractor + trailer(s)).

Motorcycle licenses used to be a single license, then they changed it based on cc's of the engine so that a license for a 55cc would not qualify you to drive a 1200cc, but this was changed back to a single license when the stats showed it didn't make any difference.

Hope you are not suggesting this really happened: http://www.snopes.com/military/lighthouse.asp

That's funny. Every single thing you list as lacking I had to do for my driver's test--in real traffic, and the written, just like you, was one on a computer, including the braking distances.

In terms of accidents, the UK is indeed the best, but Canada, the US, and most of northern Europe are right up there, too. You just don't want to get caught driving in Turkey or Egypt, where the chances of death are astronomically higher.

Look at my sig.

I finally fired CenturyLink's 1.5Mbps DSL after a decade waiting for their promised "upgrade" for 40Mbps+ download--for the SAME price! I am astounded at the speed of, well, everything. Videos play without "buffering." Downloads are amazingly fast. It doesn't help shitty web sites bringing in ads from all over the world to 'populate' their crummy sites, but overall I'm as happy as a clam. Wow! Just wow! The 21st century has arrived.

I know. No big deal, but I'm enjoying wallowing in all this speed for awhile!

I've tried 'em all, and sometimes IE just doesn't work, period. But the fact is it has the best built-in RSS feed out there. No muss, no fuss, no "add-ons": It's just there. Everything else is a hassle and you never know when Google will say, "We're removing this because we don't like it."

My last shop had twice as many desktops, four times as many servers, and less staff. Your problem, it seems to me, is that your ratio of programmers to IT staff is completely skewed. In other words, you're doing way too much "custom" work. Turn a programmer or two into IT staff (if not the physical person, then the position) and you should have sufficient staff for support.

Of course your programmers won't like that and your IT Manager, being a programmer, won't like that, but the fact is your programmers have created a fiefdom that never should have existed in the first place. It's like a tumor that has infiltrated the brain, hard to remove. For such a small company to create so much custom work is really absurd. You're not that "special."

What you REALLY need is a new CEO who understands the nature of the problem and cleans house.

If I had mod points, you'd get 'em all.

Watched my father die by his refusing food altogether. He was still lucid enough to do this. The "rule" in my state apparently is that you can offer food three times, and if it is refused, you need not offer it again. I realize he was 'in the driver's seat,' so to speak because he was lucky enough not to be already hooked up to tubes and such.

The medical people were giving him morphine and told me I could ask them to give him more if I wanted. I really didn't understand what they were telling me at the time. Today I understand there was a lot more behind this statement than I realized.

Also, though I appreciate Adam's lament that his father's estate was being burned up at $8,000 a month and that he was probably speaking as if his father was average, the fact is Adams is a multi-millionaire several times over and could easily afford to subsidize his father's care. Few of us are in that position. I think Adams' failure to at least acknowledge his father's true financial position is a bit disingenuous on his part. He could still make his case with full disclosure.

They're fine of you are a Metro sexual who feels all tingly about saving the planet when driving a Prius around. You can afford a Tesla just by cutting back on the cologne. But for a real soccer Mom it works like this:

Two youngsters in OSHA-approved car seats (nice and bulky), plus two teenagers who have reached adult size, two huge duffel bags full of equipment and clothing, a couple of D-sticks plus Goalie sticks for lacrosse. At least one diaper bag, a stroller, folding chairs, the portable tent for the sidelines, snacks for the kids, water bottles (big ones), and the inevitable snacks for the big kids. Plus Mom & Dad.

That's a full-scale SUV which is absolutely stuffed to the gills or take two cars. Suck it up. Not everyone leads the Yuppie lifestyle and in these cases, a Tesla is not going to cut it.

The electric market isn't taking off because the consumer has few choices. And just because a tiny electric can get good "mileage" does not solve the problem above where the advantage disappears just on weight alone. Make an electric that can actually do the job plus not have a range that is across town, but not back without recharging, and you'd have a winner. The market is not going to blossom until the manufacturers produce what consumers want to buy. And that's not the consumers' fault.