Here is one way to start ...

Tell the Silent Majority to SPEAK UP

Do you even understand what stopping distance or what reaction time means at all???

Why do you think driver's handbooks mentions Braking Distance along with Reaction Time??

It is important to note that the graph below illustrates the braking distance AFTER YOU HAVE APPLIED YOUR BRAKES. To this must be added a REACTION DISTANCE, which is the distance you travel from seeing the danger to putting your foot on the brake pedal. Since 3/4 second is the average reaction time, a motorist will travel 11 feet for each 10 m.p.h. of speed before hitting the brake. At 50 m.p.h. this distance would be 55 feet!

If you are doing 30 mph, this means you are traveling 30 mph * 5280 ft/mi / 60 mins/hr / 60 secs/min = 44 ft / sec. Let's even give you the benefit of the doubt and say your reaction time is 3/4 seconds -- far quicker then the average reaction of around 1.5 seconds.

* Your reaction distance is: ~0.75 sec to react to the light change * 44 ft / sec = 33 ft ! (Agrees with the estimate of 11 ft / 10 mph)
* Your braking distance is: 40 feet.
* Your total distance to stop is: 74 feet !

Which matches what this graph shows for the total distance to stop for various speeds:

* http://www.drivingtesttips.biz...

This means that if the light turns yellow or red and if you are closer then 74 feet, you'll stop past the white line, well into the intersection.

ERGO, you should RUN the light to get OUT of the intersection.

Who ever told you to never run a yellow or red light was a fucking idiot.

Yeah this is basic Computer Science -- IIRC we studied this in the Operating Systems courses.

Check-in at the airport does this too.

Yes, the ridiculous length is indeed a problem.

The "evils" of copyright was debated back in 1841 !!

"The easiest form of parochialism to fall into is to assume that we are smarter than the past generations, that our thinking is necessarily more sophisticated. This may be true in science and technology, but not necessarily so in wisdom."
  -- "Macaulay on Copyright"

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/...

Correct. The dirty secret of Copyright is that it was invented by --> Publishers <-- to maintain control by preventing other publishers from making a profit !!

I've posted about this in the past ...

"The history of copyright law starts with early privileges and monopolies granted to printers of books. The British Statute of Anne 1710, full title "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned", was the first copyright statute. Initially copyright law only applied to the copying of books."

and

"Pope Alexander VI issued a bull in 1501 against the unlicensed printing of books and in 1559 the Index Expurgatorius, or List of Prohibited Books, was issued for the first time."

and

"The first copyright privilege in England bears date 1518 and was issued to Richard Pynson, King's Printer, the successor to William Caxton. The privilege gives a monopoly for the term of two years. The date is 15 years later than that of the first privilege issued in France. Early copyright privileges were called "monopolies," ...

and

"In England the printers, known as stationers, formed a collective organization, known as the Stationers' Company. In the 16th century the Stationers' Company was given the power to require all lawfully printed books to be entered into its register. Only members of the Stationers' Company could enter books into the register. This meant that the Stationers' Company achieved a dominant position over publishing in 17th century England"

History of Copyright Law

Incorrect.

As a kid for the longest time I couldn't see or reason how simply copying a number* was illegal.

* Where on the Apple ][ //e this number was 2 nibbles / byte * 256 bytes * 16 sectors * 34 tracks = 278, 528 hex digits.

When "piracy" became hijacked from meaning the naval context, copying was rampant. In the 80's as kids we couldn't afford all the games so we (illegally) shared them. Hell, I got into computers simply because it was a fun challenge to "krack" software. In the 90's In college/university we used BBS's, FSP (how many know about _that_ protocol!!), FTP with hidden directories containing control characters, IRC with XDCC, binary newsgroup with split .RARs., in 2000's we used Torrents and/or P2P such as Emule, etc. It wasn't until years later did we learn that piracy = lack of respect for the author's distribution. As adults we buy things because we want to support the author(s) to produce more. And if it is crap we vote with our wallet -- and tell others to not buy it.

What is kind of ironic and completely counter-intuitive is that those who pirate tend to spend more but that is a discussion for another day. (Part of the problem is that certain "assets" are not even available to be legally purchased, etc.)

IMHO Piracy begins AND ends with education. Futurama's Bender made fun of this "archaic philosophy" that "Sharing is illegal" by joking "You wouldn't steal X, right? Or would I !" meme along with the popular "You wouldn't download car?" Because most people are able to separate the issue from money vs freedom. i.e. Artists want to share their creations. Consumers want to share those same creations -- that is what culture does -- preserves "popular" art in whatever medium. Unfortunately the context behind those same reason's don't always sync up. You have bands like The Who who don't care about "bootlegging"; other sellout bands like Metallica that only care about the money and could care less if fans help "market" the band.

Kids these day's aren't stupid. They are questing the status quo that: "Why is illegal sharing illegal? Because of arbitrary financial reasons??" id software created the shareware model -- give part of the game away for free, customers can spend money to buy the rest. These days Humble Bundles let people pay what they want. IMHO this is the correct way to do things. Compromise between 2 conflicting ideals. Open Source or Creative Commons is another approach.

Google making it harder to find digital goods is not going to change a dam thing. Google wasn't around when we were kids and piracy was rampant. Removing a search engine will only drive the process back underground when it peaked with The Pirate Bay in the mid 2000's.

Piracy has existed since the beginning of the network. Any technological means to try to remove it is like pissing in the ocean. Yeah good luck with that !