I agree about investing in good hardware with force feedback, such as a G27 wheel or similar, but thats not even slightly the hard part. The problem is there is pretty much no software that gives even close to a realistic impression of driving an actual car, or how it realyl responds.

Since I'm lucky enough to have owned and/or driven several of the cars that appear in such games, I can tell you first hand that all driving games I've ever tried (including the ones you mentioned and the ones that make bold claims about hyper-realsitc physics) all fail BADLY at feeling or responding anything like the actual cars they are supposed to be moodelling. In fact they most don't behave anything like any actual car would at all. Actually the real cars are FAR easier to drive than their video game versions.

Also you want to teach omeone how to deal with traffic, situational awareness, blind spots, pedestrians etc etc, not how to get good lap times. I think that if you leart to drive only using a video game you would actually have a LOT of bad preconceptions around physics to undo when you first got behind the wheel of a real car, so I'm not sure using racing video games to teach is a beneficial approach at all.

This is also true of PC flight simulators by the way. If real cessna 152s and 172s were half as twitchy and difficult to fly and land as they are in Microsoft Flight sim X and to a lesser degree, X-plane, nobody would have ever bought one at all, yet in real life most flight schools choos those planes for training exactly because of their easy handling and docility.

>> Are you referring to Hybrid in the sense of electric motors and batteries that are charged by regenerative braking? That's something I don't have any experience with but I'm not aware of any downside to them.

Extra weight, complexity, extra cost to buy and maintain.

Of course I have. Call me strange if yuou want but I actually LIKE driving, especially on long open roads you find on roadtrips.

I like the idea of a TJ or a wrangler, but its surprising how expensive even old/very high mileage ones are.
Also AC and a somewhat airtight cabin are both pretty much must-haves here in Phoenix in the summer.

I once had asparagus.

I have EXACTLY the same issue with cars.

I really don't want (to buy, maintain, or the extra weight, complexity and/or immediate outdatedness of) LCD touchscreens, navigation, parking aids, multimedia systems, blind spot monitors, voice control, OnStar, 57 airbags, hybrid technology, my car connecting to its manufacturer, etc etc.
These "features" are pretty much all literally unavoidable in all cars these days.

I ESPECIALLY don't EVER want a car that drives itself.

I wish someone would just make a new version what used to pass for a sporty car about 20-30 years ago. I.e.a simple, ergonomic cabin that uses physical controls, analog dials, a good motor and a well-sorted suspension, all without the need for any onboard computers at all. I say this as a software engineer, even I know there are some places that are better off without any technology and computers, and the car is one of the best examples I can think of.

>> You can't win if you don't play

In practical terms, the chances of winning are about the same whether you do or don't buy a ticket.

Ahh I was (incorrectly) presuming you were talking about offshoring.

I agree that more first gen. immigrants are coming into software within the US.
As long as they are truly competing on an actually level playing field (i.e they don't get concessions over locals and any other artificial advantages in the hiring decisions) I don't actually see that in itself as a bad thing. The real question is, is it actually level?

Don't forget that the US was built by and is mostly comprised of families that were themselves immigrants only a few generations ago.

>> in the future, it will be done by 'cheap world labor'. ie, NOT YOU.

I call bullshit. I've worked in several comapnies that have each tried outsourcing software development projects and without exception they've ALL failed due to bad quailty. Thankfully many if not most US companies are finally deciding that outsourcing software development as a cost-cutting exercise just doesn't work.

I think they all would if they thought they could get away with it.

If you run doxygen on an existing codebase that was developed without doxygen support already built-in, all you get is a giant list of classes and member names, and empty spaces where any descriptions would go.
This has little to no value in trying to understand existing architecture or functionality.

I'm thinking that no company is really any better than Sony in actually caring about their customers rights and privacy. Its just that Sony and Microsoft are incompetent enough to make it obvious, while companies like Google and Apple have smarter PR people and a larger marketing budget.

If 2 years of CS is actually equivalent to a "World Lanuage" (whetever that is), since I can speak 3 langauges, where do I collect my free (2nd) CS degree?

Motive and cause.

In the case of Sandy Hook, it seems clear that the perpitrator was actually mentally ill, so was literally malfunctioning mentally.

The terrorists not only clearly knew what they were doing and chose to do it anyway, but had planned it beforehand, and then further used it to try to incite mass terror on a wider scale. Unlike the Sandy hook perpitrator, their intention was to not just kill the victim(s), but to make him suffer in the worst way possible before he died, and then also publicise it as a sick and callous attempt at prmoting their own political agenda.

There is no way that the perpitrators of these two events can be considered morally equivalent.

>> Terrorists should be dealt with the same way other criminals are dealt with.

Tell that to the family that watched a video of their son being burnt to death in a iron cage yesterday.

http://freedomoutpost.com/2015...