Sorry, still doesn't explain shortened yellow-light times. And thanks for the lesson, but I'm pretty sure I know that already; I log about 100K to 120K miles each year. How long would it take you to reach that level of practice, 10 years (considering the average motorist drives about 15,000 miles per year - the average trucker does close to that in a month)?

And where are you getting this information? Disabling brakes has nothing to do with this: it's more of a matter of physics, actually. Remember, we are talking about a vehicle that weighs 40 tons when fully loaded. It's going to take some distance to stop something with that much mass. Also, nobody disables their brakes; what you are hearing about is drivers using the trolley brake (which is a lever-operated brake on the dash and operates the trailer brakes only).

THANK YOU!!! As an economic refugee of the "Great Recession", I ended up driving a tractor-trailer for a living - and wound up learning a few things along the way. One interesting fact I've learned is that a fully loaded (80,000 lbs) semi moving at 55 mph can take up to 300 ft to come to a complete stop (think about that next time you want to "brake-check" a truck...). I have, unfortunately, run across traffic lights in which the yellow phase was, for some strange reason, really short- even if the the semi is traveling the legal speed limit. This is not a situation you want to be in: your choices often boil down to:


(1) Stand on the brake in order to not run the impending red light (remember that 300-foot stopping distance? By the time you get stopped, your trailer in squarely in the middle of the intersection. And that's if you don't jackknife and end up wiping out 5 or 6 cars along the way).

(2) Run the light (Yes, it's going to be red by the time you hit it, meaning you will almost certainly incur the wrath of any red-light camera or nearby cop - but see option 1 for the alternative scenario)


This is probably the number two reason I try to avoid surface streets when possible (reason number one being the preponderance of infrastructure not exactly designed with a 75-ft long, nearly 14-ft high vehicle in mind). I figure any traffic engineer worth his salt is going to take these factors into consideration; a failure to do so is going to inevitably invite the occurance of an 18-wheeled clusterfuck and all that comes with it (major property damage, potential loss of life, etc).

And you just proved his point. Good work!

But don't they know that the internet is for porn?

This could also have something to do with the way a lot of albums are mixed these days. Unfortunately, it seems that many studios are compressing the hell out of the music; I guess it has more to do with music industry execs thinking that their acts need to be louder to keep from being drowned out on the radio by the competition (who are also compressing their music into oblivion). I'm no audiophile but I abhor the practice; it has the effect of making the music come out of the speakers like a 747 on full throttle.

The bandwidth "ceiling" also has the deplorable effect of not giving the tracks room to "breath"; certain otherwise audible higher frequencies can get "lost in the sauce" (listen to an older recording and you'll hear the difference). The result is often akin to the difference between quietly closing a door and slamming it.

Yeah, I've heard about those kangaroos, and the problem you described sounds very, very much like our deer overpopulation issue. There are quite a few recreational (but avid) deer hunters here who like to mount "deer catchers" on their vehicles; sort of reminds me of your 'roo bars', especially since they pretty much serve the same purpose (our deer have this annoying habit of suddenly darting out into the paths of oncoming vehicles at the very last second, often after sundown).

This reminds me of the time I visited a friend in Cairnes: he invited me to a cookout, where I sampled some of the most delicious ribs I'd ever had the pleasure of eating. When I asked the cook about his interesting marinade, he gave me a puzzled look and informed me that I was actually eating kangaroo! Everyone had quite a laugh at my ignorance but, I had to admit, I loved every bite!

Actually, I guess it depends on which type of big game you're talking about.

I'm sure you're familiar with white-tail deer. This is an animal which, left unattended, can (and has shown) the ability to quickly multiply to dangerous levels. A large enough herd can (and will) wipe out anything and everything related to foliage in its path (both forest and farmland), in turn causing yet another ecological clusterf*ck. Also, due in no small part to man's encroachment upon the natural habitat of the white-tail, the larger numbers can also cause increasingly recurring disasterous meetings between beast and man (you ever see a collision between a sedan and a 200-lb buck? It's ugly - neither one wins). With few other natural predators around to cull the herd (probably man's fault as well), it's actually up to license-holding deer hunters to cull the herds.

This isn't hyperbole: there's a reason for many states' hunting seasons.

Insightful post. Completely off-topic but, still, you make some damned good points.

Probably not but, then again, I wouldn't be surprised to learn you were not far from the truth. In fact, I've always had a BIG problem with how Linux has been implemented on these netbooks. It seems as if most of the OEMs just sort of threw any old thing on these machines, and that optimizing the installs for the machines was an afterthought (if they even thought of doing it at all). I have sort of a pet theory on why Linux on many netbooks was half-baked: my guess is that the manufacturers were probably looking to use XP (or some other flavor of Windows) all along, but the price point would have put the retail cost of the products over what they were aiming for. Someone gets the big idea to throw on Linux, using the OS as leverage; they knew that the last thing Microsoft wanted was to lose out on a potentially burgeoning market due to being caught with their pants down (Ballmer and company MUST have dominance in all things IT-related, not just desktops), And that MS would pull out the stops to keep anyone not named Microsoft from even gaining a foothold. Apparently, the ruse worked: XP OEM licenses (as we all know by now) were offered for a song. Everybody wins: the OEMs get their Microsoft OS for next to nothing, keeping the retail price at a reasonable level ; and Microsoft, in keeping XP around for just a little while longer, gets to use it as a stopgap measure until Windows 7 goes RTM and hits the store shelves. IOW, I believe Linux got used, and that there was no real commitment on the part of the OEMs to doing it right in the first place.

First of all, if Intel + AMD's integrated graphics on the CPU suck, then NVIDIA's niche will not be only high end, it will be mid range too. But AMD is definitely going to support its discrete business, its making them money, its a great product at the moment. Intel, well its safe to say all their products absolutely suck. But, Intel has massive "persuasion" when it comes to spending millions "convincing" companies to support Intel products.

Secondly, while integrating CPUs and GPUs will be possible, you will not get two high performance parts combined into one, ever. NVIDIA has a current answer to that, GPU in the chipset (the venerable ION/MCP7A chipset driving many Atom-based systems, and _every single shipping Apple machine_ (paired with dGPUs in higher end parts), and while in the future they will have issues on the Intel front with legal issues, they will definitely find ways around it (pushing Tegra probably).

Why is NVIDIA's outlook not too bright? In all honesty, how often does not having an open source driver impact your average Joe? Virtually never. How useful will an entirely open driver actually be for the majority of Linux users? Have you ever looked into a graphics driver? Think its easy to tweak and fix? Their driver support on Linux right now is pretty damn solid with their blob. In most cases, it just "works". And yes, there are cases where it does not, but you give me any piece of software for Linux, and I'll give you a case where it doesn't work. Opening the source will not magically solve this issue.

The real message to gather from TFA is all those wonderful references to the fact that WORKSTATION LINUX IMPLEMENTATIONS MAKE NVIDIA MONEY. Lots of money. A lot more money than your friend buying a 9400GT to throw in a *nix-based HTPC. They are going to go after that market, first and foremost. Guess what? It's working. The Quadro lines are the only viable workstation choice for Linux CAD/DCC, and CUDA on Linux is sweet too.

AMD/ATI tried to push this entire open source movement, but its really hurting them. If they put half of that effort to making their driver rock solid in linux as a BLOB, they could really push into the market with their amazing 5xxx line of cards.

That, plus you have to remember that this plugin was being installed without user's knowledge in the first place. Where I come from, anything which installs something on your machine without the knowledge or consent of either the owner or the admin is generally considered a Bad Thing (tm). It would have been nice for Microsoft to have been upfront about installing the plug-in in the first place, and the security hole was a glaring example of why.

Something I've never understood about online advertising: a marketer puts up ads on a website, and people go out of their way to avoid/block those ads because they find them "annoying" and "always getting in the way". So what does the marketing department do? That's right; they find ways to make the ads even more obtrusive and annoying! I guess I could never understand how getting in the faces of unwilling viewers (who are actively trying to avoid you) is supposed to bring in more sales. There seems to be some ass-backward logic at work here.

Instead of working on "targeting" ads, maybe they should work on forms of advertising which don't somehow annoy the hell out of the majority of people who are likely to see those ads. Maybe something like "opt-in" advertising? I'm no expert so I don't know. All I know is that the present way of advertising seems rather self-defeating IMHO.

Why is it interesting to study anything? Science is a way of describing the physical world around us. Clearly you lack appreciation for such knowledge. Perhaps join the apes? They don't seem too interested in science either.

Copyright was intended to "encourage the arts" not grant special rights to publishers over works that were funded by the public.

Indeed. Copyright was originally to protect authors from publishers.