Bikes rule. Pedals or pistons, I don't mind, but biking through town means my journey is always more fun as well as being considerably quicker.
However, here in London, it is almost invariably quicker to walk than to take a bus.
While the protestors are using the climate change argument as a hook, I have to say my sympathies are with that event. In reality, it is a local protest against the expansion of Heathrow airport. The plans will mean the loss of about 700 homes and the eviction of up to 2000 people. One local school will be demolished and the others will be severely affected by noise.
Having suffered an eviction recently, due to the short-term financial thinking of a supposedly 'social' landlord, I know that the villages of Sipson and Harlington will welcome any support in defending their homes against similar short-termist thinking from BAA.
Al, that sounds like an interesting article. Is that in the most recent issue?
Not forgetting Pat Moss, European rally champion in 1958, 1960, 1962, 1964 and 1965.
The Great Elmyr
I tried watching Heroes, but it was too slow to develop for me....
NO MORE HEROES ANY MORE (repeat ad infinitum...)
BTW ... My heroes as a child were Guy the Gorilla, David Hemery, and Neil Armstrong... What a team that would make!)
LOL! Nah, getting married would probably void the contract he made at the crossroads a long time ago...
Ha ha.... yeah, I don't really think you took Becky's point onboard. Another good example is Casey Stoner. Last year he was willing to go for those chances and earned himself the nickname "Crashey Stoner". So he got married, calmed down, started thinking and there are very few riders capable of beating him at the moment.
And don't anyone try the "but the Ducati is so much quicker than anything else" argument. Even if its true, Casey is so obviously a better rider than he was last year.
I'll be there on Sunday (being a Greenwich resident means I got a few free tickets). Weather forecast doesn't look too great though....
Really stunning that this discussion can even exist.... Fact is, there are not actually that many MEN who can compete at the highest levels of motorsport. And quite a high proportion of the men who are there... well, they brought an awful lot of money to the table when the negotiations were going on.
I'm willing to bet that there aren't too many women around, because the prevailing sexist attitudes in wider society mean that there are fewer people willing to put the required loot behind a woman. At club level, I know that there are many more women. Again, its down to money, not testosterone. I don't want to join the Hamilton knockers, but can anyone here imagine a dad seeing his precious eight year old princess screaming round a kart track and saying anything other than, "Wouldn't you rather have a pony love?" (okay, there's probably a few of you here willing to contradict me on that!
At least, I hope there is....)
Do a few searches on this lady:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laleh_Seddigh
Very instructive story....
And as for motorcycling, check out this lady, a road racer with more guts than many blokes I know: http://www.costelloracing.com/
I'm willing to bet that there aren't too many women around, because the prevailing sexist attitudes in wider society mean that there are fewer people willing to put the required loot behind a woman. At club level, I know that there are many more women. Again, its down to money, not testosterone. I don't want to join the Hamilton knockers, but can anyone here imagine a dad seeing his precious eight year old princess screaming round a kart track and saying anything other than, "Wouldn't you rather have a pony love?" (okay, there's probably a few of you here willing to contradict me on that!
At least, I hope there is....)Do a few searches on this lady:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laleh_Seddigh
Very instructive story....
And as for motorcycling, check out this lady, a road racer with more guts than many blokes I know: http://www.costelloracing.com/
I've been sort of fascinated by Nascar/Oval racing recently. Its always had that redneck image, but at the same time its really geeky - all about stats. This little device seems to reinforce that idea:
http://www.nextel.com/en/promotions/racing/fanview.shtml
I guess its something about American masculinity....
Anyway, I'd like to officially confess to having really enjoyed watching the Sheetrock 400 recently. I've no real understanding of the nuances of the racing, but it was great watching Dale Earnhardt wrestling the car round when the power assist went on his steering.
The coverage helped, offering some dynamic footage showing how loose the cars were lap after lap... Don't think I'll make a special effort to follow the series, but I understand more of why people are into it.
http://www.nextel.com/en/promotions/racing/fanview.shtml
I guess its something about American masculinity....
Anyway, I'd like to officially confess to having really enjoyed watching the Sheetrock 400 recently. I've no real understanding of the nuances of the racing, but it was great watching Dale Earnhardt wrestling the car round when the power assist went on his steering.
The coverage helped, offering some dynamic footage showing how loose the cars were lap after lap... Don't think I'll make a special effort to follow the series, but I understand more of why people are into it.
Characterising opinion, even self-criticism, as "bitching" is just a way of stigmatising thought, without having to answer its questions honestly.
Well, thanks for demonstrating the "shut up" part, but I would be eating shit, if I was to even remotely take you seriously.
If you are happy with a life of wage slavery... keep it. If you enjoy the social alienation brought upon your life by its total commodification... then carry on. If you are happy to enjoy your own reflection, at the expense of never experiencing that tinge of fear that comes with leaving the script behind... fair enough.
By the way, the NHS and a vast amount of the other public utilities in this country, were designed, built, and maintained by people who think very differently from you. People who had ambition. People who didn't shut up.
Not really the point I was trying to make.... If you want a short version: patriotism makes you blind to the fact that you are abused just as much in peace time.
Shut up, eat shit, and be proud. Not a life that I can be happy with.
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Patriotism is an infantile emotion. It was very nearly (but unfortunately not completely) annihilated in the trenches of the first world war. Many patriotic Brits went out to fight in that war, only to realise that they had been used, exploited, and generally crapped upon by a ruling class that treated them as cannon fodder in times of trouble, and as an expendable commodity in times of growth and prosperity.
We didn't go to war in the forties out of a sense of patriotism. We went to fight fascism. We came back and built the infrastructure for a state that would work for our benefit.
The problem with Britain is that somewhere along the line we put that future back in to the hands of the people our grandparents were really fighting against.
That was a truly ungrateful, if not willfully masochistic, thing to do....
My choice? The bloke who didn't fall for the nationalistic bullshit in the first place. The bloke who realised that the words politician and gangster are interchangeable whatever country you live in. The bloke who had more in common with a drunk Russian in a town thousands of miles from my own, than I do with anyone who would seek authority over me.
I don't have to imagine... throw in a random smattering of emigres from other Eastern Euopean states and that's just a larger version of my high street.... Except they're mostly arguing with each other, rather than indulging in nationalistic rivalry...
No, but maybe he was manipulative enough to let it run and therefore drop his 'mate' Gordon into the poo...
LOL... why the
? Is it weird to think of communication as healthy? BTW, I'm not sure if you missed the point of my previous post... My experience of DMR was that it was, probably is, a great server. In my estimation, that means its free of spammy chat, not bound to the LFS standard combos, with hard, fair racing. You want FCV...? Whatever, I understand why, but dispute the logic... That doesn't mean I don't still think DMR is probably a great server to race on.
This is one of those discussions where it becomes necessary to state some kind of preference; that in itself makes it a divisive issue. Anyway, for the record: I don't play other games, only LFS and GPL. I'm only interested in driving simulations (with maybe the occasional gliding sim thrown in...). I'm not an arcade gamer, never have been. Not even Tetris...
I'm a driver with over twenty years experience, and an artist and designer for just as long. I know about driving from experience. I know about images from experience. I know that between a photograph of a building, a painting, and an architects plan, there is not one that can claim to be more realistic than the other. Images are inherently subjective, and if the herd says it is imperative to believe otherwise, then there is almost always something inherently wrong with the herd's beliefs.And yes, I feel more chilled for saying as much!
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This is how I chill...
Sorry, I don't come from the sort of background where argument is considered stressful or combative. It is considered necessary and healthy.
We differ then. I just think you're wrong there. But thanks for posting, since I do agree very much that the argument is healthy. Far too many people here are taking the trogladyte attitude that "sim=single point perspective viewpoint". That's just plain wrong.
As if there aren't enough bloody fundamentalists in the world already....
BTW... Sorry to hear about DMR... before I was forced offline temporarily, I raced there a couple of times and it seemed an especially enticing server: clean, hard racers and imaginative combos. I won't be returning ... not a principled stand
just won't have the cpu to cope ... as I noted before, the decent servers will all fall over themselves to be 'hardcore' ... au revoir.
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IMHO all the arguments for and against a forced view are missing the point. From many of the comments here it is obvious that the forced view is merely a bit of 'social engineering'.
It will divide those with lesser powered machines from those who can spend more on their recreational activities (quite spuriously equating an investment in home equipment with an investment in the future of LFS)
By stigmatising the use of any other view, it will cleanse the userbase of those who will now be considered as 'arcade gamers'. Quite unfairly in my view (pun intended!)
Sorry, I thought this was a racing simulator. I thought it was the racing that mattered. I didn't realise that lining up on the grid meant joining a particular social category.
I absolutely agree here - it is very subjective... dependent on what type of screen one is using, how close to the screen one sits, how large the screen is, what resolution one uses. The degree of subjectivity involved is very much at the root of my opposition.
It is one thing to determine how the brakes work ie. whether braking help is allowed or not. These calculations all take place on the other side of the screen... in the fictional, simulated world. Views are not of the same order, not the same type of information.
Tristan, I do have some symapathy with your post regarding configurability, and I realise that I'm arguing a lost cause against the FCV jihad, but I just don't agree that:
I never use chase view, just as a matter of personal taste, but I can see that such a view merely transforms the spatial understanding one has in a real car (informed by all sorts of stimuli that LFS will never provide), into a concrete image. It is therefore, no less realistic than any other view. The advantage of being able to see the racing line more clearly is negligable to anyone experienced in using a sim.
It is absolutely not a matter of the view replicating what one sees in real life. This kind of naturalism is nothing but a fantasy, an ideal. If you wish to indulge it, fair enough, but I don't see the point of forcing that fantasy on other people.
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How? Certainly from my twenty years of driving, a bonnet cam is closer to what I see from the drivers seat.
Edit: Oh god... its actually closer to twenty-five years of driving....
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Reason : I'm getting older....
Balls. I disagree. And I am not one of the people ....
Red Herrings:
- "Its an option" - Promoting FCV as "hardcore" means ALL decent servers will adopt it. Hands up all committed racers who want to be known as "softcore"? No takers? I thought so....
- "What about breakable windshields?" - whatever algorithm is applied to the virtual windshield can be applied to ANY view.
- "Its about creating a level playing field" - So if I play on a 14" monitor, can we also have an option to restrict everyone to to the same amount of screen real estate. 800 x 600 for all!!
- "If you sit in a real car...." - you aren't sitting in a real car. Period. When I drive, the dashboard is not in my line of sight, because perception does not work within a pseudo-proscenium arch, with rectangular boundaries, set to a 4:3 ratio. You are looking at a picture. It is not real.
I am happy to use cockpit view - my times do not differ if I do so. My frame rate drops like a bomb, but .... hey, whatever, I'll just have to look for those servers that only have about five other people on them.... This bugs me, but no where near as much as the infantile idea that FCV is "hardcore" or even, that its "realistic". Go out and read some ****ing books...
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FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG