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codehound
S2 licensed
I tried LFS again yesterday. I think it still does the best job of any sim telling the driver what is happening in those 10 cm between the contact patch and the wheel rim. I can just feel the car moving about on the contact patch which I don't get with any other sim. But ... I will still go back to the sim I have been driving for the last 5 months. It has at least 20 cars that I like and 15 tracks that I enjoy (and they don't have chicanes and horrendous curbs Smile ). That seems to make up for any lack of physics and "feel".

That said, I would still like to see LFS flourish. Scawen is a talented programmer and it is evident that the interface of LFS been given a lot of thought. And the netcode is great. But all that doesn't make up for the lack of content Frown. And LFS is competing with developers with a lot more resources.

The only hope I see is that they can find some kind of nitch market. Maybe they can become a poor man's iRacing. Netcode is one part of the online experience ... human drivers are the other. And human drivers are the worst part of the online experience. iRacing uses Safety Rating and licence levels to attempt to restrain drivers. Maybe some kind of incentive can be built into LFS (not just tacked on through insim) that would accomplish this. Anyway, I wish them good fortune.
codehound
S2 licensed
Beautifully done! It has the feel and flow of a 1960's true road course as opposed to the artificialness of the modern racing circuits. The FZ5 is truly at home here and so much fun to drive. Thank you very, very much.
codehound
S2 licensed
@flymike91

I know you must feel like a lonely voice in the wind but I think there are others, like me, who find your arguments informed and well expressed. But, for myself, I just don't see it as a useful allocation of time to try to convince liberals to change their view points.

I would be interested in learning if there is anyone here who has changed from liberal to conservative or conservative to liberal in the last few years and what it took to change you opinions.
codehound
S2 licensed
Quote from Hyperactive :I just quote this so I can point you towards this later on my post.

That's just most stupid thing I've ever heard.

Heavily focusing the suffering on the poor will not exactly help anyone.

Why should anyone give money to charity if (using your own words) it is just money spent helping those who are supposed to suffer? Doesn't charity financially reward that bad behaviour as well? lol

Personally I think you are just looking at some extreme examples. Life is not black and white.

I don't know what you have heard or read so I can not judge your opinion that what I said was the most stupid thing you have heard. But "most stupid" is a bit harsh I would think. Please enlighten me on how you would go about making things "fair" for the hypothetical mother and child we were discussing. Maybe we are not both using the same definition of "fair". Certainly you could give the child more benefits by taking property from someone else. But who has the wisdom to determine what the exact amount that would be in order to be "fair". As Dr. Thomas Sowell says, "What is one person's fair share of what another person has earned?" I think people should be given charity but I don't think they are entitled to it. And no one should be threatened with force to relinquish their property on the pretext by a third party that it is charity.

I never said people are "supposed to suffer" or anything about "focusing suffering on the poor". That people do suffer or thrive based on their decisions and actions should be an obvious fact. The innocent should be helped but not by government. Those who are not innocent should be allowed to learn from their mistakes. If not, they just make more and worse mistakes. Some forms of kindness are the worst things you can do for some one.
codehound
S2 licensed
Quote from Hyperactive :Because it is fair for the child who was born into poor family.

No, it is not fair to the child born to a mother who produces nothing for which to be financially rewarded and, therefore, be able to take care of herself and her child. That mother has done her child an unkindness by her selfishness. You cannot make things fair. A bureaucrat in some government agency can not make things fair. A politician after votes can not make things fair. All you and they can do is shift the suffering around to different groups or individuals. This is not "fairness". If you want to help the mother, the child, and the taxpayers then place the child in a home sponsored by a charitable institution. The mother is not rewarded for her actions and can start trying to become a better citizen. The child will be cared for and probably be given better moral training than she would get from her mother. Society will be rewarded because other women will learn that there are unpleasant consequences for their actions. And society will also be rewarded for being productive and giving to charity rather than being robbed by the government. This is not an ideal solution but there are no ideal solutions, only trade offs.
codehound
S2 licensed
Quote from Hyperactive :Why should people (I take it you mean both the mother and the child) be punished for having a child they can not support?

Why should other people be punished for someone else having a child that that person can not support? What is fair about taking money from one person who earned that money and who might like to use it to improve the lives of their children and give it to someone who behaved irresponsibly. If you don't want the child to suffer then take it from the mother and give it to someone who will be a better provider and better example of a responsible person. If society rewards bad behavior and punishes good behavior then it ends up with lots of bad behavior and very little good behavior. Oh, wait, we are already there.
codehound
S2 licensed
I think that liberals only distrust government when Republicans are in charge. But they should distrust it all the time. One reason why:

Quote :Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood told The Daily Caller that he is “very proud” of the Economic Recovery Act of 2009 that put 65,000 people to work with $48 billion in federal funds for the Department of Transportation, amounting to $738,461 per job.

http://dailycaller.com/2012/08 ... -at-738000-per-job-video/

With $738,461 you could start two or three name brand fast food franchises. That should be about 5-6 jobs each. So about a total of 11 jobs. A person spending their own money just has more incentive to use it wisely and efficiently than does a bureaucrat who is spending someone else's money.
codehound
S2 licensed
The Dems had control of the House, Senate, and the Presidency for 2009 and 2010. Obama got his stimulus spending passed. And Obamacare after twisting the arms of Democrats who were afraid to pass it because polls showed that the majority of the public didn't want it. For the last two years the House has blocked what Obama wants and the Democrat Senate has blocked most of what the House has tried to do. But we still went from $11 trillion in debt to $16 trillion in debt.
codehound
S2 licensed
Quote from DeadWolfBones :Fascist would be passing new laws that allow him to do things the system doesn't otherwise allow/didn't originally intend for him to do. What he's done is use every available legal resource to sidestep the worst congress in ages, which has no interest in getting anything done.
/

By that definition the President could never be a Fascist since the President does not pass new laws, Congress does. The President only has the opportunity to sign laws that Congress sends to him. But Congress has abdicated its responsibilities to the executive branch by passing laws that setup agencies which then have the power to create regulations that have the same force as law. The fact that he has used the agencies to "sidestep ... congress" (being inept does not negate its constitutional authority), as you concede, to confer favors on his supporters is proof that he is an authoritarian which many would link only to the right wing, which really was my point. Because of Mussolini's and Hitler's WW2 actions fascism has taken on a very negative connotation and is now only used by liberals to describe conservatives but, in the 1930's the liberals were quite receptive to fascism (Will Rodgers said of Mussolini that there is nothing wrong with having a dictator if you have the right one.) But if it distresses you we can just leave it that Obama is an authoritarian and forget fascism.

By the way, "new laws" does not automatically mean "good laws". I can only think of two major programs that the federal government has created since World War 2 that have been worth the money spent on them or have not had terrible unintended consequences. Just because I don't want the federal government to do or fix something doesn't mean that I don't think that a problem shouldn't be handled but in a different manner.
codehound
S2 licensed
The problem with the right wing / left wing descriptions is that people often use those terms when trying to describe libertarian / authoritarian or liberal / conservative or big government / small government or free-market / regulated market positions. Some people say a policy is right wing when they really mean it is authoritarian (government has to tell people how to run their lives, sometimes called Fascism). Others use right wing to mean conservative values whether that be social values or fiscal.

Most people in government are authoritarians no matter what other view points they have. People don't go into politics to stand on the side lines and watch the game or to be neutral referees. They want to influence the outcome of the game which means they have to use the powers of government to limit the freedom of the people.

Obama, in the last two years, could not get the House of Representatives to pass his immigration policies, his energy policies, his stimulus policies, his welfare polices, or his environmental polices so he enacted them on his own by issuing executive orders to his regulatory agencies. He also could not get many of his appointees approved by the Senate so he waited until Congress was out of session to by pass it by making what are called recess appointments. This is extremely authoritarian and fascist (don't get excited, I am not implying that Obama has Hitler's values, just his methods). Based on this you could call Obama very right wing. But his policies on using market regulation, taxes, to force one portion of population to buy food for 47 million other people and to remove work requirements for the receiving of welfare, is very liberal or left wing. But it is still authoritarian.
codehound
S2 licensed
Did anyone do any searches on this? I could not turn up a single hit for the story on any newspaper in the US. All the hits were for blogs or far left web sites who repeated what was in the Norway stories. One forum hit was a 2001 post that Larsgard was suspended, not expelled, by a student discipline board for disorderly conduct. At that time he apparently made exaggerated statements about why he was suspended. This story has a very strong smell about it.
codehound
S2 licensed
Just imagine if there was an option to take the downforce under-trays off the cars. The FBM with no under-tray and LX6 tyres would be a fun car to drive. And it shouldn't require a huge programming effort to do.
codehound
S2 licensed
Victor,

Thanks for the reassurance that work is continuing on the new physics. As it is, I think LFS is the best sim for the money and maybe the best regardless of cost.

P.S. Please get Scawan a bike helmet or something so that he doesn't hurt himself banging his head on the desk.
codehound
S2 licensed
Quote from Yuri Laszlo :... the employer extracts the largest share of its profit through seizure of surplus-value.

What does Marxist theory propose should happen in the case of deficit-value? Does Marx say that the employer should require that the worker return some of his pay to cover some of the employer's loss?

Apologizes to the original poster for going off topic. But it just makes me sad to see the young and the poor suffer because people don't understand economics. Every time that politicians have raised the minimum wage here in the US the unemployment rate among the young and poor has gone up.
codehound
S2 licensed
Quote from Yuri Laszlo :It's the workers who pay their own wage.

I am not sure how you are defining the word "pay". Surely you are not arguing that he literally takes money out of one of his pockets and puts in the other. If you mean that the worker earns, i.e. deserves the amount of his pay, then that is a moral judgement ... not an economic principle. Work has no economic value other than what it adds to raw resources. That value is determined by the end users and has nothing to do with the sweat and time involved in the products manufacture.

To me "pay" means that the employer gives the worker money for producing some product that the employer hopes he can sell for more than he paid. If the consumer does not buy the product and it remains in the warehouse then it is certain that the employer will eventually stop paying the worker to make that product. So I stand by my original remark that it is the customer who, in the long run, decides whether the workers efforts are of enough value to him to pay the worker for his labor.
codehound
S2 licensed
Quote from bmwe30m3 :codehound, the way I see it is, that if minimum wage was lowered, then MAYBE the school dropouts will get a job, but that also means that people who are getting minimum wage, and are not doing that good, will get their wage probably lowered, since they are allowed to get less wage now.

I think you are correct. A larger supply of workers will tend to depress the wages of the less skilled. It is the customers who ultimately pay the wages of workers. When the workers demand too much for their contribution to the creation of a product or service (by voting in politicians that support minimum wage laws or supporting unions) the consumers will refuse to pay that wage, the business will lose customers, and the workers will be laid off. This is what happened to the American auto makers.

Remember that lower wages mean lower prices for products and greater productivity from the economy. Why do you think economists are demanding that Greece lower their minimum wage? If they are less efficient than their neighbors then the only way to compete is by charging less for their labor or investing capital (which they don't have) to improve efficiency. It is harsh but that is life, economics doesn't change its rules just because we don't like those rules.
codehound
S2 licensed
There are a couple of ways of looking at minimum wage laws. 1) Businesses don't have to pay someone the minimum wage. They can always pay them 0 by not hiring them in the first place. 2) The minimum wage is the least amount of money for which the government says a worker can sell his labor. Imagine that you have an old car with faded paint, worn tires and a few dents. You want to sell it cheap and I want to have something to drive but don't have much money. We are both happy with the deal but the government says that you can't sell the car below a certain price. So you are stuck with a car you don't want and I am walking. It is the same with labor.

We have young people in the US that have dropped out of school, have no training or job skills. But the government says they cannot work for a wage that a business could pay and still stay in business. So the youths have nothing to do with their time and get into mischief. But the politicians get the less well off to vote for them because the politicians are for the "little guy".
codehound
S2 licensed
The old cars should really be laying down oil instead of rubber. I asked about this 3 or 4 months ago and didn't get an answer. Just tried again:
http://isiforums.net/f/showthr ... &viewfull=1#post35729
codehound
S2 licensed
Quote from rediske :
It's Spa Francorchamps !

Historic road course or modern track?
codehound
S2 licensed
Does anyone have any idea on how well they have done at attracting membership? I haven't noticed much activity on non-WMD forums about CARS but then most members are probably doing their posts on the part of the WMD forum that non members can't see.
codehound
S2 licensed
Why are some people equating lower grip with less stability? High down force cars loose stability when other cars take the wind off their wings, or when gusts of wind hit their cars, or when they are aimed more than a few degrees off the direction they are traveling. Once they loose that down force they become high speed bullets looking for a target.

If you look at some pre-wing videos of cars at the Indy Speedway, you will see that the cars that spun entering a turn often slid to a stop on the inside of the track before ever reaching the exit of the turn. They might loose 30 percent of their grip going sideways or backwards but it still was stopping the car.

My vote would be for no wings, no under trays, and narrow tires. If a car is going 150 instead of 225 in the turns then the kinetic energy is reduced by more than half. Getting traction out of the corners reduces the ability of the cars to reach high speeds on the straights as well as the fact they would have to brake earlier to slow down for the corners.

The biggest advantage is that it would mean that driver ability would count for something again and I would resume watching the races. Maybe all those no-talent drivers with sponsors would no longer be taking up seats the real drivers should have.
codehound
S2 licensed
Quote from PMD9409 :They keep saying that John Henry has to keep forking in money.

If that is the case, then I hope he likes the new tire model.
codehound
S2 licensed
In the last month I have gotten 3 emails from iRacing with promotions to get me to come back. I also got one in July as well as a special one year offer a couple of weeks ago that I think was for both former and existing subscribers. That is probably as many offers as I have gotten in the whole two years since I left the service.

Add this to the people who seem to be unhappy with the new tire model and the fact that they don't have very many high interest series that they haven't already included and I start to wonder if they are having some money problems.

Anyone have any information that counter this idea?
codehound
S2 licensed
Quote from rowdog :I figured this would be a load of bull but it turned out pretty darn accurate. Economic Left/Right: -8.75 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.74 And yes, I'm a Marxist Anarchist living in deep East Texas ... I suppose I'm the only one.

Damn! I thought we had run all you fellers out of the state.
codehound
S2 licensed
The bill that was just passed increases spending by 7 trillion dollars over the next 10 years. They sell this as a 1 trillion "cut" because they had planned on increasing it by 8 trillion. Does the major news media make this known to the public? Of course not. What is worse is that these projected numbers are based on optimistic guesses as to the amount of GDP growth and the hope that the interest rates will stay as low as they are now. Fat chance. Ask Greece and Italy how that worked for them.

And raising tax RATES is not the same thing as raising REVENUE. People and businesses get rich because they know how to adapt their investments. Money goes to countries over seas or is invested in tax free bonds and there goes the additional revenue that the government thought they were going to get, along with the jobs that those investments would have created if they had been made based on making real profits rather than reducing taxes.

This lady has the right idea:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/com ... ed-to-face-the-truth.html
Last edited by codehound, .
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