h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Congrats, abcBen! Well done! All this good news is so welcome...

It took a few hours, but I finally liberated a TIF scan of the death sentence for Kid Antrim, a.k.a. You Know Who. But the experience put me off Windows XP. One doesn't want to go morphing other people's desktops, but it took ages to determine whether the archivist had saved the scanned documents to TIF or JPEG format. Her designated equipment is an off-the-shelf Dell with MS Office. She wasn't aware that half her apps were 30-day trials (expired).

Maybe it's because she was running her screen at SVGA size. Everything was big and dopey. I hope there's an option to run a "classic" desktop.

I brought my own Mitsui gold CD, I ran the app myself to burn it, and it STILL cost me $50 for these public documents. But I wouldn't have trusted any clerk in that office any further than he or she could fly, to do it for me.

After I finish off the greeting card job and the snapshot rehab, all paying stuff, I will get down with these docs and see what's what. I hope she scanned them at 24 bits.

Sounds very much like something that happened in Stockholm in the end of May this year - a man who drove into a narrow pedestrian street and killed 2 and injured 17 - but then, he said he was commanded to do it...

I can hear the AARP screaming now. There's probably too much voting power against anybody who would pass that law. But they could easily solve the problem with technology.

Put a sensor in the front bumper connected to the onboard computer. Then it can calculate your distance from an object, check it against your speed and apply an override brake if necessary. They already have these sensors in the rear bumper of some cars to warn you before you back up into something.

Blimey that's nasty news about the market

Is there any kind of age limit on driving in the US. I know that in the UK things get a little more tricky after the age of 70. I think you need to get a medical / eyetest every two years to maintain the license.

Actually I really ought to research this a bit as my mother is fast approaching this age, and might have some problems getting her UK license renewed. She lives in Canada you see, but comes over here several times a year and obviously hires a car during her stay.

I have often said that at some point regular testing needs to be done to approve people for drivers licenses. Of course, I also think that licenses are far too easy to obtain in the first place. I worked hard and scored nearly perfectly both in teh written and practical exams. Most of my class did not. In Utah, you need but 70% for both driving and written tests to obtain a license. That means that nearly 1 out of every 3 decisions you make on the road can be wrong, but you are still allowed to drive.

Requiring older drivers to retest instead of automatically renewing their license would be a help. We have a little pud vision test everyone must take at renewal time, but nothing to test reflexes. And make the license good for a year instead of 3 or 4.

boots, Frank is improving. He's still limping, but is on his own now - no vacuum cleaner.

Great news Ben.

Oh Hypatia you should have encouraged the vacuum game for at least a month! (winkeye so glad it's getting better smilie).
take care
boots (one last ciggie and off to bed)

I would say that anyone over the age of 65, or that has proven to be accident prone, must do a full retest for their license every year. And then start lowering the time between tests, so that at some point around 75 or so, they are taking a test every month.

People forget that a drivers license is a priviledge, not a right.

Courtesy

Dang! And

This CD seized up my computer so badly that it needed a hard reset. Happened out of both drives. But one file got copied down. It's a TIFF but my computer recognises neither the compression technology nor the colorspace.

They're charging $50 for a service they don't have the faintest idea how to implement! And I am no closer to opening and fixing those documents than I was when I got in my car this morning.

Hi, everyone ! Welcome dna !

Glad to hear Frank is doing well, Hypatia. Weather is miserable here. Temperatures have been reaching 105 F daily this week. But I hear it's worse elsewhere...

Spent yesterday finding the British Council, so I could join their library and do a bit of research into PGCEs, only to find it is closed for refurbishment for the whole summer, which is a pain. Back to wrestling with the internet, I guess.

The good news is that the weather broke this morning and it's a tolerable 25 degrees today.

Yeah, the weather broke here, and it is cool and dull and grey and damp and lovely.

I am throwing a sickie today. I was due to go to some all-day team-day thing. However I am surfing on the edge of getting a migraine, and that could go either way. Since I am not prepared to get a migraine I am not going to work. It feels strange to decide that I am too ill to go even though I am not at the moment too ill to go, if you see what I mean.

The annoying thing is that the team-day is being run by the people who own the website in the organisation, and who will decide whether or not to give me some real work. But after last year I have made a commitment to myself that my health comes first second and third, and work comes fourth on a good day and fifth on a bad one.

Ben
*dosed up on neurofen, codein and coke, and about to do nothing for the rest of the day*

I'm about to go and buy a camal. It's B's and my first wedding anniversary tommorrow, and after my brother presented B with fifteen stuffed toy camals as my bride price last year, I have decided that he should get one more every year to add to the collection. I do hope I don't have as much trouble finding camals as he did.

It's never a year since your wedding, Sol! Where does the time go?

Ben a realy good article and its nice to see hootoo getting in to the mainstream press.

Eyesight and driving tests, I could go on for hours about the 70+ ones. The biggest problem in the UK is that you see your own Practitioner who you have known for years. He/she then has the difficult task of passing or failing. I personally know of several cases where the GP has allowed someone to carry on driving when they really shouldn't have done, because without a car they would be house bound. The 'testee' usually argues that they only drive into the town or village for groceries, bank and library. Which of course is never the case, but even so it is quite possible to have an accident or knock a child over pulling out of your own drive.

My Dad is still driving at the age of 81 and he hasn't seen his optician for over a year despite me nagging at him But with out his car, life would be much tougher for the rest of the family, not just for him, as none of us live locally to him. Although in his defence, he is a safe driver and an extremely good one. His car has parking radar, but I find a gentle nudge with bumper works just as well

Went to pick No2 son from the area I used to w*rk as a community nurse and practise nurse (where the eyetests mentioned above occured). The amount of in-fill housing there is astounding since I was last there, doesn't bode well for our protest. Where three or four large houses with gardens of half to a whole acre stood are now a dozen houses. Did pass one beautiful new house, with a thatched roof. It must have cost a fortune, to buy the old house and garden it must have cost £700,000 at least, to knock down and rebuild would be around £200,000. But the new house must be worth £1.5m, I wish I had that sort of money

The driving hadn't improved in the area!

Well done Ben .

The weather is on the change here. It's raining but still very hot and muggy.

My father reaches his 70th birthday next year. If he loses his licence he'll be devastated but I think my mother will be secretly delighted. She tries to avoid travelling in the front seat while he's driving and does all she can to find excuses to get my brother to give her lifts instead. Like many men of his generation he never took a proper driving test. He drove an army truck around the drill square while the Sergeant Major stood in the middle and watched him. Then he was given a licence valid for the next 50 years. I think the government should have retested everyone who got their licences on that basis a long time before now.

(One thing which has warmed the cockles of my heart today is the plethora of congratulations about the Guardian mention. I was delighted, of course, but it is so lovely when your friends are delighted for you too. This really IS the best thread on h2g2! Thanks guys!)

[B]

Yet another warm day - and I definitely don't like being woken up by my bedroom being hot like a sauna due to the morning sun (despite blinds)

*drifting off towards kitchen to stick her head into the fridge*

And one of the nice things about this place is being able to express genuine delight for the people here. It is a very cool thing, that article and its recognition, Ben.

I found my camal! It is surprising how few stuffed camals there are on offer compared to, well, pretty much every other animal.

It's certainly true that some older folks still do a good job of driving. These people would be able to pass a driving test. I also understand Caer's point about her dad's independence and the strain it would put on the rest of the family if he were to lose his license. The problem is particularly accute in areas without public transportation. But something needs to be done.

Going to be a hot one again today. But not as hot here as SLC. Bryce, Marv, you have my sympathy. (Guess I should just copy that and paste it in every day until the middle of September.)

Happy anniversary Sol.

Lil & Ben

Maybe if there was better public transport in all areas then people wouldn't try and carry on driving when they knew themselves that they couldn't cope with it. And without a car some people are housebound in some areas. In the midlands there is a brilliant scheme for older people called "ring and ride" which is run by the council. If they're registered they can get order a Minibus which will pick them up from their door and take them to somewhere else in the area. So there's no need for my Grandparents to drive because they can do every thing they need on ring and ride. So when my grandad got worried that he wasn't able to drive any more, he was able to give up with no worries. They won't move to be near family in Surry though because they don't want to do with out the ring and ride service!