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Random Q & A Thread - PART 2

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12:50 / 07.08.04

BTW, it's the same for right- and left-hand drive cars.

Are you stoned? :-)

12:50 / 07.08.04

The indicator lever is on the right-hand side of my right-hand drive car...and I push it up to indicate left and down to indicate right. So basically what Linus said. You flick it in the direction you're turning the wheel.

12:52 / 07.08.04

Sheesh. Who's the dunce?
Thanks Linus. My dumb light was flashing.

13:02 / 07.08.04

Shit. The answer to your last question is yes, and now I'm wondering why turning the wheel clockwise = right. Seems a bit top-biased... Your right hand and any point in the lower half of the wheel is moving right to left...

*brain melts*

13:05 / 07.08.04

Kids! Just say No to Marie-joo-ana!

...doesn't anyone have an answer to my cow question?

13:25 / 07.08.04

Seems a bit top-biased...

When I started learning to drive, I assumed that it was because of the association between top / right and bottom / left in western culture ; right hand of God versus 'sinister', the Ascension versus descent into madness, etc.

Then I stopped studying social anthropology (and learning to drive, actually) and tried to forget that I'd ever thought such a thought, as I didn't even have your current excuse...

Grey Area, I'm pretty sure I've seen your cow thing, but will also have deleted it by now. I'll see if I still have any of my old accounts on this computer, but I don't think I do.

14:07 / 07.08.04

The steering wheel thing is less obvious when you think about it, isn't it? My immediate reaction was that the most direct mechanical linkage would inevitably result in a clockwise=turn right configuration. Then I realised that no, it could just as easily be the other way around. (The cog could just as easily(?) be underneath the rack for those who are wondering about my mechanical reasoning)

Maybe it's something to do with reins and handlebars ...

15:41 / 07.08.04

its so that its one fluid motion.(yeah, one should indicate before turning, i know)

think about it.
if the lever went the other way, you wouldn't be able to use it as easily.
most steering wheels(if not all) reset the indicators automatically when you straighten up again, so it needs to be matching.

it may be easier for you to think of the indicator switch moving round a circle, albeit only ever through a small arc of said shape.

its not going up, its going clockwise.#

one might as well ask why the steering wheel itself steers in the manner it does.

i think you'll find that it is very difficult to move your arms through 4 and 8 instead of 10 and 2, as you would need to use a steering wheel that went the other way.(logic sugests that one move more of themselves to the side they wish to turn to)

16:40 / 07.08.04

toksik, are you stoned?

17:37 / 07.08.04

i havent been stoned in days.
why you ask?
did that sound mental?

17:43 / 07.08.04

its all about instinct.
hanging both your arms left feels like it should shift you left, probably because of the weight shift.(skateboards, bikes, small boats, etc thats part of how you turn)

to trun left while hanging your arms left and turning the wheel anti-clockwise, your arms would have to be at the bottom of the wheel and not the top.

try turning an imaginary wheel with your hands at 4o'clock and 8o'clock.

notice how you have really restricted movement? you'd have to make the wheel more sensitive to get the full range of tire movement you need, and in doing so would lose a lot of control.

17:53 / 07.08.04

Say your hands are at 9 and 3, like an F1 driver.

18:05 / 07.08.04

Sorry, it's just that I'm just not getting it.
Say you're steering like my driving instructor taught me: hands somewhere between 10 & 8 and 2 & 4. To turn left you feed the wheel through your hands, pulling down with the left, pushing up with the right. There's nothing intrisically leftish about that, is there? Or instinctively turn-rightish about doing the reverse?

18:13 / 07.08.04

the steering wheel in an F1 is designed to be easily accomodated in the aerodynamic cockpit(there is, in fact, no room for the driver to get in and out without removing it).

a tiny little steering wheel takes more effort to turn through the same rotationas a larger one, and requires a stronger hand position. i have seen wheels designed as an elipse, or in some case like a flattened X with sides... this i imagine would make the hours of driving some races entail less taxing on the arms., in effect enlarging the circle again. as you can imagine, the only sensible place for your hands is going to be 9/3.

the steering system is pretty darn responsive and so the movement less, despite being more difficult.

18:17 / 07.08.04

all right.
loose hand-tight hand, yeah?

turning left, the left is loose, and the right moves to the left to meet it. this shift to the left feels like it should yield a left turn, in my mind.

i keep thining of FPS computer games, some of which are Y-inverted automatically, and some of which are not. (y inverted=flying controls) personally i play with the top of joypad=top of screen style, but i have many friends who claim this is freakish. i maintain its just taste, but defend the normalcy of my choice by pointing out that HALO comes setup my way.(and other games...)

18:28 / 07.08.04

To turn left you feed the wheel through your hands, pulling down with the left, pushing up with the right.

like, uh, it aint feeding thru if both hands move...
my instructor always said that your hands should sit at 10 and 2, and should never leave that 120 degree zone at the top of the wheel.

even if you dropped your hands to turn rather than raising them(doing exactly what my teacher said not to), your left arm moves left in dropping through 9o'clock.

18:35 / 07.08.04

turning left, the left is loose, and the right moves to the left to meet it. this shift to the left feels like it should yield a left turn, in my mind.

Only half the time. Half the time, the right hand is loose and the left moves to the right.

even if you dropped your hands to turn rather than raising them(doing exactly what my teacher said not to), your left arm moves left in dropping through 9o'clock.

Dropping through 9 o'clock, your hand starts off going left but ends up going right, no?

18:37 / 07.08.04

okay so that was full of shit.
you move both hands, dont you?
one tight and one loose, both moving up and down to turn either direction.

18:41 / 07.08.04

for the original question, i think its more useful to think about the stalk moving through a small arc of a circle, and doing so in the same direction as the steering wheel.

as to why the wheel turns anticlockwise for left, i guess thats because of the way we are built.
with our eyes where are, the top of the wheel is what you see most easily. it goes left, so does the car.

18:59 / 07.08.04

I agree, I think you (and Linus and GA) are absolutely right about the indicator thing.

And maybe you're right and the 'clockwise = right' convention is based on the direction that a spot on the top of the steering wheel (most directly in your line of vision) moves right when turned clockwise. But is there really no more to it than that? Would we instinctively do the reverse if (for some reason) we steered with the bottom of the wheel at eye-level.

19:37 / 07.08.04

if you think about it, its only a wheel so that it takes up less room.
it could quite easily be a stick you slid left and right, if you were not worried about clotheslining anyone or running out of stick on the big corners. making it circular means that what goes left is recycled to appear on the right again, ready to go left. (and vice versa)

07:03 / 11.08.04

Why is Hitler's 2nd testicle (purportedly) in the Albert Hall?

pointless and uncalled for

07:46 / 11.08.04

Three syllable London landmarks rhyming with ball.

The list isn't that long.

08:10 / 11.08.04

Imagine. Losing a testicle to rhyme.

pointless and uncalled for

08:43 / 11.08.04

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Bogey_March

With a page discussinging Hitlers monorchiastic state.

08:44 / 11.08.04

Does anyone know what chan is? It's a type of fanfiction, and it has something to do with one of the sexual partners being under the legal age of consent, and I think the basic definition is "Fanfiction in which someone under the legal age of consent has sex and which I don't like", but I'm not sure and no-one will tell me, and I don't want to bring it up at the con I'm going to in October because people will cry and accuse each other of being child molesters and it will just be no fun.

00:40 / 12.08.04

Tech support question about wireless routers and security.

Just got home from a camping trip and fired up the new Mac laptop. Needed to print a photo up, the only printer is on a PC in the back room, but hey -- that's no problem, since a friend and I just set up a wireless network for the house. The connection is occasionally funky -- sometimes the only way to access the network is when the Mac is on the web (generally receiving a radio netcast or something). So I go back there, fire up the PC, grab the file, and I notice a THIRD computer on the network. I've never seen this before.
There's no name, only a number like S00796something something, and I'm told I need to contact my network administrator to access it without a password. Hmm. I AM the administrator (although the "admin" account on my mac is rarely used, if that matters).

I don't live in an urban area, but in a sleepy suburb surrounded by single-family homes (with the occasional garage apartment). Is one of my neighbors bogarting my wireless network connection? Is this a problem? Or is it something like the router itself showing up in the network -- like I say, the thing is a little funky, and not nearly as consistent as you'd expect a machine to be.

The same device shows up on the Mac network menu as well. Is this something worth worrying about?

00:46 / 12.08.04

By the way, the first cars didn't have wheels, they had tillers, like boats. I think the wheel came from turning that mechanism upright.

Might, now that I think of it, be related to the same mechanism in ships' wheels, which predate cars by a few centuries.

09:25 / 12.08.04

Deva, if memory serves, the suffix -chan is put at the end of children's names in Japan. In adulthood, it's rather rare that people refer to other adults with -chan, but there are exceptions. Girls often refer to one another in High School with the -chan ending.

Don't know if this is exactly what you were after, but I hope it helps!

03:12 / 13.08.04

Sigh, imagine the indicator stalk so it's at the top of the wheel, right? Uu is right, down is left.

Gedt?

03:13 / 13.08.04

-chan means 'small'.
neko means 'cat'
Nekochan means 'small cat'

04:27 / 13.08.04

Sigh

who?

10:54 / 16.08.04

I have just bought a crappy 2nd hand laptop. When I press the key for @ I get an " and vice versa. Is there anything I can do. I'm using XP Pro if that makes any difference.

pointless and uncalled for

11:07 / 16.08.04

Your character mapping is set to the wrong country.

If I had access to the functions I would tell you how to get to fix it but I don't.

All i can suggest is that it will be in the Start Menu/Control Panel.

11:36 / 16.08.04

There's a 'keyboard' option in the control panel. You need to add a keyboard layout that conforms to the one you have. If there's a £ above the 3 you've got a British layout, if the @ is above the two you've got an American layout. I'd go one step further and delete the layout that you don't need.

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