Tag Archives: safety

Thoughts

A rule of thumb to help you avoid accidents

So many traffic accidents happen when we don’t keep our proper distance from the cars in front of us. Here’s a simple equation to help you do just that:

Distance (in car lengths) = (Speed/10) – 1

Let me explain it. Say you’re going along at 20 mph — the distance between your car and that in front of you should be 1 car length. If you’re going along at 40 mph — the distance between your car and that in front of you should be 3 car lengths. Obviously, the formula given above is no good at speeds below 10 mph, so use your judgment there. I try to leave half a car-length to 1 car length between my car and someone in front of me, even if my speed is fairly low. I never know when they could brake suddenly. People’s actions can’t be predicted, and it’s best to have a little room for error in our calculations and reflexes.

I would go further and add an additional car length to that distance — in other words, modify the equation as follows, if you’re older and have problems seeing, if it’s dark, or if it’s rainy or foggy.

Distance (in car lengths) = (Speed/10)

If it’s snowing or it’s icy on the roads, by all means, drive slower and keep as far away from the car in front of you as you can. There’s no way to approximate distances in those situations. You never know just how your car will behave when you brake. Just hope you don’t have to brake on a particularly icy portion of the road, because you’ll skid all over the place, and chances are you’ll hit something.

MINI Cooper S on snowy country road

One additional word of advice. If you’re going to drive through snow, sleet or ice, make sure you’ve either got winter tires on your car, or you’ve got good all-season tires that aren’t worn out. And be sure that your brakes are in good working condition.

I don’t claim to be a traffic safety expert, so don’t think this rule of thumb is written in stone. See how my advice will work for you, and let me know if you think my equations need some adjustments. The idea is to keep the math simple so that everyone can understand and benefit from this.

Standard
Reviews

Windows Family Safety

Windows Family SafetyWindows Family Safety (WFS) is a new offering from Microsoft that aims to offer protection from questionable or indecent websites to families or individuals. I tried it out for a couple of weeks, and found it to work fairly well, except for a few hiccups here and there.

It is a software-based internet filtering mechanism. The difference between a software-based internet filter and a hardware-based one is that the software needs to be installed on every computer where filtering is desired. A hardware-based internet filter is usually self-contained in a box or appliance that gets placed between the user’s internet connection and the internet. The benefit of such an appliance is readily seen. There’s nothing to install on client computers. Unfortunately, hardware-based solutions have been fairly expensive, historically speaking.

Software-based internet filtering has also cost money, until now. As a matter of fact, Microsoft used to offer one such software-based solution with its premium MSN service. Windows Family Safety may be that same offering, repackaged as a free service.

Having used other software-based internet filters, I can tell you Windows Family Safety is a lot easier to use, and much less annoying than paid products. Those other services, who don’t even deserve to be called by their names, were just plain awful. I had to authenticate every time I tried to access a website, and logins didn’t even take at times. What’s worse, if a single website called out to other websites to display information, as is so common these days, I had to authenticate for every single request. They were a nightmare, and I quickly uninstalled them.

Windows Family Safety requires a simple install, and the selection of a master account which can set the level of access for that computer. It uses Microsoft Passport sign-ons, which means I was able to use my Hotmail account to log in. After that, it was a matter of logging in every time I turned on my computer or came back from standby. This was one area where I encountered a hiccup though. The software had an option to allow me to save my username and password, so I wouldn’t have to enter them so often, but that option didn’t seem to work. I was stuck logging in much more than I cared to do, but still, this was nothing compared to the torture I went through with other software-based filters — as already mentioned in the paragraph above.

Just how does WFS work? It turns out that it uses a proxy to filter the traffic. It means that every time you make a call to a website, that call first goes through the WFS servers, where it gets matched to their content database and the website deemed to be appropriate for the level of safety that you’ve chosen. Here’s where I encountered two hiccups.

The first was that at peak times, the speed of my internet connection was slowed down to a crawl until it could pass through the fairly busy proxy servers and be filtered. That was really annoying, but I assume that’s going to get better as MS dedicates more proxy servers to the service. Perhaps it might be better to download content filters directly to each computer and filter the traffic locally, so the chance of a bottleneck is reduced or eliminated.

The second was the seemingly arbitrary designation of some sites as inappropriate. I chose to filter out adult, gambling and violent websites. Somehow, both of my blogs (ComeAcross and Dignoscentia) didn’t meet that standard, which was very surprising to me. Neither of those sites can even remotely be classified under those questionable categories. Fortunately, there’s a fairly simple process for requesting that a site be reconsidered for proper classification, and it’s built into the Windows Family Safety website. I followed the procedure, and within days, my sites were properly classified. But the fact that I had to go through all of that makes me wonder how they’re classified in the first place.

Overall, I found that WFS still hasn’t gotten proper branding. What I mean by that is that it’s not clearly identified as a product by Microsoft. The Windows Live OneCare Family Safety website is part of the Live Family of sites, true, but it’s not even identified on most of the other sites in that family (Hotmail, SkyDrive, etc.) I also found that configuring one’s WFS account can be pretty unintuitive, as the navigation on the WFS site is cumbersome and lacking focus (much like the Windows Live OneCare site, come to think of it.) I even got code errors when I tried to surf through it recently, which is not what I expected from a public MS site.

On a general note, Microsoft really needs to do some work in associating each MS product with the Windows Live account that uses it, and making it easy for each user to access the online/offline settings for each product. Google does a great job with this, and MS could stand to learn from them here.

Windows Family Safety is a good solution, and it works well considering that it’s free. If you’re looking to set up some easy internet filtering at your home, it could turn out to work great for you. Give it a try and see!

Standard
Lists

Condensed knowledge for 2007-09-19

A bit of a health theme to this edition of condensed knowledge:

  • A new CPR technique was discovered. It’s called OAC-CPR (Only rhythmic Abdominal Compression). As its name implies, you only press on the abdomen, eliminating the risk of broken ribs, mouth-to-mouth, and fatigue from pushing so hard. Definitely worth looking into this!
  • Prozac found in the drinking water in the UK. Apparently so many people are on the anti-depressant in England, that it can now be found, diluted, in the water supply, after having passed through their bodies, into the sewers, through the water treatment plants, etc. Although the “experts” are saying there’s no risk, I doubt it. I mean, this is a drug, found active, in the water supply!
  • WD40 turns out to be a great help for bad joints. Despite the precautions written on the cans, rubbing it into the skin was of tremendous help to a man suffering from joint pain. Not sure that I’d recommend this.
  • Aspartame is the behind the spike in suicides for teen and pre-teen girls. Apparently, it’s a powerful mood-changer — it causes depression. Something to think about the next time you buy your children something with Nutrasweet or Aspartame as the sweetener.
  • Exercising in traffic is bad for your heart. Now that’s something I’ve known was wrong for some time. It just didn’t make sense to me when I saw people running on the sidewalk, next to heavy traffic, breathing in all those noxious fumes. When I run, I want to breathe fresh, healthy air, not someone’s nasty car exhaust. I just couldn’t get why they’d put themselves through something that unhealthy. It turns out the particulates from vehicle emissions decrease our blood’s ability to clot, and restrict the amount of blood that reaches the heart immediately upon exposure.
  • Mobile phones are as dangerous as smoking. So reads a recent headline… People have gone back and forth on the safety of mobile phones for years. Now the EU has finally decided to pick a side and take action. The article’s in Romanian, but what it says is that governments are starting to take mitigating action, first by warning people of the risks, and then by looking at ways to minimize exposure to WiFi radiation. They’re recommending that people go back to using wired Internet connections instead of wireless ones.

Now for some funny stuff:

And some economic discussion:

  • Greenspan on Iraq war, oil link. He confirms what I’ve thought and said for some time. In his talk with Matt Lauer, he touches on the housing bubble and the fiscal irresponsibility of the current administration, but he has no compliments for the Democrats, either. Last, but no least, he says the dollar may be replaced by the euro as the reserve currency of choice.
  • Transparent Investing: what your broker doesn’t want you to know. Here’s a site that offers a purportedly frank discussion of index investing. Definitely worth a look.
Standard
Lists

Sports videos

I’m not really into motorsports, but I understand there’s a big Formula One race going on in Europe this weekend. I admire the capabilities of the F1 cars, and I thought I’d post a few racing-related videos. Enjoy!

The best video is up first. Ari Vatanen climbs Pike’s Peak in a Peugeot 405 T16. This is back from 1988. If you watch it, you will very likely break into a cold sweat. Ari literally speeds through hairpin turns where even the slightest miscalculation can throw him right over the edge and into the deadly precipice below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBYR2EYJe_I

“Top Gear” shows off one of the most exclusive cars in the world, the Ferrari Enzo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v==n8KuetZuOAc

The Dutch (I think) came up with this souped up cart that runs on a 1100CC bike engine and puts out 164 bhp. That thing looks terminally unsafe and I’d never get in it, but it does put up a good fight against a Dodge Viper:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rPpoK3A8aE

Some spoiled brats race a Ferrari 355 against a Dodge Viper GTS through a twisty mountain road in California. What do you think happens when someone that doesn’t know how to drive rally-style gets behind the wheel of a Doge Viper? Watch and see:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySLvePpB1vw

A plane lands on a motorhome in this next video — it gets billed as the world’s shortest runway:

This last one is another thriller. A stunt plane comes within inches of crashing miserably as it undergoes a loopdeloop:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUzjLxqHy5g

Standard
How To

Store ICE on your speed dial – in case of emergency

The National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians is getting the word out about ICE, an acronym which stands for In Case of Emergency. ICE entries in your phone’s addressbook can help paramedics decide who to call if you’re hurt. The advice given is to “type ICE into your phone’s directory and include a name and number under the heading.” Always include an area code. Should you need to include multiple entries, call them ICE1, ICE2, and so on. You can also designate your next of kin with ICEWife, ICEMom, ICEDad, etc.. Make sure your contact has your basic medical information: blood type, allergies, and medications you’re taking. Source: Summer 2006 edition of the USAA Magazine.

Standard