chris0101

Lol - the city went overbudget in the fireworks celebrations (as usual). Still, it seems to make Sims of all ages happy like kids. One exception: Apparently the finance woman isn't the happiest. Still great for tourism.

Happy Cove City Founding Day!

Is there any way to finish the ones that EA never finished or supplant them?

In real life, I do know that roundabouts are designed to be safer for pedestrians. On the downside, they are slower and less able to handle heavy traffic.

It's a good CJ. Keep it up!

Out of curiosity, has anyone else had difficulties installing custom bridges on the NAM June 2009? I've downloaded it and cannot install any custom bridges onto it. When I drag my highways, roads, railways across the water, only the default bridges show up.

People above my post - you may want to resize your images to 800 x 600 like me and link to somewhere like photobucket - a mod might delete them otherwise if they're over 800 x 600. See Haljackey's guide for resizing and using an image hosting page.

Construction appears to be all the rage at my city: Demand is soaring and the economy is booming! No photoshop was used. Click image to see at 1680 x 1050!

IDS2 ... that may actually be your graphics card overheating. Check your GPU temperatures. If they're above 110C, you've got problems. Try to improve the heating on your PC.

Originally posted by: z1 No, as the current 1.1a BTM release is essentially identical to the 1.1.1 general release. The only difference is that the 1.1.1 release allow Sims to walk on the side of RHW-2 roads. Eventually this will make it into the BTM version as well, but right now, it doesn't seem too urgent. quote> I'll just use the 1.1.1 version and push up the monorail speed to 400. After looking through Ilives, there are no major differences; just the walking that you mentioned. I tried experimenting with 500 and 600 km/h as well with the version 1.1.1. Beyond about 600 km/h, I'd say that most Sims have made up their mind; monorail is the best way to go. At 700km/h and even 800 km/h, there were no major increases in BTM (or monorail) traffic. Seems reasonable enough to me. (Speaking of which, the idea of a train going at 800 km/h may seem pretty far off for now, but when you consider the current maglev testing speeds, it may very well be possible in a few decades). In theory at an intersection, traffic would be traffic going on one road + traffic going on the other side + perhaps a slight delay in the signal changes (maybe slow it down by 10%?). If it is jammed on one road, it will be even more jammed on an intersection. Your simulation Z is pretty realistic in this respect. Still, the slowdown appears to be temporary as Sims start to pick up speed once they clear the intersection again. Bottlenecks can also occur near highway interchanges. Another side effect seems to be a pretty high amount of car accidents around the intersections; again realistic like in real life.

Article from above: www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm Ironically in the US, they spend double per capita of what we in Canada do on healthcare and yet are only slightly higher according the Economists' charts than Canada. It implies that if the US were to adopt a universal healthcare system, it could see some serious savings or perhaps some unheard of survival rates. However, the data is 10 years old, so we have no way of knowing today's data. Another consideration - the source in the article of the US information is not representative of the whole US population; only 42% of the population was studied (most likely those with the best insurance coverage), where as universal healthcare systems will report everyone studied. Here's the source: www.sciencedirect.com/science Furthermore, cancer survival rates also depend on quality of detection. In other words, there are people who may have died from cancer without being detected. According to Scientific American, the US cancer detection system is inferior. Add on the fact that the rate of getting cancer in the first place is higher in the US than the rest of the world, and it evens out somewhat. A final consideration is the way that cancer is diagnosed in the US. Not all cancers are created equal. I have heard of pharmaceutical companies offering drugs to doctors to give to their patients when they really did not need such drugs (ex: their symptoms were not severe enough or they really did not have the illness) and yet were prescribed the drugs by their doctor anyways. Could this not be happening with cancer as well? And then when they do survive what really did not need the severe treatment, they are in the cancer survival rate. What is unquestionably true is that the US does do some of the best research in the world and has some of the world's best doctors at its disposal (for Americans that can afford it anyways). Of course, Europe, Asia, and the rest of the world are also doing a lot of cancer research as well. However, the US leads the world because of its research, not as some proponents would advocate, it's privatized medical system. Those are 2 completely different things.

If you think about it, this was doomed to happen. Housing prices were going up at a crazy rate. Prudence demands that the government, the central banks (or the Fed in the US), and other organizations take control when wages are not rising, commodity prices are not rising nearly as fast, and other prices are not rising nearly as fast when housing rises nearly the way it did. Of course, the real problem is not the housing market, but the credit default swaps market. It has a posted value on the order of $600 TRILLION (yes 12x the world's GDP)! (Although it lost "only" 80 trillion or so dollars). Humans are a remarkably short-sighted and stupid people, and denial seemed to be commonplace in the world about the fact that this was an inevitable and predictable occurance for those who studied history. When you read works of people like Dean Baker, Paul Krugman, Thomas Frank, Kevin Phillips, etc. you realize that this was entirely predictable for those that studied the past. Prudence also demands that government take out speculation bubbles early on (the smaller the bubble, the bigger the pop). The ideologues who thought that a perfectly free market would regulate itself or that the free market was the optimal outcome are about as deluded as the advocates of the opposite extreme, communism for the world's problems.

To be honest, the sooner that we colonize space, the better. It's unwise to have all of our eggs in one basket - this earth. I feel that we should try to set up a permanent base on the moon, Mars, and O'Neil colonies in space. The question is where to start? It would probably only cost the US a fraction of the military budget (albeit politicians are too shortsighted to see that) or the massive financial bailouts, but even so, money and "stick shock syndrome" will likely prevent what could very well be the salvation of our species. We are in danger of exhausting our planet's resources and overpopulating the planet as is - 50 years down the road, who knows?

I think that at heart this is an issue of morals. Healthcare should be considered a basic right in my opinion. It is clear that if you were to do any objective study, nations with large social programs and universal healthcare generally have healthier and happier people. Fundamentalist capitalism and communism are 2 extremes - neither of which can assure the optimum quality of life for most of its people. The correct solution is most likely in between. Another thing that many people have failed to consider is luck. autoVino in particular seems to be an offender here. (Speaking of which, it is not just 15% without healthcare insurance in the US; often those with health insurance have so limited coverage or pay so small a portion of the bills which charging so great a premium that in effect, their insurance is worthless.) I have met many people who work for 80+ hours a week. Some are university graduates who have failed to find decent jobs. They did their research, studied hard, and work hard in their jobs. Yet they still do not always succeed. Why? In many cases, they did not get the majors that were hot, simply because you don't know what is going to be in demand in your life. In other cases, it is because education is so much beyond you reach for financial reasons that you simply cannot afford it. Or if you do go through via debt financing and fail to find a good career, you have no choice but to default on your massive loans. Working hard is not the only thing needed for success at times. Do the people born in rich families deserve to inherent their fortunes? Or is it sheer luck that you were born in a rich family versus one in the developing world where each day is a struggle to get enough food just to survive? Clearly, something else is at work here - luck, plain and simple. Hard work may be a necessity to success to go from rags to riches, but it is not the only driver. In this respect, the American dream is a great illusion for the foolish or the blind. At heart, the advocates of private healthcare are advocating for individualism and libertarianism (perhaps even anarchy). Unless you are a hardened ideologue, you are going to have to admit that a world where everyone worked together for the benefit of all is going to be better than the world where everyone takes a me first approach, which often occurs at the expense of society. That is why I very firmly support universal healthcare, social programs, and assistance for the poor. Healthy, happy, and skilled citizens are the goal. They can work hard, give back to society and help others too. A person may be a drug addict today, but with social counselling, some help to start a new business, etc. could very well end up in university, as a tradesman, etc. The result is a short term loss (price of social workers and counselling) and a long term gain. Now health is a bit different in that respect as often those most in need are the elderly. However, when you consider that we owe our very lives to them, the world around us (both the good and the bad), you realize, that they've earned their right to healthcare. We are not only denying the right of people to care, we are in many cases, debating their right to live. Nobody choose to get sick. Nobody wanted to get sick. But people do get sick, do get injured, and often, it is beyond their control. Again, often this is a factor of luck. Even if you take good care of your self, eat healthy, exercise, you cannot avoid somethings like car accidents (you may be a careful driver, but you can be sure that not everyone is for example). Suppose you're medical bills are now beyond your ability to pay. What now? Perhaps you will be more receptive that risks should indeed be socialized. Our opinions are formed due to a serious problem. We cannot empathize, we don't have all of the facts; just our life experiences. Even so, I am convinced that there are some things that are ethical and some are not. Profiting from the sick is not what I consider ethical. I am going to end my little speech with a quote from Al Gore, a man whom I both admire and disagree with on some issues: "it's not a political issue, it's a moral issue."

Originally posted by: Dexist why does the el rail change too? i have btm version 2 installed and my el rail has changed. it just look like the btm now... without the catanteries is there any el rail < > BTM connection? or any BTM <> glr quote> Looks like a bug as the 2 are incompatible. Still, I would imagine that elevated rail to BTM may be possible. If HSRP to subway can be done, then BTM to subway could be done as well (if it hasn't already been done).

Originally posted by: ROFLyoshi Double Decker El-Highway networks doen't exist anyway.quote> Sadly not. Any idea whether or not monorail over road could exist? Or HSRP over road? If elevated rail over road can exist, why not monorail, BTM, or HSRP?

So why does the congestion map display the tiles where the monorail overpasses the road as red and the rest as just blue? The monorail displays as light blue coloured (about 15% used in capacity). Or is just that because the game has limitations that prevent it from distinguishing between the 2 types of traffic? (This could be problematic I suppose with the tram on road/avenue/street, as there are 3 modes of transportation intersecting.) Congestion shouldn't be severe at 130% traffic should it? UPDATE: Never mind, apparently, the congestion graph does seem to be flawed. I suppose that I'll just ignore the messages for now. The only real useful graph is the volume graph as it tells you the real traffic volume and general direction. Also, has there been a 1.1.1 BTM version of Simulation Z released? Thanks in advance.

Better link: sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php

Here's all I could find about it: sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php

On an unrelated note, speaking of neighbouring cities travel, z1, what is this ESURE that I hear talk about and how does it prevent the eternal commuter bug? sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php

Scratch that - one possible error where the BTMs cross over the streets: Traffic Direction (all traffic is moving towards an neighbouring city): Enhanced Traffic Congestion View (NAM June 2009) Enhanced Traffic Volume View (NAM June 2009): I am using Simulation Z Ultra BTM v1.1a. Simulation Z Ultra should not be jamming at this capacity; the cap is 12,000.

Out of curiosity, how fast can you recover from things like severed water pipes (lesson - incorporate redundancy into the water mains) and after you demolish I-D?

Originally posted by: ROFLyoshi draggable trams are impossible, as it is puzzle piece based. The Tram under El Highway is possible, you just have to cycle through long enough (its near the viaduct rail piece)quote> I meant a double decker with tram under highway as possible. I do not believe that this is possible (at least for now). Sadly, neither of the things appear possible. I had been hoping to use tram on avenue and road everywhere in my city (ex: completely subsitute roads for tram on road and avenue for tram in avenue).