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Don't forget about Science Friday and NPR: All Songs Considered.

There is also Car Talk which is not free.

Just FYI, sugar doesn't kill an engine.

But your argument is certainly reasonable otherwise :)

Before I found Real Alternative and its necessary companion Media Player Classic I stayed far, far away from anything that used Real Player. I didn't want messages about Brittney Spears in my system tray, I didn't want to click 4 different links to bypass their premium player, and I certainly shied away from the massive load time.

I found out about it only after Click and Clack switched back to Real Player's format after having temporarily using Windows Media Player. Their reasoning was similar to mine; many older folks were having trouble locating the free Real Player. Despite the fact that Tom and Rau were able to make nice with Real Networks, I was never able to. But, thanks to my friend Sean, I shall never have to go through 4 different option menus to disable a message center again.

Besides, the Real Alternative codec seems better able to stream than Real's own player software. I assume the codec is just the "guts" of the player with no fluff...perhaps all of the extra system resources are being used by, oh, the message center checking on the latest dirt about TomKat or something.

Before I found Real Alternative and its necessary companion Media Player Classic I stayed far, far away from anything that used Real Player. I didn't want messages about Brittney Spears in my system tray, I didn't want to click 4 different links to bypass their premium player, and I certainly shied away from the massive load time.

I found out about it only after Click and Clack switched back to Real Player's format after having temporarily using Windows Media Player. Their reasoning was similar to mine; many older folks were having trouble locating the free Real Player. Despite the fact that Tom and Rau were able to make nice with Real Networks, I was never able to. But, thanks to my friend Sean, I shall never have to go through 4 different option menus to disable a message center again.

Besides, the Real Alternative codec seems better able to stream than Real's own player software. I assume the codec is just the "guts" of the player with no fluff...perhaps all of the extra system resources are being used by, oh, the message center checking on the latest dirt about TomKat or something.

I'd say it IS the cost - Audible is expensive. It's hard to justify paying so much in advance for a show that you could hear for free. At least Car Talk is available for free for the first week via their website, then by Audible from there.

Which brings up an interesting point - there is no standard model for NPR shows. Some of the local stations just publish directly in mp3 (kuow.org), other NPR shows are just on their website, and others (like previously mentioned) show up on Audible.

I would like to see them offer all shows for free in mp3 off their website for a limited time period, then as a paid download after a week or two. And go a head and throw in a small "this podcast is supported by X company and from donations from people like you..." in the beginning of each downloadable show.

I grew up in Minnesota where the land is flat and it would take me three and half hours to drive between my parent's house and the University of Minnesota. My car was a complete junker and therefore wasn't worth the two hundred or so dollars it would take to equip it with a CD player. So instead, I listened to the many programs that NPR and MPR had to offer.

Two of my absolute favorites were This American Life and Car Talk. Oftentimes, I would find myself in a parking lot listening to Ira Glass as the episode he was doing had me hooked and I couldn't even get out of my car to buy groceries.

My senior year of college found me looking up TAL episodes online and using Total Recorder to compress the Real Audio feeds directly to MP3. Was I stealing from TAL? I didn't really feel like it, I was a poor college student and I had heard the program on the radio--I just wanted it on my computer to listen to it time after time.

I'll never forget the time I heard the two part series of Come Back to Afghanistan and it's sequel. What really happened and is happening in Afghanistan never hit home until I heard it through the voice of a young teenager named Hyder Akbar.

I have made a few contributions to NPR since I've graduated but I can see where they'd be strapped financially. I think NPR could take advantage of the modern media formats that all of us seek. I have purchased Car Talk CDs and I'd purchase TAL CDs too. Even more importantly, I'd be more than willing to pay a dollar through iTunes or Napster or whatever service you choose to have a random episode of TAL or Car Talk on my MP3 player. They seem to have the audio book version of Poultry Slam but not every episode, correct me if I'm wrong but I don't have any kind of service to check on hand.

start calling up Car Talk, trying to imitate the funny noise their network is making (a practice known as automatopoeia).

Stores will not accept a card number. No way no how.

That depends on the store. My auto mechanic once rang up $650 of repairs from a credit card number I recited to him because I'd left my wallet at home. I guess it helps that he's been fixing my cars for over a decade. However, if you think back to the old days when you used to order from catalogues over the phone, instead of the internet, you always just read out your credit card number and they'd ship off your product. I'm sure they still do that, but no /.er would ever find out :)

Oh yes, when worthy political campaigns call my house asking for $$, I'll sometimes give them my credit card number over the phone. Granted, the people I'm donating to don't count as a store, but I'm sure that Republicons do the same thing, and the news is full of stories these days showing that the Republicon Party politicians are totally up for sale.

Somewhat related, the Car Talk guys had a puzzler on relative efficiency:

Question:

http://www.cartalk.com/content/puzzler/transcripts /200505/index.html

Answer:

http://www.cartalk.com/content/puzzler/transcripts /200505/answer.html

Somewhat related, the Car Talk guys had a puzzler on relative efficiency:

Question:

http://www.cartalk.com/content/puzzler/transcripts /200505/index.html

Answer:

http://www.cartalk.com/content/puzzler/transcripts /200505/answer.html

Why not just get your Car Talk fix by just downloading it for free?

http://www.cartalk.com/Radio/Show/online.html

I have a 3.8L V6 1998 Oldsmobile and it can pass anything but a gas station. You may have other problems; the 3800 was never known as a wimpy engine.

Put a bigger exhaust on it to move the air out as well

Note that if you decrease the exhaust's backpressure out of the designed range, you can dramatically increase your emissions while simultaneously burning out your valves. Bigger can be a little better, but don't get carried away.

Source: Car Talk

"If you want to go to work an hour earlier, just go to work an hour earlier."

Except there's a whole trickle-down effect from the federal agencies that observe things like daylight saving time. It's a lot like federal holidays; sure, you can be open for business, but the more your business relies on, say, transactions at the Federal Reserve, the less work you're going to be doing for that hour between when you open and when the Federal Reserve opens. So far as commerce relies on groups of people coming together, the only way you can effectivley do something like this is all or none, otherwise the concept of standards becomes meaningless.

"Noon should always be when the sun is directly over my time-zone."

I'm surprised there isn't some sort of "bad atronomy" page on this.

First off, time zones are not defined by two meridians. They start off that way, but then they move with respect to political boundaries in an attempt to keep states (or at least counties) synchronized. Otherwise Airzona would be split right down the middle (Arizona goes from about 109 W to 114 W, and the line "should" be at 112.5 W)

Secondly, the length of time between two consecutive noons is never 86,400 seconds. The reason we developed mechanical timekeepers and then ultimately defined our length of time on something that has nothing to do with astronomy is that the sun is inconsistant. The earth's orbit is not circular, the earth's speed in that orbit is not constant, and the result is that, over regular 86.4 ks cycles, the sun traces a figure-eight over the course of a year.

On 2005 October 30, when the US and the EU both go back to standard time zone, the sun will be directly over New Orleans (almost exactly 90 degrees west of Greenwich) at about 11:44 AM Central Standard Time. On Groundhog's Day next year, after racing past perihelion, "noon" will be 12:14 PM.

"Change the start time instead of the clocks"

That would defeat the purpose of having a standard schedule to begin with. People and other businesses need to plan around when you intend to operate, and a system where everybody's schedule drifts from time to time leads to confusion at best. It's better to change the standard frame of reference than to try to alter behavior within that frame of reference.

If anything, what you're proposing more resembles the "logic" of setting your personal alarm clock ten mintues later than Daylight Saving Time. Both examples involve deviating from an accepted standard.

"Do it gradually, the way available light changes gradually."

First, if you're going to do it based on fractions of hours, why bother having time zones of integer hour differences to begin with? Why bother with time zones at all?

Secondly, the amount of daylight during a day and the change of that amount between two consecutive days varies with latitude, not longitude. Just because you are able to describe the change as "gradual" in Arizona does not mean it is "gradual" in New York or Oregon. Daylight Saving Time makes less sense the closer you are to the Equator because there is less change in sunlight over the course of the year (how the Equator got its name), which is why Hawaii, in the tropics, doesn't follow it. However, even without leaving the contiguous 48, we can look at the Car Talk brothers in Massachusetts and their half-joking suggestion of going ahead two hours because, even with Daylight Saving Time, the sun was still rising at 5 AM EDT (a/k/a 4 AM EST).

According to the US Naval Observatory sunrise in Boston on 2005 June 21 was 5:08 EDT (4:08 EST), with the sun being above the horizon for about 15.5 hours for that day.

" That way you don't fuck up people's sleep cycles either."

Not changing clocks seems to

Click and Clack is currently advocating Double Dog Daily Savings Time.

If you're not interested in this expert's opion, the radio personalities of NPR's Cartalk have ideas of their own.

And the best Gem ever!
http://www.cartalk.com/Radio/Show/
Car Talk is available through podcast.. Fad?

...and to further the cause, here is a reputable source outlining what to do when your accelerator sticks.

You know, I don't even know why I'm bothering to keep adding to this thread. It's not like anyone gives a crap.

And not everyone nitpicks anyone who says something they find offensive. You're feeding a troll, do you realize that? At any rate, people DO judge people based on the cars they drive. Old car = poor, sports car = reckless, car with a lot of weird stickers/duct tape = redneck/trailer trash...

Why the hell would someone be considered one sexual orientation over another just because of the car they drive?

I don't know, but it happens and has resulted in things like these.

This is the most ignorant thing I've heard in a while

You really don't spend very much time on the Internet, or even in the real world, do you? Ever been on IRC? Or do you simply not notice stereotypes?

A few other NPR shows:

Science Friday

Speaking of Faith

To the Best of Our Knowledge

The World

And the most popular hour on public radio:
Car Talk

You can get a free "drive now - talk later" bumper sticker from the guys at Car Talk: http://www.cartalk.com/content/features/Drive-Now/ bumper-sticker2.html

The Car Talk guys (from NPR) have the Worst Cars of the Millenium as voted on by their listeners.

It's funny and worth a read.

They are often twice as bright as the cars low beams, and when they are on (with the low beams) there is as much or more light coming from the front of the car as with the high beams alone, and are just as blinding to oncoming traffic (or traffic you are following)

If you are refering to fog lights you are greatly mistaken. Legal fog lights are 55 watt bulbs (model H1 infact), equivelent in power to a typical cars low beam. When they are aimed as they should be, they do not shine up at all and will not "blind" anyone. If you are blinded by a factory or aftermarket fog lights that are aimed correctly (much lower then the headlights), you should not be driving at night yourself. Stand about 20 feet in front of a car with the low beams and fog lights on, look at the light patterns on your legs as you walk toward the car. You should clearly see both light beams and where they are aimed. For a better perspective, bend down and look into the lights, you will see the different heights that they are aimed as noted by the extreme brightness change. There is no way the eyes of an oncoming car are that low to the ground.

Here is are two links that debunk your yellow theory also.

THe biggest reason for this is that unlike cars without power steering, which generally have a direct system of gears between the steering wheel and the mechanism, a power steering system actively alters the steering mechanism. No concern is given for making sure the system works well without it, and the system itself becomes a drag on the steering.

Think of this: power steering intercepts your commands and assists you with them. When it is dead, not only are you working against the road (as in a non-power-steering car) but you're also working against the dead power steering system. The stronger the power steering system when functional, the stronger it will fight your steering commands when it's dead.

Click and Clack (the tappit brothers: cartalk.com) did an article about this, basically saying, "look knuckleheads, just because cars without power steering work just fine, don't expect that your car with power steering will work fine without it." I'm too lazy to find their story; but go to the link and search.

Also, the point about the steering wheel locking is a very real and serious concern.

The car in question was a Renault Vel Satis.

As the Tom and Ray Magliozzi from Car Talk say about car design, "Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, but nobody imitates the French".

I know Audi had similar problems in the mid 1980's. I guess the French are imitating 20 year old German design flaw.

Anything can be dangerous when abused and mistreated. It is also possible to blow-up lead-acid batteries if they're not charged correctly (eg: in a poorly-ventilated area with a spark igniting the hydrogen efflux Car Talk).

I have been using Li-Poly batteries in electric aircraft for a while now, even a "hot liner" glider which pulls around 65-amps through a geared-down Astro-05. I haven't had any blow-up yet, but I have heard of the occasional one doing so. The only one's I've seen so far have been postings to the internet where people have forced them to blow-up by overcharging them causing a thermal runaway (eg: BANG! (5.1MB)). I've blown-up the occasional Ni-Cd and Ni-MH cell over the years by overcharging them, too.

Real audio was a mature technology when they (NPR) first signed on for their service. It has served them well. If you want them to consider free alternatives, make a presentation to them.

Exactly. Look at what happened with Car Talk (story one, story two). Click & Clack didn't like the way that Real tries to abuse their users either, so they reluctantly tried switching to Windows Media instead, knowing that this solution wasn't much better. After getting lots of complaints, they switched back to Real, but not before getting Real to relax on some of their policies.

And you may have other options, as well. In Boston, WBUR provides streams in each of RealAudio, Windows Media, and Quicktime, and even goes so far as to tell users how to listen to the station through iTunes (or, but they don't quite spell this out, any other player that can take an MPEG-4 URL as a stream source).

But if these formats aren't enough for you, and you've just got to have these shows in your format of choice (and you're using a Mac, but I think we can take that as given if you're an NPR junkie :-), then maybe you should take a look at Audio Hijack, which is a neat little program for, either on-demand or on a schedule, starting up an audio stream in your player of choice (or the site's player of choice, as the case may be) and capturing the output as AIFF files. (Actually, it does far more, and can record any audio on your Mac, but I'm trying to stay focused on internet audio here.) These files can in turn be converted by a program like Amadeus II or LAME into MP3 or OGG or what have you; Audio Hijack can even fire off the converter program for you automatically if you want it to. The audio quality of a Real->AIFF->MP3 recording may not be anything spectacular, but for talk radio this isn't such a bad compromise (hint: an episode of This American Life averages around 30mb this way). For a year or two now, I've been idly wondering how to do a decent TiVo for radio on my computer, and now with this I think I've found a pretty good solution...

cartalk.com
Informative AND funny - very entertaining even if you aren't a gearhead. They back up almost all their stuff with sound engineering and science.

You know the Bush administration is taking its toll when NASA's experts are a radio call-in show...

People talking on a cell phone while driving is bad enough. Can you imagine some idiot in an SUV waving one of these things at other drivers?

As Click and Clack say, Drive Now, Talk Later.

People talking on a cell phone while driving is bad enough. Can you imagine some idiot in an SUV waving one of these things at other drivers?

As Click and Clack say, Drive Now, Talk Later.

This reminds me of a certain Car Talk Puzzler.

-T

REal has listened to a collective "fuck you RealPlayer" because of very legitimate complaints. I had a problem sympathizing with Real in it's battle with Microsoft, because of exactly those issues.

I feel that Now Real is back home.

The only thing that spoils my good mood is that it took a media powerhouse (powerful because of it's fantastic popularity (yeah, I love car talk, too)) like Car Talk to make a difference. Obviously, users, no matter how many are, are powersless if they are disorganized.

The current week's show is available here.

I know the site used to have archived "favorites" of many, many shows when it was hosted by cars.com. However, I don't see the favorite clips listed anymore...

It sounds like Car Talk's Complaint Line Operator, Xavier Breath, earned his paycheck this week.

Wow. First Microsoft adds a project to Sourceforge and now Real has admitted that not everyone likes being bombarded by pushy bookmarks and shortcuts of unusual size. What next? SCO admiting that maybe they didn't invent sliced bread?

Seriously though, I'm glad to see that Tom and Ray gave Real a second chance. If it's true that they is dedicated to responding to customer's complaints then this is a good thing for everyone.

What did you expect them to say?
"Their product almost as good as ours, so don't bother giving us money."

Sales/marketing will say anything to promote their own stuff.

Remember...there was a marketing team for the Edsel and the Yugo.

I like what the car talk guys had to say about Real:

http://cartalk.com/Radio/windowsmedia-switch.html

Car Talk will now be available via the Windows Media Player, rather than RealMedia. That's right, we're unceremoniously dumping RealMedia.

Why? Because, for a long time, we've had tons of complaints about RealNetworks. And the one that ticks us off the most is the perceived trickery they use to sell their premium products. This is just our opinion, mind you, but it's shared by enough of our listeners, that we finally decided to take action.

Here's the problem. In order to hear our audio, you have to go to Real.com and download their "free" RealPlayer. But when you get to the web site, the free player is harder to find than Osama Bin Laden at night. And the site seems to do everything it possibly can to get you to "buy" a player instead. You have to work very hard to get the free player. And we think that stinks. And get this. It stinks so much that it even makes Microsoft look good by comparison. That's something, huh?

We've heard from many of our fans that have been duped, and who have accidentally shelled out their hard-earned dineros. And we won't even get into the ways that the RealPlayer tries to take over your computer once you install it. So, after surveying the alternatives, we're switching to Windows Media Player (which works on Macs, too).

Having a computer controlling the engine is fine. You can still work on your car if you buy a vag-com tool, or a program for your laptop which does the same.
I bought a 2000 vw diesel and a vag com tool and I work on my own car like everyone else on Fred's TDI page.
A car with no user access to the engine is fine for someone who leases a new car every 2-3 years, but I expect mine to last at least 10 years and at least 300,000 miles, if not forever
(the one drawback of a computer controlled diesel is that it is no longer electrically independent. If the alternator dies on a long trip across the desert at night, I am limited by battery life.)

As for an EMP pulse, well in that event my guns will probably be more useful than my car anyway.

An engineer at Volkwagen thought that if someone tries to steal a new super-deluxe Toureg sport utility, the theft deterrent system ought to make it damn hard. So, if the car's alarm is not turned off using the key fob, the would-be intruder (even if he uses the key to manually unlock the driver's door) will run into several obstacles.

He'll find that the car won't start. And he'll then find he can't remove the key from the ignition (it locks it in place), and can't take the car out of Park.

Unfortunately, if the battery dies (for no apparent reason), the alarm cannot be turned off. So the owner will face the same set of obstacles.

He will use the key to manually open the door. He will insert the key and try to start the engine. He will fail, and try to remove the key, which will not come out. He will call VW roadside assistance, who will call AAA. The tow truck driver will arrive and won't be able to jump start the car, because the battery is in the rear cargo compartment, and the door locks are either dead or disabled by the alarm system. He will shrug and leave. Another tow truck driver will arrive, shrug, and leave. A third tow truck driver will arrive and decide to tow the car. He will discover that the transmission is locked in Park, so he can't tow it. He will shrug and leave. After another call to VW roadside assistance, a local dealer will get involved, sending a tow truck with a dolly, so the car can be rolled onto a flat bed truck and taken to the dealer.

The owner will be really happy he just spent $40,000 on a high-end German sport utility vehicle.

Car Talk will now be available via the Windows Media Player, rather than RealMedia. That's right, we're unceremoniously dumping RealMedia.

Why? Because, for a long time, we've had tons of complaints about RealNetworks. And the one that ticks us off the most is the perceived trickery they use to sell their premium products. This is just our opinion, mind you, but it's shared by enough of our listeners, that we finally decided to take action.

Here's the problem. In order to hear our audio, you have to go to Real.com and download their "free" RealPlayer. But when you get to the web site, the free player is harder to find than Osama Bin Laden at night. And the site seems to do everything it possibly can to get you to "buy" a player instead. You have to work very hard to get the free player. And we think that stinks. And get this. It stinks so much that it even makes Microsoft look good by comparison. That's something, huh?

We've heard from many of our fans that have been duped, and who have accidentally shelled out their hard-earned dineros. And we won't even get into the ways that the RealPlayer tries to take over your computer once you install it. So, after surveying the alternatives, we're switching to Windows Media Player (which works on Macs, too).

For those of you who don't yet have the Windows Media Player installed, you can get it for Windows--for free--at:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/window smedia/9ser ies/player.aspx

And for Mac--for free--at:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/window smedia/soft ware/Macintosh/osx/default.aspx for OS X or
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/ down load/mac71.aspx for OS 8.1 and up

Listening to Car Talk is painful enough by itself. You don't need more angst. If you'd rather take Car Talk with you, you can also download the show anytime by clicking on the Audible link at:
http://www.cartalk.com/Radio/Show/ (Cheapskate alert: fee *definitely* involved.)

Let them know.

Here's the story.

Dewie Cheatem

And Howe!

Ham on rye, hold the mayo please.