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I got one of those and I second the recommendation. Just remember to don't keep the zippers up top. Pull them down one side instead. How I know.

I bought the DCR-14E or whatever, base DV model with Zeiss optics. My gf has left it out in the rain overnight, no ill effects. I once dropped it from my backpack doing 210km/h on my bike. The flimsy fake leather bag got more or less shredded, but the camera got only a small scratch on the lenscap. I'll try dropping it into a volcano next.

Yes, they do. :-)

It was probably perfectly possible to change the sparks without touching the rear light cluster on his bike, but you'd have to pull the tank off. I do on mine and we share the same engine, if not body work.

Thanks. ;-) And yes, for the record, I'm the one that told him about the "fun tax" on speeding tickets, too.

Or, like a fellow on the GPZ mailing list has as his .sig: "Wear gear, do wheelies".

Weering back on-topic - I for one welcome our new HUD overlords. A non-obtrusive speed reading and the possibility for the system to add any other interesting information like the oil warning light and an indicator for low fuel would be nice. Nothing that's in the middle of my field of vision, just so I won't have to look down. A glance into a top corner would be fine.

BTW, I'm a certified MC safety instructor and just today I got some interesting statistics in the mail: In Sweden, the difference between cars and motorcycles regarding the chances of personal injury per vehicle in traffic is neglible. That is, statistically, riding a bike in Sweden carries the same level of risks as riding a car. Bikes are not inherently more dangerous than cars. And this statistic includes all the crackpots who go out speeding on a borrowed bike, with no protective gear while drunk. A full 3/4ths of all motorcycle deaths occur when the driver fulfils one or more of those critera: Borrowed/stolen bike, no gear and drunk/high. If you'd disregard those and also disregard the number of dead car drivers/passengers that are in stolen/borrowed cars, without a seat belt and inebriated, you'd reach the conclusion that CARS ARE MORE DANGEROUS THAN MOTORCYCLES. This is because it seems that cars attract a much lower ratio of idiots. ;-)

YMMV, I have no idea what the stats look like in the US although I've once rented a bike and ridden from WV down the Shenandoah Valley to Lynchburg and up the Blue Ridge Parkway. In 30 degree C heat and all of my gear. On that two-day trip I encountered a bike accident, something I haven't done in 18 years (and counting) in Sweden. Go figure.

Where we live, it's illegal to think about that. ;-) We don't need that many new nukular plants, what we need is an awareness that it's time (for a lot of reasons) to stop spending resources we don't have and it's time to think about rebuilding our energy systems to adapt to the circumstances. When the oil runs out, it's too late.

Look, it's very simple, logically: You detect an adverse effect which we shall call E. Just before this effect was noticed, possible causes A, B, C and D also occured. A, B and C are beyond our control, but D isn't. Now, is it logical to keep doing D just because E could be caused by any of the other three reasons, in combination or alone? I put it to you that the logical conclusion must be to stop doing D and see if it helps E any. Going on about an imaginary "risk" that would suddenly appear when stopping D is just silly, after all we did just fine not doing D just moments ago.

Cows are more likely to cause any effects compared to cars.

And rows upon rows of millions of cows (Dr. Seuss would be proud of me) are a natural phenomenon since when, exactly? Humans do other things than drive cars, you know. For example, I drive a bike. ;-)

(Not to mention that 65 million years ago the mean temperature of the earth was 10 degrees celsius higher. I guess the dinos drove a lot of SUVs ...)

So you are advocating not only that we skip cutting back on emissions, but also that we deliberately increase them, try to create a few thousand more active volcanoes, killing off all the large mammals (including ourselves) and crawl back into the holes we lived in before we took to the trees? Is this a plan to manufacture more crude oil?

Well, I don't think Gaia would mind, but there are a few billion others that may have a problem with that plan. While we're at it, 4 billion years ago, it was waaay warmer than that. Let's go there instead, shall we?

The current increase in temperature is a bit drastic to be natural. We're not talking 10 degrees in 65 million years here (and just look at the changes in climate we've had since then) but in the range of tens of degrees in the last decade. At this rate, we will not have time to adapt.

Wood's Hole Research Center - The Warming of the Earth

Why then are the most recent increases of such concern? First, because the most recent increases are occurring at rates that have not been observed since the last ice age (IPCC 1995) and have only previously been observed in association with dramatic shifts in climate. Second, the dramatic increase in carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere over the past 150 years (from about 280 parts per million to about 360 parts per million) is largely due to anthropogenic (human-caused) effects (IPCC 1995).

Wood's Hole Oceanographic Institute - Abrupt Climate Change: Should We Be Worried?

In an important paper published in 2002 in Nature, oceanographers monitoring and analyzing conditions in the North Atlantic concluded that the North Atlantic has been freshening dramatically--continuously for the past 40 years but especially in the past decade.4 The new data show that since the mid-1960s, the subpolar seas feeding the North Atlantic have steadily and noticeably become less salty to depths of 1,000 to 4,000 meters. This is the largest and most dramatic oceanic change ever measured in the era of modern instruments.

At present the influx of fresher water has been distributed throughout the water column. But at some point, fresh water may begin to pile up at the surface of the North Atlantic. When that occurs, the Conveyor could slow down or cease operating.

Signs of a possible slowdown already exist. A 2001 report in Nature indicates that the flow of cold, dense water from the Norwegian and Greenland Seas into the North Atlantic has diminished by at least 20 percent since 1950.

I do so NOT want to pay insurance for the truckload of motorcycles I would have to claim... I'd rather just pay the fines (or "fun tax" as I like to call them. :-)

Personally I prefer a 250 kg, 1100 cc bike. It doesn't burn CDs, but it's known to have left a few black marks on the road. :-)

But the latency, the latency... You need a bike. :-)

I think they wanted to separate Enterprise from the other Trek shows, both to signal that this is different (except they'll sneak in the same time-warp plots and weekly alien nose-jobs) and to attract a new audience that thinks 'real' Trek is silly.

Now, don't get me wrong, I even love Voyager and the first seasons of DS9, I often hum Voyager's theme song on my bike and Picard could take out Archer any day. But, give Enterprise a chance. Treat the intro like another commercial and zap around while its playing. It's not like the producers give a rat's ass what we think anyway... :-)

Picture this: A regular cellphone, just like today's, in my pocket, briefcase, backpack - whereever. Like I care, as long as it's in BT range from my comm badge and earpiece. The comm badges could be styled - different colours, shapes and so on to look like anything from Star Trek comm badges to women's jewelry. If you touch the badge, the voicedial activates and you can go "Computer! Locate Cmdr Taco!" and have the phone dial his cell phone number. (Or just say "Home!" like I do with my Philips SparK (which had working voicedial like five years ago) and it calls home.) The comm badge also activates answering the phone when it rings (when the user wears the earpiece, the phone just whispers "answer it, you bozo" softly in your ear instead of ringing out loud).

The earpiece uses skull resonance for the speech so you won't need the mike boom. This would also make this system perfect for when I'm on my bike.

Add Bluetooth in the laptop and/or PDA to access your address book/LDAP server to find people and you're good to go. If anyone makes this system now, I want a set as royalty for the idea. ;-)