At this point: the quality improvements made over time, to the automotive fleet as a whole, dwarf any deltas between brands from a given year.
Also, the supply chain has been so homogenized at this point that underlying components are nearly identical.
Their ad men work really hard to convince you otherwise, but if you really think brand X is going to sell you a 25 thousand dollar car that will burst into flames months after you drive it off the lot, while brand Y, for the same amount of money, can build you a magic car that will go 300k miles without seeing the mechanic, you are just silly...
It just doesn't work that way[br][br]I have one small commuter car, a corolla, and one larger family car, one of the new Chevrolet Impalas. I bought both because I like them and felt like I was getting a fairly good deal (relatively, car dealers being the scumbags that they are) on each.
The main reason people get new cars less frequently is that cars are a lot better than they used to be. It used to be getting a car to 100k miles without major engine work was a rare occurrence. Now, the automotive consumer gets pissed if that doesn't happen.
I know that flies in the face of the "everything was better when I was young" old-man logic, but it's still a fact.
The industry is looking for reasons to get customers into the showrooms on a faster cycle, hence the heavy focus on enhancements like this
It also kinda explains why making the product easily upgradable isn't a big concern.
Nothing magic about Ford, it was in terrible shape at that time too, but they did managed to get their massive loan financed privately before the credit markets froze. If they would have waited a few more weeks, they would have been in exactly the same shape. Good for them, but still, lets not make them into something they aren't
No turbine necessary. Conventional internal combustion engines run on methane just fine. In fact it burns so clean, you can change your oil every 20k miles and your plugs every 200k miles and be just fine.
There doesn't seem to be much of a point in using natural gas to produce hydrogen, to produce electrical energy, to produce mechanical energy.
Why not just use the natural gas in an existing internal combustion engine. Thats what the nat gas civic does, and its available today, for less than 10k more than the gasoline version, has a 250 mile range, and the natural gas pipeline structure is already built. All we need to do is solve the 'last mile' problem by having more nat gas filling stations, which is easily solvable with today's technology
Hydrogen only seems to make sense if we started a WW2 scale effort to build dozens of new Nuclear power plants, producing an abundance of electricity and removing coal from the mix.. Which we should do, but won't
No: they are bullshit AND these charges should be dropped The polygraph is a turn of the century medical quackery masquerading as science not only are there ways to "fool" it (i.e. manipulate the biofeedback it records to confuse the "analyst"), but with no countermeasures employed, it has been proven (many times actually) to have a false positive and false negative rate so high as to render its results statistically worthless...
Nobody should be running any fully functional, system aware, computer program in a browser...
A java applet is a java computer program written by "someone" coming from "somewhere" running in a browser on your computer.
Replace "java computer program" with "c++ computer program" (or any other "real" language) in the previous sentence, and it describes a situation no less dangerous, arguably more-so.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with the language, its the paradigm.
Latest news: They are going to start trading at 2:45 EDT. My prediction is a brief panic sell-off, followed by a return to normalcy, considering putting in a few limit orders.
And that's actually a good thing. There are so many inherent advantages to web-based applications from a maintenance and overhead perspective, that businesses, large and small, are going to push more applications to them.
Mobile apps exist because the capabilities of the hardware got so far out in front of browser software that a decent experience couldn't be provided. But, back to point 1, as the capabilities of browser based software inevitably improves, a lot of this development is going to get sucked back into the web. It is inevitable. Just looking at where Microsoft has came between IE 8 and IE 10 (not that isn't a lot of work still to be done) is an indicator what way the wind is blowing.
In this respect, I see the mobile-app craze as a rear guard action against the inevitable.
The hack described in the article is interesting from a technical perspective, but the use of the term "blackout" is hysterical and misleading.
When I think of the term "blackout", I take that to mean no more 120/240 in any of my sockets.
Yes, appliance hacks are something that we all should think about as more and more of the ubiquitous appliances, like lights, HVAC, water and sewer, that truly make the modern world function come online, but cmon....
"The master of the school was adamant any reports of students using their knowledge to harm others"
That's ok, if you ever tried using Tae Kwon Do in a street fight against and even moderately physically fit/skilled opponent you'd just end up on your backside getting choked/pummled anyways....
They should enable plates to report when auto insurance expires uninsured motorists are a menace. This could really the situation better, when people realize that any cop car driving by can know your insurance is expired.
Finally if you really need the raw power, use C or Fortran, seriously. Java and.Net are the last places to look for performance.
actually the > 1.6 incarnations of Java are fast and only getting faster, and there are real time implementations of the JRE if you really need them. As far as "power" (however that is defined), folks are doing some really interesting (especially in the news lately) things with large data set analysis and manipulation with products like Hadoop.
And there are other relevant facts (in my mind at least) Coal, as a percentage of our overall energy grid (speaking as a USian here) is going down, quite rapidly actualy, not up, and has been doing so for the last 20 years. The boom in natural gas production and stricter emissions regulations are major contributors here.
even if your local power producer is 100% coal (and it most likely isn't), but even if it is, we don't have to stage the 5th fleet in the persian gulf to make sure coal keeps flowing through the Straits of Hormuz.
And those ships don't run on pixie dust, or even uranium, most of them at least...
And gasoline isn't refined from crude oil by unicorn farts depending on the refinery it takes between 5-12 KWH per gallon of gasoline produced. That's electricity a an EV could use to get a good ways down the road
So does your government not do the same? Does the intelligence gathering services of YOUR country apply the equivalent of 4th ammmendment rights to non citizens? That's right, they don't.... it's the fucking world we live in, deal with it
I take it you are not a US citizen. Although recent developments put in on shaky ground for us in the US, as a foreign person the 4th amendment doesn't apply to you, never has, and never will
Nobody is debating that the NSA is free to spy away on you, in fact that's what they were started for
Slashdot Mirror
At this point: the quality improvements made over time, to the automotive fleet as a whole, dwarf any deltas between brands from a given year.
Also, the supply chain has been so homogenized at this point that underlying components are nearly identical.
Their ad men work really hard to convince you otherwise, but if you really think brand X is going to sell you a 25 thousand dollar car that will burst into flames months after you drive it off the lot, while brand Y, for the same amount of money, can build you a magic car that will go 300k miles without seeing the mechanic, you are just silly...
It just doesn't work that way[br][br]I have one small commuter car, a corolla, and one larger family car, one of the new Chevrolet Impalas. I bought both because I like them and felt like I was getting a fairly good deal (relatively, car dealers being the scumbags that they are) on each.
The main reason people get new cars less frequently is that cars are a lot better than they used to be. It used to be getting a car to 100k miles without major engine work was a rare occurrence. Now, the automotive consumer gets pissed if that doesn't happen.
I know that flies in the face of the "everything was better when I was young" old-man logic, but it's still a fact.
The industry is looking for reasons to get customers into the showrooms on a faster cycle, hence the heavy focus on enhancements like this
It also kinda explains why making the product easily upgradable isn't a big concern.
Nothing magic about Ford, it was in terrible shape at that time too, but they did managed to get their massive loan financed privately before the credit markets froze. If they would have waited a few more weeks, they would have been in exactly the same shape.
Good for them, but still, lets not make them into something they aren't
I could see a small vampire draw to keep a few of the embedded systems online, but the amount quoted in the article seems extreme
Based on the author's experience, the Chevy Volt did not experience a similar draw when it was shut down
No turbine necessary. Conventional internal combustion engines run on methane just fine.
In fact it burns so clean, you can change your oil every 20k miles and your plugs every 200k miles and be just fine.
There doesn't seem to be much of a point in using natural gas to produce hydrogen, to produce electrical energy, to produce mechanical energy.
Why not just use the natural gas in an existing internal combustion engine.
Thats what the nat gas civic does, and its available today, for less than 10k more than the gasoline version, has a 250 mile range, and the natural gas pipeline structure is already built. All we need to do is solve the 'last mile' problem by having more nat gas filling stations, which is easily solvable with today's technology
Hydrogen only seems to make sense if we started a WW2 scale effort to build dozens of new Nuclear power plants, producing an abundance of electricity and removing coal from the mix.. Which we should do, but won't
No: they are bullshit AND these charges should be dropped
The polygraph is a turn of the century medical quackery masquerading as science
not only are there ways to "fool" it (i.e. manipulate the biofeedback it records to confuse the "analyst"), but with no countermeasures employed, it has been proven (many times actually) to have a false positive and false negative rate so high as to render its results statistically worthless...
You sound angry. I'm glad my NSA is keeping tabs on you, who knows what you are capable of.
Car dealers have absolutely no qualms with using the good-ole-boy network and government lobbying to quash competition.
Their existence is the worst kind of anachronism. Their overall value-add to society is zero, actually less than zero...
Nobody should be running any fully functional, system aware, computer program in a browser...
A java applet is a java computer program written by "someone" coming from "somewhere" running in a browser on your computer.
Replace "java computer program" with "c++ computer program" (or any other "real" language) in the previous sentence, and it describes a situation no less dangerous, arguably more-so.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with the language, its the paradigm.
Latest update: "Limited Quotes" at 3:10, full trading at 3:25
Latest news: They are going to start trading at 2:45 EDT.
My prediction is a brief panic sell-off, followed by a return to normalcy, considering putting in a few limit orders.
No, we can't stop
And that's actually a good thing. There are so many inherent advantages to web-based applications from a maintenance and overhead perspective, that businesses, large and small, are going to push more applications to them.
Mobile apps exist because the capabilities of the hardware got so far out in front of browser software that a decent experience couldn't be provided. But, back to point 1, as the capabilities of browser based software inevitably improves, a lot of this development is going to get sucked back into the web. It is inevitable.
Just looking at where Microsoft has came between IE 8 and IE 10 (not that isn't a lot of work still to be done) is an indicator what way the wind is blowing.
In this respect, I see the mobile-app craze as a rear guard action against the inevitable.
The hack described in the article is interesting from a technical perspective, but the use of the term "blackout" is hysterical and misleading.
When I think of the term "blackout", I take that to mean no more 120/240 in any of my sockets.
Yes, appliance hacks are something that we all should think about as more and more of the ubiquitous appliances, like lights, HVAC, water and sewer, that truly make the modern world function come online, but cmon....
"The master of the school was adamant any reports of students using their knowledge to harm others"
That's ok, if you ever tried using Tae Kwon Do in a street fight against and even moderately physically fit/skilled opponent you'd just end up on your backside getting choked/pummled anyways....
SEDC technology is what I call it... Somebody Else's Data Center
Always use an acronym, everything's better with acronyms
They should enable plates to report when auto insurance expires
uninsured motorists are a menace. This could really the situation better, when people realize that any cop car driving by can know your insurance is expired.
exactly, but "java is slow" meme, just won't die...
Finally if you really need the raw power, use C or Fortran, seriously. Java and .Net are the last places to look for performance.
actually the > 1.6 incarnations of Java are fast and only getting faster, and there are real time implementations of the JRE if you really need them. As far as "power" (however that is defined), folks are doing some really interesting (especially in the news lately) things with large data set analysis and manipulation with products like Hadoop.
And there are other relevant facts (in my mind at least)
Coal, as a percentage of our overall energy grid (speaking as a USian here) is going down, quite rapidly actualy, not up, and has been doing so for the last 20 years.
The boom in natural gas production and stricter emissions regulations are major contributors here.
even if your local power producer is 100% coal (and it most likely isn't), but even if it is, we don't have to stage the 5th fleet in the persian gulf to make sure coal keeps flowing through the Straits of Hormuz.
And those ships don't run on pixie dust, or even uranium, most of them at least...
And gasoline isn't refined from crude oil by unicorn farts
depending on the refinery it takes between 5-12 KWH per gallon of gasoline produced.
That's electricity a an EV could use to get a good ways down the road
Damn strait
Thank God for the NSA, we'll never let these oily bastards sneak up on us again
So does your government not do the same? Does the intelligence gathering services of YOUR country apply the equivalent of 4th ammmendment rights to non citizens? That's right, they don't....
it's the fucking world we live in, deal with it
I take it you are not a US citizen.
Although recent developments put in on shaky ground for us in the US, as a foreign person the 4th amendment doesn't apply to you, never has, and never will
Nobody is debating that the NSA is free to spy away on you, in fact that's what they were started for
How do I know you don't work in corporate Amercia