Solid red is stop, right turn (or left onto a one way street going left) allowed unless otherwise indicated by sign. Flashing red is equivalent to a stop sign. Flashing red with appropriate signage does indeed mean stop and wait for the streetcar to pass. I've only seen one intersection like this, however. Dead traffic signal equals all way stop.
It's not THAT hard, especially if you were to, you know, read up on the regulations (or stop by the DMV) before actually driving.
Sounds like you haven't stepped into a Big Three (GM/Ford/CerberusChrysler) car since the 80's.
For the most part, I haven't seen anything worthwhile from Detroit in a long, long time. The new Chrysler 300 comes pretty close to interesting, but has been plagued by quality problems (mysterious alignment problems from the factory, using inferior seals on the transmission, etc, etc).
I did get a chance to check out a couple Saab 9-3s in a junkyard a few months ago. The switchgear was absolute trash. Saab has been turned into GM's premium brand for those who don't know. The control stalks, door handles, etc felt cheaper than those of my dad's '99 Civic. Hell, they felt cheaper than those of my former '89 Taurus. It's not that the Big 3 use more plastic than the Japanese (or Europeans), it's that they use cheaper plastic than the Japanese.
Take a look at pretty much any 90s GM product and tell me that the Fisher-Price-esque interior doesn't make you cringe. Until GM started focusing on interior quality a little while ago, their interiors were absolute trash compared to the imported competition. The "new" Cobalt is a great example of their old ways. The interior is still cheesy and gaudy. Proponents of the Cobalt will claim that it's an economy car... yet again my dad's eight year old Civic has an interior that's put together with a lot more attention to detail.
However, my complaints run far beyond mere appearances. Compare the Fiero and/or Sky/Solstice to the Miata. Mazda let the engineers loose with the car, and cranked out something that's been best of class pretty much since its introduction. Conversely, GM let the beancounters loose on the parts bin. The end result was a car with lots of fatal problems (Fiero), or in the case of the Sky/Solstice a car that's just nowhere near best of class (read any comparison of the two).
Mediocre designs are also a somewhat minor problem. Check out the first gen Chrysler LH cars (early 90s) with the front suspensions that basically just come apart. Check out the second gen LH cars (late 90s) with the atrocious 2.7L V6. Detroit has churned out turd after turd, well into the 90s and well into the 2000s.
Ford... ahh... Ford. Early modular/triton engines that simply didn't have enough threads cut for the spark plugs and would promptly spit them out. Or how about the Taurus SHO. Sure, the 80s V6 model was great. The 90s V8 powered model with the cam sprockets not appropriately affixed to the cams themselves. Sheesh.
Now you were saying something about assembly/content? The most you could do is rip on it being US/Canada. Interesting that you can get a car that isnt from Mexico or some other FTA/MFN and it's not a compact. Or you could check a group that counters the Japan lobby.
Er? What? The Big 3 have all been ramping up production in Mexico (which was, last I checked, was not part of the USA or Canada). My point was that the cost of labour in the USA isn't as big a factor as everyone seems to think it is. American buyers are complaining that the Big 3 are turning out shitty cars, not complaining that they're overpriced.
Cranking out tons of underpowered "Gentleman's Agreement" cars is why GM/Ford/Chrysler still have the Midwest(despite Far Eastern manufacturers making the rare presence north of the Mason-Dixon). At least Germany/Austria understood this one clearly - now if there was some possibility of not having compact I4 death traps be the only thing below $20000.
Eh, the thing is that the Big 3 don't have the Midwest.
Oh hell... death traps? Puhleeze. Take a look at where most of the safety innovations have been developed in the past 50 odd years. It ain't America.
Underpowered four bangers? Uhh.. yeah. Okay. The European and Asian four bangers have simply outclassed the entry level vee engines from Detroit for a long time. The Big 3 may be able to churn out some nice V8s (and some real stinkers too), but they have utterly failed at prod
Check the window stickers in any new Big 3 car. Like the new Ford Fusion (giant gaping holes between the body panels and all)? It's made in Mexico. Focus SVT? Made in Mexico until last year. Dodge Ram? Made in Mexico. Chrysler product with a (recent) Hemi or the "Phoenix" V6? Mexican made.
FWIW, here's a list of Canadian motor vehicle plants:
If the Big 3 had actually produced quality small to midsize cars in the first place, they would have been plenty able to compete. Cheap labour doesn't make tripe very attractive to anyone. Sure, imported cars are hardly perfect. However, the cars that the Big 3 pawned off in the US in the 80s and 90s were absolute rubbish. Cadillac Cimarron? Ford Tempo? Chrysler LH cars?
The prices of American cars is not the issue. The value of American cars is. Simply put, Japanese cars are more expensive than their American counterparts. However, people will buy these more expensive cars because they are of higher quality. In the same vein, the reason that the Big 3 were able to move cars when they slashed prices was because people will adjust their expectations downward appropriately.
The big issue isn't wages (Toyota pays pretty competitive wages in their USA plants), but benefits. It's the idea that this large unyielding workforce is nearing retirement age and thus needing more expensive health care. Even then, however, the cost of the benefits package that these companies agree dto would be a much smaller issue if the Big 3 were able to actually move product in the US. Instead, the Big 3 have churned out shitty design that nobody wants to buy after shitty design that nobody wants to buy. Blaming the problem on the cost of American labor is simply a red herring.
Food for thought: where are most Big 3 cars assembled? Try somewhere other than the USA.
Simply put, if the Big 3 had actually focused on building cars that people want to buy versus how to market cars (SUVs) that are convenient to make we wouldn't be having this issue.
"The problem began when breakers in the utility's transmission service opened for an unknown reason, Chiu said. Every time workers attempted to close those breakers to restore service, it caused voltage fluctuations -- high and low flows of electricity through the system -- that impacted PG&E's Martin Substation in Daly City, she said."
PG&E is a good example of why "deregulation" does not work for utilities. We got about one thousandth of an inch of rain (barely measurable). This was just enough to knock out the power to a sizable chunk of the East Bay. Why? Because in their quest for profits, PG&E is too cheap to properly wash down their equipment, and dust builds up. A drizzle turns the dust into mud and causes stuff to short out. That's not to say that PG&E is good in the dry weather. Where I live in the Bay Area (decidedly not the sticks), power goes out for 3+ hours at least twice a year.
Personally, I wouldn't buy a car if I knew it'd be a major PITA to service.
Most people don't take this into consideration. For instance, this is missing from the domestic versus import rhetoric. While fantastically complex, Japanese cars are often fairly well thought out. American car, OTOH, are thrown together with the littlest of care. Take a look at the AXOD autbox in the Taurus. It's held together with a mix of standard and metric fasteners. Yuck.
I'll take the former. If you can afford a 7-series BMW or Mercedes E-series or whatever, and $1000 to change plugs isn't a big deal to you, then more power to you.
It's not just expensive Euro luxobarges that can be difficult to service. VWs and Audis are notorious for being difficult to work on. Hell, just about any V6 midsize car is going to be a pain (Camry -- even the 2nd gen V6, Taurus... check) to change the spark plugs on.
I'm curious: what do you base that statement on?
First-hand observations of course. The official policy is to drain fluids, remove batteries, and such. That doesn't prevent them from "forgetting" to drain the fluids on lots of cars, or leaving residual fluid that simply gets drained onto the (dirt) ground.
Then there's the occasional fire. I'm sure watching that took a few years off of my life (not my picture tho).
Of course, if you're too stupid to change the plugs yourself (one of the easiest things to do on a modern car), you'll pay more in labor, but too bad.
Depends entirely on the car. There are cars where removing spark plugs requires lots of contortion or removal of the engine. Think large V engines in compact cars.
However, I disagree about aluminum. Aluminum is a much better material for cylinder heads because of the far better thermal conductivity. Misthreading spark plugs isn't a problem: just be careful!
I'm not arguing that Al is a worse material for cylinder heads. Aluminum cylinder heads simply magnify the problems you see with long life spark plugs. Plus, you've got the issue of galvanic corrosion. So, yeah, okay. Change the spark plugs. Tell that to the MFRs who boast about the 100k+ service intervals. Bleh.
I don't know about this. For one thing, old cars aren't "disposed of", unless they're some piece of crap that no one wants. They're recycled in some way.
"Recycled". Junk yards are interesting places, but champions of the environment, they're not.
cars are almost certainly less energy intensive to produce today than years ago. That's not the issue. The issue is whether or not your new shiny, fuel efficient car took less energy to produce than you'd save over driving your older, less fuel efficient car.
Mechanical versus electronic fuel injection is almost a no brainer. There are some wonderfully functional, simple EFI setups. MFI? Hah.
Of course, it depends on what type of mechanical injection you're talking about. Are you talking about full-on mechanical pump driven MFI (like you'd find on earlier diesels)? Or are you talking about continuous injection (K-Jet) like you'd find on lots of 80s European cars?
Either way they both suck compared to EFI for most intents and purposes. With mechanical pump driven injection a la KF or Bosch's VE you've simply got a complicated pump that demands a lot of precision. More moving parts to wear out, it's not as easily adaptable as EFI, and more expensive to maintain.
With K-Jet, you could, in theory have a real simple setup with no electronic bits. But, you've still got a giant obstruction in the intake path called the air flow sensor. You've still got the inherent lack of power and throttle response compared to a nice carb (or EFI setup). Look at all the people that bitched when Lamborghini switched to K-Jet. Or, look at Volvo's 140s when they switched from D-Jetronic (primitive fiddly EFI) to K-Jetronic. As obnoxious as D-Jet was, the EFI cars made more power. Even on a good system K-Jet means that you've gotta locate the air flow meter near the fuel injectors, lest you run fuel lines all over the engine compartment (meh). Oh, and like any MFI setup, K-Jet doesn't really adapt to changes (small vacuum leaks, wear, etc) the way you can with an EFI setup.
And by the 80s, you had to meet more stringent smog standards. Doing this with K-Jetronic is just a pain in the ass. Suddenly Rube Goldberg-esque contraptions were showing up. You've got frequency valves and their fiddly relays. You've got control pressure regulators with multiple heating elements, as well as atmospheric pressure compensation doohickeys. You've got delay valves and their associated mess of vacuum hoses. What do all these moving parts mean? More things to wear out. Actually, even worse, lots of these moving parts were lubricated with fuel. You know, stuff that can gum up with time... which of course means that K-Jet cars are just not as happy about sitting (for extended periods of time) and being started right up.
While lots of people argue that K-Jet doesn't (often) fail completely the way that an EFI setup typically does, that doesn't really mean much. You can cause a K-Jet system to leave you with a barely running car quite easily (large vacuum leak, or fucked up CPR). Besides that, while the K-Jet setup may run, the EFI setup will run better. It's just a lot more difficult to get K-Jet in perfect tune than it is to get a reasonable (say LH-Jetronic) EFI setup working in perfect tune.
Mechanical fuel injection was not a better or more desirable design than its electronic replacements. MFIs were generally just temporary stopgaps at best.
More modern smog gear has given us: more powerful engines, easier monitoring, and more efficient engines. However, at this point we're mostly dealing with diminishing returns.
Volvo (at least I think it was them) came out a few years ago and pointed out that most of the emissions that we're reducing with the advanced controls are the cold start emissions. Once your engine is up to operating temp, it's easily as clean as a 5-10 year old car would be (assuming it's in good shape). This is why you see things like pre-cats, air pumps, and heated oxygen sensors.
Also worth noting is that efficiency and cleanliness are two different things. Again, the modern engine management may allow for increased mileage, but that doesn't mean that the emissions per unit of fuel burned are that much cleaner. Indeed, I'd say a new car is going to be an overall bad things in terms of use of resources (or carbon footprint, or whatever you want to call it). New cars take a whole lot of water and energy to build. Let's not forget all the lovely solvents (such as paint) required. Let's not forget, that if you're replacing your car with a new one, we've still got to deal with the disposal of the old car. The world would probably be better off, environmentally speaking, if we'd just cut back on new car production and kept our slightly older cars for a longer period of time. Of course the economy would suffer quite a bit (certainly we've seen how dependent the US is on auto manufacturing).
Oh, and the distributor as an example of unreliable technology? Puhleeze. Even the mechanical points based distributors were pretty reliable (unless you're driving a something with a shoddy design in the first place). The distributorless systems aren't necessarily anything to write home about, and in some instances they're pretty bad. One example would be Nissan, and their coil on plug design. A coil is essentially a simple step up transformer, and by nature somewhat sensitive to heat and vibration. On a traditional car there's one ignition coil, and it's mounted out of the way. With a coil on plug design, the are many coils (one per cylinder), and they're mounted directly on the engine and thus subjected to more heat and vibration. Nissan, like many other companies, apparently didn't sink enough money in trying to overcome the inherent additional stresses. The end result has been that the coil packs are notorious for failure on some of their cars (previous generation Maximas come to mind). Yeah, technology is awesome. Wanna get started on how awesome drive by wire is? Not.
Oh, and 100k service intervals are nothing to be proud of. Instead of, for instance, changing spark plugs every few years as in a typical design, you'll change them every 10 years. So, what? That's an additional 7 yrs/70,000mi for the spark plugs to become corroded in place. And, of course, we all know how forgiving aluminum is (assuming we're talking about a modern alloy engine) to things being threaded improperly.
Seriously. Where we've got these obnoxious faux trucks, they've got proper utes and far more efficient full-sized sedans. Hell, their full sized sedans even have reasonably modern suspensions, something our full sized sedans (Crown Vic, Caprice) lacked.
If you're feeling daring, pop off the distributor cap (a huge pain on that engine when it isn't shoved sideways into a DeLorean), pull off the rotor and the dust cap. Note the lack of points. Yep, that's called an electronic ignition. If you're feeling even more daring, pop off the intake manifold (hahaha...), and look at the air flow meter. Right around there you should see a frequency valve. Yep. That's a computer controlled solenoid designed to regulate the fuel mixture in response to the oxygen sensor. Or, you know, look at the smog plate and it should mention you've got an "O2S" (oxygen sensor in EPA vernacular). If your cams aren't completely shot, you might even be able to hear the frequency valve buzzing away with the engine idling.
Re:Dartmouth Co-education
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The HP Way 2.0
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· Score: 1
Why? That's easy. Men will succeed in co-ed and all male institutions quite easily. Women often underperform in co-ed enviornments. Read up on stereotype threat.
Tryin to scam a referral bonus outta slashdot readers? Meh.
You'd have more credibility if you were pimping out a higher quality host. DH oversells their capacity, and is about average for bargain basement junk. I tried their $10/yr promo a while back to run a small image g2 gallery. I'd say it wasn't worth $10. Their MySQL server was unreliable (lots of downtime), the httpd server I was on was quite slow, and even after canceling the account I get spam from them.
In California, the taxes levied on fuel are listed at the pump. It's about $0.18/gal in state taxes, and about the same for federal taxes (+ $0.08/gal in federal taxes on diesel).
Specifically, I refuse to throw money at Yahoo! because of their actions in China. You know, the whole dissident who was jailed because of information provided by Yahoo!. I realize that Google is guilty of similar things both in China, and in countries like Brazil. But, thankfully, the Picassa interface is so bad, I wouldn't really consider using it anyhow. And, of course, I think that most countries (save for the United States) have better records on human rights than China does.
As far as every communications company cooperating, that's true to some extent. However, the level to which the company complies varies quite a bit. For instance, AT&T having a secret room is far different than Verizon attempting to not cooperate with the NSA. Maybe Verizon's got a secret room or two. But, for now, I'll find Verizon to be the lesser of two evils.
Flickr has bumped the bandwidth limit to 100 mb/month. While I am loathe to support Yahoo, considering their willingness to cooperate with law enforcement, the Flickr interface is vastly superior (way way more intuitive) than the Picassa interface. Plus, you can store an unlimited number photos on Flickr, even with a free account.
And obviously bigger sensors have much, much better low light/high ISO performance... but there is something to be said for being able to carry a camera in your pocket.
Almost. The primary thing that you gain with a bigger sensor and removable lenses is control over the depth of field. You just can't fake that (very well anyways) with a compact camera. As far as low light sensitivity, Fuji has released some superb sensors with their F10/F11/F30/F20/F31fd models. Of course, DSLRs also come with much more manual control, but that's a very artificial limitation.
I've got an F30, and there's less noise (and less heavy handed noise reduction) at ISO 800 than you'll see on some more full featured cameras at ISO 400. I took these two at ISO 800, with no flash: Graffiti on the beach, San Francisco Mayor Newsom, Burlesque (ISO 800+flash). ISO 1600 on this camera can still yield usable prints, and ISO 3200 is good for an emergency shot.
Sure, I miss some things about an SLR with this camera. For instance, I miss having manual control over the focus. I dislike that the 3:2 aspect ratio can only be chosen at the lower of the 6MP quality settings. Sure, sometimes I miss being able to use a better zoom lens, but then I realize that this thing fits into my pocket.
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Solid red is stop, right turn (or left onto a one way street going left) allowed unless otherwise indicated by sign. Flashing red is equivalent to a stop sign. Flashing red with appropriate signage does indeed mean stop and wait for the streetcar to pass. I've only seen one intersection like this, however. Dead traffic signal equals all way stop.
It's not THAT hard, especially if you were to, you know, read up on the regulations (or stop by the DMV) before actually driving.
You're right. The "free" press of the USA is far from complacent. Ha.
Sounds like you haven't stepped into a Big Three (GM/Ford/CerberusChrysler) car since the 80's.
For the most part, I haven't seen anything worthwhile from Detroit in a long, long time. The new Chrysler 300 comes pretty close to interesting, but has been plagued by quality problems (mysterious alignment problems from the factory, using inferior seals on the transmission, etc, etc).
I did get a chance to check out a couple Saab 9-3s in a junkyard a few months ago. The switchgear was absolute trash. Saab has been turned into GM's premium brand for those who don't know. The control stalks, door handles, etc felt cheaper than those of my dad's '99 Civic. Hell, they felt cheaper than those of my former '89 Taurus. It's not that the Big 3 use more plastic than the Japanese (or Europeans), it's that they use cheaper plastic than the Japanese.
Take a look at pretty much any 90s GM product and tell me that the Fisher-Price-esque interior doesn't make you cringe. Until GM started focusing on interior quality a little while ago, their interiors were absolute trash compared to the imported competition. The "new" Cobalt is a great example of their old ways. The interior is still cheesy and gaudy. Proponents of the Cobalt will claim that it's an economy car... yet again my dad's eight year old Civic has an interior that's put together with a lot more attention to detail.
However, my complaints run far beyond mere appearances. Compare the Fiero and/or Sky/Solstice to the Miata. Mazda let the engineers loose with the car, and cranked out something that's been best of class pretty much since its introduction. Conversely, GM let the beancounters loose on the parts bin. The end result was a car with lots of fatal problems (Fiero), or in the case of the Sky/Solstice a car that's just nowhere near best of class (read any comparison of the two).
Mediocre designs are also a somewhat minor problem. Check out the first gen Chrysler LH cars (early 90s) with the front suspensions that basically just come apart. Check out the second gen LH cars (late 90s) with the atrocious 2.7L V6. Detroit has churned out turd after turd, well into the 90s and well into the 2000s.
Ford... ahh... Ford. Early modular/triton engines that simply didn't have enough threads cut for the spark plugs and would promptly spit them out. Or how about the Taurus SHO. Sure, the 80s V6 model was great. The 90s V8 powered model with the cam sprockets not appropriately affixed to the cams themselves. Sheesh.
Now you were saying something about assembly/content? The most you could do is rip on it being US/Canada. Interesting that you can get a car that isnt from Mexico or some other FTA/MFN and it's not a compact. Or you could check a group that counters the Japan lobby.
Er? What? The Big 3 have all been ramping up production in Mexico (which was, last I checked, was not part of the USA or Canada). My point was that the cost of labour in the USA isn't as big a factor as everyone seems to think it is. American buyers are complaining that the Big 3 are turning out shitty cars, not complaining that they're overpriced.
Cranking out tons of underpowered "Gentleman's Agreement" cars is why GM/Ford/Chrysler still have the Midwest(despite Far Eastern manufacturers making the rare presence north of the Mason-Dixon). At least Germany/Austria understood this one clearly - now if there was some possibility of not having compact I4 death traps be the only thing below $20000.
Eh, the thing is that the Big 3 don't have the Midwest.
Oh hell... death traps? Puhleeze. Take a look at where most of the safety innovations have been developed in the past 50 odd years. It ain't America.
Underpowered four bangers? Uhh.. yeah. Okay. The European and Asian four bangers have simply outclassed the entry level vee engines from Detroit for a long time. The Big 3 may be able to churn out some nice V8s (and some real stinkers too), but they have utterly failed at prod
You're kidding, right? My last Seagate ('Cuda.10 - 320GB) was made in China.
Check the window stickers in any new Big 3 car. Like the new Ford Fusion (giant gaping holes between the body panels and all)? It's made in Mexico. Focus SVT? Made in Mexico until last year. Dodge Ram? Made in Mexico. Chrysler product with a (recent) Hemi or the "Phoenix" V6? Mexican made.
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FWIW, here's a list of Canadian motor vehicle plants:
http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/site/auto-auto.nsf
If the Big 3 had actually produced quality small to midsize cars in the first place, they would have been plenty able to compete. Cheap labour doesn't make tripe very attractive to anyone. Sure, imported cars are hardly perfect. However, the cars that the Big 3 pawned off in the US in the 80s and 90s were absolute rubbish. Cadillac Cimarron? Ford Tempo? Chrysler LH cars?
The prices of American cars is not the issue. The value of American cars is. Simply put, Japanese cars are more expensive than their American counterparts. However, people will buy these more expensive cars because they are of higher quality. In the same vein, the reason that the Big 3 were able to move cars when they slashed prices was because people will adjust their expectations downward appropriately.
The big issue isn't wages (Toyota pays pretty competitive wages in their USA plants), but benefits. It's the idea that this large unyielding workforce is nearing retirement age and thus needing more expensive health care. Even then, however, the cost of the benefits package that these companies agree dto would be a much smaller issue if the Big 3 were able to actually move product in the US. Instead, the Big 3 have churned out shitty design that nobody wants to buy after shitty design that nobody wants to buy. Blaming the problem on the cost of American labor is simply a red herring.
Food for thought: where are most Big 3 cars assembled? Try somewhere other than the USA.
Simply put, if the Big 3 had actually focused on building cars that people want to buy versus how to market cars (SUVs) that are convenient to make we wouldn't be having this issue.
The even scarier part is that the Diebold machines have not been decertified.
You can find SIM cards paired with CDMA phones in places like Korea. You'll also find that the newer GSM standards (UMTS) have adopted CDMA signaling.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2 007/07/24/BAG9NR67253.DTL
"The problem began when breakers in the utility's transmission service opened for an unknown reason, Chiu said. Every time workers attempted to close those breakers to restore service, it caused voltage fluctuations -- high and low flows of electricity through the system -- that impacted PG&E's Martin Substation in Daly City, she said."
Basically, PG&E is run by beancounters.
PG&E is a good example of why "deregulation" does not work for utilities. We got about one thousandth of an inch of rain (barely measurable). This was just enough to knock out the power to a sizable chunk of the East Bay. Why? Because in their quest for profits, PG&E is too cheap to properly wash down their equipment, and dust builds up. A drizzle turns the dust into mud and causes stuff to short out. That's not to say that PG&E is good in the dry weather. Where I live in the Bay Area (decidedly not the sticks), power goes out for 3+ hours at least twice a year.
Personally, I wouldn't buy a car if I knew it'd be a major PITA to service.
Most people don't take this into consideration. For instance, this is missing from the domestic versus import rhetoric. While fantastically complex, Japanese cars are often fairly well thought out. American car, OTOH, are thrown together with the littlest of care. Take a look at the AXOD autbox in the Taurus. It's held together with a mix of standard and metric fasteners. Yuck.
I'll take the former. If you can afford a 7-series BMW or Mercedes E-series or whatever, and $1000 to change plugs isn't a big deal to you, then more power to you.
It's not just expensive Euro luxobarges that can be difficult to service. VWs and Audis are notorious for being difficult to work on. Hell, just about any V6 midsize car is going to be a pain (Camry -- even the 2nd gen V6, Taurus... check) to change the spark plugs on.
I'm curious: what do you base that statement on?
First-hand observations of course. The official policy is to drain fluids, remove batteries, and such. That doesn't prevent them from "forgetting" to drain the fluids on lots of cars, or leaving residual fluid that simply gets drained onto the (dirt) ground.
Then there's the occasional fire. I'm sure watching that took a few years off of my life (not my picture tho).
Of course, if you're too stupid to change the plugs yourself (one of the easiest things to do on a modern car), you'll pay more in labor, but too bad.
Depends entirely on the car. There are cars where removing spark plugs requires lots of contortion or removal of the engine. Think large V engines in compact cars.
However, I disagree about aluminum. Aluminum is a much better material for cylinder heads because of the far better thermal conductivity. Misthreading spark plugs isn't a problem: just be careful!
I'm not arguing that Al is a worse material for cylinder heads. Aluminum cylinder heads simply magnify the problems you see with long life spark plugs. Plus, you've got the issue of galvanic corrosion. So, yeah, okay. Change the spark plugs. Tell that to the MFRs who boast about the 100k+ service intervals. Bleh.
I don't know about this. For one thing, old cars aren't "disposed of", unless they're some piece of crap that no one wants. They're recycled in some way.
"Recycled". Junk yards are interesting places, but champions of the environment, they're not.
cars are almost certainly less energy intensive to produce today than years ago. That's not the issue. The issue is whether or not your new shiny, fuel efficient car took less energy to produce than you'd save over driving your older, less fuel efficient car.
Mechanical versus electronic fuel injection is almost a no brainer. There are some wonderfully functional, simple EFI setups. MFI? Hah.
Of course, it depends on what type of mechanical injection you're talking about. Are you talking about full-on mechanical pump driven MFI (like you'd find on earlier diesels)? Or are you talking about continuous injection (K-Jet) like you'd find on lots of 80s European cars?
Either way they both suck compared to EFI for most intents and purposes. With mechanical pump driven injection a la KF or Bosch's VE you've simply got a complicated pump that demands a lot of precision. More moving parts to wear out, it's not as easily adaptable as EFI, and more expensive to maintain.
With K-Jet, you could, in theory have a real simple setup with no electronic bits. But, you've still got a giant obstruction in the intake path called the air flow sensor. You've still got the inherent lack of power and throttle response compared to a nice carb (or EFI setup). Look at all the people that bitched when Lamborghini switched to K-Jet. Or, look at Volvo's 140s when they switched from D-Jetronic (primitive fiddly EFI) to K-Jetronic. As obnoxious as D-Jet was, the EFI cars made more power. Even on a good system K-Jet means that you've gotta locate the air flow meter near the fuel injectors, lest you run fuel lines all over the engine compartment (meh). Oh, and like any MFI setup, K-Jet doesn't really adapt to changes (small vacuum leaks, wear, etc) the way you can with an EFI setup.
And by the 80s, you had to meet more stringent smog standards. Doing this with K-Jetronic is just a pain in the ass. Suddenly Rube Goldberg-esque contraptions were showing up. You've got frequency valves and their fiddly relays. You've got control pressure regulators with multiple heating elements, as well as atmospheric pressure compensation doohickeys. You've got delay valves and their associated mess of vacuum hoses. What do all these moving parts mean? More things to wear out. Actually, even worse, lots of these moving parts were lubricated with fuel. You know, stuff that can gum up with time... which of course means that K-Jet cars are just not as happy about sitting (for extended periods of time) and being started right up.
While lots of people argue that K-Jet doesn't (often) fail completely the way that an EFI setup typically does, that doesn't really mean much. You can cause a K-Jet system to leave you with a barely running car quite easily (large vacuum leak, or fucked up CPR). Besides that, while the K-Jet setup may run, the EFI setup will run better. It's just a lot more difficult to get K-Jet in perfect tune than it is to get a reasonable (say LH-Jetronic) EFI setup working in perfect tune.
Mechanical fuel injection was not a better or more desirable design than its electronic replacements. MFIs were generally just temporary stopgaps at best.
More modern smog gear has given us: more powerful engines, easier monitoring, and more efficient engines. However, at this point we're mostly dealing with diminishing returns.
Volvo (at least I think it was them) came out a few years ago and pointed out that most of the emissions that we're reducing with the advanced controls are the cold start emissions. Once your engine is up to operating temp, it's easily as clean as a 5-10 year old car would be (assuming it's in good shape). This is why you see things like pre-cats, air pumps, and heated oxygen sensors.
Also worth noting is that efficiency and cleanliness are two different things. Again, the modern engine management may allow for increased mileage, but that doesn't mean that the emissions per unit of fuel burned are that much cleaner. Indeed, I'd say a new car is going to be an overall bad things in terms of use of resources (or carbon footprint, or whatever you want to call it). New cars take a whole lot of water and energy to build. Let's not forget all the lovely solvents (such as paint) required. Let's not forget, that if you're replacing your car with a new one, we've still got to deal with the disposal of the old car. The world would probably be better off, environmentally speaking, if we'd just cut back on new car production and kept our slightly older cars for a longer period of time. Of course the economy would suffer quite a bit (certainly we've seen how dependent the US is on auto manufacturing).
Oh, and the distributor as an example of unreliable technology? Puhleeze. Even the mechanical points based distributors were pretty reliable (unless you're driving a something with a shoddy design in the first place). The distributorless systems aren't necessarily anything to write home about, and in some instances they're pretty bad. One example would be Nissan, and their coil on plug design. A coil is essentially a simple step up transformer, and by nature somewhat sensitive to heat and vibration. On a traditional car there's one ignition coil, and it's mounted out of the way. With a coil on plug design, the are many coils (one per cylinder), and they're mounted directly on the engine and thus subjected to more heat and vibration. Nissan, like many other companies, apparently didn't sink enough money in trying to overcome the inherent additional stresses. The end result has been that the coil packs are notorious for failure on some of their cars (previous generation Maximas come to mind). Yeah, technology is awesome. Wanna get started on how awesome drive by wire is? Not.
Oh, and 100k service intervals are nothing to be proud of. Instead of, for instance, changing spark plugs every few years as in a typical design, you'll change them every 10 years. So, what? That's an additional 7 yrs/70,000mi for the spark plugs to become corroded in place. And, of course, we all know how forgiving aluminum is (assuming we're talking about a modern alloy engine) to things being threaded improperly.
Seriously. Where we've got these obnoxious faux trucks, they've got proper utes and far more efficient full-sized sedans. Hell, their full sized sedans even have reasonably modern suspensions, something our full sized sedans (Crown Vic, Caprice) lacked.
Yep. Computer controlled (albeit fairly primitive) ignition, check. Computer controlled fuel injection (again fairly primitive), check.
If you're feeling daring, pop off the distributor cap (a huge pain on that engine when it isn't shoved sideways into a DeLorean), pull off the rotor and the dust cap. Note the lack of points. Yep, that's called an electronic ignition. If you're feeling even more daring, pop off the intake manifold (hahaha...), and look at the air flow meter. Right around there you should see a frequency valve. Yep. That's a computer controlled solenoid designed to regulate the fuel mixture in response to the oxygen sensor. Or, you know, look at the smog plate and it should mention you've got an "O2S" (oxygen sensor in EPA vernacular). If your cams aren't completely shot, you might even be able to hear the frequency valve buzzing away with the engine idling.
Why? That's easy. Men will succeed in co-ed and all male institutions quite easily. Women often underperform in co-ed enviornments. Read up on stereotype threat.
Tryin to scam a referral bonus outta slashdot readers? Meh.
You'd have more credibility if you were pimping out a higher quality host. DH oversells their capacity, and is about average for bargain basement junk. I tried their $10/yr promo a while back to run a small image g2 gallery. I'd say it wasn't worth $10. Their MySQL server was unreliable (lots of downtime), the httpd server I was on was quite slow, and even after canceling the account I get spam from them.
In California, the taxes levied on fuel are listed at the pump. It's about $0.18/gal in state taxes, and about the same for federal taxes (+ $0.08/gal in federal taxes on diesel).
Specifically, I refuse to throw money at Yahoo! because of their actions in China. You know, the whole dissident who was jailed because of information provided by Yahoo!. I realize that Google is guilty of similar things both in China, and in countries like Brazil. But, thankfully, the Picassa interface is so bad, I wouldn't really consider using it anyhow. And, of course, I think that most countries (save for the United States) have better records on human rights than China does.
As far as every communications company cooperating, that's true to some extent. However, the level to which the company complies varies quite a bit. For instance, AT&T having a secret room is far different than Verizon attempting to not cooperate with the NSA. Maybe Verizon's got a secret room or two. But, for now, I'll find Verizon to be the lesser of two evils.
Flickr has bumped the bandwidth limit to 100 mb/month. While I am loathe to support Yahoo, considering their willingness to cooperate with law enforcement, the Flickr interface is vastly superior (way way more intuitive) than the Picassa interface. Plus, you can store an unlimited number photos on Flickr, even with a free account.
http://www.macintouch.com/reliability/laptops.html
And obviously bigger sensors have much, much better low light/high ISO performance ... but there is something to be said for being able to carry a camera in your pocket.
Almost. The primary thing that you gain with a bigger sensor and removable lenses is control over the depth of field. You just can't fake that (very well anyways) with a compact camera. As far as low light sensitivity, Fuji has released some superb sensors with their F10/F11/F30/F20/F31fd models. Of course, DSLRs also come with much more manual control, but that's a very artificial limitation.
I've got an F30, and there's less noise (and less heavy handed noise reduction) at ISO 800 than you'll see on some more full featured cameras at ISO 400. I took these two at ISO 800, with no flash: Graffiti on the beach, San Francisco Mayor Newsom, Burlesque (ISO 800+flash). ISO 1600 on this camera can still yield usable prints, and ISO 3200 is good for an emergency shot.
Sure, I miss some things about an SLR with this camera. For instance, I miss having manual control over the focus. I dislike that the 3:2 aspect ratio can only be chosen at the lower of the 6MP quality settings. Sure, sometimes I miss being able to use a better zoom lens, but then I realize that this thing fits into my pocket.