> Ford was far [...] licensing some hybrid technology from Toyota
It seems strange to me that Toyota would work with both Ford & GM. Toyota & GM worked together on creation of the Toyota Matrix/Pontiac Vibe, so why is Ford buying stuff from them?
I guess if it's just the power tech, it's not a big deal, but how closely tied are the engines to the power source on these hybrids? What I'm asking is, if Ford is licensing the power stuff, would they also be likely to use a Toyota or Toyota-designed engine?
> I've never had to replace a starter on my car [or hoses...] maybe that says something...
So.... you haven't replaced any parts on your 1992 car? Even belts? I might suggest you do that, as they will probably break umm... now. Belts & hoses are not meant to be used for 12 years. The only way this is likely is if you rarely drive your car, or at least don't drive it very far. And you live in a place with little snow (or your local gov doesn't put anything on the roads when it does snow).
I can understand not replacing a starter, but if you've never replaced anything you are either very stupid or monumentally lucky. The good quality of the parts new isn't going to matter a whole lot now that they are all 12-13 years old.
I'm also curious as to what kind of car you have. Maybe you spent a ton on it to begin with -- it makes sense that if you can afford to buy a $40K car that it'll last longer than a Civic.
> I never could understand what would cause someone to take their own life.
That's something I'm going through right now.
People are expected to just "be happy" because they are told to. I, OTOH, don't know how others do it. I spend a large part of my time wondering why I'm not allowed to have the things that make others happy. Thinking about it makes me more unhappy than simply not having it. This means that any time I'm not concentrating (doesn't have to be hard) on doing something else, I'm thinking about how much my life sucks and trying to come up with ways that it won't suck -- most of the answers that arise are unrealistic/unreasonable or simply will not happen. This makes me more unhappy still.
When most of your time is spent either working hard or crying hard (or both), you begin to consider nonexistence a sweet, sweet blessing.
I don't understand why "normal" people don't understand depressed people. Have they never been unhappy? Can they not extrapolate their moment of depression to what it may be like to have a lifetime of it? I guess it's the same way that I can't take the few bright moments of my life and imagine always being happy. Actually, I guess I can imagine always being happy, but it depresses me to know it will not happen -- that's a rather morbid irony.
> I guess you and the like just want to get away with anything you do as "long as it doesn't hurt anyone". > he says that since you don't believe in rules, then no rules apply to the person that committed a crime against you.
Are you seriously that braindead? Christ man, buy a clue. "As long as no one is hurt..." of course, no one gets hurt during A RAPE?!?!?! You are an absolute moron. You can't even come up with a decent TROLL? Fer fuck's sake, man, try using your brain.
> If Washington was truly "anti-gay" we would enforce our sodomy laws
If Washington was truly concerned with the future of our country, you would be shot to ensure your ignorance is not spread to another generation. Fortunately for you & for Gay people, we have this concept called Freedom. It isn't reality, but we are supposed to think so.
> > Act like you own the place, and nobody will say a thing to you. > That works with most women too, you know...
I think you have that backwards... Act like you own the place & women flock to you for their ritual beatings. Act respectful and don't steal, they ignore you.
> does that mean I should apply Godwin's spray to my shower curtain to get off all that damned bacteria?
No, I think you want to kill the bacteria. "Getting off bacteria" just results in more bacteria... Which brings up an interesting point: can a one-celled organism "get off" at all? Does an orgasm occur during the cell splitting?
Paraphrasing Carlin, these are the kinds of questions that kept me out of the really good schools.
> you want to give these same sycophants each the ability to cause their own little 9/11 with just a slight miscalculation in their laughable *judgement*?
Despite the stupid SUV comparison, Ryvar makes a good point. If it weren't for that, the post wouldn't be flamebait.
Pick a random person. You wouldn't let them on your network, would you? Hell no, they'll probably go download their favorite virus-riddled game. Network security is important. But you want to let these same morons move a tonne of metal through the sky? Above & next to your home? No thanks, I'll wait until people become more responsible. I might be waiting a few thousand years...
> your future and distant future examples are dangerous and violate physics laws,
There is only danger if someone uses it in a dangerous way. The Internet is dangerous -- if someone wants it to be.
As for violating the laws of physics, do you know exactly how I teleport items now? Then how do you know it's impossible? Just because someone says "it's a law of physics" does not mean it is right. There's a good chance it's correct, but it is not immutable.
I'm no physics whiz, but I don't believe that moving at the speed of light is impossible. People thought you would cease to exist if you moved at the speed of sound, but Chuck Yeager came back. Think of this: If the universe is expanding at the speed of light and I move toward the center of it at the speed of light. Relative to the Earth, I'm moving at 2c, but relative to the center of the universe, I am completely motionless. So which one defines how fast I could really go? Can I move at almost 3c (rel to Earth), since I would be moving at almost c "universally."
> I'm just suggesting that the net will continue to be the biggest thing
I tend to agree, but how much of the future is really "forseeable?" A dozen nukes could be launched in a few seconds, although the chances are slim. Basically what I'm saying is it is impossible to know the future until you get there and we have no idea what kinds of discoveries will be found in that time. Something akin to wormholes? Maybe we can build artificial temporary wormholes, thus making "sorta Faster-than-light" communications a reality. Unlikely, but if we had all the answers, all the physicists (scientists in general) would be out of jobs.
> these changes are all based on extending existing technology, not revolutionary discoveries/inventions
That is a very good point -- all technology is based on technology that came before it. It's a form of evolution, I suppose. TNBG -- all of them, really -- will probably just start out as a lab experiment that someone did and said "Wow, that's really neat/unexpected, how can I use this to our advantage?"
> it might be a good thing to develop other shuffle methods for the shuffling connoisseur:
Do they already do this?
I've been using WinAMP 5, and v3 before that. For some reason, it never seems to be random enough for me. I even turned the "randomness" slider all the way up. With 4000 songs listed in the playlist, some of them get repeated kinda often, even in the same day. Does anyone know if the WinAMP shuffle takes into account how often you play a song/artist or how new (or whatever) it is? It's getting kind of annoying to hear 10 Beatles songs in a row. I like The Beatles & all, but I use shuffle for a reason.
> Because taxing something legitimizes it... > At least, that's what the pot-legalization crowd says.
I've never heard anyone in the "pot-legalization crowd" say that. Usually the argument is it's none of your f&#$ing business what I do in my own house, as long as I'm not hurting anyone else.
> Rather it appears that "Gravity" is an electromagnetic effect corresponding to a "Pressure" in a media.
I suck at Physics, so I apologize if this a is a completely stupid or obvious question. Does something have more gravitational pull if it is compressed? IE, if the earth were compressed to the size of a basketball or something, would the gravity be roughly the same? Of course, I realize that gravity is measured from the center of the object, so you would have to be floating in space at the same radial distance as the Earth's original surface.
> Until "The Next Big Thing" comes along (very unlikely - you can't go much further than having everyone on the net,
Likely, the "Next Big Thing" will be completely different. Using your thoughts presented here taken back in time:
40 Years ago: "You can't go much further than having everyone connected by telephone! Instant communication!"
Now: "You can't go much further than having everyone on the net. REALLY instant communication!"
Future: "You can't go much further than having everyone connected to a wireless neural grid. REALLY, REALLY instant communication, just by thought!"
Distant Future: "You can't go much further than being able to instantly transmit physical items across the stars. Screw instant communication, I'll just zap myself there & talk to them personally." Funny how technology could actually bring us closer, instead of just our words and ideas.
True, this exact scenario is unlikely, but when ARPANet was first thought up, who would have imagined things like KaZaA or NetFlix? No, the Next Big Thing may very well be something nearly unrecognizable to us now.
What if the inventor can't afford to create it? And the VCs won't invest in him until they are sure the item is patented -- they don't want to lose all their money later because they find out he stole the idea from someone else.
I think rejecting it outright due to lack of prototype would be bad, but to avoid the creation of "companies" like PanIP, how about the patent being granted on a trial basis? If, after maybe two years, there is still no actual working device, the trial patent is revoked. If the device is working, they are given a real patent.
I'm sure there would be problems with this as well, but it partially solves some of the issues brought up.
> I don't watch golf. Do the games change enough to notice if you replaced the broadcast with some "best of" DVDs?
As long as someone isn't keeping track of the score. Since golf usually has between 9-16 pairs playing on the course at a time, the cameras have to keep jumping from hole to hole, making it difficult to keep track of what the heck is going on. Granted, I'm not a huge golf fan, just know a few who made me suffer through it.
> I don't think all programmers approach the task using the same kind of intelligence.
And some go at it with no intelligence whatsoever.
When I code, I do it like a complete moron builds a bridge (although I usually end up successful, unlike a bridge being built in this way). I start with the bridge itself -- the endpoints, where the data comes in and the final output. I test to make sure the in & out work right. Then I build a quick & easy bridge across the top, where I do a really quick "outline" of the program, doung all the easy logic & filling in gaps by hand (ie, if a is out of range, just assign it an arbitrary in-range value till I can figure out how to handle it).
Here's where the moron part comes in. After the bridge's main structure is basically built, I finally get to the supports. I really start thinking about the logic after the program has been partially boult all the way through. This means, sometimes, that I have to completely rewrite parts of it (I have to completely destroy the middle of the bridge & rebuild it because it was an inch too far to the left after installing supports).
Finally, I have a mangled bridge, with great supports, so I fill in all the cracks. I guess this is the normal last step -- debugging. Unfortunately, this method can leave huge cracks/bugs, but it goes quickly for me.
> the possibility of portknocking that depends on delays between knocks,
Would that still work when you go to a dialup connection? You might have to make the timing pretty large (say, a few seconds?) to be able to make up for the differences in network speed & latency, wouldn't you? Still, it's a workable idea & another layer of intricacy to breaking in.
Omlet? If I were setting up a website for people who wanted chickens as pets... I wouldn't name it after a meal consisting of their slaughtered unborn.
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> Ford was far [...] licensing some hybrid technology from Toyota
It seems strange to me that Toyota would work with both Ford & GM. Toyota & GM worked together on creation of the Toyota Matrix/Pontiac Vibe, so why is Ford buying stuff from them?
I guess if it's just the power tech, it's not a big deal, but how closely tied are the engines to the power source on these hybrids? What I'm asking is, if Ford is licensing the power stuff, would they also be likely to use a Toyota or Toyota-designed engine?
> I've never had to replace a starter on my car [or hoses...] maybe that says something...
So.... you haven't replaced any parts on your 1992 car? Even belts? I might suggest you do that, as they will probably break umm... now. Belts & hoses are not meant to be used for 12 years. The only way this is likely is if you rarely drive your car, or at least don't drive it very far. And you live in a place with little snow (or your local gov doesn't put anything on the roads when it does snow).
I can understand not replacing a starter, but if you've never replaced anything you are either very stupid or monumentally lucky. The good quality of the parts new isn't going to matter a whole lot now that they are all 12-13 years old.
I'm also curious as to what kind of car you have. Maybe you spent a ton on it to begin with -- it makes sense that if you can afford to buy a $40K car that it'll last longer than a Civic.
> I never could understand what would cause someone to take their own life.
That's something I'm going through right now.
People are expected to just "be happy" because they are told to. I, OTOH, don't know how others do it. I spend a large part of my time wondering why I'm not allowed to have the things that make others happy. Thinking about it makes me more unhappy than simply not having it. This means that any time I'm not concentrating (doesn't have to be hard) on doing something else, I'm thinking about how much my life sucks and trying to come up with ways that it won't suck -- most of the answers that arise are unrealistic/unreasonable or simply will not happen. This makes me more unhappy still.
When most of your time is spent either working hard or crying hard (or both), you begin to consider nonexistence a sweet, sweet blessing.
I don't understand why "normal" people don't understand depressed people. Have they never been unhappy? Can they not extrapolate their moment of depression to what it may be like to have a lifetime of it? I guess it's the same way that I can't take the few bright moments of my life and imagine always being happy. Actually, I guess I can imagine always being happy, but it depresses me to know it will not happen -- that's a rather morbid irony.
> I guess you and the like just want to get away with anything you do as "long as it doesn't hurt anyone".
> he says that since you don't believe in rules, then no rules apply to the person that committed a crime against you.
Are you seriously that braindead? Christ man, buy a clue. "As long as no one is hurt..." of course, no one gets hurt during A RAPE?!?!?! You are an absolute moron. You can't even come up with a decent TROLL? Fer fuck's sake, man, try using your brain.
> anywhere where English is spoken, as opposed to the half-arsed offshoot language that is American English.
Ummm.. Americans don't pronounce it like "colon" either, just one person who happens to be well known. You really are an ignorant twat.
I would also point out that every English-speaking country, other than England of course, speaks an offshoot of English.
> Nobody I know or have ever met pronounces "Colin" to rhyme with "pollen".
Just two comedians off the top of my head...
Colin Quinn?
Colin Mockery?
> If Washington was truly "anti-gay" we would enforce our sodomy laws
If Washington was truly concerned with the future of our country, you would be shot to ensure your ignorance is not spread to another generation. Fortunately for you & for Gay people, we have this concept called Freedom. It isn't reality, but we are supposed to think so.
> Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
That's an interesting use of the word "fertilize" of which I was previously unaware.
> > Act like you own the place, and nobody will say a thing to you.
> That works with most women too, you know...
I think you have that backwards... Act like you own the place & women flock to you for their ritual beatings. Act respectful and don't steal, they ignore you.
> does that mean I should apply Godwin's spray to my shower curtain to get off all that damned bacteria?
No, I think you want to kill the bacteria. "Getting off bacteria" just results in more bacteria... Which brings up an interesting point: can a one-celled organism "get off" at all? Does an orgasm occur during the cell splitting?
Paraphrasing Carlin, these are the kinds of questions that kept me out of the really good schools.
> Funny I was always of the opinion that peace came when you stopped shooting.
It does, but he said "promoting peace," which is not the same as "enacting peace." Dick.... Cheney!
> you want to give these same sycophants each the ability to cause their own little 9/11 with just a slight miscalculation in their laughable *judgement*?
Despite the stupid SUV comparison, Ryvar makes a good point. If it weren't for that, the post wouldn't be flamebait.
Pick a random person. You wouldn't let them on your network, would you? Hell no, they'll probably go download their favorite virus-riddled game. Network security is important. But you want to let these same morons move a tonne of metal through the sky? Above & next to your home? No thanks, I'll wait until people become more responsible. I might be waiting a few thousand years...
> It appears the more intelligent one becomes, the closer to insanity they reach!
If the reverse is true, I must be fucking brilliant!
> your future and distant future examples are dangerous and violate physics laws,
There is only danger if someone uses it in a dangerous way. The Internet is dangerous -- if someone wants it to be.
As for violating the laws of physics, do you know exactly how I teleport items now? Then how do you know it's impossible? Just because someone says "it's a law of physics" does not mean it is right. There's a good chance it's correct, but it is not immutable.
I'm no physics whiz, but I don't believe that moving at the speed of light is impossible. People thought you would cease to exist if you moved at the speed of sound, but Chuck Yeager came back. Think of this: If the universe is expanding at the speed of light and I move toward the center of it at the speed of light. Relative to the Earth, I'm moving at 2c, but relative to the center of the universe, I am completely motionless. So which one defines how fast I could really go? Can I move at almost 3c (rel to Earth), since I would be moving at almost c "universally."
> I'm just suggesting that the net will continue to be the biggest thing
I tend to agree, but how much of the future is really "forseeable?" A dozen nukes could be launched in a few seconds, although the chances are slim. Basically what I'm saying is it is impossible to know the future until you get there and we have no idea what kinds of discoveries will be found in that time. Something akin to wormholes? Maybe we can build artificial temporary wormholes, thus making "sorta Faster-than-light" communications a reality. Unlikely, but if we had all the answers, all the physicists (scientists in general) would be out of jobs.
> these changes are all based on extending existing technology, not revolutionary discoveries/inventions
That is a very good point -- all technology is based on technology that came before it. It's a form of evolution, I suppose. TNBG -- all of them, really -- will probably just start out as a lab experiment that someone did and said "Wow, that's really neat/unexpected, how can I use this to our advantage?"
> Do you maybe have like a whole lot of beatles?
:)
Admittedly, yes, but I have more Nine Inch Nails than Beatles, and I rarely hear any of them.
> code them into the monster shuffle variety pack
That would be a good idea, and I'd do it, but I'm afraid to get feedback about how crappy my programming skills are
> it might be a good thing to develop other shuffle methods for the shuffling connoisseur:
Do they already do this?
I've been using WinAMP 5, and v3 before that. For some reason, it never seems to be random enough for me. I even turned the "randomness" slider all the way up. With 4000 songs listed in the playlist, some of them get repeated kinda often, even in the same day. Does anyone know if the WinAMP shuffle takes into account how often you play a song/artist or how new (or whatever) it is? It's getting kind of annoying to hear 10 Beatles songs in a row. I like The Beatles & all, but I use shuffle for a reason.
> Nice little Karma grab.
+Funny doesn't give you karma. Nice try at an insult, though.
> Because taxing something legitimizes it...
> At least, that's what the pot-legalization crowd says.
I've never heard anyone in the "pot-legalization crowd" say that. Usually the argument is it's none of your f&#$ing business what I do in my own house, as long as I'm not hurting anyone else.
> Rather it appears that "Gravity" is an electromagnetic effect corresponding to a "Pressure" in a media.
I suck at Physics, so I apologize if this a is a completely stupid or obvious question. Does something have more gravitational pull if it is compressed? IE, if the earth were compressed to the size of a basketball or something, would the gravity be roughly the same?
Of course, I realize that gravity is measured from the center of the object, so you would have to be floating in space at the same radial distance as the Earth's original surface.
> Until "The Next Big Thing" comes along (very unlikely - you can't go much further than having everyone on the net,
Likely, the "Next Big Thing" will be completely different. Using your thoughts presented here taken back in time:
40 Years ago: "You can't go much further than having everyone connected by telephone! Instant communication!"
Now: "You can't go much further than having everyone on the net. REALLY instant communication!"
Future: "You can't go much further than having everyone connected to a wireless neural grid. REALLY, REALLY instant communication, just by thought!"
Distant Future: "You can't go much further than being able to instantly transmit physical items across the stars. Screw instant communication, I'll just zap myself there & talk to them personally." Funny how technology could actually bring us closer, instead of just our words and ideas.
True, this exact scenario is unlikely, but when ARPANet was first thought up, who would have imagined things like KaZaA or NetFlix? No, the Next Big Thing may very well be something nearly unrecognizable to us now.
> no working prototype = patent denied!
What if the inventor can't afford to create it? And the VCs won't invest in him until they are sure the item is patented -- they don't want to lose all their money later because they find out he stole the idea from someone else.
I think rejecting it outright due to lack of prototype would be bad, but to avoid the creation of "companies" like PanIP, how about the patent being granted on a trial basis? If, after maybe two years, there is still no actual working device, the trial patent is revoked. If the device is working, they are given a real patent.
I'm sure there would be problems with this as well, but it partially solves some of the issues brought up.
> I don't watch golf. Do the games change enough to notice if you replaced the broadcast with some "best of" DVDs?
As long as someone isn't keeping track of the score. Since golf usually has between 9-16 pairs playing on the course at a time, the cameras have to keep jumping from hole to hole, making it difficult to keep track of what the heck is going on. Granted, I'm not a huge golf fan, just know a few who made me suffer through it.
> I don't think all programmers approach the task using the same kind of intelligence.
And some go at it with no intelligence whatsoever.
When I code, I do it like a complete moron builds a bridge (although I usually end up successful, unlike a bridge being built in this way). I start with the bridge itself -- the endpoints, where the data comes in and the final output. I test to make sure the in & out work right. Then I build a quick & easy bridge across the top, where I do a really quick "outline" of the program, doung all the easy logic & filling in gaps by hand (ie, if a is out of range, just assign it an arbitrary in-range value till I can figure out how to handle it).
Here's where the moron part comes in. After the bridge's main structure is basically built, I finally get to the supports. I really start thinking about the logic after the program has been partially boult all the way through. This means, sometimes, that I have to completely rewrite parts of it (I have to completely destroy the middle of the bridge & rebuild it because it was an inch too far to the left after installing supports).
Finally, I have a mangled bridge, with great supports, so I fill in all the cracks. I guess this is the normal last step -- debugging. Unfortunately, this method can leave huge cracks/bugs, but it goes quickly for me.
> the possibility of portknocking that depends on delays between knocks,
Would that still work when you go to a dialup connection? You might have to make the timing pretty large (say, a few seconds?) to be able to make up for the differences in network speed & latency, wouldn't you? Still, it's a workable idea & another layer of intricacy to breaking in.
Omlet? If I were setting up a website for people who wanted chickens as pets... I wouldn't name it after a meal consisting of their slaughtered unborn.