My TRITTON AXPRO 5.1 uses a TOSlink connector, so it will continue to work. I've thought about upgrading to a wireless Mad Catz (who bought TRITTON), but the reviews indicate that the quality dropped drastically.
I also have the OEM PS3 Bluetooth. I had bought it to use with the PS3 Eye for video conferencing, but VC across the internet is still hit or miss. I used it with my cell phone for a while, but the battery life sucked and there was no noise cancellation, so I ended up getting a Plantronics. Since then it has been sitting on a shelf. I can't see wanting to use it with the PS4...
It is unbelievable that this article is taken seriously. The writer refers to the shift paddles as "flappy paddles behind the steering wheel". This tells me that the person writing the article knows nothing about cars and did very little research to reach their conclusions.
Actually, you just showed you know less about the automotive world than they do.
"Flappy paddle" has been the derogatory term Jeremy Clarkson and the other Top Gear presenters have used for years upon years, and it's now in widespread popular use. It referred to three things, early on: 1)Automatics with paddles that simply said to the transmission "shift up or down now", which usually happened eons after you pushed the paddle and the transmission still has all the inefficiencies of an automatic 2)Automated-manual transmissions which had horrendous "creeping" functionality, poor usability/interface (ie 3 point turns were mind-numbingly hard/slow/complex), and broke down a lot because of the complexity of actuators/sensors/etc. 3)Sequential transmissions that were brutal in terms of comfort (having been adopted from racing applications) and poor creeping functionality.
Nowadays the term is mostly used by automotive fans who hate anything that doesn't have a manual gearbox, even if it's a perfectly reliable 7 gear, double-clutch transmission that shifts so smoothly you can do so mid-corner and not upset the car's balance, and can shift so fast it has to wait for the engine to match revs...
Fine, so it's a made-up term from a TV show, and not a technical term... It doesn't mean squat about how much I do or don't know about cars. It just means that I haven't been hanging out in circles that use the term. The article, however, doesn't even pretend to perform a comparison against the Volt and the new Caddy but come to a conclusion that it is well over priced. It may well be, but where is the proof??
It is unbelievable that you don't know that the shift paddles are actually called "flappy paddles". Go watch some Top Gear before you complain about motor journalism.
Like top gear is serious motor journalism... I've watched a large number of Top Gear shows both the British and American versions and they have been nothing but entertainment TV. They are fun to watch, but there is very little actual content other than this car, that I can't afford, goes faster than that car, which I also can't afford...
They are not called flappy-paddles (i.e. not the technical term), this is just a cute term coined by Top Gear and is used by people who don't know better.
It is unbelievable that this article is taken seriously. The writer refers to the shift paddles as "flappy paddles behind the steering wheel". This tells me that the person writing the article knows nothing about cars and did very little research to reach their conclusions.
If the author had been willing to do some actual research, instead of generating a fluff piece, we would have a comparison of the features between what's included with the Volt and the Cadillac version. Perhaps there are a few more things under the hood than a re-badged Volt.
It's a featureful app, but I hate having to dig through the UI to accomplish the most basic tasks.
How does Word fail the 80/20 rule when you admit that the problem isn't the tool or it's features but the fact that you refuse to learn how to actually use it? Get off your butt and take a MS Word class. If you can't afford it, there are Microsoft tutorial videos and youtube videos...
I wouldn't take much stock in this. All it really reveals is what we already know, Google has had a lot of publicity around their self-driving cars and thus are more popular and would show up more in web conversations (which is where they got their data - MOBI).
Personally, I would trust car manufacturers much more than Google to deliver a self-driving car. Google is developing the technology but it's up to the car company to tweak and integrate it safely. This is no different than the other tech components created by various companies and integrated into our vehicles (i.e. Radio, GPS, Follow Cruise Control, Traction Control, heated seats, etc.). When we go to buy a car it will simply be listed in the specs. For example: Heated seats, Alpine Infotainment system, Quadra-Trac II traction control, Google Autonomous Drive, etc....
Apple car: Will be named "iDrive." The car will cost $300k and will look modern and sexy. Build quality will be excellent. No matter what destination you enter, you'll end up in Camden because it uses Apple maps.
The battery will be sealed in a black box and welded to the frame. You will either have to go to a specialist Apple shop to get it replaced or learn how to weld.
... is that most hand reliefs are likely of a woman's hand, it doesn't mean that they did the art work.
It's a bit of a leap to go from identifying what gender the hand belongs to and who actually did the cave paintings. I'm guessing that the assumption is that the hand relief is the artist's signature. But we have no way of knowing that this is true or not. It could be just another image denoting the artists history (i.e. got married today).
Interestingly enough, I haven't caused any accidents yet. Go figure....
Like to dance with the devil, do we?
Key operatives in your statement: "I" and "yet."
Nope, I'm just a good enough driver to keep my eye on the road at all times and use technology to my advantage instead of letting it distract me.
Isn't your rant the same thing that they said about radios, GPS devices, etc.... You forget that people eventually adapt and learn how to use new technology safely.
The NHTSA states that 80% of accidents and 16% of highway deaths are the result of distracted drivers
Did you miss the point in the Wiki that distracted driving can be anything from drinking, eating, checking on your kid in the rear view mirror, watching that cute girl on the side of the road, etc... (see the article you linked to). Are we now going to mandate that people can no longer drive their kids around, eat, drink, etc.? Not likely!!
If someone is a bad driver, they are going to be a bad driver no matter what they have in the car to distract them. The point of technology is to provide solutions that reduces this distraction to a minimum level. As an example, current technology allows you to text and read texts using voice through the car system. This will reduce the potential distraction of cell phones. Most cars also now have avoidance and lane change warning systems.
You forget that most people are selfish, irresponsible jerks with their heads nested firmly in their rectums.
I agree that there are a decent amount of jerks and idiots on the roads, but most people are responsible decent drivers. I drive a very busy interstate between home and work every day. If people were as bad as you think they are, there would be tons of accidents every day. As it is, there are very few in comparison to the amount of traffic.
OK, show of hands, how many of us want our cars to behave like smartphones?
Now, the second show of hands, how many of us think this is probably not what you want in the dash of your car?
Mine already behaves like a smartphone. The Uconnect system in my 2014 Jeep is upgradeable, has an 8.4" touchscreen, configures all of the car settings (i.e. whether to lock the doors when the car starts moving), can be remote started via an app on my mobile device, and supports the downloads of additional apps, has built-in 3g/4g, can act as a WiFi hot spot, etc.....Oh, and it reads text messages back to me and can use the voice recognition to send texts, so no typing.
Interestingly enough, I haven't caused any accidents yet. Go figure....
Isn't your rant the same thing that they said about radios, GPS devices, etc.... You forget that people eventually adapt and learn how to use new technology safely. In my opinion, we are obviously still on the learning curve when it comes to cell phones and texting, but as text-to-voice and voice recognition becomes better so does the safety factor.
I live in the Boston area, Marlborough, and FiOS is still in business and selling FiOS. What they won't do is run new fiber to a building that doesn't already have it. They still advertise trying to get people to connect that do have the fiber already ran.
I have moved twice and have been able to purchase FiOS is both locations.
So, unless the commercial talks about running cable the argument doesn't make much since.
I think you know this, but Marlborough is not part of the City of Boston, which is what the article is about...
FIOS was rolled out to a number of communities in a patchwork fashion and they skipped the dense cities. For example, I live in Lowell and can't get FIOS but most of the communities around Lowell, such as Chelmsford, Tewksbury, ect., can.
I live near Lowell, MA and every community around Lowell has FIOS except Lowell. Boston is the same. Those that managed to get FIOS in Boston probably were only able to get it because they near another community where it was rolled out.
Verizon started rolling out FIOS in Massachusetts and did deploy it to a number of communities but then just stopped. I read somewhere that supposedly Verizon decided to switch their concentration away from land connections to rolling out better wireless because they see it as the future. Supposedly, and I have no proof of this other than innuendo, Verizon was using the FIOS roll out as a bargaining chip for spectrum space from Comcast. Whether this is true or not, Comcast did agree to sell spectrum space to Verizon.
Chip and Pin, in use in Europe and Canada, is 1000x better than fingerprints for multiple reasons, not the least of which is personal privacy. There is NO way that I would trust any corporation with my fingerprints. It's bad enough that the credit card companies have my social security number.
Don't talk about how to play the game... this guy wasn't a player, he was a loser. He was setup from day one, by his own stupidity, to lose. If I was running a website like that, the very first thing I'd have done after getting ahead financially is separate out as much money as I could for future legal troubles, and hire accountants and lawyers so when the day came to save my sorry ass, all I'd have to do is just sit in jail and wait while Plan Bravo executed all on its own to spring me.
So, what you're saying is that Walter White did it right in Breaking Bad when he hired Saul with a rather large retainer.
So, this analyses text and emotional connotation of words to produce an emotional score for each story. Yet, it has no way of divining context, whether or not a particular section of the story is funny, or if a death causes an emotional reaction of sadness or satisfaction (i.e. the character was evil, deserved it, etc.). In other words, it's an arbitrary system that may work at a basic level but will still get a lot of things completely wrong... at least it's a start, I guess...
They only way you could intercept something like that is to accidentally hit it.
Yes, brilliant.
To bad we have never invented something that could bounce sound waves off of objects in or under the water so that we could find them even when we can't see them.
If you have a blind spot your mirrors are adjusted wrong. Every Drivers Education course teaches students to adjust the mirrors so that the driver can see the side of the car, but unless you're worried about a quarter-panel falling off and not noticing it you really don't need to see your own car. The mirrors should be adjusted outwards so that you need to move your head at least 6"/20 cm to the right or left before you see the side of the car. Once you've done that drive slowly past a parked car and you'll see that the car appears in your peripheral vision just before it goes out of view in the mirror.
Exactly. I put the small round mirrors on mine. I can tell at a glance if the lane is clear and if there is room for my entire car to move over without cutting anyone off. I originally got them for towing my boat so that I could see further back, but I find that they are invaluable as they completely eliminate my blind spot.
Until the law changes, Amazon, or anyone else for that matter, cannot directly sell cars online.
I too would love to be able to buy a car from Amazon. I had to buy a new car this year and it reminded my why I hate the process. The sales and manager guys were fine and kept it light while we played the negotiation game, but the finance guy was a tad slimey. He tried to get me into a higher interest rate than what I qualified for and acted like I was killing him when I didn't want the extended warranty.
Except that the BSA doesn't have a trademark on either the whole, or any distinct part of 'Hacker Scouts'. The BSA was in no danger of losing their trademark on 'Boy Scouts'.
The problem here is that people go, "That sounds kind of, vaguely, sort of similar if you squint hard enough. You can't use that name!", and then proceed to threaten with an expensive, baseless lawsuit (which the other, newly founded group can't afford to defend against) if the new group doesn't change it's name.
However much you argue that it's a bad thing, it proves that the problem is the law. It's how the law is written and applied with respect to trademarks. And the usage just needs to be somewhat close and be in a similar type of business, group, etc. Grumble all you want, until the law is changed this will continue, whether it's the Boy Scouts, Apple, McDonalds, etc.
It's still pretty much common sense. You want a fast CPU, so not the top of the line $1000 chip, take a step back or two and go for the one selling in the $300-$500 range. Motherboard for that chip from someone you trust - ASUS, Gigabyte, etc. Again never the $500 "gamer" board, take a step back, there are some really nice ones for $200 or so. Latest generation graphics card, or top end from last generation (assuming the prices have come down), plenty of memory on the card. Power supply that can feed the card what it needs and then some. Plenty of system RAM. SSD hard drive. Water/Air cooling system for your CPU type. And you're set! Shouldn't take a whole "day" to check those out. An hour or two would suffice.
I would agree with you except for one thing, new technology. It can take a few days to get up to speed on the newest technology. I built a new system this past winter and it had been three years since I built my old one. It took time to research SSDs (brands, price, reliability, best practice, etc) as it was fairly new tech at the time, CPU and socket types, triple-channel memory, Video cards, etc. On top of that, anyone concerned about best bang for their buck will shop around a bit and look for deals.
If you build systems for a living or stay on top of the latest tech, you can do it in a few hours. However, if you've been sitting on the sidelines for a while, it may take some time to shake off the rust and get up to speed on what's out there.
"I don't think that word means what you think it means".
Since when is protecting your trademarked name bullying? It's simply business. The law forces organizations to do this or they lose their right to their own name. Like the Boy Scouts or not, the problem here is the law.
Myst was truly one of the first games that most people could not solve without cheat books or walk throughs... And, yes, I realize that walk throughs were kicking around before Myst, but Myst was freaking hard to solve. At least, that's my opinion.
Up until just a few years ago you almost always got better gas mileage with a stick. Sticks are also superior at pulling trailers/dealing with heavy loads, though some of the newest automatics are contenders. Race performance wise sticks are faster off the line, but they can lose some advantage between shifts over an auto, all other things being equal they tend to top out at a higher speed.
Everything I mentioned was solid up until a few years ago. In just the past few years automatics have caught up to sticks in most categories, and are often more fuel efficient now, but all of this in the past few years. If your stick is about five or more years old (unless it's a Saturn with their shitty sticks) you've probably got a better vehicle than the equivalently spec automatic. If it's less than five years old, maybe.
I might actually buy automatic next time. For me and my history that's saying something, but being an owner of said Saturn and noticing newer automatics often have more speeds than the stick eaquivalent, and things like the Beetle getting better gas milage in auto regardless of town or highway I might just make the switch.
My new Jeep has an 8-speed ZF automatic transmission in it. It has an ECO mode, Drive mode, Sport mode, and includes manual paddle shifts. A large number of cars such as BMW and Audi are using the same transmission (Note: the one in the Jeep is licensed and manufactured by Chrysler whereas the one in BMW, etc. is manufactured by ZF). The new automatic transmissions provide better gas mileage, better power band management, and provides the option to shift manually using the paddle shifts.
With the new transmissions, the question changes to: Why are you still driving a manual?
Slashdot Mirror
My TRITTON AXPRO 5.1 uses a TOSlink connector, so it will continue to work. I've thought about upgrading to a wireless Mad Catz (who bought TRITTON), but the reviews indicate that the quality dropped drastically.
I also have the OEM PS3 Bluetooth. I had bought it to use with the PS3 Eye for video conferencing, but VC across the internet is still hit or miss. I used it with my cell phone for a while, but the battery life sucked and there was no noise cancellation, so I ended up getting a Plantronics. Since then it has been sitting on a shelf. I can't see wanting to use it with the PS4...
It is unbelievable that this article is taken seriously. The writer refers to the shift paddles as "flappy paddles behind the steering wheel". This tells me that the person writing the article knows nothing about cars and did very little research to reach their conclusions.
Actually, you just showed you know less about the automotive world than they do.
"Flappy paddle" has been the derogatory term Jeremy Clarkson and the other Top Gear presenters have used for years upon years, and it's now in widespread popular use. It referred to three things, early on: 1)Automatics with paddles that simply said to the transmission "shift up or down now", which usually happened eons after you pushed the paddle and the transmission still has all the inefficiencies of an automatic 2)Automated-manual transmissions which had horrendous "creeping" functionality, poor usability/interface (ie 3 point turns were mind-numbingly hard/slow/complex), and broke down a lot because of the complexity of actuators/sensors/etc. 3)Sequential transmissions that were brutal in terms of comfort (having been adopted from racing applications) and poor creeping functionality.
Nowadays the term is mostly used by automotive fans who hate anything that doesn't have a manual gearbox, even if it's a perfectly reliable 7 gear, double-clutch transmission that shifts so smoothly you can do so mid-corner and not upset the car's balance, and can shift so fast it has to wait for the engine to match revs...
Fine, so it's a made-up term from a TV show, and not a technical term... It doesn't mean squat about how much I do or don't know about cars. It just means that I haven't been hanging out in circles that use the term. The article, however, doesn't even pretend to perform a comparison against the Volt and the new Caddy but come to a conclusion that it is well over priced. It may well be, but where is the proof??
It is unbelievable that you don't know that the shift paddles are actually called "flappy paddles". Go watch some Top Gear before you complain about motor journalism.
Like top gear is serious motor journalism... I've watched a large number of Top Gear shows both the British and American versions and they have been nothing but entertainment TV. They are fun to watch, but there is very little actual content other than this car, that I can't afford, goes faster than that car, which I also can't afford...
They are not called flappy-paddles (i.e. not the technical term), this is just a cute term coined by Top Gear and is used by people who don't know better.
It is unbelievable that this article is taken seriously. The writer refers to the shift paddles as "flappy paddles behind the steering wheel". This tells me that the person writing the article knows nothing about cars and did very little research to reach their conclusions.
If the author had been willing to do some actual research, instead of generating a fluff piece, we would have a comparison of the features between what's included with the Volt and the Cadillac version. Perhaps there are a few more things under the hood than a re-badged Volt.
http://www.topspeed.com/cars/cadillac/2014-cadillac-elr-ar128653.html
It's a featureful app, but I hate having to dig through the UI to accomplish the most basic tasks.
How does Word fail the 80/20 rule when you admit that the problem isn't the tool or it's features but the fact that you refuse to learn how to actually use it? Get off your butt and take a MS Word class. If you can't afford it, there are Microsoft tutorial videos and youtube videos ...
I wouldn't take much stock in this. All it really reveals is what we already know, Google has had a lot of publicity around their self-driving cars and thus are more popular and would show up more in web conversations (which is where they got their data - MOBI).
Personally, I would trust car manufacturers much more than Google to deliver a self-driving car. Google is developing the technology but it's up to the car company to tweak and integrate it safely. This is no different than the other tech components created by various companies and integrated into our vehicles (i.e. Radio, GPS, Follow Cruise Control, Traction Control, heated seats, etc.). When we go to buy a car it will simply be listed in the specs. For example: Heated seats, Alpine Infotainment system, Quadra-Trac II traction control, Google Autonomous Drive, etc....
Apple car: Will be named "iDrive." The car will cost $300k and will look modern and sexy. Build quality will be excellent. No matter what destination you enter, you'll end up in Camden because it uses Apple maps.
The battery will be sealed in a black box and welded to the frame. You will either have to go to a specialist Apple shop to get it replaced or learn how to weld.
... is that most hand reliefs are likely of a woman's hand, it doesn't mean that they did the art work.
It's a bit of a leap to go from identifying what gender the hand belongs to and who actually did the cave paintings. I'm guessing that the assumption is that the hand relief is the artist's signature. But we have no way of knowing that this is true or not. It could be just another image denoting the artists history (i.e. got married today).
Whoever painted them, cave paintings are cool!!
No. The burned church full of people happened in the USA during the revolutionary war.
It didn't involve 'what's his fuck', the villain in 'the Patriot' who is also the hero in much English fiction.
I'll trust the Scots before I ever trust the English regarding Scottish history.
I'll trust a history book or even a documentary before I trust a movie to get facts right.
Really... who the hell watches a movie to get the unvarnished truth or history? Whoever you are, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you....
Interestingly enough, I haven't caused any accidents yet. Go figure....
Like to dance with the devil, do we?
Key operatives in your statement: "I" and "yet."
Nope, I'm just a good enough driver to keep my eye on the road at all times and use technology to my advantage instead of letting it distract me.
Isn't your rant the same thing that they said about radios, GPS devices, etc.... You forget that people eventually adapt and learn how to use new technology safely.
Not according to the NHTSA, who I'm more inclined to believe than some random Slashdotter.
From the article:
The NHTSA states that 80% of accidents and 16% of highway deaths are the result of distracted drivers
Did you miss the point in the Wiki that distracted driving can be anything from drinking, eating, checking on your kid in the rear view mirror, watching that cute girl on the side of the road, etc... (see the article you linked to). Are we now going to mandate that people can no longer drive their kids around, eat, drink, etc.? Not likely!!
If someone is a bad driver, they are going to be a bad driver no matter what they have in the car to distract them. The point of technology is to provide solutions that reduces this distraction to a minimum level. As an example, current technology allows you to text and read texts using voice through the car system. This will reduce the potential distraction of cell phones. Most cars also now have avoidance and lane change warning systems.
You forget that most people are selfish, irresponsible jerks with their heads nested firmly in their rectums.
I agree that there are a decent amount of jerks and idiots on the roads, but most people are responsible decent drivers. I drive a very busy interstate between home and work every day. If people were as bad as you think they are, there would be tons of accidents every day. As it is, there are very few in comparison to the amount of traffic.
OK, show of hands, how many of us want our cars to behave like smartphones?
Now, the second show of hands, how many of us think this is probably not what you want in the dash of your car?
Mine already behaves like a smartphone. The Uconnect system in my 2014 Jeep is upgradeable, has an 8.4" touchscreen, configures all of the car settings (i.e. whether to lock the doors when the car starts moving), can be remote started via an app on my mobile device, and supports the downloads of additional apps, has built-in 3g/4g, can act as a WiFi hot spot, etc.....Oh, and it reads text messages back to me and can use the voice recognition to send texts, so no typing.
Interestingly enough, I haven't caused any accidents yet. Go figure....
Isn't your rant the same thing that they said about radios, GPS devices, etc.... You forget that people eventually adapt and learn how to use new technology safely. In my opinion, we are obviously still on the learning curve when it comes to cell phones and texting, but as text-to-voice and voice recognition becomes better so does the safety factor.
Unless somebody has proof that somebody was trying to create a back door then stop with all of the "X-Files" shit.
Yes. Never try to think that anyone would be interested in compromising a very popular OS.
Um... Very popular OS? in 2003?
I guess it all depends on your point-of-view. LINUX wasn't all that popular in 2003, just a hobbyist OS.... It has become more popular since.
I live in the Boston area, Marlborough, and FiOS is still in business and selling FiOS. What they won't do is run new fiber to a building that doesn't already have it. They still advertise trying to get people to connect that do have the fiber already ran.
I have moved twice and have been able to purchase FiOS is both locations.
So, unless the commercial talks about running cable the argument doesn't make much since.
I think you know this, but Marlborough is not part of the City of Boston, which is what the article is about...
FIOS was rolled out to a number of communities in a patchwork fashion and they skipped the dense cities. For example, I live in Lowell and can't get FIOS but most of the communities around Lowell, such as Chelmsford, Tewksbury, ect., can.
I live near Lowell, MA and every community around Lowell has FIOS except Lowell. Boston is the same. Those that managed to get FIOS in Boston probably were only able to get it because they near another community where it was rolled out.
Verizon started rolling out FIOS in Massachusetts and did deploy it to a number of communities but then just stopped. I read somewhere that supposedly Verizon decided to switch their concentration away from land connections to rolling out better wireless because they see it as the future. Supposedly, and I have no proof of this other than innuendo, Verizon was using the FIOS roll out as a bargaining chip for spectrum space from Comcast. Whether this is true or not, Comcast did agree to sell spectrum space to Verizon.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57500149-94/what-$3.9-billion-verizon-cable-spectrum-deal-means-to-you-faq/
Chip and Pin, in use in Europe and Canada, is 1000x better than fingerprints for multiple reasons, not the least of which is personal privacy. There is NO way that I would trust any corporation with my fingerprints. It's bad enough that the credit card companies have my social security number.
Don't talk about how to play the game... this guy wasn't a player, he was a loser. He was setup from day one, by his own stupidity, to lose. If I was running a website like that, the very first thing I'd have done after getting ahead financially is separate out as much money as I could for future legal troubles, and hire accountants and lawyers so when the day came to save my sorry ass, all I'd have to do is just sit in jail and wait while Plan Bravo executed all on its own to spring me.
So, what you're saying is that Walter White did it right in Breaking Bad when he hired Saul with a rather large retainer.
So, this analyses text and emotional connotation of words to produce an emotional score for each story. Yet, it has no way of divining context, whether or not a particular section of the story is funny, or if a death causes an emotional reaction of sadness or satisfaction (i.e. the character was evil, deserved it, etc.). In other words, it's an arbitrary system that may work at a basic level but will still get a lot of things completely wrong... at least it's a start, I guess...
They only way you could intercept something like that is to accidentally hit it.
Yes, brilliant.
To bad we have never invented something that could bounce sound waves off of objects in or under the water so that we could find them even when we can't see them.
To bad we haven't invented a way to cloak objects from said bounced sound waves... oh, wait...
http://gizmodo.com/5729554/this-device-makes-objects-invisible-to-sonar
Pet Peeve
If you have a blind spot your mirrors are adjusted wrong. Every Drivers Education course teaches students to adjust the mirrors so that the driver can see the side of the car, but unless you're worried about a quarter-panel falling off and not noticing it you really don't need to see your own car. The mirrors should be adjusted outwards so that you need to move your head at least 6"/20 cm to the right or left before you see the side of the car. Once you've done that drive slowly past a parked car and you'll see that the car appears in your peripheral vision just before it goes out of view in the mirror.
Exactly. I put the small round mirrors on mine. I can tell at a glance if the lane is clear and if there is room for my entire car to move over without cutting anyone off. I originally got them for towing my boat so that I could see further back, but I find that they are invaluable as they completely eliminate my blind spot.
Can I pay them an extra $1000 and buy directly from amazon? Why get a dealer involved?
(Not that I'm interested in a Nissan Versa. But my point is the same. Car dealers are the scum of the Earth.)
There are laws that prohibit this. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/02/why-you-cant-buy-new-car-online
Until the law changes, Amazon, or anyone else for that matter, cannot directly sell cars online.
I too would love to be able to buy a car from Amazon. I had to buy a new car this year and it reminded my why I hate the process. The sales and manager guys were fine and kept it light while we played the negotiation game, but the finance guy was a tad slimey. He tried to get me into a higher interest rate than what I qualified for and acted like I was killing him when I didn't want the extended warranty.
Except that the BSA doesn't have a trademark on either the whole, or any distinct part of 'Hacker Scouts'. The BSA was in no danger of losing their trademark on 'Boy Scouts'.
The problem here is that people go, "That sounds kind of, vaguely, sort of similar if you squint hard enough. You can't use that name!", and then proceed to threaten with an expensive, baseless lawsuit (which the other, newly founded group can't afford to defend against) if the new group doesn't change it's name.
However much you argue that it's a bad thing, it proves that the problem is the law. It's how the law is written and applied with respect to trademarks. And the usage just needs to be somewhat close and be in a similar type of business, group, etc. Grumble all you want, until the law is changed this will continue, whether it's the Boy Scouts, Apple, McDonalds, etc.
It's still pretty much common sense. You want a fast CPU, so not the top of the line $1000 chip, take a step back or two and go for the one selling in the $300-$500 range. Motherboard for that chip from someone you trust - ASUS, Gigabyte, etc. Again never the $500 "gamer" board, take a step back, there are some really nice ones for $200 or so. Latest generation graphics card, or top end from last generation (assuming the prices have come down), plenty of memory on the card. Power supply that can feed the card what it needs and then some. Plenty of system RAM. SSD hard drive. Water/Air cooling system for your CPU type. And you're set! Shouldn't take a whole "day" to check those out. An hour or two would suffice.
I would agree with you except for one thing, new technology. It can take a few days to get up to speed on the newest technology. I built a new system this past winter and it had been three years since I built my old one. It took time to research SSDs (brands, price, reliability, best practice, etc) as it was fairly new tech at the time, CPU and socket types, triple-channel memory, Video cards, etc. On top of that, anyone concerned about best bang for their buck will shop around a bit and look for deals.
If you build systems for a living or stay on top of the latest tech, you can do it in a few hours. However, if you've been sitting on the sidelines for a while, it may take some time to shake off the rust and get up to speed on what's out there.
"I don't think that word means what you think it means".
Since when is protecting your trademarked name bullying? It's simply business. The law forces organizations to do this or they lose their right to their own name. Like the Boy Scouts or not, the problem here is the law.
Myst was truly one of the first games that most people could not solve without cheat books or walk throughs... And, yes, I realize that walk throughs were kicking around before Myst, but Myst was freaking hard to solve. At least, that's my opinion.
Up until just a few years ago you almost always got better gas mileage with a stick. Sticks are also superior at pulling trailers/dealing with heavy loads, though some of the newest automatics are contenders. Race performance wise sticks are faster off the line, but they can lose some advantage between shifts over an auto, all other things being equal they tend to top out at a higher speed.
Everything I mentioned was solid up until a few years ago. In just the past few years automatics have caught up to sticks in most categories, and are often more fuel efficient now, but all of this in the past few years. If your stick is about five or more years old (unless it's a Saturn with their shitty sticks) you've probably got a better vehicle than the equivalently spec automatic. If it's less than five years old, maybe.
I might actually buy automatic next time. For me and my history that's saying something, but being an owner of said Saturn and noticing newer automatics often have more speeds than the stick eaquivalent, and things like the Beetle getting better gas milage in auto regardless of town or highway I might just make the switch.
My new Jeep has an 8-speed ZF automatic transmission in it. It has an ECO mode, Drive mode, Sport mode, and includes manual paddle shifts. A large number of cars such as BMW and Audi are using the same transmission (Note: the one in the Jeep is licensed and manufactured by Chrysler whereas the one in BMW, etc. is manufactured by ZF). The new automatic transmissions provide better gas mileage, better power band management, and provides the option to shift manually using the paddle shifts.
With the new transmissions, the question changes to: Why are you still driving a manual?