Ford is liable for putting the wrong tires on SUVs and causing people to die. Ask Explorer owners (if you can talk to people that would buy one nowadays) how they would have reacted to such a license, and imagine how the courts would have reacted.
This example is problematic though as while it's pretty clear that the tires were bad, bad tires should not result in death. It's only when you combine a terrible, antiquated suspension, a lot of unsprung weight, and a really high center of gravity that bad tires equal death. It's not just the tires-- it's the entire design principle.
A well designed car with a low center of gravity (take my '89 BMW 325is for instance) is not going to be even remotely as dangerous as any type of SUV. You can put crappy tires on any car (as Ford also puts crappy tires on their other vehicles) and you'll probably survive a tire blowout, but such is not the case in SUVs, especially not in one as poorly designed as the Explorer.
http://www.sptimes.com/News/062401/Perspective/Exp lorer_safety.shtml
http://poseur.4x4.org
I received this movie some years ago as a birthday present. I've watched it about 7 times, most with friends. It's hilarious and definitely worth seeing.
I picked up a Toshiba Satellite 2805-S402 for about $2400. When I purachased my laptop, it was the only laptop available with a nVidia Geforce2 Go graphics chipset.
The machine is a Pentium 3 850MHz with 256 MB RAM (I added 128MB for $60 after perusing pricewatch.com), a 20GB hard drive, built in 10/100 ethernet card and modem, firewire, CD Burner/DVD Player, 15" display, etc.
Now you can buy the 1GHz version for $2400 or the 900MHz version for $2000 (much better value).
A Geforce2 Go is a must if you use any OpenGL CAD type software or play games. The lack of any decent 3D accelerators had kept me away from laptops until I bought this one.
I just became the owner of a Toshiba 2805-S402 with a GeForce2 Go (16MB)...
It's a 850MHz PIII with a 15" LCD...
Firewire, integrated ethernet, integrated modem, integrated smartmedia reader, integrated 8x DVD/4x CDR/RW burner, two free PCMCIA slots, etc.
Came with 128MB ram, add another 128 for ~$50 after a quick search on PriceWatch.com...
This laptop cost me ~ $2500 (retails for $2599) and probably offers better gaming performance than any currently available laptop.
The Geforce2 Go performance is more or less like a under clocked (143MHz) Geforce2 MX. It plays Q3, Black and White, etc. very well.
Sometime around the end of this month Dell will also have a laptop (Inspiron 8000) with a Geforce2 Go priced roughly at $2650 for the base model.
I recommend going with one of these two laptops if you're going for compact gaming.
My only gripe about this laptop, and all other laptops, is that laptop hard drive performance is nowhere near as good as a cheap 7,200 RPM Desktop harddrive...
Well, I wouldn't say you'd have all the benefits of a typical desktop/tower PC...
Expandability and performance (faster hard drives, memory, video cards, etc.) will be lost mainly due to size and power limitations...
Currently I feel that the best way to go is to have a really fast desktop and a decent laptop (i.e. not a desktop replacement), because you can have a fast desktop and a decent laptop for the price of a fast desktop replacement laptop.
I wouldn't mind seeing laptop market saturation either. =)
My friend held up the box as we drove by a decently large line at Target. =)
I'm not sure if they were happy about it.
My Playstation 2 buying experience was pretty good-- I had a reserve at Toys R Us and was basically able to walk in at 7:00AM (on the 26th), as the only customer in the store, and pick up my PS2, 2 games and a SVideo cable with no lines or waiting. It is good. I feel silly for having opened the box. On one hand I feel like I should've turned around and sold it. On the other I feel like I'm probably going to enjoy it a lot.
I own a Kershaw T1 - Hawk (model 1435 - uses ATS 34 metal/alloy) and I must say it's much nicer than any of the other knives I own (of which, I have about 20 good lock-blade folding knives) and I highly recommend it. A rather large knife shop in Jack London Square (Oakland CA) informed me that this was the best lock blade knife in their shop when taking into account, size, form factor, weight, how well the blade holds an edge, etc. Remarkably, at $130 there were many other more expensive lock blade knives by various other companies I had never heard of.
I highly recommend this knife to anyone who is willing to spend a little bit more on a knife to get a great knife.
It's a fairly simple knife (there aren't any gems or exotic materials used in this knife other) with a titanium handle with cutouts to make it lighter, an ATS 34 blade, and a build in/removeable clip. You can open and close the knife with one hand (it opens rather quickly and smoothely).
In general, Kershaw makes some damned fine knives.
The Kodak DC280 is likewise a great camera. It is fairly similar to the DC290, but lacks some of the multimedia and adjustment features and is much smaller. The most notable difference, aside from size, is the zoom capability-- the DC290 has a 3x optical and 2x digital zoom whereas the DC280 has a 2x optical and 3x digital zoom. A few months ago I payed approximately $600 for my DC280, which may seem like a lot of money until you consider that I've already taken over 1,100 photos with the camera-- all together I have not taken that many photos with my father's Canon AE1 as the added cost and wait time associated with using film is preventative to me.
The ability to transfer several pictures to my computer in a matter of seconds is very appealing to me. My personal preference is to look at photos on my monitor and be able to send them to my friends with ease. I don't have to wait for the film to develop and then to scan each photo in individually.
The DC280 and DC290 create really nice pictures-- the quality is quite acceptable for most people who want to take a few snaps of their friends, family, pets, and even of things you wouldn't normally take pictures of as it could be a waste of film, but not completely unworthy of a photo.
It allows you the freedom to take way too many pictures.
Now, a word on digital camera media: Compact flash is my favorite as it seems to be the cheapest and is available in a wide range from very small to 340MB (with actual compact flash memory you can go up to 256MB currently-- the 340MB is available from IBM as a very small compact flash hard disk... very cool). Plus, I can put the compact flash card into a PCMCIA converter into a laptop or into the compact flash slot on my PDA to view the pictures (not even practicle on a Nec MobilePro 800 at 800x600... maybe a laptop with 1280x1024). Smart memory is very low on my list here as I think it's too flimsy, slightly more expensive, proprietary, and is not available in anything above 64 MB (as a matter of fact, I don't even know if it goes that high... I'll give it the benefit of the doubt). Memory sticks are available in up to 64MB (so far as I know) and they're made by Sony (and only by Sony)... enough said.
I would love to see these games ported to Linux and would even consider buying them even if I owned a Win32 version: Ultima Online SE (Yeah, they have a port... but rarely updated and bad sound support... with more bugs than even the Win32 version) and upcoming Ultima Online 2 Need for Speed 4 (and force feedback steering wheel drivers are necessary) Theif 2 Baldur's Gate 2 (and 1) Final Fantasy 8 and 7 (oh hell, all of the Final Fantasy's would be nice... most fall under NES emulation, but emulation doesn't count, right?) Ultima 9 (if they could actually fix the wretched performance issues (without telling us to scrap a GeForce for a 3DFX card)) Diablo 2 It's worth mentioning that I bought the Win32 version of Quake 3 and will also purchase the Linux version, even though I know they will make the executables available in the near future simply because I want to contribute to the Linux gaming cause.
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Ford is liable for putting the wrong tires on SUVs and causing people to die. Ask Explorer owners (if you can talk to people that would buy one nowadays) how they would have reacted to such a license, and imagine how the courts would have reacted. This example is problematic though as while it's pretty clear that the tires were bad, bad tires should not result in death. It's only when you combine a terrible, antiquated suspension, a lot of unsprung weight, and a really high center of gravity that bad tires equal death. It's not just the tires-- it's the entire design principle. A well designed car with a low center of gravity (take my '89 BMW 325is for instance) is not going to be even remotely as dangerous as any type of SUV. You can put crappy tires on any car (as Ford also puts crappy tires on their other vehicles) and you'll probably survive a tire blowout, but such is not the case in SUVs, especially not in one as poorly designed as the Explorer. http://www.sptimes.com/News/062401/Perspective/Exp lorer_safety.shtml
http://poseur.4x4.org
Cane Toads-Unnatural History
1 08 597&loc=14577
http://www.us.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=40
I received this movie some years ago as a birthday present. I've watched it about 7 times, most with friends. It's hilarious and definitely worth seeing.
I picked up a Toshiba Satellite 2805-S402 for about $2400. When I purachased my laptop, it was the only laptop available with a nVidia Geforce2 Go graphics chipset. The machine is a Pentium 3 850MHz with 256 MB RAM (I added 128MB for $60 after perusing pricewatch.com), a 20GB hard drive, built in 10/100 ethernet card and modem, firewire, CD Burner/DVD Player, 15" display, etc. Now you can buy the 1GHz version for $2400 or the 900MHz version for $2000 (much better value). A Geforce2 Go is a must if you use any OpenGL CAD type software or play games. The lack of any decent 3D accelerators had kept me away from laptops until I bought this one.
Yes, it does...
I just became the owner of a Toshiba 2805-S402 with a GeForce2 Go (16MB)...
It's a 850MHz PIII with a 15" LCD...
Firewire, integrated ethernet, integrated modem, integrated smartmedia reader, integrated 8x DVD/4x CDR/RW burner, two free PCMCIA slots, etc.
Came with 128MB ram, add another 128 for ~$50 after a quick search on PriceWatch.com...
This laptop cost me ~ $2500 (retails for $2599) and probably offers better gaming performance than any currently available laptop.
The Geforce2 Go performance is more or less like a under clocked (143MHz) Geforce2 MX. It plays Q3, Black and White, etc. very well.
Sometime around the end of this month Dell will also have a laptop (Inspiron 8000) with a Geforce2 Go priced roughly at $2650 for the base model.
I recommend going with one of these two laptops if you're going for compact gaming.
My only gripe about this laptop, and all other laptops, is that laptop hard drive performance is nowhere near as good as a cheap 7,200 RPM Desktop harddrive...
Well, I wouldn't say you'd have all the benefits of a typical desktop/tower PC...
Expandability and performance (faster hard drives, memory, video cards, etc.) will be lost mainly due to size and power limitations...
Currently I feel that the best way to go is to have a really fast desktop and a decent laptop (i.e. not a desktop replacement), because you can have a fast desktop and a decent laptop for the price of a fast desktop replacement laptop.
I wouldn't mind seeing laptop market saturation either. =)
My friend held up the box as we drove by a decently large line at Target. =)
I'm not sure if they were happy about it.
My Playstation 2 buying experience was pretty good-- I had a reserve at Toys R Us and was basically able to walk in at 7:00AM (on the 26th), as the only customer in the store, and pick up my PS2, 2 games and a SVideo cable with no lines or waiting. It is good. I feel silly for having opened the box. On one hand I feel like I should've turned around and sold it. On the other I feel like I'm probably going to enjoy it a lot.
I'd rephrase that to "Without Ford, who would buy cheap-defective tires that aid in the death of SUV drivers?"
I own a Kershaw T1 - Hawk (model 1435 - uses ATS 34 metal/alloy) and I must say it's much nicer than any of the other knives I own (of which, I have about 20 good lock-blade folding knives) and I highly recommend it. A rather large knife shop in Jack London Square (Oakland CA) informed me that this was the best lock blade knife in their shop when taking into account, size, form factor, weight, how well the blade holds an edge, etc. Remarkably, at $130 there were many other more expensive lock blade knives by various other companies I had never heard of.
I highly recommend this knife to anyone who is willing to spend a little bit more on a knife to get a great knife.
It's a fairly simple knife (there aren't any gems or exotic materials used in this knife other) with a titanium handle with cutouts to make it lighter, an ATS 34 blade, and a build in/removeable clip. You can open and close the knife with one hand (it opens rather quickly and smoothely).
In general, Kershaw makes some damned fine knives.
The Kodak DC280 is likewise a great camera. It is fairly similar to the DC290, but lacks some of the multimedia and adjustment features and is much smaller. The most notable difference, aside from size, is the zoom capability-- the DC290 has a 3x optical and 2x digital zoom whereas the DC280 has a 2x optical and 3x digital zoom.
A few months ago I payed approximately $600 for my DC280, which may seem like a lot of money until you consider that I've already taken over 1,100 photos with the camera-- all together I have not taken that many photos with my father's Canon AE1 as the added cost and wait time associated with using film is preventative to me.
The ability to transfer several pictures to my computer in a matter of seconds is very appealing to me. My personal preference is to look at photos on my monitor and be able to send them to my friends with ease. I don't have to wait for the film to develop and then to scan each photo in individually.
The DC280 and DC290 create really nice pictures-- the quality is quite acceptable for most people who want to take a few snaps of their friends, family, pets, and even of things you wouldn't normally take pictures of as it could be a waste of film, but not completely unworthy of a photo.
It allows you the freedom to take way too many pictures.
Now, a word on digital camera media:
Compact flash is my favorite as it seems to be the cheapest and is available in a wide range from very small to 340MB (with actual compact flash memory you can go up to 256MB currently-- the 340MB is available from IBM as a very small compact flash hard disk... very cool). Plus, I can put the compact flash card into a PCMCIA converter into a laptop or into the compact flash slot on my PDA to view the pictures (not even practicle on a Nec MobilePro 800 at 800x600... maybe a laptop with 1280x1024).
Smart memory is very low on my list here as I think it's too flimsy, slightly more expensive, proprietary, and is not available in anything above 64 MB (as a matter of fact, I don't even know if it goes that high... I'll give it the benefit of the doubt).
Memory sticks are available in up to 64MB (so far as I know) and they're made by Sony (and only by Sony)... enough said.
I would love to see these games ported to Linux and would even consider buying them even if I owned a Win32 version: Ultima Online SE (Yeah, they have a port... but rarely updated and bad sound support... with more bugs than even the Win32 version) and upcoming Ultima Online 2 Need for Speed 4 (and force feedback steering wheel drivers are necessary) Theif 2 Baldur's Gate 2 (and 1) Final Fantasy 8 and 7 (oh hell, all of the Final Fantasy's would be nice... most fall under NES emulation, but emulation doesn't count, right?) Ultima 9 (if they could actually fix the wretched performance issues (without telling us to scrap a GeForce for a 3DFX card)) Diablo 2 It's worth mentioning that I bought the Win32 version of Quake 3 and will also purchase the Linux version, even though I know they will make the executables available in the near future simply because I want to contribute to the Linux gaming cause.