It isn't theory, my friend. Mac, Linux, Unix, Solaris - ALL computers are quite happy to store files, whether they be mail, binary files, source files, or whatever. As a malicious act, I can download every worm, virus, trojan or whatever else I might imagine, and store them on a *nix server, in places where Windows users can find them. I can change the names of those files to "betty_gets_nekkid" or whatever I wish, to invite attention to them. There is no theory behind the idea that any system can harbor malware.
In theory, that malware isn't going to harm the Mac, or the *nix box. But, in reality, it is possible for that malware to damage any of them, if given the proper permissions. A buddy recently managed to make his Mac barf while running a virtual machine. I only heard the details second hand, but it involved overly generous permissions, and intentional download of a "hacked" executable. The result was two days of work to fix the damage on the host Mac machine.
Gates deserves some credit - but I think you give him to much credit, by two factors. Dos 3.2, to me, means TRS-DOS, NOT MS-DOS. Tandy Radio Shack made the first 6 computers that I ever touched. Commodore and Atari were next, although I never learned to love them like so many others did. My FIRST experience with MS, was when I stumbled over MS-DOS 5 and installed it on the TRS 1000, only to find that the memory enhancements couldn't be made to work on an 8088 chip. I had already been exposed to computers for at least 12 years, before I found it necessary to purchase a (used) 386 machine so that I could properly explore MS-Dos potential, then soon moved up to a 486 machine.
And, already, Microsoft was working hard to put other companies out of business.
An entire generation of potential innovation was squashed because Bill Gates couldn't tolerate the idea that companies such as Digital Research might discover "the next big idea". Some of the other companies went out of business anyway, for various reasons, including mismanagement and marketing failures. God only knows what any one of those may have offered the world, if they had been competent business people. Which only makes it more reprehensible that Gates actively went after those companies with competent management.
Bill Gates is a pig, and his head should have been put on a pig pole around 1990 to serve as an example to other megalomaniacs.
Microsoft created almost nothing, on their own. They did not create Windows, they did not create 32 bit computing, they did not create 32 bit disk access, they created squat. Almost all of it was bought, stolen, or copied from open source.
The one thing Gates deserves credit for, was making the personal computer popular with the non-geek, and maybe for helping to bring the cost of personal computers into reach of the common man.
Gates wasn't a pioneer in any of the areas you point to - there were beautiful office suites available before Gates hit it big. MSN? You truly don't recall similar efforts BEFORE Gates got on the bandwagon? Phhht. Gates sucks, and Microsoft will always suck due to his influence.
How soon we forget? No, I'll not forget. There are a lot of other people who won't forget, either.
You're thinking of DCC. Fire up your IRC client. Transfer files directly from one computer to the other. I can't think of any reason a stream can't be sent over that connection - to Linux, EVERYTHING is a file. Just set up your mixer to stream to the correct file, and it should work beautifully. I've no idea how many computers can be DCC'd to at the same time - One? a hundred?
My question, though, is why? I have almost all the music I want to listen to on my hard drives. I can set up a play list, or just play the entire collection randomly, so why do I want to do internet radio? Especially with my slow DSL connection.
Oh, wait. I forgot. People with fast connections want that streaming just because they can, right?
Don't sweat it dude. You won't be here in a few hundred years. In fact, I just checked with the Ouija board. You only have 24 years, 10 months, and 3 days left. So, don't sweat the petty shit, you weenie. (Yeah, the Ouija board told me that you're a weenie, too - odd, you DON'T live in your mother's basement? Ahhhh, I see now.........)
Well, Fantastic Chump, allow me to explain a simple little thing for you. Among the media, there ARE NO 'good' guys. The best of them are whoring themselves out, and/or have a secret agenda.
I happen to like the Wikileaks site. They may be the best example today of impartial reporting. But, even those people are attention whores with an agenda.
It doesn't matter that I happen to agree with this reporter, or that reporter - or even that I agree with this media outlet, or that. They are all whores, trying to sway your opinion into line with THEIR views.
Fuck 'em all. And, while we're at it, fuck all the chumps who swallow all the bullshit thrown at them.
"Have any of you seen drops in IE usage share for Web-sites you administer?"
IE users never manage to load my site, for some reason. Of course, no one would be stupid enough to actually BREAK their own site for IE users, would they? That little script that redirects any browser identifying itself as IE to my "YOU'RE AN IDIOT! GET A REAL BROWSER STOOPID!" page wouldn't influence anyone, would it? It certainly wouldn't bias my statistics!
So, my figures are at least as fair, balanced, and unbiased as Fox News.
IE usage has been below 1% for a long, long, long time.
Heh. That's funny. The U.S. and Australia are going to start sending thieves back to ENGLAND! The little bastards you sent to us are running RIAA and similar organizations today. We don't want them!!
"People who cannot afford a couple of hundred dollars for a computer, or don't already own one, are not a typical case."
That is rather amusing. Or, maybe not. There are millions of Americans who scrabble for the money to feed themselves every day. And, with the current economy, those numbers are increasing. It hardly matters where you live, if you look around you, you can and will find huge numbers of people who can't afford a couple hundred dollars for a computer.
Now, look at the immigrant population. And, look outside the United States. For every person who CAN afford a couple hundred dollars for a computer, there are probably a thousand who cannot.
[sarcasm]I see your point. Almost everyone is a fucking gay wannabe, so when someone comes along and REALLY plays the game, he's just an asshole.[/sarcasm]
I play war games. I play to kill. Some sissy crybaby comes to my game world, I'm going to rape him/her for whatever they have of value. If they want to hang out with a bunch of pansies, and talk about how great they are in bed, they can do it elsewhere. Give them a link for some pastel wallpaper for their gayspace page, and get them out of the game.
Everyone gets windows for "free". Sorry, that is wrong on two levels.
First, I mentioned that many of my coworkers are immigrants, and that some of those are almost certainly illegal. These people don't make a lot of money, nor do they have easy routes to establishing credit. A number of these people buy (or steal) or accept ancient machines, and broken machines, as donations or hand me downs.
It is positively amazing, the array of hardware that they have to work with. Given time and motivation, I could build a number of superb machines from what this community of people can show me. However, they DO NOT own ready-made, licensed, working machines. IF one of them goes out to purchase a legal CD to "upgrade" a machine, it's going to be used repeatedly to install on those machines. And, some of them are going to be worried about the legal problems. (remember, they aren't ALL illegals, only some)
I offer them a dozen different CD's and DVD's, mostly of the LiveCD variety, to introduce them to Linux. Some switch. Some don't. But, more switch this year, than switched 5 years ago.
Besides which, there is no such thing as a "free" Windows, unless you pirate it. There are many of us who are willing to purchase their machine in bits and pieces, exercising our right to avoid the MS tax. "Free" would mean that Dell, Compaq, and the rest sold Windows machines at the same price that I can buy a comparable (key word, comparable) No-OS or Linux machine. That doesn't happen, nor will it happen any time soon. The fact is, I can almost always build a No-OS machine that is superior to the OEM's offerings for the same, or a lesser cash outlay.
"But if you can do it, the cost could be 10 times less"
Apparently educated people make these statements. Emphasize the word "apparently". This is political talk, not science talk.
Had he stated, "We can build these sheets at one tenth the cost of current solar panels" then his statement would have meaning. Then, we could investigate the accuracy of his statement. But, the statement has no meaning, so we can never establish accuracy.
Phhhht.
Get a clue people. I hate grammar nazis, but there comes a point where blabbering idiots fail to communicate their idea because they don't comprehend the most basic rules of language - or math.
I simply don't understand your thinking. I've not yet heard of Wikileaks installing malware on computers, or harvesting personal data for whatever nefarious reasons. But, you compare them to such people.
Wikileaks is just about the ultimate whistleblower. Perhaps you believe that fraud is a protected activity of elected officials? As well as people appointed by those elected officials? How about large corporations? Government itself, whether elected or not?
The fine people at Wikileaks may be chasing wild geese from time to time, and putting out info that really doesn't do a lot of good, but overall, they seem to be pretty accurate.
Please, point to information that they have leaked which does real harm to society. Please, explain how the Wikileak people are preying on me, or on you. Have you spent any time exploring the material they deal with? Does NONE of it qualify as "good info", in your eyes?
As for Jimmy Wale's personal data - I guess if you can find it, you can publish it. If a man in his position is dumb enough to have published his SSN, driver's license, and other information then he can suffer the consequences. Have fun with that, though.
IMHO, Wales and company are doing the world a service. It is good to get information out, in most cases. Those who are most embarrassed by leaked information are usually doing something wrong. Not always, but usually.
Show us some real harm done by Wikileaks, and my opinion my change.
Among other reasons - I don't have to pay Linux a couple hundred dollars for a license every time I set up a new machine. No validation checks, no asking special permissions codes to unlock a machine because I've reinstalled to many times, or the hardware has changed to a greater degree than allowed.
I believe that in the current economic climate, more and more people will be leaving microsoft behind.
I've had some success proseletyzing at work. I work with a number of Mexican and South American immigrants (some of them illegal, I'm sure). None of them are willing to pay the many fees associated with running windows. All of them love the idea of running a legal operating system, for FREE.
As nearly as I can see, we are in agreement. Those people who actually want Apple to assure them that they have a secure machine have the choice of allowing Apple to administer their little boxes.
However - Apple has no right to deny people like you and I choice of unlocking. To be perfectly honest, I'd probably wreck the thing repeatedly, til I figured it out. But, being just as honest, I wouldn't be asking Apple to fix the thing for me - when I break it, I fix it.
Given a few rounds with the worst things that can happen with an unlocked gizmo, I would know which parts of Apple's security I really need and/or want, then everyone would be happy. But, the whole point of the article is, Apple will not permit people to use their phones as they see fit, so someone had to hack it. That is a real shame. At most, Apple should say, "If you unlock the thing, we won't support it - warranty will be void."
I get all the AC's confused - but this one has a brain. When I buy something it is MINE, and the guy who sold it has no say in how I might use it. Simple as that.
Do you own an iPhone? Is it jailbroken? If your answers are yes, and no, in that order, you probably belong to some lower order of life than primate. Just climb back down the food chain to where you belong.
What, you think slashdot is a luser's club? RTFM, RTFA, Winbloze users don't do that kind of thing. You gotta hold their hands, and explain it to them in kindergarten terms.
KINDERDOT!! Let's get the name of this place changed to reflect it's real purpose: educating those who can't read!
Well - I would. I would be more than happy to do so. But, one divorce, a remarriage, plus 20 years - I'm not sure who is alive that might be able to get that information. I'm not exactly on speaking terms with the ex-wife, if you know what I mean.
Errr - realize that a number of people migrate to Linux because they believe Linux to be more secure than Windows. Such people are more likely to do some studying, and follow best practices as they learn them. I'll even go so far as to say that people migrating to Linux tend to be more security minded when they need or want to use a Windows machine.
In the end, I'll trust an inexperienced Linux user just a little bit further than I'll trust that "average" Windows user. At least our inexperienced Linux user has the psychological ability to say "I screwed things up, didn't I?" rather than saying "This computer SUCKS - it won't do what I want it to do!"
As for dancing nekkid women - they beat my door down to dance for me. There isn't time to follow links to look at more.;)
MSDN? Noted. The author of that article has a vested interest in an operating system prone to such exploits. He makes use of chmod in Linux to make a point - but he fails to note that the Linux user is somewhat less likely to a: have admin rights or to b: grant admin rights to a program if he has them.
Dancing bunnies indeed. When I look at bunnies, I see food. (actually, they are catfood or dogfood more often than they find their way onto my table) I don't have any desire to see food dance.
There is no need for you to believe, or to disbelieve anything you read on slashdot. Since I don't come with any kind of credentials, you may believe that everything I've ever posted was bullshit. Feel free.
But, you miss a great deal, with your answer. I don't claim that the Impalas remained "high performance" vehicles. They lost in performance. In the late '70's and the early '80's people were only beginning to understand that they might need to conserve fuel, but they were very unwilling to sacrifice performance to do so. Witness the rise of the SUV over such machines as the Volkswagens. Oh - wait, did I say Volkswagen? Didn't we outlaw them, because they failed to meet some arbitrary emissions standard, while we continued to drive the wasteful Impalas, and cars like them?
The methods the old man used to get that kind of fuel mileage worked, I witnessed it. Detroit percieved it as a threat, so they paid him for the patent, to avoid being confronted with their own vehicles running twice as far (or more) on a tank of gasoline.
This sort of thing is widely accepted as one of those urban legends, but I happened to marry the man's grand-niece in time to have met him, and seen some of his work. Urban legend or not, there is truth to at least some of the stories.
I watched the man work on one car. Among other things, he threw away the jets, redrilled the ports, tapped them, and replaced the jets with his own. That particular vehicle was less than a total success - after he worked on it, the car only got about 26 mpg. But, that was a huge improvement over 13 or 14!!
The old guy is dead now. At the time, I understood little of what he was doing, and that was just the way he wanted it. He wasn't about to allow a machinist to go through his shop.
Two decades later, I wish that I HAD understood what he was doing. There aren't any cars that large getting the kind of mileage that he was able to get. While a lot of vehicles get 30+ today, most of them weigh little more than half what the Impalas weighed, and they are using entirely different methods. (Computerization and fuel injection, of course.)
Slashdot Mirror
It isn't theory, my friend. Mac, Linux, Unix, Solaris - ALL computers are quite happy to store files, whether they be mail, binary files, source files, or whatever. As a malicious act, I can download every worm, virus, trojan or whatever else I might imagine, and store them on a *nix server, in places where Windows users can find them. I can change the names of those files to "betty_gets_nekkid" or whatever I wish, to invite attention to them. There is no theory behind the idea that any system can harbor malware.
In theory, that malware isn't going to harm the Mac, or the *nix box. But, in reality, it is possible for that malware to damage any of them, if given the proper permissions. A buddy recently managed to make his Mac barf while running a virtual machine. I only heard the details second hand, but it involved overly generous permissions, and intentional download of a "hacked" executable. The result was two days of work to fix the damage on the host Mac machine.
Gates deserves some credit - but I think you give him to much credit, by two factors. Dos 3.2, to me, means TRS-DOS, NOT MS-DOS. Tandy Radio Shack made the first 6 computers that I ever touched. Commodore and Atari were next, although I never learned to love them like so many others did. My FIRST experience with MS, was when I stumbled over MS-DOS 5 and installed it on the TRS 1000, only to find that the memory enhancements couldn't be made to work on an 8088 chip. I had already been exposed to computers for at least 12 years, before I found it necessary to purchase a (used) 386 machine so that I could properly explore MS-Dos potential, then soon moved up to a 486 machine.
And, already, Microsoft was working hard to put other companies out of business.
An entire generation of potential innovation was squashed because Bill Gates couldn't tolerate the idea that companies such as Digital Research might discover "the next big idea". Some of the other companies went out of business anyway, for various reasons, including mismanagement and marketing failures. God only knows what any one of those may have offered the world, if they had been competent business people. Which only makes it more reprehensible that Gates actively went after those companies with competent management.
Bill Gates is a pig, and his head should have been put on a pig pole around 1990 to serve as an example to other megalomaniacs.
Microsoft created almost nothing, on their own. They did not create Windows, they did not create 32 bit computing, they did not create 32 bit disk access, they created squat. Almost all of it was bought, stolen, or copied from open source.
The one thing Gates deserves credit for, was making the personal computer popular with the non-geek, and maybe for helping to bring the cost of personal computers into reach of the common man.
Gates wasn't a pioneer in any of the areas you point to - there were beautiful office suites available before Gates hit it big. MSN? You truly don't recall similar efforts BEFORE Gates got on the bandwagon? Phhht. Gates sucks, and Microsoft will always suck due to his influence.
How soon we forget? No, I'll not forget. There are a lot of other people who won't forget, either.
You're thinking of DCC. Fire up your IRC client. Transfer files directly from one computer to the other. I can't think of any reason a stream can't be sent over that connection - to Linux, EVERYTHING is a file. Just set up your mixer to stream to the correct file, and it should work beautifully. I've no idea how many computers can be DCC'd to at the same time - One? a hundred?
My question, though, is why? I have almost all the music I want to listen to on my hard drives. I can set up a play list, or just play the entire collection randomly, so why do I want to do internet radio? Especially with my slow DSL connection.
Oh, wait. I forgot. People with fast connections want that streaming just because they can, right?
Don't sweat it dude. You won't be here in a few hundred years. In fact, I just checked with the Ouija board. You only have 24 years, 10 months, and 3 days left. So, don't sweat the petty shit, you weenie. (Yeah, the Ouija board told me that you're a weenie, too - odd, you DON'T live in your mother's basement? Ahhhh, I see now.........)
Well, Fantastic Chump, allow me to explain a simple little thing for you. Among the media, there ARE NO 'good' guys. The best of them are whoring themselves out, and/or have a secret agenda.
I happen to like the Wikileaks site. They may be the best example today of impartial reporting. But, even those people are attention whores with an agenda.
It doesn't matter that I happen to agree with this reporter, or that reporter - or even that I agree with this media outlet, or that. They are all whores, trying to sway your opinion into line with THEIR views.
Fuck 'em all. And, while we're at it, fuck all the chumps who swallow all the bullshit thrown at them.
When they do, will you post it on slashdot where I'm likely to see it? Hopefully before I die of old age.....
"Have any of you seen drops in IE usage share for Web-sites you administer?"
IE users never manage to load my site, for some reason. Of course, no one would be stupid enough to actually BREAK their own site for IE users, would they? That little script that redirects any browser identifying itself as IE to my "YOU'RE AN IDIOT! GET A REAL BROWSER STOOPID!" page wouldn't influence anyone, would it? It certainly wouldn't bias my statistics!
So, my figures are at least as fair, balanced, and unbiased as Fox News.
IE usage has been below 1% for a long, long, long time.
Gave you a free fucking media player. Don't like it? Don't use it. And, don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.
Heh. That's funny. The U.S. and Australia are going to start sending thieves back to ENGLAND! The little bastards you sent to us are running RIAA and similar organizations today. We don't want them!!
Ahhh. All irrelevant. In effect, anyone who doesn't agree with your position is irrelevant. Thank you, Doctor Freud.
"People who cannot afford a couple of hundred dollars for a computer, or don't already own one, are not a typical case."
That is rather amusing. Or, maybe not. There are millions of Americans who scrabble for the money to feed themselves every day. And, with the current economy, those numbers are increasing. It hardly matters where you live, if you look around you, you can and will find huge numbers of people who can't afford a couple hundred dollars for a computer.
Now, look at the immigrant population. And, look outside the United States. For every person who CAN afford a couple hundred dollars for a computer, there are probably a thousand who cannot.
[sarcasm]I see your point. Almost everyone is a fucking gay wannabe, so when someone comes along and REALLY plays the game, he's just an asshole.[/sarcasm]
I play war games. I play to kill. Some sissy crybaby comes to my game world, I'm going to rape him/her for whatever they have of value. If they want to hang out with a bunch of pansies, and talk about how great they are in bed, they can do it elsewhere. Give them a link for some pastel wallpaper for their gayspace page, and get them out of the game.
Everyone gets windows for "free". Sorry, that is wrong on two levels.
First, I mentioned that many of my coworkers are immigrants, and that some of those are almost certainly illegal. These people don't make a lot of money, nor do they have easy routes to establishing credit. A number of these people buy (or steal) or accept ancient machines, and broken machines, as donations or hand me downs.
It is positively amazing, the array of hardware that they have to work with. Given time and motivation, I could build a number of superb machines from what this community of people can show me. However, they DO NOT own ready-made, licensed, working machines. IF one of them goes out to purchase a legal CD to "upgrade" a machine, it's going to be used repeatedly to install on those machines. And, some of them are going to be worried about the legal problems. (remember, they aren't ALL illegals, only some)
I offer them a dozen different CD's and DVD's, mostly of the LiveCD variety, to introduce them to Linux. Some switch. Some don't. But, more switch this year, than switched 5 years ago.
Besides which, there is no such thing as a "free" Windows, unless you pirate it. There are many of us who are willing to purchase their machine in bits and pieces, exercising our right to avoid the MS tax. "Free" would mean that Dell, Compaq, and the rest sold Windows machines at the same price that I can buy a comparable (key word, comparable) No-OS or Linux machine. That doesn't happen, nor will it happen any time soon. The fact is, I can almost always build a No-OS machine that is superior to the OEM's offerings for the same, or a lesser cash outlay.
"But if you can do it, the cost could be 10 times less"
Apparently educated people make these statements. Emphasize the word "apparently". This is political talk, not science talk.
Had he stated, "We can build these sheets at one tenth the cost of current solar panels" then his statement would have meaning. Then, we could investigate the accuracy of his statement. But, the statement has no meaning, so we can never establish accuracy.
Phhhht.
Get a clue people. I hate grammar nazis, but there comes a point where blabbering idiots fail to communicate their idea because they don't comprehend the most basic rules of language - or math.
I simply don't understand your thinking. I've not yet heard of Wikileaks installing malware on computers, or harvesting personal data for whatever nefarious reasons. But, you compare them to such people.
Wikileaks is just about the ultimate whistleblower. Perhaps you believe that fraud is a protected activity of elected officials? As well as people appointed by those elected officials? How about large corporations? Government itself, whether elected or not?
The fine people at Wikileaks may be chasing wild geese from time to time, and putting out info that really doesn't do a lot of good, but overall, they seem to be pretty accurate.
Please, point to information that they have leaked which does real harm to society. Please, explain how the Wikileak people are preying on me, or on you. Have you spent any time exploring the material they deal with? Does NONE of it qualify as "good info", in your eyes?
As for Jimmy Wale's personal data - I guess if you can find it, you can publish it. If a man in his position is dumb enough to have published his SSN, driver's license, and other information then he can suffer the consequences. Have fun with that, though.
IMHO, Wales and company are doing the world a service. It is good to get information out, in most cases. Those who are most embarrassed by leaked information are usually doing something wrong. Not always, but usually.
Show us some real harm done by Wikileaks, and my opinion my change.
Among other reasons - I don't have to pay Linux a couple hundred dollars for a license every time I set up a new machine. No validation checks, no asking special permissions codes to unlock a machine because I've reinstalled to many times, or the hardware has changed to a greater degree than allowed.
I believe that in the current economic climate, more and more people will be leaving microsoft behind.
I've had some success proseletyzing at work. I work with a number of Mexican and South American immigrants (some of them illegal, I'm sure). None of them are willing to pay the many fees associated with running windows. All of them love the idea of running a legal operating system, for FREE.
Buncha tightwads, huh?
As nearly as I can see, we are in agreement. Those people who actually want Apple to assure them that they have a secure machine have the choice of allowing Apple to administer their little boxes.
However - Apple has no right to deny people like you and I choice of unlocking. To be perfectly honest, I'd probably wreck the thing repeatedly, til I figured it out. But, being just as honest, I wouldn't be asking Apple to fix the thing for me - when I break it, I fix it.
Given a few rounds with the worst things that can happen with an unlocked gizmo, I would know which parts of Apple's security I really need and/or want, then everyone would be happy. But, the whole point of the article is, Apple will not permit people to use their phones as they see fit, so someone had to hack it. That is a real shame. At most, Apple should say, "If you unlock the thing, we won't support it - warranty will be void."
I get all the AC's confused - but this one has a brain. When I buy something it is MINE, and the guy who sold it has no say in how I might use it. Simple as that.
Do you own an iPhone? Is it jailbroken? If your answers are yes, and no, in that order, you probably belong to some lower order of life than primate. Just climb back down the food chain to where you belong.
What, you think slashdot is a luser's club? RTFM, RTFA, Winbloze users don't do that kind of thing. You gotta hold their hands, and explain it to them in kindergarten terms.
KINDERDOT!! Let's get the name of this place changed to reflect it's real purpose: educating those who can't read!
You done good, though, in explaining.
Well - I would. I would be more than happy to do so. But, one divorce, a remarriage, plus 20 years - I'm not sure who is alive that might be able to get that information. I'm not exactly on speaking terms with the ex-wife, if you know what I mean.
Errr - realize that a number of people migrate to Linux because they believe Linux to be more secure than Windows. Such people are more likely to do some studying, and follow best practices as they learn them. I'll even go so far as to say that people migrating to Linux tend to be more security minded when they need or want to use a Windows machine.
In the end, I'll trust an inexperienced Linux user just a little bit further than I'll trust that "average" Windows user. At least our inexperienced Linux user has the psychological ability to say "I screwed things up, didn't I?" rather than saying "This computer SUCKS - it won't do what I want it to do!"
As for dancing nekkid women - they beat my door down to dance for me. There isn't time to follow links to look at more. ;)
MSDN? Noted. The author of that article has a vested interest in an operating system prone to such exploits. He makes use of chmod in Linux to make a point - but he fails to note that the Linux user is somewhat less likely to a: have admin rights or to b: grant admin rights to a program if he has them.
Dancing bunnies indeed. When I look at bunnies, I see food. (actually, they are catfood or dogfood more often than they find their way onto my table) I don't have any desire to see food dance.
Awesome. I'll be a member in a few minutes. Sweet. Thanks!!
There is no need for you to believe, or to disbelieve anything you read on slashdot. Since I don't come with any kind of credentials, you may believe that everything I've ever posted was bullshit. Feel free.
But, you miss a great deal, with your answer. I don't claim that the Impalas remained "high performance" vehicles. They lost in performance. In the late '70's and the early '80's people were only beginning to understand that they might need to conserve fuel, but they were very unwilling to sacrifice performance to do so. Witness the rise of the SUV over such machines as the Volkswagens. Oh - wait, did I say Volkswagen? Didn't we outlaw them, because they failed to meet some arbitrary emissions standard, while we continued to drive the wasteful Impalas, and cars like them?
The methods the old man used to get that kind of fuel mileage worked, I witnessed it. Detroit percieved it as a threat, so they paid him for the patent, to avoid being confronted with their own vehicles running twice as far (or more) on a tank of gasoline.
This sort of thing is widely accepted as one of those urban legends, but I happened to marry the man's grand-niece in time to have met him, and seen some of his work. Urban legend or not, there is truth to at least some of the stories.
I watched the man work on one car. Among other things, he threw away the jets, redrilled the ports, tapped them, and replaced the jets with his own. That particular vehicle was less than a total success - after he worked on it, the car only got about 26 mpg. But, that was a huge improvement over 13 or 14!!
The old guy is dead now. At the time, I understood little of what he was doing, and that was just the way he wanted it. He wasn't about to allow a machinist to go through his shop.
Two decades later, I wish that I HAD understood what he was doing. There aren't any cars that large getting the kind of mileage that he was able to get. While a lot of vehicles get 30+ today, most of them weigh little more than half what the Impalas weighed, and they are using entirely different methods. (Computerization and fuel injection, of course.)