Offering a service for a fee is fine. Promising a service for free and then announcing a fee at a later date is somewhat underhand[ed].
Agreed; and my recollection is similar to yours, that mac.com email accounts were supposed to always be free and around forever, assuming Apple didn't go under. I'm sure there's something in the EULA or TOS that says "we can change this at any time and therefore this document is hopeless to you so don't count on anything" so their butt is covered legally, but it still stinks.
One of the selling points people make in the "switch" ads is that Apple computers work simply, out of the box, with no trouble. Having to switch away from my mac.com email address to something else is not simple. It's a pain, and I didn't buy a Mac so that I'd have to deal with this kind of nuisance.
It's kind of hard to imagine anybody but Christopher Reeve as the Man of Steel -- somebody check Michael Keaton's schedule.
According tp the IMDB's "Celebrity News" the director wants Matt Damon. Here's the relevant text:
Matt Damon may get his choice of playing either Batman or Superman in a new movie that brings the comic book superheroes together - as enemies. Moviemaker Wolfgang Petersen has signed up to direct Batman vs. Superman for a 2004 release, and he wants Damon among his stars. The director says, "Matt's an interesting action man and a hell of an actor." The Perfect Storm director jumped at the chance to make the new movie because he likes the idea of pitting two heroes against each other. He says, "It's a clash of the titans. They play off each other so perfectly - Superman is clear, bright, all that is noble and good, and Batman represents the dark, obsessive and vengeful side. It'll make for great drama."
The two-door VW TDIs (the Bug and the Golf) get better mileage than any other car sold in America except for the Insight.
Wait a second. Honda Civic Hybrid gets 46/51 (city/highway), which is better than Golf (42/49) and new Beetle (42/49 also). The mpg of the Prius is inverted (higher city than highway), so it's harder to compare, but its combined mpg is also higher than the two diesel VWs.
They're also among the least-polluting cars available, though there are cleaner ones out there.
Actually, those same pages show they're among the most-polluting cars, rating 1 out of 10 on the EPA air pollution score -- yuck. Meanwhile the hybrids rate anywhere from a 6 (Insight 5spd in most of the US) to a 10 (Prius).
Of course, all hybrid cars still use fossil fuels.
According to the EPA, the Jetta's combined MPG is only 45, which is about 10% worse than both Civic Hybrd and Prius (see this list of the all-time best mpg-getting cars).
InsightCentral is better IMO than the pages produced by Honda at explaining the Insight. Take a look also at the lifetime MPG database. YMMV, of course.
Other notes: A hybrid (Prius, Insight, Civic Hybrid) does not qualify for an electric vehicle tax credit, but does qualify for a "clean fuel" tax deduction, for up to $2000 (you needn't itemize to take the deduction). A hybrid may or may not qualify you to single-passenger-drive in HOV lanes... in California, it does not. This is typically because hybrids (burning gasoline) are not regarded by the goverment as true "alternative fuel" vehicles.
Disclaimer: I own an Insight, have put almost 50k miles on it and overall I've averaged 74 mpg. That means I spend about half as much on gas as people driving a regular Civic. It is ULEV-rated for emissions and the Insight tops the list of the Top 10 or so most fuel-efficient cars you could ever get in the U.S. I love my car. You could say that makes me a bit biased.
A year ago we inherited an african grey parrot. They're considered the smartest of birds...
We have an African grey parrot and 2 cockatiels. The grey is very smart, and the cockatiels are often content to hang out on the shoulder while we work.
However, both of these species (in addition to the regular "mess" they make of their area and shedding of feathers) also generate a fine powder to preen themselves (cockatoos do this as well). This stuff is incredibly adept at settling into computer components, and you'll have to either keep your birds several well-ventilated rooms away from your computers, or invest in a HEPA filter and vacuum cleaner. It's something additional to consider for the tech person aside from the general issues already mentioned (loud, messy, destructive) that apply to other birds.
Why the heck didn't Apple come out with a Windows version in the first place?
Why bother dealing with the hassle of Windows software support issues when a version of XPlay was available within weeks? At the Apple retail stores I visited while thinking about an iPod, the staff knew of XPlay and mentioned it to people who asked about "Windows versions."
I think they had the right idea. Sell the iPods and let someone else deal with the Windows issues.
Given that Apple politely asked Mediafour, the makers of XPlay (the Windows "iTunes" equivalent to interface w/ iPod), to change their name from XPod to something else, I think you've got a point.
All of these cars can barely get out of their own way.
The Honda Insight was rated by Car and Driver as doing 0-60 in 10.6 sec, about the same as a low-end Civic. That's fast enough for me! I never have trouble merging. Prius is slower at 13 sec. A Ford Explorer is at 8.4 sec.
What's more, these cars get better overall mileage if you haul it getting up to speed, maximizing your use of the electric motor while accelerating, minimizing the distance over which you burn a lot of gas, and maximizing the distance over which you cruise. Perhaps the hybrid drivers you saw didn't know this?
Passing on the highway mandates a downshift to 3rd (assuming you're cruising in 5th; even 4th is geared pretty high).
In any case, the Insight isn't like driving a Geo Metro.
I don't like password expiration. I have a good unique password for each machine already, never been guessed, why change it unless my machine has been compromised? Password expiration is a bad idea that encourages people to make bad password choices since their new passwords are harder to remember.
Great point about removing the last-person-who-logged-in listing. When I logout, I'm almost never the next person to log back in! Why would I logout if I were? Get rid of that.
Web servers -- Apache is installed by default, but disabled, and only admins can turn it on (presumably admins can be trusted not to screw up, security-wise).
An improvement I'd like: MacOS X has ipfw built-in but disabled, and while apps like Brickhouse are out there to interface with it, I'd like to see a built in OS tool. Maybe in Jaguar? And where's my built in GPG/PGP with GUI? This is Apple, right? Gimme my GUI!
>> Also, the EPA "city" test cycle does have transient accelerations/decelerations. See this example. [epa.gov] >Hey, that's a city test after all:p
Well, yeah! That's why in my posting I quoted the "combined" rating from EPA which uses both city and highway numbers to come up with a single value. I still think it's the most consistent way to compare fuel efficiency for different vehicles so that the consumer can attempt to make a decision.
Some of the hybrids can be weird -- Toyota Prius for example gets better city mileage than highway, and Honda Civic Hybrid with the CVT has city/highway numbers that are the same.
If the user did [apply as an ISP], the user would then be subject to DMCA takedown notices.
Interesting discussion.
How would the user respond to such notices as a Freenet node, given that he wouldn't know what he has or how to remove it? I suppose the person filing the lawsuit would argue "remove the software completely until the violator can run it without violating our copyright." Okay, so let's say I take it down, and 1 day later put it back up saying "yeah brah, it's fixed." They'd have to keep checking.
Furthermore, even if the individual user you download from can be identified and sued, wouldn't the people suing the freenet users have to sue all of them to get the content removed?
They sued Napster, it pushed people to true P2P networks like Gnutella. Now they go after the people on the networks, won't this just push people to something like Freenet? (Freenet masks users and files so it'd be more difficult to target specific people for trading specific things)
AFAIK, 10.1 wasn't about being a new product, it was about letting the system mature... OS X is a fine product, and Apple should be commended for keeping it up to date and fresh.
Agreed. Furthermore, MacOS X 10.1 was a free update for anyone who had MacOS X 10.0. That means 10.1 wasn't a new revenue stream/product at all and it didn't "truncate" 10.0 in any sense from a financial standpoint.
IMHO Apple must keep innovating in both hardware and software to stay afloat. If they stop, then the rest of the industry catches up with cheap knock-offs and they drown. The analysts don't understand this.
How are people going to justify stealing a movie by saying it isn't any good after the movie's already a $100-million hit?"
Single counter-example. "Wild Wild West." Made $113,745,408 according to the all-time box office numbers at IMDB. I'm sure there are other examples.
Making $100M, especially nowadays when the hype is enough to get a few people to go to the opening and pay astronomical ticket prices, doesn't really say anything about whether the movie is "good" or not. "Good" is an issue of personal taste, not earnings, be they at the box office or at the record store.
I'm not too shocked that Mr. Urie doesn't seem to grasp this.
EPA ratings, much like ISO ratings, reflect close-to-perfect usage conditions (flat roads, constant speed etc).
Yes of course, YMMV. However I've found that "reviews" of mileage on the hybrids are from test tracks, which don't reflect most people's everyday driving. A mileage database of 172 Insight owners finds that people get mileage within about 5% of the EPA combined rating. I personally do much better. My suspicion is that many car owners could do better if their car simply recorded/reported MPG to them.
Also, the EPA "city" test cycle does have transient accelerations/decelerations. See this example.
Your points about torque are interesting, but don't forget that a hybrid's electric motor has a flat torque curve -- the torque "peak" for the Insight is at about 2000 rpm. The idea that diesel MPG is less sensitive to driving style is another interesting one. I suspect that would be reflected in the numbers -- "city" mileage ought to be relatively close to the "highway" mileage for such a car, if that were the case.
The starter-alternator sounds suspiciously like what a hybrid does, minus the boost/recharging ability while driving.
Finally, the Insight is available in parts of the EU. I know there are owners in Germany and the UK. In fact they are available in colors that we can't get in the U.S.
Actually the Golf/Jetta TDIs don't even approach the top 10 of most fuel-efficient cars (by EPA combined mileage rating) ever sold in the U.S, going back as far as 1986 (when the numbers changed a bit). If you can't top 50 mpg, you can't play with the big boys:
I think you can make a case for those 4 Civic models being essentially the same car. There may be some other older cars that I missed, but they'd have to be older than 1986.
As far as overall "greenness," the batteries in the Insight are nickel-metal-hydride, not nickel-cadmium, as someone else pointed out, and the diesels are rated with a score of 1 out of 10 on emissions. The CVT Insight gets an 8 or a 10, the manual Insight gets a 5 or a 6, and the Prius gets a 7 or a 10. Until biodiesel is widely available, the VW diesels definitely aren't a good "green" choice, and we may have fuel cells before biodiesel...
The US EPA combined mileage rating in MPG for the Honda Insight is the highest of any passenger car you can purchase in the U.S.
Yes, you can tweak the numbers to look at passenger-mpg, but that's going beyond the bounds of what the EPA can test and report. Fact is, most cars on the highway are driven just with 1, maybe 2 passengers per vehicle, no matter their occupancy rating. And last I checked, you couldn't use a pet to get into HOV lanes:)
Pure electrics probably don't use "gas," but they may or may not use oil, natural gas, or have other impacts, depending on where the electricity comes from. Additionally, you can't even buy an EV-1, it's strictly for leasing. Another caveat.
Anyway, we (I drive an Insight as well when I'm not riding my bike) are doing much better than typical America, so pats on the back all 'round.
To be fair, the article does say (boldface emphasis added):
" Nor are the new ads limited to sites purveying gambling and pornography, as they once were. Almost every big-name Web site now displays them, including Amazon.com, Yahoo, CNN.com, AOL.com, TIME.com, WSJ.com and NYTimes.com."
Is this the same Stanislaw Lem that wrote Solaris... ?
Yes, it is the same author. "Solaris" is generally thought of as his best novel. I was always particularly fond of "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub;" it was one of the first I'd read, and I was pleased to see it reviewed here.
Other notable Lem works (IMHO of course) are "Fiasco" (a novel) and "The Star Diaries" (series of short stories). Lem would also write other fascinating truly future-science works of fiction, such as reviews of books that don't exist (e.g. "One Human Minute").
One note of caution is that many of his oldest works are coming out in recent translations, and they're not as good.
Vitrifax
is a very good website dedicated to his work.
For the money you'd spend on one of these things, you could get one of those hundred-CD units that goes into your trunk, and never worry about the company going belly-up.
Better yet, just use an MP3 player and adapter to your existing car stereo. The iPod has about the capacity of that hundred-CD unit and you can still keep your CDs with your home stereo.
Neither your list nor the original included 12 Monkeys. I'm disappointed that nobody has mentioned 12 Monkeys (that I've seen). They did have "Brazil" for Gilliam and "Planet of the Apes" for the simian.
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One of the selling points people make in the "switch" ads is that Apple computers work simply, out of the box, with no trouble. Having to switch away from my mac.com email address to something else is not simple. It's a pain, and I didn't buy a Mac so that I'd have to deal with this kind of nuisance.
Of course, all hybrid cars still use fossil fuels. According to the EPA, the Jetta's combined MPG is only 45, which is about 10% worse than both Civic Hybrd and Prius (see this list of the all-time best mpg-getting cars).
Other notes: A hybrid (Prius, Insight, Civic Hybrid) does not qualify for an electric vehicle tax credit, but does qualify for a "clean fuel" tax deduction, for up to $2000 (you needn't itemize to take the deduction). A hybrid may or may not qualify you to single-passenger-drive in HOV lanes... in California, it does not. This is typically because hybrids (burning gasoline) are not regarded by the goverment as true "alternative fuel" vehicles.
Disclaimer: I own an Insight, have put almost 50k miles on it and overall I've averaged 74 mpg. That means I spend about half as much on gas as people driving a regular Civic. It is ULEV-rated for emissions and the Insight tops the list of the Top 10 or so most fuel-efficient cars you could ever get in the U.S. I love my car. You could say that makes me a bit biased.
However, both of these species (in addition to the regular "mess" they make of their area and shedding of feathers) also generate a fine powder to preen themselves (cockatoos do this as well). This stuff is incredibly adept at settling into computer components, and you'll have to either keep your birds several well-ventilated rooms away from your computers, or invest in a HEPA filter and vacuum cleaner. It's something additional to consider for the tech person aside from the general issues already mentioned (loud, messy, destructive) that apply to other birds.
Why bother dealing with the hassle of Windows software support issues when a version of XPlay was available within weeks? At the Apple retail stores I visited while thinking about an iPod, the staff knew of XPlay and mentioned it to people who asked about "Windows versions."
I think they had the right idea. Sell the iPods and let someone else deal with the Windows issues.
Given that Apple politely asked Mediafour, the makers of XPlay (the Windows "iTunes" equivalent to interface w/ iPod), to change their name from XPod to something else, I think you've got a point.
The Honda Insight was rated by Car and Driver as doing 0-60 in 10.6 sec, about the same as a low-end Civic. That's fast enough for me! I never have trouble merging. Prius is slower at 13 sec. A Ford Explorer is at 8.4 sec.
What's more, these cars get better overall mileage if you haul it getting up to speed, maximizing your use of the electric motor while accelerating, minimizing the distance over which you burn a lot of gas, and maximizing the distance over which you cruise. Perhaps the hybrid drivers you saw didn't know this?
Passing on the highway mandates a downshift to 3rd (assuming you're cruising in 5th; even 4th is geared pretty high).
In any case, the Insight isn't like driving a Geo Metro.
Great point about removing the last-person-who-logged-in listing. When I logout, I'm almost never the next person to log back in! Why would I logout if I were? Get rid of that.
Web servers -- Apache is installed by default, but disabled, and only admins can turn it on (presumably admins can be trusted not to screw up, security-wise).
An improvement I'd like: MacOS X has ipfw built-in but disabled, and while apps like Brickhouse are out there to interface with it, I'd like to see a built in OS tool. Maybe in Jaguar? And where's my built in GPG/PGP with GUI? This is Apple, right? Gimme my GUI!
>Hey, that's a city test after all
Well, yeah! That's why in my posting I quoted the "combined" rating from EPA which uses both city and highway numbers to come up with a single value. I still think it's the most consistent way to compare fuel efficiency for different vehicles so that the consumer can attempt to make a decision.
Some of the hybrids can be weird -- Toyota Prius for example gets better city mileage than highway, and Honda Civic Hybrid with the CVT has city/highway numbers that are the same.
Interesting discussion.
How would the user respond to such notices as a Freenet node, given that he wouldn't know what he has or how to remove it? I suppose the person filing the lawsuit would argue "remove the software completely until the violator can run it without violating our copyright." Okay, so let's say I take it down, and 1 day later put it back up saying "yeah brah, it's fixed." They'd have to keep checking.
Furthermore, even if the individual user you download from can be identified and sued, wouldn't the people suing the freenet users have to sue all of them to get the content removed?
They sued Napster, it pushed people to true P2P networks like Gnutella. Now they go after the people on the networks, won't this just push people to something like Freenet? (Freenet masks users and files so it'd be more difficult to target specific people for trading specific things)
Agreed. Furthermore, MacOS X 10.1 was a free update for anyone who had MacOS X 10.0. That means 10.1 wasn't a new revenue stream/product at all and it didn't "truncate" 10.0 in any sense from a financial standpoint.
IMHO Apple must keep innovating in both hardware and software to stay afloat. If they stop, then the rest of the industry catches up with cheap knock-offs and they drown. The analysts don't understand this.
Single counter-example. "Wild Wild West." Made $113,745,408 according to the all-time box office numbers at IMDB. I'm sure there are other examples.
Making $100M, especially nowadays when the hype is enough to get a few people to go to the opening and pay astronomical ticket prices, doesn't really say anything about whether the movie is "good" or not. "Good" is an issue of personal taste, not earnings, be they at the box office or at the record store.
I'm not too shocked that Mr. Urie doesn't seem to grasp this.
Yes of course, YMMV. However I've found that "reviews" of mileage on the hybrids are from test tracks, which don't reflect most people's everyday driving. A mileage database of 172 Insight owners finds that people get mileage within about 5% of the EPA combined rating. I personally do much better. My suspicion is that many car owners could do better if their car simply recorded/reported MPG to them.
Also, the EPA "city" test cycle does have transient accelerations/decelerations. See this example.
Your points about torque are interesting, but don't forget that a hybrid's electric motor has a flat torque curve -- the torque "peak" for the Insight is at about 2000 rpm. The idea that diesel MPG is less sensitive to driving style is another interesting one. I suspect that would be reflected in the numbers -- "city" mileage ought to be relatively close to the "highway" mileage for such a car, if that were the case.
The starter-alternator sounds suspiciously like what a hybrid does, minus the boost/recharging ability while driving.
Finally, the Insight is available in parts of the EU. I know there are owners in Germany and the UK. In fact they are available in colors that we can't get in the U.S.
- 2000-02 Honda Insight 5spd (65 mpg)
- 1986-87 Chevy Sprint Er (57 mpg)
- 1988 Chevy Sprint Metro (56 mpg)
- 2001-02 Honda Insight CVT (56 mpg)
- 1990-94 Geo Metro XFI (55 mpg)
- 1986-87 Honda Civic Coupe HF (54 mpg)
- 1988-89 Honda Civic CRX HF (52 mpg)
- 1992-95 Honda Civic HB VX (51 mpg)
- 1990-91 Honda Civic CRX HF (50 mpg)
- 1985 Chevy Sprint (50 mpg)
- 1985 Suzuki Sa310 (50 mpg)
- 2000- Toyota Prius (48 mpg)
- 2003 Honda Civic Hybrid (48 mpg)
I think you can make a case for those 4 Civic models being essentially the same car. There may be some other older cars that I missed, but they'd have to be older than 1986. As far as overall "greenness," the batteries in the Insight are nickel-metal-hydride, not nickel-cadmium, as someone else pointed out, and the diesels are rated with a score of 1 out of 10 on emissions. The CVT Insight gets an 8 or a 10, the manual Insight gets a 5 or a 6, and the Prius gets a 7 or a 10. Until biodiesel is widely available, the VW diesels definitely aren't a good "green" choice, and we may have fuel cells before biodiesel...Yes, you can tweak the numbers to look at passenger-mpg, but that's going beyond the bounds of what the EPA can test and report. Fact is, most cars on the highway are driven just with 1, maybe 2 passengers per vehicle, no matter their occupancy rating. And last I checked, you couldn't use a pet to get into HOV lanes :)
Pure electrics probably don't use "gas," but they may or may not use oil, natural gas, or have other impacts, depending on where the electricity comes from. Additionally, you can't even buy an EV-1, it's strictly for leasing. Another caveat.
Anyway, we (I drive an Insight as well when I'm not riding my bike) are doing much better than typical America, so pats on the back all 'round.
(can't wait either)
For those who are interested in the author, Vitrifax is a very good website dedicated to Lem.
Yes, it is the same author. "Solaris" is generally thought of as his best novel. I was always particularly fond of "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub;" it was one of the first I'd read, and I was pleased to see it reviewed here.
Other notable Lem works (IMHO of course) are "Fiasco" (a novel) and "The Star Diaries" (series of short stories). Lem would also write other fascinating truly future-science works of fiction, such as reviews of books that don't exist (e.g. "One Human Minute").
One note of caution is that many of his oldest works are coming out in recent translations, and they're not as good.
Vitrifax is a very good website dedicated to his work.
Neither your list nor the original included 12 Monkeys. I'm disappointed that nobody has mentioned 12 Monkeys (that I've seen). They did have "Brazil" for Gilliam and "Planet of the Apes" for the simian.