Funny you say that... as I wrote earlier Comcast has been deploying IPv6 on their network since 2005, based on internal demand (they don't have enough addresses to manage all their cable modems and set top boxes). And they are one of the most prominent consumer ISPs in the United States.
Comcast is adding support for IPv6 network wide. Each Comcast cable modem is managed and thus has a public IP address in addition to the one allocated to the customer, furthermore, the rise of triple play and digital set top boxes means that these also require IPs. They were using NET-10 (10.x.y.z) but they *exhausted this space*. So now they have an even larger public block. Their migration strategy is to use it for managing modems remotely now, and when the market demands it will be easy to offer IPv6 service to customers since their entire backbone is already routing v6. Clearly this is a slow, ongoing process, but "real" ISPs have already recognized the need for it.
They started this process in 2005. Check out these presentations for more info:
Gah! Yes! I have experienced this problem. I operate a web/mail/IRC/jabber/and more colocated server which has native IPv6 support, and has both A and AAAA records so dual stacked hosts will use IPv6. Mac OS X, most Linux distros, and now Vista will all autoconfigure by default, which means if there are invalid prefixes being advertised (particularly ones that simply drop packets instead of responding with "no route to host") then any host with a AAAA is effectively unreachable.
At my University I had this problem on a wireless network - there was a rogue host on the network announcing invalid 6to4 prefixes. I complained about this issue, because I know that the IT staff registers and tracks each MAC address seen on the network. Since I knew the MAC address I figured I could pass this along to them and they could advise the user they were interfering with IPv4 connectivity by advertising these prefixes. The response was sobering. The network admins were rude, had no idea IPv6 had ever progressed beyond the tunnels of the 6bone, refused to advise anyone. I told them this issue effected all MacOS X systems, which would autoconfigure by default - the response was that Mac systems were only 10% of their users and they didn't want to support them anyway. The guy argued with me for ages, claiming there was no "IPv6 Internet" and that he could "just get IPv6 BGP from our provider" so it wasn't real. I later found out the University's primary network provider not only offers native IPv6 but was one of the first to do so.
I had figured maybe in an academic environment there would be some interest in IPv6 - especially because of the eventual trend towards more and more dual stacked services. But what I found out is that network admins are really, really, good at sticking their fingers in their ears and saying "la la la, we'll never have to support that." I fear what will happen when these guys actually have to implement some of this stuff - they had absolutely no idea about the protocol.
You ignore the fact that cars are rarely used even close to capacity whereas airliners usually are (especially on long haul flights). It simply isn't economical to operate airliners below a certain load factor. The marginal cost of an airline seat (additional crew needed, weight, food, etc) amounts to something on the order of $30 on a typical flight, so the dominant costs of aviation are fixed. Sometimes certain routes need to be operated at lower loads, but this is balanced by more efficient routes. This is dictated by the economics of air travel, and is becoming even more true as fuel cost increases.
Of course, this is true in cars, too - the marginal cost of an additional passenger is very low. But because of the nature of car travel, cars are often operated with just one or two people in them, even SUVs and vans with high capacity.
I use Exceed at work. Mostly it works OK, but it seems that the mouse scroll wheel does not. Since I do use the scroll wheel, for better or worse, it would be nice if it did. Anybody know how to fix this?
Switching jobs rapidly significantly lowers your credit score as well as making lenders think you're a flake, which will push the APR on any money you borrow through the roof. You may not think this matters, but if you buy a house or a car the penalty can amount to many thousands of dollars a year. If you don't use credit, that's not a problem... but if (like me) you can borrow money under the rate of inflation it's a huge benefit.
Is this really true? I do not recall that my credit report from any of the major agencies included information on my employers. And I don't think employment history is a factor in any of the score systems. I could be wrong. What is definitely true is that your credit score is affected by treating credit cards in this manner - having one for 6 months, closing it, opening another one, etc.
Don't be afraid to take the financial aspect into consideration. A degree from a slightly less prestigious school is probably worth 30k less in debt.
This is VERY TRUE. I know someone who borrowed a lot of money to go to a higher end private University and now he has over 80k in student loans to pay off, with no end in sight. Fortunately, my parents have contributed towards my tuition at a state school. I could easily have gotten in somewhere more prestigious, but this is "Good enough" for me and I am extremely happy to not be in debt. So, in your case, carefully consider the cost, minus any grants or scholarships you receive. Graduating with huge amounts of student debt is extremely discouraging and depressing, it will delay your ability to buy a house, get your life together, etc. Think about what expected salaries are and compare that to any loans and expected living expenses. Of course, if somebody is paying for you to go there, then this point is moot.
Another thing to keep in mind is that you can always go to CMU for undergrad, then MIT for grad school. Sometimes I think this is better since by the time you get to grad school you have already verified you like the career path you chose, you have more background knowledge to appreciate a good school, and depending on the field, they're often paying *you*. Plus, many universities are so researched focused that more energy is placed on the graduate program.
I would agree with that, except they apparently told that to everyone looking for internships. They had a list of job openings on a sheet on their table, and there really weren't any internships. Which is especially shady because they told the University Career Center people they were looking for interns so they were listed as such in the directory. I think it was a bait and switch - but a bait and switch on basically everyone looking for internships.
My second piece of advice is to send some of your technical people. This is especially true in smaller startups where it is more practical. The people looking for technical jobs are going to be much more drawn in if they can see what you actually do, instead of marketing speak. And HR department people often have no clue what they are actually hiring for, apart from some buzzwords (and usually nobody knows what those mean).
I found my current employer at a University Job Fair. I'm nominally an intern, although that reflects more on my seasonal/part time status and my wage versus what I actually do at the company. They had a large display, with the founder of the company and several of their software developers. They had some devices they were demonstrating (we write software to test said devices). Everybody looked happy, enthusiastic, and had technical knowledge about the company and what it did. They handed out cards inviting people to an open house where they gave free pizza and discussed what the company was all about. It worked well. They had a large pool of potential applicants at the open house and everybody got a chance to talk to the current employees and managers before interviewing.
For me, a job is more than just a paycheck. Sure, money is important and it makes the world go around. But if your employees are happy, have fun at their job, do exciting work, etc, you should exploit that to find more employees. Because otherwise you're going to hire somebody who cares more about the paycheck than the work they do. And if your employees aren't happy.. Well, fix that before you head to the job fair.
Alcatel showed up at one of our college (University of New Hampshire) Job Fairs and they had a huge sign that said they were looking for interns. The conversation went something like this:
spinfire: Hi, I'm a student looking for an internship. Big Black Dude from Alcatel: Ah, well, you see, we don't actually have any internships. spinfire:... BBDfA: We're only looking for people for full time positions available in Dallas, Texas right now.
Seriously? Then wtf do you have "Internships" as one of the things you have available? The happy ending: I did find a job at the job fair. And I didn't have to relocate to Dallas. Advice for companies that are hiring: Be honest about what you do, and what you are looking for. You don't want your prospective employees thinking you're a bunch of liars.
One of the problems is that the drivers are x86 only (although there are old and outdated Itanium drivers). Another issue is obsolete video cards. nVidia could one day stop supporting the TNT or GeForce. What do we do then? If there are no open source drivers, we're SOL on updates. If there are open source drivers, then we can make continued improvements when needed.
You are either misinformed or a liar. The nVidia Linux drivers support x86, x86-64, and IA-64 architectures. This is actually one more architecture than they support on Windows (no IA-64 for Windows systems).
I agree it would be nice to see open source replacements for the nVidia drivers, but please lets not spread or further any FUD about the current closed source drivers. nVidia has done a nice job with the drives. I use them without issue on two different x86-64 machines (one AMD, one Intel).
When I worked for a small independent computer repair shop we did a lot of customer Windows reinstalls. Most of the time when it was that bad we would just encourage the customer to do a Windows reinstall and in the end it was usually cheaper and better for the customer. Plus, there is something very rewarding about getting back the computer after the reinstall - it really is like getting a new computer back.
Of course, eventually spyware will take its toll again, and the vicious cycle repeats.
I don't think that at all. But that doesn't change the fact that the President is the head of the executive branch and is ultimately responsible for the CIA's actions. Including oversight of those who feel they are above the President.
The CIA is part of the Executive Branch and thus operates under the authority of the President. If the President is "bitch" to the CIA, he isn't doing his job because he is supposed to oversee them and holds ultimate responsibility for their actions.
Your first statement is true but your second isn't.
You can purchase "off road" fuel which does not have tax added. This is definitely true for diesel fuel. Off road fuel is dyed red. In rural areas you can also see it marketed as "ag fuel" or "agriculture fuel" because tractors that do not drive on public roads don't need to pay road taxes. Of course, if you get caught running the stuff on road you're in big trouble - and in fact big rig trucks do get inspected at weigh stations for the red fuel. Usually for gasoline the deal is that you can get a tax refund for gasoline used off-road.
As an operator of a mailserver I know I do frequently get dictionary attacks (searching through names for mailing addresses) and sometimes these turn up addresses which aren't used (like my "stats" account or mail sent to "apache" or "mailman"). Usually these addresses later received subsequent spam - and often it is the most shady kind of spam such as the stock scam emails. So it is possible that the address may have been discovered through this means.
FAR Part 61 allows private pilots to be compensated with the pro rata cost of the flight. So if the fuel and any fees cost a total of $100 and there is a pilot and three passengers the passengers can each contribute $25 to offset the cost of the flight. They cannot give the pilot more, because that would be considered compensating the pilot or hiring the pilot which would require a commercial pilot license.
Reportedly, evil malware authors have been discovered using Microsoft Visual Studio! That is right, they're using Microsoft development tools to create their evil wares. Where are the crowds with pitchforks?! Time to hang Redmond out to dry.
But seriously folks, malware authors using CVS? I never thought they'd think of using arguably the most popular version control system in the world. Besides, that means they are adopting the open source development model how? Plenty of companies use CVS internally, my employer included.
The desktop 64-bit processors out now are x86 processors, unless I missed the memo that we were all to move to RISC.
You did miss the memo. The AMD and Intel 64 bit processors use an instruction set architecture called "x86_64" (also x64 or AMD64 or EM64T, isn't marketing wonderful?). This instruction set extends the original 32 bit x86 instruction set.
Wikipedia has some x86_64 architecture information.
My recording of Aja, by Steely Dan, takes exactly 8:00 and is a bit over 9MB. So it's fair to say that audio files take about 1mb/minute. So I'm going to reasonably assume that phone calls are likely to take around 1mb a minute.
Your assumption is grossly incorrect in that it assumes the bitrate needed to encode telephone speech with "acceptable" quality is the same as encoding music with "Near CD quality." Bitrates for VoIP typically range in the 4-16kbps range, which is considerably less than even low quality streaming radio at 56kbps.
At University of New Hampshire, most people begins with vi and emacs (or even pico, but it was not recomended) on the University Linux systems. As they get into classes which require more programming many people typically "discover" IDEs on their own. Additionally, in some courses a grad student TA will give an introductory lecture about an IDE like Eclipse. It works pretty well. I began myself with vim, then used Eclipse for Software Engineering class taught in Java. I switched back to vim and make for my last class and now I am using Visual Studio at work:)
The NHTSA study can be found here. The results are very circumstance dependant and different vehicles (if I recall correctly never identified) definitely show different results. On loose gravel (snow was not tested) ABS increased stopping distances by 22%, a significant margin.
Another test was performed by the Finnish car magazine Tekniikan Maailma. Comparing ABS with completely locked wheels (not skilled driving or selective choices about when to lock) ABS reduced distances by about 10m on dry pavement and increased by about 10m on snow. On ice, ABS increased the stopping distance from 255m to 405m, a massive increase. This was a braking test from 80kph. The results on ice are sobering - many drivers believe that while ABS is defeated by loose surfaces ice is ideal for it. On ice, the ABS controller was simply unable to apply the brakes at all. Again, this is comparing completely locked wheels, not skilled driving.
Judging from both of these, I was in error when I said "marginal." However, the performance on ice really makes me cringe as in that case the dry performance improvement really is marginal compared to the ice performance hit.
My point is that while suboptimal tires increase stopping distance overall, ABS performance can really be defeated by poor tires and even on packed snow the results can be disasterous. What little wedge would have built up to help stop the vehicle does not because of the ABS and the lack of grip means the ABS system is continuously releasing the brakes. Newer ABS systems seem to be able to detect some of these situations and correct them, but are a fraction of ABS equipped vehicles on the road. I have frequently encountered people who are of the opinion that "Well, I have ABS, snow tires aren't worth it for me" when the truth is that ABS makes snow tires more important in climates where they are even remotely useful.
Like most technologies, ABS is a compromise. Lots of people assume that ABS is magic and always improves stopping distance. Lots of drivers assume ABS will improve winter performance/more/ than dry performance, because it is frequently targetted towards those markets. In fact, the reverse is true and usually snow and ice performance is worse. Even the benefit of being able to "steer while braking" is a dangerous assumption and frequently leads inexperienced people into the ditch around here. "But I had ABS! It must have malfunctioned!" No... the driver malfunctioned. More than anything else, the important thing to realize is that ABS alters a car's handling - not always in a positive direction - and the behavior of snow handling should be explored in a parking lot in order to fully understand it.
Actually, the benefits of ABS in dry conditions can be marginal as well (according to the NHTSA at least:) and on gravel or loose snow ABS can be downright dangerous. Poor tires make ABS even less effective, especially on snow. And a huge percentage of people, even in heavy-winter areas, do not drive with dedicated winter tires. In fact, I see a scary amount of nearly bald tires. On even one inch or less of snow or wet pavement ABS is going to act like it is on glare ice in this situation, as ABS absolutely requires a strong rolling grip.
I frequently drive in loose packed snow. Several times a winter I find myself driving on roads covered at least 3 inches deep. Beginning at this point, ABS can definitely be a hindrance. And this is in New Hampshire and Maine.
What I'd like is a selective disabling of the ABS system, something frequently done for the electronic traction control systems (because they also have issues under certain conditions). However, most cars do not have this for ABS.
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Funny you say that... as I wrote earlier Comcast has been deploying IPv6 on their network since 2005, based on internal demand (they don't have enough addresses to manage all their cable modems and set top boxes). And they are one of the most prominent consumer ISPs in the United States.
Comcast is adding support for IPv6 network wide. Each Comcast cable modem is managed and thus has a public IP address in addition to the one allocated to the customer, furthermore, the rise of triple play and digital set top boxes means that these also require IPs. They were using NET-10 (10.x.y.z) but they *exhausted this space*. So now they have an even larger public block. Their migration strategy is to use it for managing modems remotely now, and when the market demands it will be easy to offer IPv6 service to customers since their entire backbone is already routing v6. Clearly this is a slow, ongoing process, but "real" ISPs have already recognized the need for it.
They started this process in 2005. Check out these presentations for more info:
http://www3.ietf.org/proceedings/05aug/slides/lrw-5.pdf
http://www.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/ripe-54/presentations/IPv6_management.pdf
Gah! Yes! I have experienced this problem. I operate a web/mail/IRC/jabber/and more colocated server which has native IPv6 support, and has both A and AAAA records so dual stacked hosts will use IPv6. Mac OS X, most Linux distros, and now Vista will all autoconfigure by default, which means if there are invalid prefixes being advertised (particularly ones that simply drop packets instead of responding with "no route to host") then any host with a AAAA is effectively unreachable.
At my University I had this problem on a wireless network - there was a rogue host on the network announcing invalid 6to4 prefixes. I complained about this issue, because I know that the IT staff registers and tracks each MAC address seen on the network. Since I knew the MAC address I figured I could pass this along to them and they could advise the user they were interfering with IPv4 connectivity by advertising these prefixes. The response was sobering. The network admins were rude, had no idea IPv6 had ever progressed beyond the tunnels of the 6bone, refused to advise anyone. I told them this issue effected all MacOS X systems, which would autoconfigure by default - the response was that Mac systems were only 10% of their users and they didn't want to support them anyway. The guy argued with me for ages, claiming there was no "IPv6 Internet" and that he could "just get IPv6 BGP from our provider" so it wasn't real. I later found out the University's primary network provider not only offers native IPv6 but was one of the first to do so.
I had figured maybe in an academic environment there would be some interest in IPv6 - especially because of the eventual trend towards more and more dual stacked services. But what I found out is that network admins are really, really, good at sticking their fingers in their ears and saying "la la la, we'll never have to support that." I fear what will happen when these guys actually have to implement some of this stuff - they had absolutely no idea about the protocol.
You ignore the fact that cars are rarely used even close to capacity whereas airliners usually are (especially on long haul flights). It simply isn't economical to operate airliners below a certain load factor. The marginal cost of an airline seat (additional crew needed, weight, food, etc) amounts to something on the order of $30 on a typical flight, so the dominant costs of aviation are fixed. Sometimes certain routes need to be operated at lower loads, but this is balanced by more efficient routes. This is dictated by the economics of air travel, and is becoming even more true as fuel cost increases.
Of course, this is true in cars, too - the marginal cost of an additional passenger is very low. But because of the nature of car travel, cars are often operated with just one or two people in them, even SUVs and vans with high capacity.
Lack of adequate TCP tuning to deal with that many incoming connections. Things should be better now.
I use Exceed at work. Mostly it works OK, but it seems that the mouse scroll wheel does not. Since I do use the scroll wheel, for better or worse, it would be nice if it did. Anybody know how to fix this?
Switching jobs rapidly significantly lowers your credit score as well as making lenders think you're a flake, which will push the APR on any money you borrow through the roof. You may not think this matters, but if you buy a house or a car the penalty can amount to many thousands of dollars a year. If you don't use credit, that's not a problem... but if (like me) you can borrow money under the rate of inflation it's a huge benefit.
Is this really true? I do not recall that my credit report from any of the major agencies included information on my employers. And I don't think employment history is a factor in any of the score systems. I could be wrong. What is definitely true is that your credit score is affected by treating credit cards in this manner - having one for 6 months, closing it, opening another one, etc.
Don't be afraid to take the financial aspect into consideration. A degree from a slightly less prestigious school is probably worth 30k less in debt.
This is VERY TRUE. I know someone who borrowed a lot of money to go to a higher end private University and now he has over 80k in student loans to pay off, with no end in sight. Fortunately, my parents have contributed towards my tuition at a state school. I could easily have gotten in somewhere more prestigious, but this is "Good enough" for me and I am extremely happy to not be in debt. So, in your case, carefully consider the cost, minus any grants or scholarships you receive. Graduating with huge amounts of student debt is extremely discouraging and depressing, it will delay your ability to buy a house, get your life together, etc. Think about what expected salaries are and compare that to any loans and expected living expenses. Of course, if somebody is paying for you to go there, then this point is moot.
Another thing to keep in mind is that you can always go to CMU for undergrad, then MIT for grad school. Sometimes I think this is better since by the time you get to grad school you have already verified you like the career path you chose, you have more background knowledge to appreciate a good school, and depending on the field, they're often paying *you*. Plus, many universities are so researched focused that more energy is placed on the graduate program.
I would agree with that, except they apparently told that to everyone looking for internships. They had a list of job openings on a sheet on their table, and there really weren't any internships. Which is especially shady because they told the University Career Center people they were looking for interns so they were listed as such in the directory. I think it was a bait and switch - but a bait and switch on basically everyone looking for internships.
My first advice as stated above is to be honest.
My second piece of advice is to send some of your technical people. This is especially true in smaller startups where it is more practical. The people looking for technical jobs are going to be much more drawn in if they can see what you actually do, instead of marketing speak. And HR department people often have no clue what they are actually hiring for, apart from some buzzwords (and usually nobody knows what those mean).
I found my current employer at a University Job Fair. I'm nominally an intern, although that reflects more on my seasonal/part time status and my wage versus what I actually do at the company. They had a large display, with the founder of the company and several of their software developers. They had some devices they were demonstrating (we write software to test said devices). Everybody looked happy, enthusiastic, and had technical knowledge about the company and what it did. They handed out cards inviting people to an open house where they gave free pizza and discussed what the company was all about. It worked well. They had a large pool of potential applicants at the open house and everybody got a chance to talk to the current employees and managers before interviewing.
For me, a job is more than just a paycheck. Sure, money is important and it makes the world go around. But if your employees are happy, have fun at their job, do exciting work, etc, you should exploit that to find more employees. Because otherwise you're going to hire somebody who cares more about the paycheck than the work they do. And if your employees aren't happy.. Well, fix that before you head to the job fair.
Alcatel showed up at one of our college (University of New Hampshire) Job Fairs and they had a huge sign that said they were looking for interns. The conversation went something like this:
...
spinfire: Hi, I'm a student looking for an internship.
Big Black Dude from Alcatel: Ah, well, you see, we don't actually have any internships.
spinfire:
BBDfA: We're only looking for people for full time positions available in Dallas, Texas right now.
Seriously? Then wtf do you have "Internships" as one of the things you have available? The happy ending: I did find a job at the job fair. And I didn't have to relocate to Dallas. Advice for companies that are hiring: Be honest about what you do, and what you are looking for. You don't want your prospective employees thinking you're a bunch of liars.
One of the problems is that the drivers are x86 only (although there are old and outdated Itanium drivers). Another issue is obsolete video cards. nVidia could one day stop supporting the TNT or GeForce. What do we do then? If there are no open source drivers, we're SOL on updates. If there are open source drivers, then we can make continued improvements when needed.
You are either misinformed or a liar. The nVidia Linux drivers support x86, x86-64, and IA-64 architectures. This is actually one more architecture than they support on Windows (no IA-64 for Windows systems).
I agree it would be nice to see open source replacements for the nVidia drivers, but please lets not spread or further any FUD about the current closed source drivers. nVidia has done a nice job with the drives. I use them without issue on two different x86-64 machines (one AMD, one Intel).
When I worked for a small independent computer repair shop we did a lot of customer Windows reinstalls. Most of the time when it was that bad we would just encourage the customer to do a Windows reinstall and in the end it was usually cheaper and better for the customer. Plus, there is something very rewarding about getting back the computer after the reinstall - it really is like getting a new computer back.
Of course, eventually spyware will take its toll again, and the vicious cycle repeats.
I hope you didn't sent that. Markey is not a Senator, he is a representative in the 7th district of Massachusetts.
I don't think that at all. But that doesn't change the fact that the President is the head of the executive branch and is ultimately responsible for the CIA's actions. Including oversight of those who feel they are above the President.
The CIA is part of the Executive Branch and thus operates under the authority of the President. If the President is "bitch" to the CIA, he isn't doing his job because he is supposed to oversee them and holds ultimate responsibility for their actions.
Your first statement is true but your second isn't.
You can purchase "off road" fuel which does not have tax added. This is definitely true for diesel fuel. Off road fuel is dyed red. In rural areas you can also see it marketed as "ag fuel" or "agriculture fuel" because tractors that do not drive on public roads don't need to pay road taxes. Of course, if you get caught running the stuff on road you're in big trouble - and in fact big rig trucks do get inspected at weigh stations for the red fuel. Usually for gasoline the deal is that you can get a tax refund for gasoline used off-road.
As an operator of a mailserver I know I do frequently get dictionary attacks (searching through names for mailing addresses) and sometimes these turn up addresses which aren't used (like my "stats" account or mail sent to "apache" or "mailman"). Usually these addresses later received subsequent spam - and often it is the most shady kind of spam such as the stock scam emails. So it is possible that the address may have been discovered through this means.
FAR Part 61 allows private pilots to be compensated with the pro rata cost of the flight. So if the fuel and any fees cost a total of $100 and there is a pilot and three passengers the passengers can each contribute $25 to offset the cost of the flight. They cannot give the pilot more, because that would be considered compensating the pilot or hiring the pilot which would require a commercial pilot license.
Reportedly, evil malware authors have been discovered using Microsoft Visual Studio! That is right, they're using Microsoft development tools to create their evil wares. Where are the crowds with pitchforks?! Time to hang Redmond out to dry.
But seriously folks, malware authors using CVS? I never thought they'd think of using arguably the most popular version control system in the world. Besides, that means they are adopting the open source development model how? Plenty of companies use CVS internally, my employer included.
The desktop 64-bit processors out now are x86 processors, unless I missed the memo that we were all to move to RISC.
You did miss the memo. The AMD and Intel 64 bit processors use an instruction set architecture called "x86_64" (also x64 or AMD64 or EM64T, isn't marketing wonderful?). This instruction set extends the original 32 bit x86 instruction set. Wikipedia has some x86_64 architecture information.
Your assumption is grossly incorrect in that it assumes the bitrate needed to encode telephone speech with "acceptable" quality is the same as encoding music with "Near CD quality." Bitrates for VoIP typically range in the 4-16kbps range, which is considerably less than even low quality streaming radio at 56kbps.
At University of New Hampshire, most people begins with vi and emacs (or even pico, but it was not recomended) on the University Linux systems. As they get into classes which require more programming many people typically "discover" IDEs on their own. Additionally, in some courses a grad student TA will give an introductory lecture about an IDE like Eclipse. It works pretty well. I began myself with vim, then used Eclipse for Software Engineering class taught in Java. I switched back to vim and make for my last class and now I am using Visual Studio at work :)
The NHTSA study can be found here. The results are very circumstance dependant and different vehicles (if I recall correctly never identified) definitely show different results. On loose gravel (snow was not tested) ABS increased stopping distances by 22%, a significant margin.
/more/ than dry performance, because it is frequently targetted towards those markets. In fact, the reverse is true and usually snow and ice performance is worse. Even the benefit of being able to "steer while braking" is a dangerous assumption and frequently leads inexperienced people into the ditch around here. "But I had ABS! It must have malfunctioned!" No... the driver malfunctioned. More than anything else, the important thing to realize is that ABS alters a car's handling - not always in a positive direction - and the behavior of snow handling should be explored in a parking lot in order to fully understand it.
Another test was performed by the Finnish car magazine Tekniikan Maailma. Comparing ABS with completely locked wheels (not skilled driving or selective choices about when to lock) ABS reduced distances by about 10m on dry pavement and increased by about 10m on snow. On ice, ABS increased the stopping distance from 255m to 405m, a massive increase. This was a braking test from 80kph. The results on ice are sobering - many drivers believe that while ABS is defeated by loose surfaces ice is ideal for it. On ice, the ABS controller was simply unable to apply the brakes at all. Again, this is comparing completely locked wheels, not skilled driving.
Judging from both of these, I was in error when I said "marginal." However, the performance on ice really makes me cringe as in that case the dry performance improvement really is marginal compared to the ice performance hit.
My point is that while suboptimal tires increase stopping distance overall, ABS performance can really be defeated by poor tires and even on packed snow the results can be disasterous. What little wedge would have built up to help stop the vehicle does not because of the ABS and the lack of grip means the ABS system is continuously releasing the brakes. Newer ABS systems seem to be able to detect some of these situations and correct them, but are a fraction of ABS equipped vehicles on the road. I have frequently encountered people who are of the opinion that "Well, I have ABS, snow tires aren't worth it for me" when the truth is that ABS makes snow tires more important in climates where they are even remotely useful.
Like most technologies, ABS is a compromise. Lots of people assume that ABS is magic and always improves stopping distance. Lots of drivers assume ABS will improve winter performance
When you assume.....
:) and on gravel or loose snow ABS can be downright dangerous. Poor tires make ABS even less effective, especially on snow. And a huge percentage of people, even in heavy-winter areas, do not drive with dedicated winter tires. In fact, I see a scary amount of nearly bald tires. On even one inch or less of snow or wet pavement ABS is going to act like it is on glare ice in this situation, as ABS absolutely requires a strong rolling grip.
Actually, the benefits of ABS in dry conditions can be marginal as well (according to the NHTSA at least
I frequently drive in loose packed snow. Several times a winter I find myself driving on roads covered at least 3 inches deep. Beginning at this point, ABS can definitely be a hindrance. And this is in New Hampshire and Maine.
What I'd like is a selective disabling of the ABS system, something frequently done for the electronic traction control systems (because they also have issues under certain conditions). However, most cars do not have this for ABS.