When you finish reading some of this stuff, you really start thinking the current length of copyright is really, really out of hand (as if there wasn't enough evidence of that already.)
Technically, installing software on the sly on a computer you don't own is hacking into my computer system. Don't want me to sue you for it? Change your software to ask permission first, and respect the user clicking on No (and make No the default).
They do this in Europe already. Last I checked, their customer support seems to work just fine, judging from how many people seem to use cellphones over there.
Is there an extension for the "learning" autocomplete? It looks like a great idea, as long as the user can disable it, and it's a shame that it got yanked.
Have you ever found a GSM phone that works with your aid? I have a Phonak AudioZoom. I want a GSM bluetooth phone, since Sprint and Verizon (who use CDMA phones, which I can use) are dragging their feet when it comes to Bluetooth.
I'm pretty sure that 1.3L is from a car sold elsewhere. The 2.0L naturally-aspirated engine is the low-end model for the A4 line in the US, but elsewhere (Australia for example), the low end is a 1.6-liter engine. But I can see why a smaller engine like that is acceptable for a hybrid: the electric engine and conventional engine work together to provide the tourque needed when one can't do the work alone. The engine in the Prius, after all, is relatively anemic when on its own, but it's not on its own, is it?
Hmm, forgot to mention the Vanagon, although the Vanagon falls under the Transporter category of those I mentioned earlier.
Of course, if anyone can find a pic of this thing, the speculation will be over.;)
No, they're not -- they're still quite interesting, though! I wasn't looking for solar-powered cars (though GM's Sunraycer is possibly the best-known of those) but other electric VWs.
Without knowing what kind of engine is being used, its specs, and other details, it's hard to say. The Beetle is a very modifiable car and it's not that heavy -- it was designed, after all, for a small 34hp engine to be able to push it to cruising speeds on the Autobahns and yet be easily maintained by the ordinary people who would buy them.
The Beetle changed little from its mid-1930s beginnings as the KdF-Wagen to the final version that rolled off the Puebla assembly line in 2003.
I'm not sure what type of VW he's got, but given that he's in Afghanistan I wouldn't be surprised if it's not an air-cooled Type 1 (Beetle). But it could be a Type 2 (Transporter), too. Could even be a Golf -- it's the best-selling model they've got. We Americans are the only market that shuns it in favor of the Bora (Jetta) -- though I love my lil' white Golf IV!
I found a few more electric VWs with a little bit of looking:
And that's just for starters. VW AG itself considered a hybrid diesel-electric powertrain option for the Concept 1, which later became the New Beetle, but so far only the diesel portion has survived (the TDI is an option in the Golf, Beetle, Jetta, and now the Passat and the Touareg in the US, and in the rest of the model line elsewhere in the world.)
I'd love to see VW build a Golf-based CR-V competitor with a hybrid diesel-electric powertrain and the race-bred DSG transmission.
I have to say that I agree with you there. If I try to order something from a site and it gives me trouble, I'll just go to a competitor. I do admit that I live in the US and have little trouble with blacklists; however, I legitimately don't want to have to phone orders in if I can help it (deafness) and there are enough websites out there that sell the kind of stuff I want to order that it's no big deal for me to get what I'm after. Am I a fraudster just because I don't want to call? Of course not.
Assuming that someone isn't legit just because they don't want to call is a weird way to do it. Maybe they can't hear. Maybe they don't want to pay the insane long-distance charges. Maybe they don't have a calling plan that allows such calls. Maybe, as has been suggested, they just don't know how to do the dialing. Who knows? Chances are they turned around and went to someone else.
Apple and VW teamed up to offer iPods when you bought a New Beetle. I have a Golf so I was hoping they'd come up with a system that'd tap into the CD changer port. Yet they make a kit for BMWs instead? I can't use that. So I'm probably going to write to Apple and suggest it. Unfortunately, whatever they come up with probably would be for the Golf 5 and wouldn't fit my car anyway. I just can't win.
There've been reports of such things. One, amusingly, simply tried to install some IE spyware, which I found rather funny as if you're using Mozilla, why would you ever use IE?
Anyway, I read somewhere that there's a whitelisting feature in newer versions of Firefox that can be set to only allow extension downloads from the Mozilla Update site. I'm not 100% sure if it's true, as I go to MU to get my Firefox extensions, but if it is, it's a good idea -- just about every extension I know of is listed there. The only frustrating thing is that the copy that's easily downloadable (on the front page) is not always the latest, so sometimes you have to get them from the extension's homepage.
But saving the files and then dragging them onto the browser window always works.
Thanks! I'll check that out later. I was getting tired of that sig anyway.:) Dad's interested in the history of the A-bomb project (he's a nuclear physicist) so he'll enjoy that too.
Use it to back up your stuff and for sneakernetting files around. I've got one of the original ones, too, and if my boss wants to send me something too big to send over the network, I hand it to him and tell him to put it there. He has no idea how to use the music player part but knows to treat it just like any other removable hard drive.
The newer 3G iPod I use daily has tons of free space on it, so it ends up serving as a data dump for email backups and the like.
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? 'That's not my department,' said Wernher von Braun."
V-2s were used in early rocketry research and were some of the first scientific devices to leave the lower atmosphere -- I've seen B&W film from cameras sent up on V-2s and it's pretty amazing to think that the films were made in the late 1940s.
von Braun was actually working on longer-range rockets and manned rockets. It's possible the first suborbital spaceflights might have taken place in 1946 or 1947 if all those programs hadn't been scrapped.
Not entirely so. Shuttles were still used to do commercial work after 1986 (the Intelsat retrieval on Endeavour's first mission comes to mind), although a lot of the paying customers went away, and that's part of why we have a thriving launch industry in the form of Soyuz/Ariane/Dnepr/Proton/Progress/Pegasus/etc. rockets. The DoD quit using the shuttle, though, and some payloads were shifted to other launchers.
Yet, as you say, some things will only fit the Shuttle (large probes were some examples -- Galileo, Magellan), observatories (Hubble, Chandra, etc) and many space station parts. We simply can't afford to get rid of the shuttle until an equivalent is in operation, and the shuttle that flies now may look like what we used to fly, but honestly, it's vastly different on the inside.
The best place to launch from is the equator due to the extra boost you get from launching from the point where Earth spins the fastest, plus you don't need to use up fuel getting into the proper orbital plane.
GEO satellites are launched into egg-shaped transfer orbits by rockets, then after the upper stage separates from the payload, the payload uses its kick motor and on-board thrusters to maneuver to the proper orbital position. What matters isn't the launch site; it's the latitude of that site (for greater payload capacity) and the on-orbit maneuvers that are carried out that matter.
Check out Sea Launch -- they use a converted oil-drilling platform to launch from right on the equator. Other launch sites are in northern South America (the Ariane site) because it's near the equator, and in in Florida (far south as US territory goes, plus spent stages hit the water, not land).
Sites farther north or farther south suffer a performance penalty because of the aforementioned geographic advantage. This is part of why a Soyuz launch pad is going to be built at the Ariane launch site -- it will allow an increase in payload capacity using a derivative of the same rocket design that's been used since Sputnik 1 in 1957.
Indeed, the Phoenix launcher was nothing more than a Titan II rocket. Which makes sense as the Titan was designed for long-term storage (it uses hypergolic propellants that need no igniter), it is already man-rated (Titans launched all of the Gemini capsules ever flown and would have launched more for the USAF along with the Manned Orbiting Laboratory had that work not been cancelled), it is reliable (it's been used for satellite launches for years), and it's got the punch.
I've thought before about trying to modify one of Real Space Models' Titan kits into a model of the Phoenix launcher. It wouldn't be all that difficult.
Indeed WWII did spur huge advances in rocketry by von Braun and his team, although it is important to keep in mind that von Braun and Sergei Korolev (the genius behind the early Soviet space program; his designs are still in use today) were dreamers and wanted to build rockets that could send humans to space.
They realized that the task was a difficult one, and so they capitalized on their respective governments' interests (at first, Germany, then after the war, the US and Soviet Union) to get the funding they needed to achieve their dreams.
Both men have been vilified for what they have done, but sometimes great things are achieved in unusual ways, and the original goal of the builder is lost in all the hubbub about the methods they were forced to use.
(Note that I'm not saying that some of the German war crimes were good things; I'm not; I just like to keep everything in perspective. Someday, I like to think that the world will wake up and work toward dreams rather than battles, but I also know that if it happens, I probably won't be around to see it. And that's why we have dreamers like Gene Roddenberry: to slap us around when we need it.)
Actually, the Redstone was a missile -- it was developed by the US Army. To this day, the testing area near the Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville is called the "Redstone Arsenal".
The Jupiter-C used to launch Explorer 1 was also a Redstone derivative.
Both were heavily based on the V-2 design (and both were designed by von Braun).
The "Satan" nickname is not an official one but instead is a NATO name given to make it easier to refer to foreign weapons systems. The first letter of the name tells you what it refers to:
S: Missiles (the Sapwood is still used today as the basis for the Soyuz and Progress rockets that still launch manned spacecraft and unmanned payloads, including Progress freighters)
B: Bomber (the Tu-95 Bear is probably most famous).
And so on. I would guess that "Satan" was easy to say and sounds distinctive, though as always it's possible it's a NATO "the Soviets are bad" 'propaganda' thing.
Slashdot Mirror
This issue is usually called the "abandonware debate". Here's some more reading:
Wired News: Nostalgia Keeps Games Afloat
Home of the Underdogs
Abandonware from back before 1986
Abandonware - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Brass Lantern Warez Abandonware and the Software Industry
When you finish reading some of this stuff, you really start thinking the current length of copyright is really, really out of hand (as if there wasn't enough evidence of that already.)
Technically, installing software on the sly on a computer you don't own is hacking into my computer system. Don't want me to sue you for it? Change your software to ask permission first, and respect the user clicking on No (and make No the default).
I thought you knew that anti-muggle-tech spells on the grounds block computers, etc. from working. Or do you receive e-mail via your tinfoil hat? ;)
They do this in Europe already. Last I checked, their customer support seems to work just fine, judging from how many people seem to use cellphones over there.
Is there an extension for the "learning" autocomplete? It looks like a great idea, as long as the user can disable it, and it's a shame that it got yanked.
Have you ever found a GSM phone that works with your aid? I have a Phonak AudioZoom. I want a GSM bluetooth phone, since Sprint and Verizon (who use CDMA phones, which I can use) are dragging their feet when it comes to Bluetooth.
I'm pretty sure that 1.3L is from a car sold elsewhere. The 2.0L naturally-aspirated engine is the low-end model for the A4 line in the US, but elsewhere (Australia for example), the low end is a 1.6-liter engine. But I can see why a smaller engine like that is acceptable for a hybrid: the electric engine and conventional engine work together to provide the tourque needed when one can't do the work alone. The engine in the Prius, after all, is relatively anemic when on its own, but it's not on its own, is it?
;)
Hmm, forgot to mention the Vanagon, although the Vanagon falls under the Transporter category of those I mentioned earlier.
Of course, if anyone can find a pic of this thing, the speculation will be over.
No, they're not -- they're still quite interesting, though! I wasn't looking for solar-powered cars (though GM's Sunraycer is possibly the best-known of those) but other electric VWs.
Without knowing what kind of engine is being used, its specs, and other details, it's hard to say. The Beetle is a very modifiable car and it's not that heavy -- it was designed, after all, for a small 34hp engine to be able to push it to cruising speeds on the Autobahns and yet be easily maintained by the ordinary people who would buy them.
The Beetle changed little from its mid-1930s beginnings as the KdF-Wagen to the final version that rolled off the Puebla assembly line in 2003.
I'm not sure what type of VW he's got, but given that he's in Afghanistan I wouldn't be surprised if it's not an air-cooled Type 1 (Beetle). But it could be a Type 2 (Transporter), too. Could even be a Golf -- it's the best-selling model they've got. We Americans are the only market that shuns it in favor of the Bora (Jetta) -- though I love my lil' white Golf IV!
:)
I found a few more electric VWs with a little bit of looking:
Diesel-Electric (1.3L TDI) New Beetle
Electric 1969 Kharmann Ghia (the Ghia is a Beetle derivative)
Electric Rabbit (US Mk1 Golf)
And that's just for starters. VW AG itself considered a hybrid diesel-electric powertrain option for the Concept 1, which later became the New Beetle, but so far only the diesel portion has survived (the TDI is an option in the Golf, Beetle, Jetta, and now the Passat and the Touareg in the US, and in the rest of the model line elsewhere in the world.)
I'd love to see VW build a Golf-based CR-V competitor with a hybrid diesel-electric powertrain and the race-bred DSG transmission.
But yeah, this guy gets geek points from me.
I have to say that I agree with you there. If I try to order something from a site and it gives me trouble, I'll just go to a competitor. I do admit that I live in the US and have little trouble with blacklists; however, I legitimately don't want to have to phone orders in if I can help it (deafness) and there are enough websites out there that sell the kind of stuff I want to order that it's no big deal for me to get what I'm after. Am I a fraudster just because I don't want to call? Of course not.
Assuming that someone isn't legit just because they don't want to call is a weird way to do it. Maybe they can't hear. Maybe they don't want to pay the insane long-distance charges. Maybe they don't have a calling plan that allows such calls. Maybe, as has been suggested, they just don't know how to do the dialing. Who knows? Chances are they turned around and went to someone else.
It was a tape adapter. Writing won't necessarily help, but it WOULD tell them that there's interest in other makes, too. That's the goal there.
Apple and VW teamed up to offer iPods when you bought a New Beetle. I have a Golf so I was hoping they'd come up with a system that'd tap into the CD changer port. Yet they make a kit for BMWs instead? I can't use that. So I'm probably going to write to Apple and suggest it. Unfortunately, whatever they come up with probably would be for the Golf 5 and wouldn't fit my car anyway. I just can't win.
There've been reports of such things. One, amusingly, simply tried to install some IE spyware, which I found rather funny as if you're using Mozilla, why would you ever use IE?
Anyway, I read somewhere that there's a whitelisting feature in newer versions of Firefox that can be set to only allow extension downloads from the Mozilla Update site. I'm not 100% sure if it's true, as I go to MU to get my Firefox extensions, but if it is, it's a good idea -- just about every extension I know of is listed there. The only frustrating thing is that the copy that's easily downloadable (on the front page) is not always the latest, so sometimes you have to get them from the extension's homepage.
But saving the files and then dragging them onto the browser window always works.
Down to the Boeing logos on the yokes, yeah.
Anyway, while you do have a point, I was thinking of Soviet-made aircraft that weren't copies of American ones.
Thanks! I'll check that out later. I was getting tired of that sig anyway. :) Dad's interested in the history of the A-bomb project (he's a nuclear physicist) so he'll enjoy that too.
Use it to back up your stuff and for sneakernetting files around. I've got one of the original ones, too, and if my boss wants to send me something too big to send over the network, I hand it to him and tell him to put it there. He has no idea how to use the music player part but knows to treat it just like any other removable hard drive.
The newer 3G iPod I use daily has tons of free space on it, so it ends up serving as a data dump for email backups and the like.
Maybe we just need to go to 64-bit VINs!
And Tom Lehrer wrote,
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
'That's not my department,' said Wernher von Braun."
V-2s were used in early rocketry research and were some of the first scientific devices to leave the lower atmosphere -- I've seen B&W film from cameras sent up on V-2s and it's pretty amazing to think that the films were made in the late 1940s.
von Braun was actually working on longer-range rockets and manned rockets. It's possible the first suborbital spaceflights might have taken place in 1946 or 1947 if all those programs hadn't been scrapped.
Not entirely so. Shuttles were still used to do commercial work after 1986 (the Intelsat retrieval on Endeavour's first mission comes to mind), although a lot of the paying customers went away, and that's part of why we have a thriving launch industry in the form of Soyuz/Ariane/Dnepr/Proton/Progress/Pegasus/etc. rockets. The DoD quit using the shuttle, though, and some payloads were shifted to other launchers.
Yet, as you say, some things will only fit the Shuttle (large probes were some examples -- Galileo, Magellan), observatories (Hubble, Chandra, etc) and many space station parts. We simply can't afford to get rid of the shuttle until an equivalent is in operation, and the shuttle that flies now may look like what we used to fly, but honestly, it's vastly different on the inside.
The best place to launch from is the equator due to the extra boost you get from launching from the point where Earth spins the fastest, plus you don't need to use up fuel getting into the proper orbital plane.
GEO satellites are launched into egg-shaped transfer orbits by rockets, then after the upper stage separates from the payload, the payload uses its kick motor and on-board thrusters to maneuver to the proper orbital position. What matters isn't the launch site; it's the latitude of that site (for greater payload capacity) and the on-orbit maneuvers that are carried out that matter.
Check out Sea Launch -- they use a converted oil-drilling platform to launch from right on the equator. Other launch sites are in northern South America (the Ariane site) because it's near the equator, and in in Florida (far south as US territory goes, plus spent stages hit the water, not land).
Sites farther north or farther south suffer a performance penalty because of the aforementioned geographic advantage. This is part of why a Soyuz launch pad is going to be built at the Ariane launch site -- it will allow an increase in payload capacity using a derivative of the same rocket design that's been used since Sputnik 1 in 1957.
Indeed, the Phoenix launcher was nothing more than a Titan II rocket. Which makes sense as the Titan was designed for long-term storage (it uses hypergolic propellants that need no igniter), it is already man-rated (Titans launched all of the Gemini capsules ever flown and would have launched more for the USAF along with the Manned Orbiting Laboratory had that work not been cancelled), it is reliable (it's been used for satellite launches for years), and it's got the punch.
I've thought before about trying to modify one of Real Space Models' Titan kits into a model of the Phoenix launcher. It wouldn't be all that difficult.
Indeed WWII did spur huge advances in rocketry by von Braun and his team, although it is important to keep in mind that von Braun and Sergei Korolev (the genius behind the early Soviet space program; his designs are still in use today) were dreamers and wanted to build rockets that could send humans to space.
They realized that the task was a difficult one, and so they capitalized on their respective governments' interests (at first, Germany, then after the war, the US and Soviet Union) to get the funding they needed to achieve their dreams.
Both men have been vilified for what they have done, but sometimes great things are achieved in unusual ways, and the original goal of the builder is lost in all the hubbub about the methods they were forced to use.
(Note that I'm not saying that some of the German war crimes were good things; I'm not; I just like to keep everything in perspective. Someday, I like to think that the world will wake up and work toward dreams rather than battles, but I also know that if it happens, I probably won't be around to see it. And that's why we have dreamers like Gene Roddenberry: to slap us around when we need it.)
Actually, the Redstone was a missile -- it was developed by the US Army. To this day, the testing area near the Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville is called the "Redstone Arsenal".
The Jupiter-C used to launch Explorer 1 was also a Redstone derivative.
Both were heavily based on the V-2 design (and both were designed by von Braun).
The "Satan" nickname is not an official one but instead is a NATO name given to make it easier to refer to foreign weapons systems. The first letter of the name tells you what it refers to:
S: Missiles (the Sapwood is still used today as the basis for the Soyuz and Progress rockets that still launch manned spacecraft and unmanned payloads, including Progress freighters)
F: Fighter (Flanker, Flogger, Foxhound, Foxbat, Fishbed, etc)
B: Bomber (the Tu-95 Bear is probably most famous).
And so on. I would guess that "Satan" was easy to say and sounds distinctive, though as always it's possible it's a NATO "the Soviets are bad" 'propaganda' thing.