Where do you live? Go to VWVortex, find the regional forum for your area, and see if anyone is willing to help you. Chances are, someone near you will have the VAG-COM tool, and will be willing to hook you up. If you have a local enthusiasts' club (here's mine, join it. The membership fee you pay, if there is one, is almost guaranteed to be less than what the dealer charges for ONE hookup, and club people are willing to help for free as much as you need, as long as you're nice to 'em.
It can however change settings in the car. I have a 24-hour dash clock in my 2000 Golf and the car beeps when the doors unlock - normally, in the US, the clock is 12-hour and there's only a lock beep. It can do a LOT more than that, including make it possible to do a DIY cluster replacement (I'm planning on getting a Euro one, which looks nicer AND it has a trip computer installed, something the US Golf didn't get) and there's a lot of recoding that has to be done with the scan tool.
That's actually what it's called. It limits the gears selectable by the transmission and changes the shift points, at least in an automatic - I'm not sure what it does in a manual. I've seen VW service bulletins that actually use that terminology.
The codes aren't encrypted on cars for the most part, though on some they are. That's where you might run into trouble, although the car's yours and you never signed a license agreement of any kind when you bought it, so anyone trying to sue you for doing your own work might not have much to stand on. My experience described here is completely legitimate. No law requires me to take my car to a dealership if I don't have to, not even interrogating its computer to see why it turned on the check engine light.
When the check engine light came on briefly a few months ago, then went out after less than a minute, I put a note up on the club forums asking that a scan tool be brought to the next meeting which was to be held that next upcoming weekend.
After the meeting, I talked to the guy with the scan tool. We connected the tool to the car using the OBDII diagnostic port under the dash, followed the startup procedures described in the tool's manual, and downloaded the code. It turned out to be a momentary sensor blip from one of the numerous sensors in the engine and transmission, and a transient error, nothing serious, so we cleared the code. It never did recur, so it was indeed just the kind of blip that can happen anytime due to a slightly loose wire, gremlins, you name it.
The dealer would have charged me a LOT more than the yearly club membership fee to do the same thing, and the dealer doesn't hold social events, club drives, parties, get-stuff-installed-for-free days, or anything remotely as cool.
The car's a 2000 VW Golf GLS 2.0L, if you want to get on the racket, and feel free to move to St. Louis.;) But even if you don't, take a look at the tool site -- if you own one of the compatible cars, and are even slightly tech-saavy, you should really own this tool.
Chrysler used to do this; I read an article about the PT Cruiser (I think) in which the writer described a "back door" sequence of buttons to hold down while turning the ingnition to Accessory -- the code would be printed in one of the small LCD displays on the cluster, and you could look up what the code meant. Sort of like how you can hold down Command-V when booting a new Mac to get into Verbose mode and see all the startup messages to see where you're hanging (and often, you really do get a "We are hanging here" message!)
When Daimler bought them out, this stopped because the Germans made them stop. Kind of goes against that German-engineered usability, but eh. I don't know what their motivation was.
Generally, it's three good starts, at least with most cars (yours may be different, I don't know much about Maximas). I know it's three with new Volkswagens.
A lot of people actually do like the newer VW radios, but of course, that's just individual opinion. As for the removal tool:
Actually, in new VWs, you can build the removal tool from an old credit card. Go to forums.vwvortex.com and search for "radio removal tool" and you'll find instructions and even photos.
However, he may want to keep the original radio around and put it in before going to the dealer in case he ever does have to - they won't hook their scanner up to cars with aftermarket stereos because a lot of installers don't hook them up right, the tool can be fried if this happens, and they just can't count on it being done right.
If he really does want to do this, and it's a '99.5 or newer, put up a reply, I'm happy to try and help.
The trouble is, if you start placing blame on people based on what you think now that wasn't a problem back then, you can end up with a rather big mess. Lawyers know this kind of situation as ex post facto ("from a thing done afterward"), and it's prohibited at the constitutional level in the US.
While some people might read bad intent into such songs ("how could anyone write something like that?!"), others won't ("hey, I think that's a pretty neat way to symbolize what it feels to dance in discos"). Songwriters can't possibly imagine every interpretation of their music, and no one can imagine every single way their actions can be interpreted later.
I personally try to stay away from those sorts of traps.
I think, judging from what I've seen here and elsewhere in miscellaneous comments, that they've pissed off more people already than they would have had they just let people choose for themselves. Sure, pleasing people is good business -- but it looks to me like they pleased a lot fewer people than they angered. I'm in the "They did WHAT?!" category, personally.
It's not the business of some national conglomerate to decide what we can and can't listen to. That's up to individual listeners. If you don't like it, turn the radio off. Or call the station and politely disagree with their play lists. If enough people call and politely express their thoughts, the station might change their play list. But even if they don't, no one's under any obligation to keep listening!
I'm getting awful tired of NPR talking about war, war, mayhem, death, army, war, and I might write a polite letter to express my views -- but if I don't want to listen on my drive home (and I don't -- whatever happened to the varied stories of all kinds that got me listening in the first place?), I turn the radio off or switch it to the CD changer. That's it.
Being respectful of people is allowing them to choose. Not doing it for them.
Gracenote didn't think so. The scary part? Roxio caved -- never mind the fact that freedb was built from a version of cddb that had been released under the GPL. Apparently, if you're big enough, you can whine and pout long enough and loud enough that even if someone uses a GPLed version of your software -- released before you decided to change your license -- you can get your way.
Isn't the GPL meant to avoid this crap? Sure enough, my copy of Toast 5 doesn't have a way to change back to freedb -- and I've filed numerous requests to restore the feature, to no avail. I don't know if Toast 6 finally put the feature back or not, as Toast 5 is perfectly sufficient for what I need out of a CD burning app. Same with Apple's iTunes -- it still doesn't have a way to change databases. (I'm not sure if my modified/etc/hosts file is actually redirecting it to one of the freedb servers, like I intended.)
Roxio needs to put freedb back, and when Gracenote starts whining again, tell 'em where they can shove it.
True, though I was thinking more of being able to buy both in the same box. I can see why they'd do what they're doing - what's the point of getting a computer with a wireless NIC in it if you can't use said wireless NIC?
I don't know that the basestations are better, beyond looks, although the external antenna connectors are nice and that's something I'll be looking for when I get an 802.11g basestation whenever the PBG5 comes out. The basestations don't use a standard mechanism for the passwords, and they don't have a web-browser-based admin page. The password problem isn't such a big deal, but not being able to use a typical browser is a pretty big gotcha. And they're more expensive, to boot.
Apple doesn't bundle the base stations with their hardware. It's probably the cool look factor that's driving a lot of their sales, because aside from the external antenna connections, they don't really have anything that stands out.
My Tivo caught that one the other week. They raised a lot of good points, and thinking about it, I don't know that we're ready, either. They even brought up the point of the UFO crazies who want to have sex with alien visitors, and managed to paint them as just what they are - crazy loonies.
However, they did miss one point (though I think it was more for practicality reasons) - any aliens we do meet are unlikely to look like us, but in the episode, the "aliens" (us) looked enough like the natives that some plastic surgery was enough to allow blending in. Any real alien life is unlikely to have that luxury - though it's always possible, given convergent evolution. Of course, that in itself assumes that homeworlds will be similar, and we just don't know enough yet about habitable-zone extrasolar planets to say how likely that any "mirror Earths" are out there.
Well, um, call them if you want. They'll send you to the Ikonos people. GPS satellites don't have cameras. (Navstar is the real/original name for GPS, but it's fallen out of use.)
I once spent 3-4 pages of webboard space debunking the moon landing hoaxes on vwvortex.com while it still had a news and politics forum. I won in the end but the amount of time it took was ridiculous and the amount of stupid stuff people would believe despite it defying common sense was amazing. Even when I'd point them to websites like badastronomy.com, they'd claim to go and read them, then ask sone mindnumbingly idiotic question that proves they didn't - yet they remembered every nuance of the hoax sites.
In my case I'm hearing-impaired. I can use a regular phone but it's something I prefer not to deal with. I'm sure there are pizza lovers out there who are totally deaf and don't have the choice I do to use a phone if I have to -- but even so I'd rather order over the web.
Pizza Hut and Papa John's both will take web orders in my area, and of those two I prefer Pizza Hut -- the one near me actually has good cooks, unlike the one near my last residence (I'm in a house in a good area now, not an apartment, but I doubt that has anything to do with it).
Anyone know a good place in St. Louis that makes real deep-dish? The sort that's over an inch thick and has basil (I think) on top? Like the now-dead Mama's Ristorante in St. Louis and Papa Del's in Urbana, IL.
I think dinner tonight is gonna be pizza! Ordered online, of course.
A friend of mine almost got a great Rabbit for his first car. (I think it even was PA-built...)
It was an '81 model that had a GTI engine and tranny (5-speed manual) in it. The previous owners had apparently towed it behind their RV while in gear, so they ruined the drivetrain.
In the end it fell through, and we never learned what happened to that poor car. It was in perfect shape, including its light blue paint. If I knew what happened to the woman who had it, I'd have gone to rescue it and presented it to my friend. Sigh.
I'd been thinking of doing one, but I never got around to it. Egad. I didn't think there were this many of them. I'm a genuine space buff, but I think a lot of these were done by people who weren't... which was a disappointment as far as the content went. But some of them are hilarious. Like the teenybopper-teenager Opportunity rover. Did they put a picture of Barbie on the back of the high gain antenna or something? (Spirit has an STS-107 memorial plaque.)
I don't really think all of them are like that. In any group there will be morons. In any group there will be smart ones. In the middle... many average people. It's possible to name just about any group and point to some idiots in it... yet we don't frown on, say, people who go out and take pictures of trains... even though there are idiots among them, too.
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Where do you live? Go to VWVortex, find the regional forum for your area, and see if anyone is willing to help you. Chances are, someone near you will have the VAG-COM tool, and will be willing to hook you up. If you have a local enthusiasts' club (here's mine, join it. The membership fee you pay, if there is one, is almost guaranteed to be less than what the dealer charges for ONE hookup, and club people are willing to help for free as much as you need, as long as you're nice to 'em.
It can however change settings in the car. I have a 24-hour dash clock in my 2000 Golf and the car beeps when the doors unlock - normally, in the US, the clock is 12-hour and there's only a lock beep. It can do a LOT more than that, including make it possible to do a DIY cluster replacement (I'm planning on getting a Euro one, which looks nicer AND it has a trip computer installed, something the US Golf didn't get) and there's a lot of recoding that has to be done with the scan tool.
That's actually what it's called. It limits the gears selectable by the transmission and changes the shift points, at least in an automatic - I'm not sure what it does in a manual. I've seen VW service bulletins that actually use that terminology.
The codes aren't encrypted on cars for the most part, though on some they are. That's where you might run into trouble, although the car's yours and you never signed a license agreement of any kind when you bought it, so anyone trying to sue you for doing your own work might not have much to stand on. My experience described here is completely legitimate. No law requires me to take my car to a dealership if I don't have to, not even interrogating its computer to see why it turned on the check engine light.
;) But even if you don't, take a look at the tool site -- if you own one of the compatible cars, and are even slightly tech-saavy, you should really own this tool.
I'm a member of the St. Louis Volkswagen Organization (I'm one of the early founding members) and several members have aftermarket scan tools that run on PCs.
When the check engine light came on briefly a few months ago, then went out after less than a minute, I put a note up on the club forums asking that a scan tool be brought to the next meeting which was to be held that next upcoming weekend.
After the meeting, I talked to the guy with the scan tool. We connected the tool to the car using the OBDII diagnostic port under the dash, followed the startup procedures described in the tool's manual, and downloaded the code. It turned out to be a momentary sensor blip from one of the numerous sensors in the engine and transmission, and a transient error, nothing serious, so we cleared the code. It never did recur, so it was indeed just the kind of blip that can happen anytime due to a slightly loose wire, gremlins, you name it.
The dealer would have charged me a LOT more than the yearly club membership fee to do the same thing, and the dealer doesn't hold social events, club drives, parties, get-stuff-installed-for-free days, or anything remotely as cool.
The car's a 2000 VW Golf GLS 2.0L, if you want to get on the racket, and feel free to move to St. Louis.
Chrysler used to do this; I read an article about the PT Cruiser (I think) in which the writer described a "back door" sequence of buttons to hold down while turning the ingnition to Accessory -- the code would be printed in one of the small LCD displays on the cluster, and you could look up what the code meant. Sort of like how you can hold down Command-V when booting a new Mac to get into Verbose mode and see all the startup messages to see where you're hanging (and often, you really do get a "We are hanging here" message!)
When Daimler bought them out, this stopped because the Germans made them stop. Kind of goes against that German-engineered usability, but eh. I don't know what their motivation was.
Generally, it's three good starts, at least with most cars (yours may be different, I don't know much about Maximas). I know it's three with new Volkswagens.
A lot of people actually do like the newer VW radios, but of course, that's just individual opinion. As for the removal tool:
:)
Actually, in new VWs, you can build the removal tool from an old credit card. Go to forums.vwvortex.com and search for "radio removal tool" and you'll find instructions and even photos.
However, he may want to keep the original radio around and put it in before going to the dealer in case he ever does have to - they won't hook their scanner up to cars with aftermarket stereos because a lot of installers don't hook them up right, the tool can be fried if this happens, and they just can't count on it being done right.
If he really does want to do this, and it's a '99.5 or newer, put up a reply, I'm happy to try and help.
Or there's always ebay!
VW nut and proud of it.
Planet Druidia's in sight, sir!
Tell me ...
Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?
The trouble is, if you start placing blame on people based on what you think now that wasn't a problem back then, you can end up with a rather big mess. Lawyers know this kind of situation as ex post facto ("from a thing done afterward"), and it's prohibited at the constitutional level in the US.
While some people might read bad intent into such songs ("how could anyone write something like that?!"), others won't ("hey, I think that's a pretty neat way to symbolize what it feels to dance in discos"). Songwriters can't possibly imagine every interpretation of their music, and no one can imagine every single way their actions can be interpreted later.
I personally try to stay away from those sorts of traps.
I think, judging from what I've seen here and elsewhere in miscellaneous comments, that they've pissed off more people already than they would have had they just let people choose for themselves. Sure, pleasing people is good business -- but it looks to me like they pleased a lot fewer people than they angered. I'm in the "They did WHAT?!" category, personally.
It's not the business of some national conglomerate to decide what we can and can't listen to. That's up to individual listeners. If you don't like it, turn the radio off. Or call the station and politely disagree with their play lists. If enough people call and politely express their thoughts, the station might change their play list. But even if they don't, no one's under any obligation to keep listening!
I'm getting awful tired of NPR talking about war, war, mayhem, death, army, war, and I might write a polite letter to express my views -- but if I don't want to listen on my drive home (and I don't -- whatever happened to the varied stories of all kinds that got me listening in the first place?), I turn the radio off or switch it to the CD changer. That's it.
Being respectful of people is allowing them to choose. Not doing it for them.
Gracenote didn't think so. The scary part? Roxio caved -- never mind the fact that freedb was built from a version of cddb that had been released under the GPL. Apparently, if you're big enough, you can whine and pout long enough and loud enough that even if someone uses a GPLed version of your software -- released before you decided to change your license -- you can get your way.
/etc/hosts file is actually redirecting it to one of the freedb servers, like I intended.)
Isn't the GPL meant to avoid this crap? Sure enough, my copy of Toast 5 doesn't have a way to change back to freedb -- and I've filed numerous requests to restore the feature, to no avail. I don't know if Toast 6 finally put the feature back or not, as Toast 5 is perfectly sufficient for what I need out of a CD burning app. Same with Apple's iTunes -- it still doesn't have a way to change databases. (I'm not sure if my modified
Roxio needs to put freedb back, and when Gracenote starts whining again, tell 'em where they can shove it.
True, though I was thinking more of being able to buy both in the same box. I can see why they'd do what they're doing - what's the point of getting a computer with a wireless NIC in it if you can't use said wireless NIC?
I don't know that the basestations are better, beyond looks, although the external antenna connectors are nice and that's something I'll be looking for when I get an 802.11g basestation whenever the PBG5 comes out. The basestations don't use a standard mechanism for the passwords, and they don't have a web-browser-based admin page. The password problem isn't such a big deal, but not being able to use a typical browser is a pretty big gotcha. And they're more expensive, to boot.
Apple doesn't bundle the base stations with their hardware. It's probably the cool look factor that's driving a lot of their sales, because aside from the external antenna connections, they don't really have anything that stands out.
You've been reading The DaVinci Code, haven't you? ;)
My Tivo caught that one the other week. They raised a lot of good points, and thinking about it, I don't know that we're ready, either. They even brought up the point of the UFO crazies who want to have sex with alien visitors, and managed to paint them as just what they are - crazy loonies.
However, they did miss one point (though I think it was more for practicality reasons) - any aliens we do meet are unlikely to look like us, but in the episode, the "aliens" (us) looked enough like the natives that some plastic surgery was enough to allow blending in. Any real alien life is unlikely to have that luxury - though it's always possible, given convergent evolution. Of course, that in itself assumes that homeworlds will be similar, and we just don't know enough yet about habitable-zone extrasolar planets to say how likely that any "mirror Earths" are out there.
"Call Navstar! We need PICTURES!"
Well, um, call them if you want. They'll send you to the Ikonos people. GPS satellites don't have cameras. (Navstar is the real/original name for GPS, but it's fallen out of use.)
I once spent 3-4 pages of webboard space debunking the moon landing hoaxes on vwvortex.com while it still had a news and politics forum. I won in the end but the amount of time it took was ridiculous and the amount of stupid stuff people would believe despite it defying common sense was amazing. Even when I'd point them to websites like badastronomy.com, they'd claim to go and read them, then ask sone mindnumbingly idiotic question that proves they didn't - yet they remembered every nuance of the hoax sites.
Grrrargh...
In my case I'm hearing-impaired. I can use a regular phone but it's something I prefer not to deal with. I'm sure there are pizza lovers out there who are totally deaf and don't have the choice I do to use a phone if I have to -- but even so I'd rather order over the web.
Pizza Hut and Papa John's both will take web orders in my area, and of those two I prefer Pizza Hut -- the one near me actually has good cooks, unlike the one near my last residence (I'm in a house in a good area now, not an apartment, but I doubt that has anything to do with it).
Anyone know a good place in St. Louis that makes real deep-dish? The sort that's over an inch thick and has basil (I think) on top? Like the now-dead Mama's Ristorante in St. Louis and Papa Del's in Urbana, IL.
I think dinner tonight is gonna be pizza! Ordered online, of course.
A friend of mine almost got a great Rabbit for his first car. (I think it even was PA-built...)
It was an '81 model that had a GTI engine and tranny (5-speed manual) in it. The previous owners had apparently towed it behind their RV while in gear, so they ruined the drivetrain.
In the end it fell through, and we never learned what happened to that poor car. It was in perfect shape, including its light blue paint. If I knew what happened to the woman who had it, I'd have gone to rescue it and presented it to my friend. Sigh.
Ahh, old VW stories.
I'd been thinking of doing one, but I never got around to it. Egad. I didn't think there were this many of them. I'm a genuine space buff, but I think a lot of these were done by people who weren't... which was a disappointment as far as the content went. But some of them are hilarious. Like the teenybopper-teenager Opportunity rover. Did they put a picture of Barbie on the back of the high gain antenna or something? (Spirit has an STS-107 memorial plaque.)
I think it must be mixed - I've seen a documentary that says by order of someone high up in the chain of command, "she" became "he".
Then again, how many times do managers really get listened to?
You sunk my ... ohnevermind. ;)
We'll find that German battleship
That's makin' such a fuss
We've got to sink the Bismarck
'Cause the world depends on us
So hit the decks a-runnin' boys,
Turn those guns around,
We'll find the mighty Bismarck,
And then we'll cut her down
I don't really think all of them are like that. In any group there will be morons. In any group there will be smart ones. In the middle ... many average people. It's possible to name just about any group and point to some idiots in it ... yet we don't frown on, say, people who go out and take pictures of trains... even though there are idiots among them, too.