In reality, I would place stability control/yaw control/whatever else the manufacturers want to call it above traction control. Strictly speaking, traction control on measures slippage on the drive wheels and moves to control that. Stability control measures the yaw of a vehicle and moves to keep the vehicle from spinning or sliding out of control.
I think within the next 5 to 10 years we'll see these technologies present on almost all new cars, except for only the cheapest econoboxes on the road. These technologies are already making their way into more and more of the midrange cars. It's only a matter of years before the technology becomes cheap enough to implement on the cheaper, compact cars on the road, just like how AC is included standard on pretty much every car produced for America.
On the subject of do-it-yourself controllers, myself and a few friends were considering building a homemade TC unit for a buddy's car. We figured that with our combined knowledge of computers, electronics, and control systems and a little research, we could have come up with a device to make his launches more consistent, as well as make the car easier to handle on the streets (it was a street/drag/occasional autocross car).
In the end, I got a real job, the EE in the group went out of country for a few months, and the computer engineer got a girlfriend. So much for that idea.
Ahh... but the TT RX7s are quite an experience to drive. I've only had the opportunity to drive one once, but I was quite pleased at the way boost came on in the car. The problem with entine seal replacements (and I'm assuming you mean the apex seals on the rotors) is that you have to take the entire engine apart to do replace them. Taking the engine apart can sometimes introduce several new points of failure if the mechanic is especially unskilled or unfamiliar with a rotary engine. It's rather unlike a piston engine where you only need to disassemble, say, half the engine to replace a head gasket. It's not that rebuilding a rotary is that hard - in fact, a case could be made that it's easier since there are fewer parts - but I've had friends take their RX7s to mechanics who just can't get it right.
Most of the problems that I've seen with the NA RX7s have to do with the engine overheating at one time or another. I'd say that in about 95% of those cases, the overheating caused a burst in the water jacket, leading to coolant in the combustion chamber. RX7s run hotter than most standard piston engines and proper cooling is much more important due to the somewhat delicate nature of thier design.
The other issues I've seen usually have to do with the owner not keeping tabs on their oil level and not adding oil as needed, leading to improperly lubricated components which eventually fail.
I gotta put in the plug for 5th Gear here. While not as entertaining as Top Gear, the show does have Tiff Needell who is probably twice the driver Clarkson is. Jason Plato isn't bad either, but I haven't seen half as much of him as I have seen of Tiff over the years. However, their Boxter/Z4 comparison was simply brilliant. It was extremely cool to see these two former professional racing drivers drifting their respective cars around the corners in unison.
I think some people may feel that it kicks in too early in some situations, or that they don't have as good a braking feel at the limits - it's had to modulate the brakes once ABS has taken over. The other factor to consider is that ABS on different cars works very differently. The ABS on my 2003 Honda feels much, much more violent than the ABS on the '88 M3 I drove.
That said, I also know people who disable their ABS on their cars. A friend of mine owns a 2003 WRX. At one autocross ABS kept kicking in on his car when approaching one particular turn, making it harder for him to trail brake into the corner and rotate the car. I pointed out that there were some bumps on the outside of the corner and that the bumps were probably causing his ABS to activate. I pointed out that I had actually been taking a wider line with the CRX I was driving in order to purposely hit those bumps and induce a drift into the corner in order to better point the car towards the corner exit. We pulled his ABS fuse and he managed to shave a full second off his time. Sure, the outside rear wheel locked up for a split second when braking into the corner, but not enough to cause abnormal behavior of the car. Now he pulls his ABS fuse for every race.
That said, when it comes to the streets with other people and other cars around, I think that ABS is generally a good thing that needs to be on all cars. 99% of drivers can benefit from the use of ABS on their cars in panic situations. This includes myself and just about everybody else I know. I still get annoyed from time to time whenever the sometimes overzealous ABS kicks in on my Honda, but I am always glad that its there when I need it.
I'm actually really surprised that Mazda is at the top. Not that they are unreliable, but I think people generally perceive Toyota and Honda as being way more reliable than a Mazda. Maybe it was the old RX-7s that gave Mazda its bad name. Most of the reliability issues associated with those cars, however, were due to abuse/lack of maintenance. I've been a fan of Mazdas for a while now and I'm glad to see that they have the reliability figures to back up their reputation. That said, I still own a Honda since they depreciate less than a Mazda.
Well, I'm still learning my way around, but I actually live in Duluth and work in Alpharetta, so that makes some bearing on which routes I take. At any rate, I'm not surprised that Fulton (or at least North Fulton) is percieved as being rich. I was taken aback when I came out here and found that my office is within a mile or 2 of a Bentley dealer, a Ferrari/Maserati/Aston Martin dealer, and just about any other high line dealer there is. Being a car nut, I've found that typically those sorts of dealerships are never too far from where the money lives. (There are exceptions, such as the old Porsche dealership in New Orleans which was inexplicably located in the ghetto.) Still, "rich" people have to get to work too.
I will try to read up on the local politcs regarding reincorporating as a new town, though. That is pretty interesting. Actually, the whole geo-political structure of Atlanta is intriguing to me. The actual city of Atlanta is surprisingly small, but the metro area is quite large and consists of what seems to me, a large number of towns. This is in stark contrast to other comparable metro areas such as Houston which is mostly just Houston with a few smaller towns spread around. I would think that the sheer number of individual towns with their own individual political structures, zoning laws, etc. would tend to stifle the growth of the city.
Since you've most likely lived in the area for a little while, I'd like to pick your brain a bit. Out of curiousity, does Atlanta even have any long term plans to help relieve the congestion problems the city has? As I pointed out earlier, I've been in several other large cities that don't seem to have such a problem with congestion. I've come up with several theories as to what caused the problem, but I really have no idea how it managed to get this bad. Some days it takes me nearly 1.5 hours to travel the 16 or so miles from my place in Duluth to work in Alpharetta, and that's without ever going anywhere near 285 or any of the other major freeways.
--Posting without Karma bonus since this is getting waaay off topic.
The one specific light that makes me the most nervous is the intersecion of Haynes Bridge and North Point Parkway. That is a rather large intersection and there has been more than one time that I've had to speed through the yellow (because I feel it would be unsafe to stop for the light) and cross my fingers and hope the camemra doesn't get me. Most of the lights up there aren't that bad, but that intersection just makes me nervous. That said, I'm still trying to decide if red light cameras are a better solution. I did get by a guy running a red light in New Orleans a few years back. Long story short, I waited about 5 seconds after the green before going, then I saw him coming and hit the brakes, but he was driving too fast or was too stupid to avoid the corner of my car now sticking in the intersetion.
I get the feeling you're just trying to troll me here, but I'll bite. On the contrary, I always pay full attention to where I am going and my surroundings. In fact, I'm the guy known for pissing his friends off becuase I don't pay attention to them when they are trying to talk to me while driving. I generally ignore my phone when it rings unless I am sitting at a red light.
However, the point I am making is that considering the prevaling situations at a few of these intersections, they didn't lengthen the yellow time enough when installing the light. One particular intersection I pass through every morning is a crossing of two 8 lane roads, one with a 45mph speed limit and the other with a 35mph speed limit. There are no walk signals at this intersection to use as a pre-yellow (as I've always called them). That makes for a large intersection and a decently long stopping distance. I've never had a ticket here, but one thing I've noticed is that many people (myself included) are more prone to use poorer judgement as to whether or not they should stop for the light or continue through.
Furthermore, your assertions of blam when somebody is following too close is rather irrelevant. I never said I was worried about hitting other people when they stopped. I always make sure to leave plenty of distance. It's not me I'm worried about. It's the other jokers on the road who don't pay attention, and an accident, no matter who's to blame, is still an accident and it's something that I would rather not have. Especially if I feel that I am having to stop too quickly in order to not blow through a red light. In the end, I think the addition of red light cameras in regards to accident rates is really a case of six of one or half a dozen of another. Either way, there's a danger of an accident, but only in one scenario can the city make some extra cash on the side.
This is the Atlanta area. If there's one thing that's become painfully clear to me in the months that I've been out here after Katrina, it's that either the city doesn't have traffic engineers, or they have no fucking clue what they are doing. I've been to many much larger cities with much less of a congestion problem than this place. Nobody knows what they are doing when it comes to traffic flow around here.
Thank you. The light I speak of is actually in an urban area, but it's a major thoroughfare and the limit is 45mph. I usually do about 45-50. Unfortunately, the yellow is not very long and the intersection is (both cross streets are 7 lanes wide), which sometimes makes me a little worried that one day I'll either get hit stopping for the red or I'll get ticketed blowing through the red.
The scenario you just described is the exact reason I have a problem with speed cameras and disagree with thier arguments that they are not simply a tool used to generate extra revenue for the state. They don't take extenuating circumstances into effect. Although I know people will disagree with us here and complain that you were in fact breaking the law by exceeding the posted limit, we all know that in many situations, an actual person will look at the prevailing conditions and decide that you are doing no harm and not driving in an unsafe manner and not pull you over. After all, isn't the supposedly real purpose of speed limits to ensure safe travel in a particular area?
I don't know if you're a Top Gear fan, but I personally can't wait to hear Jeremy Clarkson rant and rave about this latest legislation. I have to say though, I was impressed that your transport minister (Ladyman?) had enough courage to go on the show, knowing full well that Clarkson would berate him on the use of speed cameras in the UK. To be honest, I can't say that I blame him, either. Several towns near me have begun to institute red light cameras, but I feel that instead of catching criminals, they promote unsafe conditions. I've had countless times where I've had to hit the brakes hard and slow down from 50 in a hurry because I was afriad of the cameras. Any time you have somebody making an unplanned stop in such a hurry, accidents seem more likely to happen. Especially when you have some redneck in a jacked up pickup truck riding your bumper as you approach the light.
not that into console gaming. I'd rather take a ride down to the range and shoot for REAL.
The big difference, however, is that paper targets don't shoot back. Oh, and depending on where you live, you may or may not be able to own/fire all of those cool automatic weapons. Thankfully, living in Georgia, I can.:-D
Still, I understand what you are saying but I do have to say that with the advent of Halo, I found FPS gaming on consoles to be better than I thought it could be. The XBox controller seems to be designed with exactly that in mind. The GC controller sucks for FPS and the PS2 is merely adequate in my eyes. The thumbsticks on the XBox controller seem to have just the right range of motion and sensitivity to make FPS work. Furthermore, my friends and I have found that our PC FPS skills have translated fairly well to the console. I just bought my XBox a little over a week ago, and I hadn't played one since February. I popped in Halo 2 and immediately jumped on live with a few of my friends... and for the most part we dominated. The first match I played, I had the top number of kills - not too bad for somebody who is used to a KB/M combo and who hadn't touched an XBox controller in about 10 months.
I guess for me, the real advantage of online gaming with a console is not having to play the "patch dance" every time I want to play a game. To give you an example, about 10 or so months ago I decided that I wanted to play BF:1942 again. Specifically, the Desert Combat mod. First, I have to install the game again since I removed it a while back. That took a good 20 minutes. Then, I have to go get the latest patch. Oh, the developers don't have it for download on their site - I'll have to go get it from FilePlanet or a similar site. So, I wait in a queue for about 45 minutes, then the file starts downloading at an appalingly (to me anyway) slow rate. So I leave and come back in an hour to find the patch downloaded. I install the patch, then install the copy of Desert Combat I have on my PC. I think to check the version number on the mod against the latest version on line... and I need a new version. Back to FilePlanet - wait in a queue - download starts - it's ~650MB - I leave for 3 hours and then come back. I Install the mod start playing, and find the my framerate sucks compared to the last time I played. I do some research on the boards and find out that the game runs smoother with version X of the ATI drivers and I have version Y. At this point, it's been approximately 6 hours since I first decided I wanted to play the game. I can figure on at least another 30 minutes to update my drivers (maybe more since I have to figure out which friggin order to install the drives for my All-in-Wonder card). At that point I just said "Fuck it!", drank a beer, grabbed my gun, and went to the range.
By comparison, the first time I decided to play Halo 2 on Live, I put the disc in, start the game, connect to Live - oh! There's an update available! The XBox automatically downloads and installs the update and I'm online and playing a game in less than 10 minutes. (OK, that's not 100% true, I did have to add my XBox to my router's DMZ and add my router to my landlord's router's DMZ, but that took all of about 1 minute to do. I made the changes while downloading the update and restarted the routers when the XBox restarted.) There was a time when I didn't mind spending hours on downloading and installing patches, but I think those days went out the window when I finished college, got a job, and could finally afford to fund my alcoholism and the resulting changes in my social life.;)
I'm like you in that I got my XBox late as well. In fact, I used the profits from the sale of my 360 on eBay to fund my purchase of an XBox. I've had it a little over a week now and I've found that there are scores of good games still available for it. Not to mention the fact that the vast majority of my friends have no intention of upgrading any time soon along with, I'm sure, many other people, so I imagine that the Live experience won't change much in the next year. There were still be a lot of people playing Halo 2 and Forza over the course of the next 3 - 6 months at least.
In the end, I've got a new toy and 7 games right now. In fact, I can't see one compelling reason (read: must have game) to purchase a 360 yet. The offerings on the original XBox are still far better than what's out for the 360. The two 360 games that interest me the most, Call of Duty 2, and PGR3 have their alternatives. Call of Duty 2 I can always pick up for the PC. PGR3, well I haven't yet seen where it's that much better than 2, especially in light of the fact that, for me anyway, Forza provides a much more engrossing experience.
In all, I think my new XBox should keep me occupied until the PS3 comes out. I'll look at getting a 360 when Microsoft can get the 3rd parties to produce a must-have game for the console.
I'm sure he means RAID 0 or 1. RAID 01 or 10 doesn't make much sense outside of a corporate environment. Although the same could be said about RAID in general, I tend to disagree.
I don't see us losing the numpad any time soon. A very large part of the commercial computer market revolves around number crunching, and the numpad simply increases the speed with which you can enter the necessary numbers. For instance, I can think of a maximum of 3 people in my office of ~200 who have no use for the numbpad. Even I find it to be useful since I have several access codes that require a string of numbers or I often find myself having to enter people's social security numbers and/or phone numbers when creating user IDs. I can type on the numbers at the top of the keyboard, but the numpad probably increases the speed with which I can enter those numbers by a factor of 10. I wouldn't give up my numpad for the world, and I would wager than greater than 50% agree with me.
Lastly, I abhore anything that's not a standard keyboard layout. I was working on an executive's PC recently, and they had some brand of keyboard (I forget which brand) that had reordered the Insert/Home/Page Up grouping into a 3x2 group instead a 2x3. Every time I reached for delete, I hit Page Up instead. It was very frustrating - my point here being that once we get used to something we require a very substantial benefit to make us switch to something "better".
While I'll agree that Dell can't exactly make a gaming PC, it has to be said that refurbished Dells can be a source of quality parts for a good price, assuming you purchase their higher line machines and not their low end stuff. I'm really only a casual gamer so I may not count, but the last time I did a full system upgrade, I found that there was absolutely no way I could build an entire machine for cheaper than it would cost me to purchase a refurbished Dell and then add a few key parts. I bought a refurbished Dimension 8300 and 19" monitor, tossed in another 512MB of RAM, binned the 64MB GeForce 5200 in favor of a Radeon 9800 Pro (top dog in October '03, even despite pesky driver issues), and installed a SB Live! I had lying around. Yes, the preinstalled OS was a joke and I had to do a clean install, but in the end I calculated that I probably came out ~$150 - $250 cheaper than if I had built it myself and bought a brand new monitor. And it was only mildly less labor intensive than building an entire PC from scratch. I'm still using the PC now, albeit with even further upgrades from stock.
Hehe. That's the problem. I'm selling Koni adjustable shocks for the car, and all I've seen are the cheaper "stock replacement" shocks for the vehicle. The stuff that goes for approximately $115 - $200 for a full set. It's hard to convince somebody that they really need these adjustable shocks when they can get a decent set of non-adjustable shocks for so much less.
If you think that's good, try searching for "French military victories" (without the quotes) and hit "I'm Feeling Lucky." You'll get a kick out of the result.
The other auction did sell for a decent profit. I've been thinking more about it though, and In retrospect there are several factors that could have worked in my favor the second time around: no reserve, lower starting bid (give 'em the glimmer of hope!), and according to the owner of the eBay account, the longer auction time might have helped (although I'm not sure that this is the case with a 360 where my auction didn't even make it to the first 5 pages until it had about 12 hours left).
Other than the seller being slow to pay (I specified 72 hours and emailed the invoice immediately after the end of the auction, but I let her slide), the auction did end with a high enough price to make it worth my time.
The whole experience did make me question my next planned eBay sale, though: an unused set of $950 shocks for a somewhat rare car. I posted on the most popular message board for the car and asked for $500, but considering I got nothing but curiosity seekers and a bunch of lowballers, I'm wondering if eBay would be worth my time and effort.
Since when do you need a license to sell a gun in a private party transaction? From what I understand, no extra paperwork is necessary when it's a person to person transaction in one state. (Or maybe I've been living in the South too long.)
That said, I think guns are one of the few items that are specifically verboten on eBay.
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In reality, I would place stability control/yaw control/whatever else the manufacturers want to call it above traction control. Strictly speaking, traction control on measures slippage on the drive wheels and moves to control that. Stability control measures the yaw of a vehicle and moves to keep the vehicle from spinning or sliding out of control.
I think within the next 5 to 10 years we'll see these technologies present on almost all new cars, except for only the cheapest econoboxes on the road. These technologies are already making their way into more and more of the midrange cars. It's only a matter of years before the technology becomes cheap enough to implement on the cheaper, compact cars on the road, just like how AC is included standard on pretty much every car produced for America.
On the subject of do-it-yourself controllers, myself and a few friends were considering building a homemade TC unit for a buddy's car. We figured that with our combined knowledge of computers, electronics, and control systems and a little research, we could have come up with a device to make his launches more consistent, as well as make the car easier to handle on the streets (it was a street/drag/occasional autocross car).
In the end, I got a real job, the EE in the group went out of country for a few months, and the computer engineer got a girlfriend. So much for that idea.
Ahh... but the TT RX7s are quite an experience to drive. I've only had the opportunity to drive one once, but I was quite pleased at the way boost came on in the car. The problem with entine seal replacements (and I'm assuming you mean the apex seals on the rotors) is that you have to take the entire engine apart to do replace them. Taking the engine apart can sometimes introduce several new points of failure if the mechanic is especially unskilled or unfamiliar with a rotary engine. It's rather unlike a piston engine where you only need to disassemble, say, half the engine to replace a head gasket. It's not that rebuilding a rotary is that hard - in fact, a case could be made that it's easier since there are fewer parts - but I've had friends take their RX7s to mechanics who just can't get it right.
Most of the problems that I've seen with the NA RX7s have to do with the engine overheating at one time or another. I'd say that in about 95% of those cases, the overheating caused a burst in the water jacket, leading to coolant in the combustion chamber. RX7s run hotter than most standard piston engines and proper cooling is much more important due to the somewhat delicate nature of thier design.
The other issues I've seen usually have to do with the owner not keeping tabs on their oil level and not adding oil as needed, leading to improperly lubricated components which eventually fail.
I gotta put in the plug for 5th Gear here. While not as entertaining as Top Gear, the show does have Tiff Needell who is probably twice the driver Clarkson is. Jason Plato isn't bad either, but I haven't seen half as much of him as I have seen of Tiff over the years. However, their Boxter/Z4 comparison was simply brilliant. It was extremely cool to see these two former professional racing drivers drifting their respective cars around the corners in unison.
I think some people may feel that it kicks in too early in some situations, or that they don't have as good a braking feel at the limits - it's had to modulate the brakes once ABS has taken over. The other factor to consider is that ABS on different cars works very differently. The ABS on my 2003 Honda feels much, much more violent than the ABS on the '88 M3 I drove.
That said, I also know people who disable their ABS on their cars. A friend of mine owns a 2003 WRX. At one autocross ABS kept kicking in on his car when approaching one particular turn, making it harder for him to trail brake into the corner and rotate the car. I pointed out that there were some bumps on the outside of the corner and that the bumps were probably causing his ABS to activate. I pointed out that I had actually been taking a wider line with the CRX I was driving in order to purposely hit those bumps and induce a drift into the corner in order to better point the car towards the corner exit. We pulled his ABS fuse and he managed to shave a full second off his time. Sure, the outside rear wheel locked up for a split second when braking into the corner, but not enough to cause abnormal behavior of the car. Now he pulls his ABS fuse for every race.
That said, when it comes to the streets with other people and other cars around, I think that ABS is generally a good thing that needs to be on all cars. 99% of drivers can benefit from the use of ABS on their cars in panic situations. This includes myself and just about everybody else I know. I still get annoyed from time to time whenever the sometimes overzealous ABS kicks in on my Honda, but I am always glad that its there when I need it.
I'm actually really surprised that Mazda is at the top. Not that they are unreliable, but I think people generally perceive Toyota and Honda as being way more reliable than a Mazda. Maybe it was the old RX-7s that gave Mazda its bad name. Most of the reliability issues associated with those cars, however, were due to abuse/lack of maintenance. I've been a fan of Mazdas for a while now and I'm glad to see that they have the reliability figures to back up their reputation. That said, I still own a Honda since they depreciate less than a Mazda.
Well, I'm still learning my way around, but I actually live in Duluth and work in Alpharetta, so that makes some bearing on which routes I take. At any rate, I'm not surprised that Fulton (or at least North Fulton) is percieved as being rich. I was taken aback when I came out here and found that my office is within a mile or 2 of a Bentley dealer, a Ferrari/Maserati/Aston Martin dealer, and just about any other high line dealer there is. Being a car nut, I've found that typically those sorts of dealerships are never too far from where the money lives. (There are exceptions, such as the old Porsche dealership in New Orleans which was inexplicably located in the ghetto.) Still, "rich" people have to get to work too.
I will try to read up on the local politcs regarding reincorporating as a new town, though. That is pretty interesting. Actually, the whole geo-political structure of Atlanta is intriguing to me. The actual city of Atlanta is surprisingly small, but the metro area is quite large and consists of what seems to me, a large number of towns. This is in stark contrast to other comparable metro areas such as Houston which is mostly just Houston with a few smaller towns spread around. I would think that the sheer number of individual towns with their own individual political structures, zoning laws, etc. would tend to stifle the growth of the city.
OK. Looks like I have some reading to do.
Thanks for the info.
Since you've most likely lived in the area for a little while, I'd like to pick your brain a bit. Out of curiousity, does Atlanta even have any long term plans to help relieve the congestion problems the city has? As I pointed out earlier, I've been in several other large cities that don't seem to have such a problem with congestion. I've come up with several theories as to what caused the problem, but I really have no idea how it managed to get this bad. Some days it takes me nearly 1.5 hours to travel the 16 or so miles from my place in Duluth to work in Alpharetta, and that's without ever going anywhere near 285 or any of the other major freeways.
--Posting without Karma bonus since this is getting waaay off topic.
The one specific light that makes me the most nervous is the intersecion of Haynes Bridge and North Point Parkway. That is a rather large intersection and there has been more than one time that I've had to speed through the yellow (because I feel it would be unsafe to stop for the light) and cross my fingers and hope the camemra doesn't get me. Most of the lights up there aren't that bad, but that intersection just makes me nervous. That said, I'm still trying to decide if red light cameras are a better solution. I did get by a guy running a red light in New Orleans a few years back. Long story short, I waited about 5 seconds after the green before going, then I saw him coming and hit the brakes, but he was driving too fast or was too stupid to avoid the corner of my car now sticking in the intersetion.
I get the feeling you're just trying to troll me here, but I'll bite. On the contrary, I always pay full attention to where I am going and my surroundings. In fact, I'm the guy known for pissing his friends off becuase I don't pay attention to them when they are trying to talk to me while driving. I generally ignore my phone when it rings unless I am sitting at a red light.
However, the point I am making is that considering the prevaling situations at a few of these intersections, they didn't lengthen the yellow time enough when installing the light. One particular intersection I pass through every morning is a crossing of two 8 lane roads, one with a 45mph speed limit and the other with a 35mph speed limit. There are no walk signals at this intersection to use as a pre-yellow (as I've always called them). That makes for a large intersection and a decently long stopping distance. I've never had a ticket here, but one thing I've noticed is that many people (myself included) are more prone to use poorer judgement as to whether or not they should stop for the light or continue through.
Furthermore, your assertions of blam when somebody is following too close is rather irrelevant. I never said I was worried about hitting other people when they stopped. I always make sure to leave plenty of distance. It's not me I'm worried about. It's the other jokers on the road who don't pay attention, and an accident, no matter who's to blame, is still an accident and it's something that I would rather not have. Especially if I feel that I am having to stop too quickly in order to not blow through a red light. In the end, I think the addition of red light cameras in regards to accident rates is really a case of six of one or half a dozen of another. Either way, there's a danger of an accident, but only in one scenario can the city make some extra cash on the side.
This is the Atlanta area. If there's one thing that's become painfully clear to me in the months that I've been out here after Katrina, it's that either the city doesn't have traffic engineers, or they have no fucking clue what they are doing. I've been to many much larger cities with much less of a congestion problem than this place. Nobody knows what they are doing when it comes to traffic flow around here.
Thank you. The light I speak of is actually in an urban area, but it's a major thoroughfare and the limit is 45mph. I usually do about 45-50. Unfortunately, the yellow is not very long and the intersection is (both cross streets are 7 lanes wide), which sometimes makes me a little worried that one day I'll either get hit stopping for the red or I'll get ticketed blowing through the red.
The scenario you just described is the exact reason I have a problem with speed cameras and disagree with thier arguments that they are not simply a tool used to generate extra revenue for the state. They don't take extenuating circumstances into effect. Although I know people will disagree with us here and complain that you were in fact breaking the law by exceeding the posted limit, we all know that in many situations, an actual person will look at the prevailing conditions and decide that you are doing no harm and not driving in an unsafe manner and not pull you over. After all, isn't the supposedly real purpose of speed limits to ensure safe travel in a particular area?
I don't know if you're a Top Gear fan, but I personally can't wait to hear Jeremy Clarkson rant and rave about this latest legislation. I have to say though, I was impressed that your transport minister (Ladyman?) had enough courage to go on the show, knowing full well that Clarkson would berate him on the use of speed cameras in the UK. To be honest, I can't say that I blame him, either. Several towns near me have begun to institute red light cameras, but I feel that instead of catching criminals, they promote unsafe conditions. I've had countless times where I've had to hit the brakes hard and slow down from 50 in a hurry because I was afriad of the cameras. Any time you have somebody making an unplanned stop in such a hurry, accidents seem more likely to happen. Especially when you have some redneck in a jacked up pickup truck riding your bumper as you approach the light.
not that into console gaming. I'd rather take a ride down to the range and shoot for REAL.
The big difference, however, is that paper targets don't shoot back. Oh, and depending on where you live, you may or may not be able to own/fire all of those cool automatic weapons. Thankfully, living in Georgia, I can. :-D
Still, I understand what you are saying but I do have to say that with the advent of Halo, I found FPS gaming on consoles to be better than I thought it could be. The XBox controller seems to be designed with exactly that in mind. The GC controller sucks for FPS and the PS2 is merely adequate in my eyes. The thumbsticks on the XBox controller seem to have just the right range of motion and sensitivity to make FPS work. Furthermore, my friends and I have found that our PC FPS skills have translated fairly well to the console. I just bought my XBox a little over a week ago, and I hadn't played one since February. I popped in Halo 2 and immediately jumped on live with a few of my friends... and for the most part we dominated. The first match I played, I had the top number of kills - not too bad for somebody who is used to a KB/M combo and who hadn't touched an XBox controller in about 10 months.
I guess for me, the real advantage of online gaming with a console is not having to play the "patch dance" every time I want to play a game. To give you an example, about 10 or so months ago I decided that I wanted to play BF:1942 again. Specifically, the Desert Combat mod. First, I have to install the game again since I removed it a while back. That took a good 20 minutes. Then, I have to go get the latest patch. Oh, the developers don't have it for download on their site - I'll have to go get it from FilePlanet or a similar site. So, I wait in a queue for about 45 minutes, then the file starts downloading at an appalingly (to me anyway) slow rate. So I leave and come back in an hour to find the patch downloaded. I install the patch, then install the copy of Desert Combat I have on my PC. I think to check the version number on the mod against the latest version on line... and I need a new version. Back to FilePlanet - wait in a queue - download starts - it's ~650MB - I leave for 3 hours and then come back. I Install the mod start playing, and find the my framerate sucks compared to the last time I played. I do some research on the boards and find out that the game runs smoother with version X of the ATI drivers and I have version Y. At this point, it's been approximately 6 hours since I first decided I wanted to play the game. I can figure on at least another 30 minutes to update my drivers (maybe more since I have to figure out which friggin order to install the drives for my All-in-Wonder card). At that point I just said "Fuck it!", drank a beer, grabbed my gun, and went to the range.
By comparison, the first time I decided to play Halo 2 on Live, I put the disc in, start the game, connect to Live - oh! There's an update available! The XBox automatically downloads and installs the update and I'm online and playing a game in less than 10 minutes. (OK, that's not 100% true, I did have to add my XBox to my router's DMZ and add my router to my landlord's router's DMZ, but that took all of about 1 minute to do. I made the changes while downloading the update and restarted the routers when the XBox restarted.) There was a time when I didn't mind spending hours on downloading and installing patches, but I think those days went out the window when I finished college, got a job, and could finally afford to fund my alcoholism and the resulting changes in my social life. ;)
I'm like you in that I got my XBox late as well. In fact, I used the profits from the sale of my 360 on eBay to fund my purchase of an XBox. I've had it a little over a week now and I've found that there are scores of good games still available for it. Not to mention the fact that the vast majority of my friends have no intention of upgrading any time soon along with, I'm sure, many other people, so I imagine that the Live experience won't change much in the next year. There were still be a lot of people playing Halo 2 and Forza over the course of the next 3 - 6 months at least.
In the end, I've got a new toy and 7 games right now. In fact, I can't see one compelling reason (read: must have game) to purchase a 360 yet. The offerings on the original XBox are still far better than what's out for the 360. The two 360 games that interest me the most, Call of Duty 2, and PGR3 have their alternatives. Call of Duty 2 I can always pick up for the PC. PGR3, well I haven't yet seen where it's that much better than 2, especially in light of the fact that, for me anyway, Forza provides a much more engrossing experience.
In all, I think my new XBox should keep me occupied until the PS3 comes out. I'll look at getting a 360 when Microsoft can get the 3rd parties to produce a must-have game for the console.
I'm sure he means RAID 0 or 1. RAID 01 or 10 doesn't make much sense outside of a corporate environment. Although the same could be said about RAID in general, I tend to disagree.
I don't see us losing the numpad any time soon. A very large part of the commercial computer market revolves around number crunching, and the numpad simply increases the speed with which you can enter the necessary numbers. For instance, I can think of a maximum of 3 people in my office of ~200 who have no use for the numbpad. Even I find it to be useful since I have several access codes that require a string of numbers or I often find myself having to enter people's social security numbers and/or phone numbers when creating user IDs. I can type on the numbers at the top of the keyboard, but the numpad probably increases the speed with which I can enter those numbers by a factor of 10. I wouldn't give up my numpad for the world, and I would wager than greater than 50% agree with me.
Lastly, I abhore anything that's not a standard keyboard layout. I was working on an executive's PC recently, and they had some brand of keyboard (I forget which brand) that had reordered the Insert/Home/Page Up grouping into a 3x2 group instead a 2x3. Every time I reached for delete, I hit Page Up instead. It was very frustrating - my point here being that once we get used to something we require a very substantial benefit to make us switch to something "better".
What? You mean something like the frogpad?
I'd mod you up if I had the points. Let's hope somebody else sees this a marks it +1 Funny.
While I'll agree that Dell can't exactly make a gaming PC, it has to be said that refurbished Dells can be a source of quality parts for a good price, assuming you purchase their higher line machines and not their low end stuff. I'm really only a casual gamer so I may not count, but the last time I did a full system upgrade, I found that there was absolutely no way I could build an entire machine for cheaper than it would cost me to purchase a refurbished Dell and then add a few key parts. I bought a refurbished Dimension 8300 and 19" monitor, tossed in another 512MB of RAM, binned the 64MB GeForce 5200 in favor of a Radeon 9800 Pro (top dog in October '03, even despite pesky driver issues), and installed a SB Live! I had lying around. Yes, the preinstalled OS was a joke and I had to do a clean install, but in the end I calculated that I probably came out ~$150 - $250 cheaper than if I had built it myself and bought a brand new monitor. And it was only mildly less labor intensive than building an entire PC from scratch. I'm still using the PC now, albeit with even further upgrades from stock.
Hehe. That's the problem. I'm selling Koni adjustable shocks for the car, and all I've seen are the cheaper "stock replacement" shocks for the vehicle. The stuff that goes for approximately $115 - $200 for a full set. It's hard to convince somebody that they really need these adjustable shocks when they can get a decent set of non-adjustable shocks for so much less.
If you think that's good, try searching for "French military victories" (without the quotes) and hit "I'm Feeling Lucky." You'll get a kick out of the result.
Well, you can't forget Google's motto: "Don't be evil."
For the most part, they really do seem to operate according to that.
The other auction did sell for a decent profit. I've been thinking more about it though, and In retrospect there are several factors that could have worked in my favor the second time around: no reserve, lower starting bid (give 'em the glimmer of hope!), and according to the owner of the eBay account, the longer auction time might have helped (although I'm not sure that this is the case with a 360 where my auction didn't even make it to the first 5 pages until it had about 12 hours left).
Other than the seller being slow to pay (I specified 72 hours and emailed the invoice immediately after the end of the auction, but I let her slide), the auction did end with a high enough price to make it worth my time.
The whole experience did make me question my next planned eBay sale, though: an unused set of $950 shocks for a somewhat rare car. I posted on the most popular message board for the car and asked for $500, but considering I got nothing but curiosity seekers and a bunch of lowballers, I'm wondering if eBay would be worth my time and effort.
Since when do you need a license to sell a gun in a private party transaction? From what I understand, no extra paperwork is necessary when it's a person to person transaction in one state. (Or maybe I've been living in the South too long.)
That said, I think guns are one of the few items that are specifically verboten on eBay.