That's true of most services. Back when I used a landline, I remember occasionally getting the "fast busy" signal when I picked up the phone instead of a dialtone (or getting it immediately after I dialed the number I wanted). No one builds out a system assuming that every customer will use it all at once.
What probably happened in your case was that some of the cell towers got borked in the storm, and the remaining ones were unable to keep up with the (understandably) very high demand. At least the cell grid has redundancy to an extent built in - if a cable snaps, your connection is GONE.
If I lived in an area known for violent weather, I'd probably keep a landline then buy myself a prepaid cell phone. Here in Maine, we pretty much get snow, and I have a long driveway so I just keep some food and fuel stocked in case things get really nasty (I own my own plow truck, so I have yet to run into any conditions I couldn't handle, but when things get truly nasty the stores may close for a day or so). I worry more about losing electricity, but that's what the Kerosun (heat indoors) and the barbecue grill (cooking food, warming water - outside, of course) are for. And we rarely lose electric for more than a few days at a stretch.
Wouldn't really make a difference to their business model. They are offering voice communications over dedicated copper/fiber wires. The cost of maintaining their infrastructure is starting to outweigh their profits.
DSL is only available within a given distance of a switching station, and even here in Maine it's getting rare to find an area where DSL is not available within range of the switching station. Outside the range of the switching station, it's the laws of physics and not some backward policy of the telco that is preventing DSL.
VoIP is how many telephone companies ARE carrying their telephone conversations once it comes out of the local switching station. Moving VoIP to the consumers's house requires expensive equipment at the customer location, and the availability of something like DSL to carry the Voice over the IP. See above for the issue.
Unfortunately, what we'll probably end up with is telcos starting to abandon their copper lines that aren't yielding any profit any more (meaning any area where VoIP *is* available because the Internet gets out there, and enough customers have switched - which is also your densest distribution of customers meaning less copper per customer to maintain), and ending up with only the longest and least profitable copper runs where Internet is not readily available. If they lose all their urban cash cows, they'll start having to get more money from their more expensive to maintain rural customers who have fewer options.
Savvy ruralites will start getting cell repeaters ($300 on Amazon nowadays, and they work pretty darned well), and going all-cell once landlines reach the point where they are more expensive than a cell (maintaining 100 miles of copper for 500 customers means you have to charge a LOT of money per customer). Non-savvy customers will either have to pony up, get some kind of help, or go back to the 1800s and disconnect their phones entirely.
Well, actually, no. When we moved back home, we moved into a house that hadn't had landline service in about a decade (previous owners switched to cell because they traveled a lot). We decided that was a pretty cool idea, and hooked up with Vonage for our "landline". I haven't done business with Verizon (good thing, I don't want to call for service and have some guy come and beat me up), or FairPoint at all.
Several neighbors and family members are on FairPoint and thank goodness they haven't had any billing or other disputes or issues. For those who have had problems, I understand it's an utter nightmare.
About the only good argument for a landline any more is 911. But with GPS-enabled cell, that's not even valid any more.
Funny, I've found the opposite. As I lean more and more on Firefox, Outlook, et al to validate my spelling, I start forgetting the spelling of specific rarely-used or oddly-spelled words. I just look for the red squigglies rather than stopping and thinking about the word, and possibly looking it up if I'm unsure.
Oh, well, if you're contributing to space flight, then your bailout check is on the way. I figure my uncle was (according to the estate executor) worth about 120 trillion dollars. I can afford to buy a few flights here and there.
Oh, what the hell, spaceflights all around! If I can afford to borrow $400,000 and send it to the executor for bribe money to speed up delivery of my money, I can afford to borrow a little more to buy a few people some seats on a simple spaceflight.
I'm sure the Russian guy I borrowed the money from will front me some more cash once the guaranteed delivery letter arrives tomorrow, and I gotta go visit my family in his villa anyway, to make sure they are enjoying their stay. Something about "cool lateral" or something - it was all technical talk and I don't really understand it, but I can pay them the million for "random sums" or whatever they called it soon, and they promised to show them a good time.
Once you achieve orbital velocity, you've "hit" orbit. If you have too much power, your orbit will be higher than you planned. If you have too little power, your orbit is lower than you planned (possibly not achieving orbit, of course). Your orbit will continue as long as you have momentum, which is eaten up by the miniscule amounts of atmosphere and space junk bouncing off you as you orbit. To come back to Earth, slow down and you'll fall out of orbit and end up on the planet somewhere. A Geosync circular orbit can be achieved approximately 26,000 miles up. So, roughly put, you figure out how much fuel you need to reach a given speed at 26000 miles, and you're largely good.
To get to the Moon, you have to hit a moving target whose distance averages about 239,000 miles from Earth. Or, roughly put, you have to go nine times as far and you have to hit a teensy tiny little moving target at that distance.
>>>>Getting to the moon seems like just getting escape velocity and proper aiming, but getting a proper circular orbit means achieving velocity AND THEN adjusting to get a proper orbit.
Getting to the moon is achieving a lot more velocity than an orbit, THEN adjusting to get a proper orbit around the Earth to match the Moon's orbit THEN adjusting that orbit to achieve an orbit around the Moon so you can control the descent of your landing vehicle from a stable orbit (or maybe you meant "impact" literally - grin). THEN you can start working out the maths to land your instruments on the Moon.
I'll go buy myself a ticket as soon as the proceeds from my uncle's estate come in, which should be any day now. Who knew, I had a Nigerian prince for an uncle. Small world, eh?
Given the number of reported "fail whale" incidents (if I'm naming them correctly), apparently it's really, REALLY hard to do. Or at least for the people who did it...
Bit I'm not a Twitter-er. I have an account and I occasionally read news blurbs on it, but I have yet to post anything on it.
My car still made the clickity-clackity noises until it was properly broken in at about 40,000 miles, and it still makes a distinctive sound, but is about as loud as an average gasoline engine.
If I put my foot down, I can make a small cloud of smoke, and of course there's a little smoke at startup when it gets chilly, but for average driving you'd never know you were behind a Diesel except for the TDI badge.
I live in Maine, where overnight temps can easily hit zero and 20 below is not that uncommon - we get a night or two down in that range about every year. If it gets truly cold I might have to wait 30 seconds for the glow plugs to finish their dastardly deed, but I've never had the slightest problem starting it up.
Admittedly, when it's below zero the engine has the power of an asthmatic hamster for the first minute or two. But it gets up to full power pretty quickly.
But, yeah, the taxes have really chewed into my fuel savings. I'm still happy with it, and at 100,000 miles I'm thinking about celebrating with a VeggieVan conversion kit if I can find a reliable source of used veggie oil. A 20-gallon veggie system + 15 gallon Diesel tank would give me a range of well over 1000 miles between fill-ups.:)
Maybe. Of course, the original article has a photo gallery where they show other pictures, including Aubrey's "after" photo while he was being interviewed. While hardly pouring blood by the gallon with bits falling off him, he had some pretty serious glasses-shaped bruises around his eyes and on his nose, and the caption implied the interview took place sometime after the incident (meaning he had probably been to see a doctor if necessary, and at least washed his face and stopped any bleeding).
So, unless he had the Verizon tech shove the ID a foot from his face then punched HIMSELF repeatedly, I'd say there's a pretty clear-cut case of assault.
Oh, that, and the Verizon tech was caught by an off-duty cop nearby. Admittedly a neighbor of Aubrey's, but still, having a cop as a witness never hurts your case.
Sorry, even if this was exaggerated, even slapping is behavior that is inappropriate for 2-year-olds in Romper Room. If any company ALLOWED A TECH WHO HAD PHYSICALLY ASSAULTED ME TO CONTINUE WORKING for the company, I'd do everything I could to make the incident as public as possible. And I'd certainly sue them for any medical expenses related to the incident.
I don't know what Aubrey is suing for. Maybe he's gold-digging. But it looks like he has a valid case for at least medical reimbursement and a small punitive amount.
I'm in Maine, I own a Jetta Diesel and I'm thrilled with it, but there are a LOT of stations around here that do not have Diesel available.
Once you get off the highway where the trucks are, I'd guess that about 30% of Maine fuel stations actually sell Diesel. There are entire towns (like Freeport) where Diesel is unavailable anywhere in town.
Fortunately, using it around home I just know where the stations are.
And when I travel, the well over 600 mile range between fillups means that I can always find a station in the 150+ miles between 1/4 tank and empty.
PS: I'm 6' 3". If I put the seat all the way back, I can barely reach the pedals. So it's a good car for short people. Just DO NOT plan on having anyone ride in the driver-side rear seat. I can do it for short trips, if the person riding back there has short legs.
Here in Maine, Diesel generally more expensive than Gasoline. That varies between "a little" and "a LOT" more expensive.
My TDI gets about 45 (average of all seasons and conditions). My wife's Pontiac Vibe gets about 38. So as long as Diesel is less than 15% more expensive than Gasoline, I'm at break-even in terms of fuel cost. Most of the time, this works out. Occasionally, Diesel will spike and/or Gas will drop enough to the point where my car is more expensive to operate.
Of course, when I bought it back in 2002, Diesel was a good deal cheaper than Gas (because Diesel is cheaper to make, and because this was before the flood of Diesel taxes started). Gas cars have also become more efficient in the meantime (even the Prius of the day was less efficient than the Jetta TDI in 2002). So it used to be a LOT cheaper to operate my car compared to most gas cars, now it's just a little cheaper.
The Cutlass Diesel was the epitome of how American car companies got the Diesel engine wrong.
They took a frame that wasn't built or tuned to handle the weight of a Diesel powerplant and they slapped it in there anyway.
They adapted a Gas engine, poorly, to burn Diesel. They used engine blocks made for gas cars which couldn't handle the compression of the Diesel.
Then, because their Diesel cars blew monkey chunks, they stopped making them or parts for them, so the cars (which needed a lot of maintenance because they were designed like absolute crap) couldn't be repaired or maintained properly.
Building a Diesel car cannot be done by adapting Gasoline technology. You have to build an engine that can actually burn Diesel fuel, then you have to put it on a frame that can support the differences. GM learned that lesson the hard way, and the unintended side effect is that most people in the US think of Diesels as slow, smoky, expensive pieces of crap.
I'm apparently chiming in with quite a Dieselhead chorus here, but I gotta say it anyway.
My 2002 Jetta TDI has 90 HP. That sounds pretty anemic by US standards, and the car's not exactly a jackrabbit, but it can hold its own against most 4 cylinder 4-door cars and a good number of 6-cylinder ones in terms of power. The most impressive part, as you'd expect, is off-the-line torque. I've had people ride in my car 4-5 times before they even notice they are in a Diesel, they just thought they were in the 6-cylinder Jetta.
Highway passing is far less impressive, but It's got far more than enough grunt to build up highway speeds rapidly on an on-ramp so you can match speed with existing traffic on any on-ramp I've ever encountered. I can't pass a Mustang going up a hill, of course, but it's got enough passing power to execute any normal traffic passing you might need. You'll never generate enough Gs to spill your latte ("DUDE!" ), but it's got a lot of go.
It gets about 50MPG in the summer on the highway, about 45 city (a dollop over 40MPG combined in the winter, with the winter-grade Diesel and the weather here in Maine), so with the 15.5-gallon tank you're looking at a theoretical range of about 750 miles. I'm a coward, so I've never driven mine more than about 680 miles between fill-ups, and I was even sweating that one pretty hard thinking I'd coast in on fumes or worse. I always have a couple of gallons left in the tank even after 600 miles when the fuel indicator drops below "E" and the car starts beeping "feed me, Seymour".
If you want a fast flashy car, walk right on by the Jetta TDI and get yourself a Mustang or a Camaro or a Hummer. But if you're happy with something like the gas Jetta, then you're probably a candidate for the Dieselhead version. Or you can get an old one and do a VeggieVan conversion if you have access to used restaurant grease and don't mind the scent of french fries.:)
The common usage of the term "Port" in gaming implies that few, if any, changes were made for the intended new platform. If you "Port" something in the gamine world, it means you are taking it largely as it is, recompiling it, slapping a few changes in to make it run on the new hardware maybe, and putting a sticker on the packaging that says "THIS VERSION IS FOR (name your platform here)".
It's not a correct usage of the term, the disparaging term should be "hacked" or "reworked" as opposed to "ported", since "ported" is supposed to mean that the game was originally designed to be moved from one platform to another "portable", and if a game is not "portable" then you can't "port" it.
But you just gotta love vernacular, in which words rarely mean what the dictionary says the words SHOULD mean. (grin)
"This word, inconceivable, I do not think it means what you think it means."
I contacted the local Comcast office about going with a commercial account back when I telecommuted. I figured I'd get the Business account and get better speed, since the best of the Residential accounts is limited to an advertised 256K up which is really closer to 120K in reality.
I could have really used the speed for telecommuting. Even with a traffic-shaping-capable router, trying to upload a >1MB file while on my Vonage line took upwards of a half hour, and sharing my desktop was pretty much impossible even if I dedicated my Internet connection to it.
Comcast told me they wouldn't sell me the contract because I'm in a residential-zoned area. Customers in residential areas are limited to residential accounts.
I'm currently on their $50 3MB plan. I could spend an extra $15 a month to go with 5MB download, or an extra $25 to go to 7MB, but I've still got the same anemic upload speed and the 250GB/month cap. So I fail to see the point of those plans - 3MB down is really more than I need even when watching YouTube.
DOCSIS 1.1 is the only standard they technically support unless you rent one of their cable modems ($10 a month). You can GET a DOCSIS 2.0 modem on your own, but they won't recommend any brands that work with their Axxis gear, and they won't state whether even the major brands will negotiate a DOCSIS 2 connection with them.
I'd go with a competitor, but Comcast has none, or at least I've not been able to get a clear answer out of FairPoint as to whether DSL is available here (they seem to be imploding after purchasing all the landlines up here, and asking them a question is almost as productive and pleasant as using a Magic 8 ball while being pummeled with a baseball bat).
Having said all that, Comcast has been really great here about maintaining really good latency. Their predecessor, SusCom, obviously built out a good backbone. And I understand that to some extent the fact that their bandwidth sucks contributes to the fact that they can keep latency low.
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That's true of most services. Back when I used a landline, I remember occasionally getting the "fast busy" signal when I picked up the phone instead of a dialtone (or getting it immediately after I dialed the number I wanted). No one builds out a system assuming that every customer will use it all at once.
What probably happened in your case was that some of the cell towers got borked in the storm, and the remaining ones were unable to keep up with the (understandably) very high demand. At least the cell grid has redundancy to an extent built in - if a cable snaps, your connection is GONE.
If I lived in an area known for violent weather, I'd probably keep a landline then buy myself a prepaid cell phone. Here in Maine, we pretty much get snow, and I have a long driveway so I just keep some food and fuel stocked in case things get really nasty (I own my own plow truck, so I have yet to run into any conditions I couldn't handle, but when things get truly nasty the stores may close for a day or so). I worry more about losing electricity, but that's what the Kerosun (heat indoors) and the barbecue grill (cooking food, warming water - outside, of course) are for. And we rarely lose electric for more than a few days at a stretch.
Wouldn't really make a difference to their business model. They are offering voice communications over dedicated copper/fiber wires. The cost of maintaining their infrastructure is starting to outweigh their profits.
DSL is only available within a given distance of a switching station, and even here in Maine it's getting rare to find an area where DSL is not available within range of the switching station. Outside the range of the switching station, it's the laws of physics and not some backward policy of the telco that is preventing DSL.
VoIP is how many telephone companies ARE carrying their telephone conversations once it comes out of the local switching station. Moving VoIP to the consumers's house requires expensive equipment at the customer location, and the availability of something like DSL to carry the Voice over the IP. See above for the issue.
Unfortunately, what we'll probably end up with is telcos starting to abandon their copper lines that aren't yielding any profit any more (meaning any area where VoIP *is* available because the Internet gets out there, and enough customers have switched - which is also your densest distribution of customers meaning less copper per customer to maintain), and ending up with only the longest and least profitable copper runs where Internet is not readily available. If they lose all their urban cash cows, they'll start having to get more money from their more expensive to maintain rural customers who have fewer options.
Savvy ruralites will start getting cell repeaters ($300 on Amazon nowadays, and they work pretty darned well), and going all-cell once landlines reach the point where they are more expensive than a cell (maintaining 100 miles of copper for 500 customers means you have to charge a LOT of money per customer). Non-savvy customers will either have to pony up, get some kind of help, or go back to the 1800s and disconnect their phones entirely.
>>did anyone else find themselves making far MORE typos and spelling errors in responding to this topic than they usually make?
Know, knot ate awl.
Wye, dew yew men yew meek moor tie poles end spilling arrows?
I live in Maine, so I feel your pain.
Well, actually, no. When we moved back home, we moved into a house that hadn't had landline service in about a decade (previous owners switched to cell because they traveled a lot). We decided that was a pretty cool idea, and hooked up with Vonage for our "landline". I haven't done business with Verizon (good thing, I don't want to call for service and have some guy come and beat me up), or FairPoint at all.
Several neighbors and family members are on FairPoint and thank goodness they haven't had any billing or other disputes or issues. For those who have had problems, I understand it's an utter nightmare.
About the only good argument for a landline any more is 911. But with GPS-enabled cell, that's not even valid any more.
Funny, I've found the opposite. As I lean more and more on Firefox, Outlook, et al to validate my spelling, I start forgetting the spelling of specific rarely-used or oddly-spelled words. I just look for the red squigglies rather than stopping and thinking about the word, and possibly looking it up if I'm unsure.
weary (tired of) or wary (nervous about)?
Amazon should patent "1-click attacking"
Yeah, it was a crazy theory based on absolutely no fact, which I shall now attempt to distract you fr.. LOOK, A UFO!
"People who attacked this site ALSO attacked..."
Oh, well, if you're contributing to space flight, then your bailout check is on the way. I figure my uncle was (according to the estate executor) worth about 120 trillion dollars. I can afford to buy a few flights here and there.
Oh, what the hell, spaceflights all around! If I can afford to borrow $400,000 and send it to the executor for bribe money to speed up delivery of my money, I can afford to borrow a little more to buy a few people some seats on a simple spaceflight.
I'm sure the Russian guy I borrowed the money from will front me some more cash once the guaranteed delivery letter arrives tomorrow, and I gotta go visit my family in his villa anyway, to make sure they are enjoying their stay. Something about "cool lateral" or something - it was all technical talk and I don't really understand it, but I can pay them the million for "random sums" or whatever they called it soon, and they promised to show them a good time.
Ridiculously oversimplified response:
Once you achieve orbital velocity, you've "hit" orbit. If you have too much power, your orbit will be higher than you planned. If you have too little power, your orbit is lower than you planned (possibly not achieving orbit, of course). Your orbit will continue as long as you have momentum, which is eaten up by the miniscule amounts of atmosphere and space junk bouncing off you as you orbit. To come back to Earth, slow down and you'll fall out of orbit and end up on the planet somewhere. A Geosync circular orbit can be achieved approximately 26,000 miles up. So, roughly put, you figure out how much fuel you need to reach a given speed at 26000 miles, and you're largely good.
To get to the Moon, you have to hit a moving target whose distance averages about 239,000 miles from Earth. Or, roughly put, you have to go nine times as far and you have to hit a teensy tiny little moving target at that distance.
>>>>Getting to the moon seems like just getting escape velocity and proper aiming, but getting a proper circular orbit means achieving velocity AND THEN adjusting to get a proper orbit.
Getting to the moon is achieving a lot more velocity than an orbit, THEN adjusting to get a proper orbit around the Earth to match the Moon's orbit THEN adjusting that orbit to achieve an orbit around the Moon so you can control the descent of your landing vehicle from a stable orbit (or maybe you meant "impact" literally - grin). THEN you can start working out the maths to land your instruments on the Moon.
I'll go buy myself a ticket as soon as the proceeds from my uncle's estate come in, which should be any day now. Who knew, I had a Nigerian prince for an uncle. Small world, eh?
Given the number of reported "fail whale" incidents (if I'm naming them correctly), apparently it's really, REALLY hard to do. Or at least for the people who did it...
Bit I'm not a Twitter-er. I have an account and I occasionally read news blurbs on it, but I have yet to post anything on it.
Diesel's come a long way.
My car still made the clickity-clackity noises until it was properly broken in at about 40,000 miles, and it still makes a distinctive sound, but is about as loud as an average gasoline engine.
If I put my foot down, I can make a small cloud of smoke, and of course there's a little smoke at startup when it gets chilly, but for average driving you'd never know you were behind a Diesel except for the TDI badge.
I live in Maine, where overnight temps can easily hit zero and 20 below is not that uncommon - we get a night or two down in that range about every year. If it gets truly cold I might have to wait 30 seconds for the glow plugs to finish their dastardly deed, but I've never had the slightest problem starting it up.
Admittedly, when it's below zero the engine has the power of an asthmatic hamster for the first minute or two. But it gets up to full power pretty quickly.
But, yeah, the taxes have really chewed into my fuel savings. I'm still happy with it, and at 100,000 miles I'm thinking about celebrating with a VeggieVan conversion kit if I can find a reliable source of used veggie oil. A 20-gallon veggie system + 15 gallon Diesel tank would give me a range of well over 1000 miles between fill-ups. :)
Maybe. Of course, the original article has a photo gallery where they show other pictures, including Aubrey's "after" photo while he was being interviewed. While hardly pouring blood by the gallon with bits falling off him, he had some pretty serious glasses-shaped bruises around his eyes and on his nose, and the caption implied the interview took place sometime after the incident (meaning he had probably been to see a doctor if necessary, and at least washed his face and stopped any bleeding).
So, unless he had the Verizon tech shove the ID a foot from his face then punched HIMSELF repeatedly, I'd say there's a pretty clear-cut case of assault.
Oh, that, and the Verizon tech was caught by an off-duty cop nearby. Admittedly a neighbor of Aubrey's, but still, having a cop as a witness never hurts your case.
Sorry, even if this was exaggerated, even slapping is behavior that is inappropriate for 2-year-olds in Romper Room. If any company ALLOWED A TECH WHO HAD PHYSICALLY ASSAULTED ME TO CONTINUE WORKING for the company, I'd do everything I could to make the incident as public as possible. And I'd certainly sue them for any medical expenses related to the incident.
I don't know what Aubrey is suing for. Maybe he's gold-digging. But it looks like he has a valid case for at least medical reimbursement and a small punitive amount.
I'm in Maine, I own a Jetta Diesel and I'm thrilled with it, but there are a LOT of stations around here that do not have Diesel available.
Once you get off the highway where the trucks are, I'd guess that about 30% of Maine fuel stations actually sell Diesel. There are entire towns (like Freeport) where Diesel is unavailable anywhere in town.
Fortunately, using it around home I just know where the stations are.
And when I travel, the well over 600 mile range between fillups means that I can always find a station in the 150+ miles between 1/4 tank and empty.
And here I am replying to myself again.
It's a good car for TALL people. Dammit, must remember to read my posts before hitting SUBMIT.
My 5' 3" wife also finds it comfortable to drive, so it's ALSO a good car for shorter people.
PS: I'm 6' 3". If I put the seat all the way back, I can barely reach the pedals. So it's a good car for short people. Just DO NOT plan on having anyone ride in the driver-side rear seat. I can do it for short trips, if the person riding back there has short legs.
Had mine since 2002, 80000 miles on the odometer so far, and I'd gladly do it all over again.
Depends on where you live.
Here in Maine, Diesel generally more expensive than Gasoline. That varies between "a little" and "a LOT" more expensive.
My TDI gets about 45 (average of all seasons and conditions). My wife's Pontiac Vibe gets about 38. So as long as Diesel is less than 15% more expensive than Gasoline, I'm at break-even in terms of fuel cost. Most of the time, this works out. Occasionally, Diesel will spike and/or Gas will drop enough to the point where my car is more expensive to operate.
Of course, when I bought it back in 2002, Diesel was a good deal cheaper than Gas (because Diesel is cheaper to make, and because this was before the flood of Diesel taxes started). Gas cars have also become more efficient in the meantime (even the Prius of the day was less efficient than the Jetta TDI in 2002). So it used to be a LOT cheaper to operate my car compared to most gas cars, now it's just a little cheaper.
The Cutlass Diesel was the epitome of how American car companies got the Diesel engine wrong.
They took a frame that wasn't built or tuned to handle the weight of a Diesel powerplant and they slapped it in there anyway.
They adapted a Gas engine, poorly, to burn Diesel. They used engine blocks made for gas cars which couldn't handle the compression of the Diesel.
Then, because their Diesel cars blew monkey chunks, they stopped making them or parts for them, so the cars (which needed a lot of maintenance because they were designed like absolute crap) couldn't be repaired or maintained properly.
Building a Diesel car cannot be done by adapting Gasoline technology. You have to build an engine that can actually burn Diesel fuel, then you have to put it on a frame that can support the differences. GM learned that lesson the hard way, and the unintended side effect is that most people in the US think of Diesels as slow, smoky, expensive pieces of crap.
I'm apparently chiming in with quite a Dieselhead chorus here, but I gotta say it anyway.
My 2002 Jetta TDI has 90 HP. That sounds pretty anemic by US standards, and the car's not exactly a jackrabbit, but it can hold its own against most 4 cylinder 4-door cars and a good number of 6-cylinder ones in terms of power. The most impressive part, as you'd expect, is off-the-line torque. I've had people ride in my car 4-5 times before they even notice they are in a Diesel, they just thought they were in the 6-cylinder Jetta.
Highway passing is far less impressive, but It's got far more than enough grunt to build up highway speeds rapidly on an on-ramp so you can match speed with existing traffic on any on-ramp I've ever encountered. I can't pass a Mustang going up a hill, of course, but it's got enough passing power to execute any normal traffic passing you might need. You'll never generate enough Gs to spill your latte ("DUDE!" ), but it's got a lot of go.
It gets about 50MPG in the summer on the highway, about 45 city (a dollop over 40MPG combined in the winter, with the winter-grade Diesel and the weather here in Maine), so with the 15.5-gallon tank you're looking at a theoretical range of about 750 miles. I'm a coward, so I've never driven mine more than about 680 miles between fill-ups, and I was even sweating that one pretty hard thinking I'd coast in on fumes or worse. I always have a couple of gallons left in the tank even after 600 miles when the fuel indicator drops below "E" and the car starts beeping "feed me, Seymour".
If you want a fast flashy car, walk right on by the Jetta TDI and get yourself a Mustang or a Camaro or a Hummer. But if you're happy with something like the gas Jetta, then you're probably a candidate for the Dieselhead version. Or you can get an old one and do a VeggieVan conversion if you have access to used restaurant grease and don't mind the scent of french fries. :)
Correct.
The common usage of the term "Port" in gaming implies that few, if any, changes were made for the intended new platform. If you "Port" something in the gamine world, it means you are taking it largely as it is, recompiling it, slapping a few changes in to make it run on the new hardware maybe, and putting a sticker on the packaging that says "THIS VERSION IS FOR (name your platform here)".
It's not a correct usage of the term, the disparaging term should be "hacked" or "reworked" as opposed to "ported", since "ported" is supposed to mean that the game was originally designed to be moved from one platform to another "portable", and if a game is not "portable" then you can't "port" it.
But you just gotta love vernacular, in which words rarely mean what the dictionary says the words SHOULD mean. (grin)
"This word, inconceivable, I do not think it means what you think it means."
I contacted the local Comcast office about going with a commercial account back when I telecommuted. I figured I'd get the Business account and get better speed, since the best of the Residential accounts is limited to an advertised 256K up which is really closer to 120K in reality.
I could have really used the speed for telecommuting. Even with a traffic-shaping-capable router, trying to upload a >1MB file while on my Vonage line took upwards of a half hour, and sharing my desktop was pretty much impossible even if I dedicated my Internet connection to it.
Comcast told me they wouldn't sell me the contract because I'm in a residential-zoned area. Customers in residential areas are limited to residential accounts.
I'm currently on their $50 3MB plan. I could spend an extra $15 a month to go with 5MB download, or an extra $25 to go to 7MB, but I've still got the same anemic upload speed and the 250GB/month cap. So I fail to see the point of those plans - 3MB down is really more than I need even when watching YouTube.
DOCSIS 1.1 is the only standard they technically support unless you rent one of their cable modems ($10 a month). You can GET a DOCSIS 2.0 modem on your own, but they won't recommend any brands that work with their Axxis gear, and they won't state whether even the major brands will negotiate a DOCSIS 2 connection with them.
I'd go with a competitor, but Comcast has none, or at least I've not been able to get a clear answer out of FairPoint as to whether DSL is available here (they seem to be imploding after purchasing all the landlines up here, and asking them a question is almost as productive and pleasant as using a Magic 8 ball while being pummeled with a baseball bat).
Having said all that, Comcast has been really great here about maintaining really good latency. Their predecessor, SusCom, obviously built out a good backbone. And I understand that to some extent the fact that their bandwidth sucks contributes to the fact that they can keep latency low.
Thanks. Nice human-interest piece that helps add some dimension to the story.