"Go back to putting appropriately sized engines and gear ratios in cars and they will be able to accelerate quickly, get good fuel economy, and limit their top speed to about 1.25 times the maximum speed limit allowed."
We never stopped. My heap of shit* 9 year old 1.6l Vauxhall can do quite a bit more than 87.5mph without trying too hard.
* "Heap of shit" is in comparison to most other cars in UK. However, it has far better fuel economy than any solely petrol powered mass produced car in the States. Compared to those it's amazing.
Are you sure? Do you have any more details? Looking at a 1.6L Vauxhall Astra (just taking a guess at the model), fuel economy doesn't look particularly out of this world amazing.
Keep in mind the imperial gallon (4.5L) is 20% bigger than the US gallon (3.8L) and will affect MPG ratings accordingly... Which is why I use L/100km
I bought a TI-84+ for a sibling last month, and it still has TI-Basic and ASM(via computer) just like my 5-year-old one. $105 or so at Target.
I think for reasons of standardized tests and testing acceptance they don't change their flagship lines very much, if at all.
That and, if they still sell at a near monopoly, without investing in additional development, why bother?
The current TI-84 series are virtually identical to my 1996 era TI-83. I was still using it when all my peers had newer TI-83+ / TI-83+SE. No functional difference.
I had a 1999 era TI-89. Functionally identical to my peers TI-89 Ti (aside from not having a spaceship inspired case)
Indeed there are improvements. I spend all my time in Desktop, have classic shell, and it's great. My dad got a new Windows 8 laptop. I set it up with Classic Shell, booting straight to desktop, and he's very satisfied with it.
You got it, it wasn't about the CPU, but the 915 chipsets which Intel was still trying to clear from inventory, or they'd eat them as they came back from OEMs
And I think they still had a ton of inventory. i910 was released in late 2004, "Vista Capable" bondoggle started in 2005 and came to a head with the release of Vista in early 2007 as consumers realized Intel had sold them a dud chipset.
Yet sales of i915 continued. In Q4 2007 EeePC and classmate were released, with a Celeron-M coupled with an i915. These were on the market until at least mid-2009, though they had other Celeron-M models as well.
Have you ever seen the applications people build around MS Access back in the day? It was, I am not exaggerating, a nightmare. You could really have bad dreams about that sort of thing, because it felt like what getting lost in the woods at night feels like.
The Visual Basic 6 monstrosities people used to cobble together back in the '90s were just as bad.
Used to cobble together? '90s? Lucky you. Some critical business processes still rely on them *sobs*.
Yet it's funny (sad?) how many cars I see on downhill, straight, on-ramps that will immediately merge within 100ft of a 2000ft lane, doing about 30MPH. It's shocking how many of those cars are significantly more powerful than mine.
mean while, you can run Windows 8 on any Pentium 4.
Actually no you can't. Windows 8 unlike Windows 7 requires PAE, NX, and SSE2. NX was introduced into later Pentium 4 Prescott models, but not earlier Willamette and Northwood models. Win 8 Betas did run on these platforms, but RTM will refuse to install on them.
When looking for places to stay on TripAdvisor I get a kick out of finding the really poorly rated hotels and reading all the passionate 1 star essays where people go on in depth about how they nearly got stabbed, druggies out front, blood stains on the wall, etc.
I look at the distribution in addition to reading comments. If a place or item only has dozen of 1 and 2 star ratings it's probably NFG.
It does, but only 2 or three times before it grinds to a halt and you require a reboot which takes about eight minutes.
Are you basing this on anything or just "LOLZ BSOD" jokes from Windows 98?
Certainly you can criticize WP for certain things, like UI, and lack of app selection, but I've never heard complaints about stability, or inability to perform basic functions. Quite the opposite. Many reviews (even from hardcore iOS and Android users) point out how stable and responsive the OS is.
My Android phone freezes and restarts once every couple weeks. After I reboot it seems to re-enumerate the SD card for 8 minutes. Once I had a phone call that I couldn't answer. I swipped to answer, and the screen responded to my swipe, but didn't actually answer. Another time it somehow went to the home screen while ringing (haven't been able to recreate this) and I had to figure out how to answer calls from the notification centre. Sometimes opening camera, dialer, or SMS takes a long time to open. iPhone isn't necessarily better. It seems to me Safari crashes once an hour.
I have to agree with it, and although my username would suggest otherwise, I would love to run Linux full time, it's some of this basic stuff that breaks with updates that keeps me away. It's the "lets create another sound API instead of fixing the broken stuff" and "Lets reinvent the UI instead of fixing the broken stuff" that keeps me away.
The problem is most drivers don't know that it's a redundant system, and never think of trying the parking brake if the brake pedal fails. This is one area where linguistic drift has hurt us. They were originally called the emergency brake, whose name clearly implies they're to be used in an emergency if the regular brakes fail. But since they were also used to keep manual transmission cars from rolling when parked, they've colloquially been called parking brakes. To the point where most people refer to them as parking brakes now and don't know about their emergency braking function.
It's also referred to as a hand-brake (especially outside of North America where front bench seats with foot operated e-brakes where not near as popular). I've heard of people trying to use it in an emergency, a panic stop situation. In which case it's far worse than the service brakes, unless the service brakes have failed.
The truth is a frightening number of people don't understand how the cars they're driving work, and it's not just limited to e-brake / p-brake / h-brake, and it's not due to the name. Many don't understand basic concepts of gears, how and when to use manual modes of an automatic, how to shift into neutral or kill the ignition in the case of a stuck throttle. A shocking number of people don't understand that an oil light means a loss of oil pressure and the car should be pulled over and shut off immediately. A shocking number of people don't know how to jump-start a car, or change a flat, or check / adjust their tire pressure, or oil / tranny / brake / power steering fluid. A shocking number don't know that a quick blinking turn signal means you have a turn signal bulb out.
Hence the comment "things that really don't need (or shouldn't have) computer controls"
The closed loop Engine Control Unit has been standard for 20+ years and has proven better emissions, fuel economy, and driveability that can't be matched with mechanical means. HVAC tied into computer, over complex infotainment, computer controlled parking brake? Not so much.
Indeed it is useful. My gym just moved and when they opened had all new cardio machines (Precor P80). The machines have touchscreens with built in TV tuners, and also have an iPod/iPhone dock. I've only seen the dock used to charge phones, and occasionally play music. It can however be used for video as well, though I've never seen anyone else use it for that. So rather than watch Judge Judy or whatever's on at 5:00, I can load my downloaded or streaming TV shows onto my iPod Touch (4g) and watch it while I bike. Now with iPhone 5 those are all obsolete. I also bought a pair of bluetooth headphones since the cable was getting in the way. LG tone 700. The 730 "is better" but has issues with iOS 6.
I also use CopyTrans Manager so I don't have to use the disaster known as "iTunes" to load mp4 files into the video library.
Too bad Apple couldn't do something like base their connector around a micro-USB connector, so you could use standard cable for basic charging and data, and a fancier dock connection for video out, accessories, etc. Similar to how MicroUSB for USB 3.0 is based around a standard MicroUSB connector
It's also a bitch what they did with their new connector. With my iPod I bought a bunch of ipod cables at the dollar store, so I can have one at work, one in my suitcase, one in the car, where the new connector has to have Apple authorized ($$) chipped cables.
Living in Canada, a lot of online retailers ship out of the US, and I prefer shipping using USPS (which goes to Canada Post) wherever possible. Shipping costs are lower, custom charges are a lot lower, and if I'm not home when the parcel arrives, I get a card and pick it up at a postal outlet (a local drug store), which is open until 9PM. Compared to the courier companies where I have to drive 45 minutes to the business park, and they close at 5PM.
Why do the sirens take so long? Are they run by Slashdot?
Slashdot Tornado alarms would ring 2 weeks after the town was devistated, and then a dupe alarm 2 weeks after that. That is if the Javascript loaded at all.
Can't tell if you're serious or not, but there will still be plenty of WindowsXP machines in service come April 2014. I saw an article saying "15% of medium and large enterprises will still have Windows XP running on at least 10% of their PCs after Microsoft support ends in April 2014." I know our large company still has 80%+ PCs on Windows XP (IT-managed PC standard is still XP. Some non-IT managed PCs run 7). Our facility is supposed to be the pilot location to deploy Windows 7. We were supposed to have migrated over by the end of 2012. Windows 7 is still a long way off here. We just migrated off Novell Netware.
Anyways, compliance risks aside, it won't suddenly be the end of the world. Most attack vectors these days are through crappy browser plugins (Java, Adobe Flash and Reader), and since XP-SP2, Windows networking hasn't been exposed to the internet by default, and most people run behind a router anyways. So given IE6 and IE8 on XP will lose support, Firefox and Chrome will continue to support XP as long as there is a userbase, as will these plugins likely. So will AV software.
Compatibility is an important feature that's suitable for portable media. You know ext2 wouldn't get full support from MS, meanwhile (at least new versions) of Windows have full UDF support. UDF unlike FAT/32 offer large file support, and it's not encumbered with patents.
No, the preloaded Linux distributions listed stunk. Crappy repos, and limited updates. Aftermarket Linux distros (eg: Ubuntu-based distros, I found Crunchbang worked great, with full repo support) had a really good experience, and would have done well if they were preloaded.
I maintain that OEM's wanted cheap licences from Microsoft, and their approach was to sell Netbooks that shipped with Linux to scare Microsoft. Half my Xandros-preloaded EeePC 701's manual was about how to install XP, and it is what I'd consider "the first Netbook", back when Microsoft was cutting off XP support.
Unfortunately the whole thing went into a death spiral. Microsoft provided cheap licences (XP-Home, then 7-Starter), but eternally limited the platform specs (1GB RAM, 160, then 250GB Hard drive, and crappy Atom-class processors), in collusion with Intel who wanted to sell Ultrabooks at 4x the cost of a Netbook and claim they are what people really want. Over the course of 4 years (2008-2012, the mainstream life of the Atom-HDD-based netbook), the specs didn't improve appreciably. There is a certain niche of an ultraportable, ultralow cost full fledge PC (not a tablet) that Netbooks did indeed fill. And they could have thrived if allowed to grow. If you look around you can find decent low cost ~12" laptops eg This C$370 11.6" Core i3, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/product/acer-acer-aspire-v5-11-6-laptop-silver-intel-core-i3-2365m-500gb-hdd-4gb-ram-windows-8-v5-171-6815/10223555.aspx
Slashdot Mirror
"Go back to putting appropriately sized engines and gear ratios in cars and they will be able to accelerate quickly, get good fuel economy, and limit their top speed to about 1.25 times the maximum speed limit allowed."
We never stopped. My heap of shit* 9 year old 1.6l Vauxhall can do quite a bit more than 87.5mph without trying too hard.
* "Heap of shit" is in comparison to most other cars in UK. However, it has far better fuel economy than any solely petrol powered mass produced car in the States. Compared to those it's amazing.
Are you sure? Do you have any more details? Looking at a 1.6L Vauxhall Astra (just taking a guess at the model), fuel economy doesn't look particularly out of this world amazing.
Keep in mind the imperial gallon (4.5L) is 20% bigger than the US gallon (3.8L) and will affect MPG ratings accordingly... Which is why I use L/100km
I bought a TI-84+ for a sibling last month, and it still has TI-Basic and ASM(via computer) just like my 5-year-old one. $105 or so at Target.
I think for reasons of standardized tests and testing acceptance they don't change their flagship lines very much, if at all.
That and, if they still sell at a near monopoly, without investing in additional development, why bother?
The current TI-84 series are virtually identical to my 1996 era TI-83. I was still using it when all my peers had newer TI-83+ / TI-83+SE. No functional difference.
I had a 1999 era TI-89. Functionally identical to my peers TI-89 Ti (aside from not having a spaceship inspired case)
Indeed there are improvements. I spend all my time in Desktop, have classic shell, and it's great. My dad got a new Windows 8 laptop. I set it up with Classic Shell, booting straight to desktop, and he's very satisfied with it.
+1 Informative!
You got it, it wasn't about the CPU, but the 915 chipsets which Intel was still trying to clear from inventory, or they'd eat them as they came back from OEMs
And I think they still had a ton of inventory. i910 was released in late 2004, "Vista Capable" bondoggle started in 2005 and came to a head with the release of Vista in early 2007 as consumers realized Intel had sold them a dud chipset.
Yet sales of i915 continued. In Q4 2007 EeePC and classmate were released, with a Celeron-M coupled with an i915. These were on the market until at least mid-2009, though they had other Celeron-M models as well.
obligatory:
http://xkcd.com/1174/
The Visual Basic 6 monstrosities people used to cobble together back in the '90s were just as bad.
Used to cobble together? '90s? Lucky you. Some critical business processes still rely on them *sobs*.
Yet it's funny (sad?) how many cars I see on downhill, straight, on-ramps that will immediately merge within 100ft of a 2000ft lane, doing about 30MPH. It's shocking how many of those cars are significantly more powerful than mine.
I prefer they got rid of the keyboard and latch and just kept it to one button
http://www.theonion.com/video/apple-introduces-revolutionary-new-laptop-with-no,14299/
mean while, you can run Windows 8 on any Pentium 4.
Actually no you can't. Windows 8 unlike Windows 7 requires PAE, NX, and SSE2. NX was introduced into later Pentium 4 Prescott models, but not earlier Willamette and Northwood models. Win 8 Betas did run on these platforms, but RTM will refuse to install on them.
When looking for places to stay on TripAdvisor I get a kick out of finding the really poorly rated hotels and reading all the passionate 1 star essays where people go on in depth about how they nearly got stabbed, druggies out front, blood stains on the wall, etc.
I look at the distribution in addition to reading comments. If a place or item only has dozen of 1 and 2 star ratings it's probably NFG.
You noticed the difference between 1450MB and 1650MB RAM usage by firefox?
It does, but only 2 or three times before it grinds to a halt and you require a reboot which takes about eight minutes.
Are you basing this on anything or just "LOLZ BSOD" jokes from Windows 98?
Certainly you can criticize WP for certain things, like UI, and lack of app selection, but I've never heard complaints about stability, or inability to perform basic functions. Quite the opposite. Many reviews (even from hardcore iOS and Android users) point out how stable and responsive the OS is.
My Android phone freezes and restarts once every couple weeks. After I reboot it seems to re-enumerate the SD card for 8 minutes. Once I had a phone call that I couldn't answer. I swipped to answer, and the screen responded to my swipe, but didn't actually answer. Another time it somehow went to the home screen while ringing (haven't been able to recreate this) and I had to figure out how to answer calls from the notification centre. Sometimes opening camera, dialer, or SMS takes a long time to open. iPhone isn't necessarily better. It seems to me Safari crashes once an hour.
And the 90 Caprice had electronic fuel injection.
I have to agree with it, and although my username would suggest otherwise, I would love to run Linux full time, it's some of this basic stuff that breaks with updates that keeps me away. It's the "lets create another sound API instead of fixing the broken stuff" and "Lets reinvent the UI instead of fixing the broken stuff" that keeps me away.
The problem is most drivers don't know that it's a redundant system, and never think of trying the parking brake if the brake pedal fails. This is one area where linguistic drift has hurt us. They were originally called the emergency brake, whose name clearly implies they're to be used in an emergency if the regular brakes fail. But since they were also used to keep manual transmission cars from rolling when parked, they've colloquially been called parking brakes. To the point where most people refer to them as parking brakes now and don't know about their emergency braking function.
It's also referred to as a hand-brake (especially outside of North America where front bench seats with foot operated e-brakes where not near as popular). I've heard of people trying to use it in an emergency, a panic stop situation. In which case it's far worse than the service brakes, unless the service brakes have failed.
The truth is a frightening number of people don't understand how the cars they're driving work, and it's not just limited to e-brake / p-brake / h-brake, and it's not due to the name. Many don't understand basic concepts of gears, how and when to use manual modes of an automatic, how to shift into neutral or kill the ignition in the case of a stuck throttle. A shocking number of people don't understand that an oil light means a loss of oil pressure and the car should be pulled over and shut off immediately. A shocking number of people don't know how to jump-start a car, or change a flat, or check / adjust their tire pressure, or oil / tranny / brake / power steering fluid. A shocking number don't know that a quick blinking turn signal means you have a turn signal bulb out.
Hence the comment "things that really don't need (or shouldn't have) computer controls"
The closed loop Engine Control Unit has been standard for 20+ years and has proven better emissions, fuel economy, and driveability that can't be matched with mechanical means. HVAC tied into computer, over complex infotainment, computer controlled parking brake? Not so much.
ODB to wireless is normally bluetooth, they are closer to $10 than $100. Are there any that do wifi?
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=wifi+obd2+reader
There are people running around with bluetooth OBD readers hooked up to their OBD port. These devices normally use the default pass codes.
I know I'm going to pull mine out once I get to my car tonight...
Shit, and I just ordered one.
Indeed it is useful. My gym just moved and when they opened had all new cardio machines (Precor P80). The machines have touchscreens with built in TV tuners, and also have an iPod/iPhone dock. I've only seen the dock used to charge phones, and occasionally play music. It can however be used for video as well, though I've never seen anyone else use it for that. So rather than watch Judge Judy or whatever's on at 5:00, I can load my downloaded or streaming TV shows onto my iPod Touch (4g) and watch it while I bike. Now with iPhone 5 those are all obsolete. I also bought a pair of bluetooth headphones since the cable was getting in the way. LG tone 700. The 730 "is better" but has issues with iOS 6.
I also use CopyTrans Manager so I don't have to use the disaster known as "iTunes" to load mp4 files into the video library.
Too bad Apple couldn't do something like base their connector around a micro-USB connector, so you could use standard cable for basic charging and data, and a fancier dock connection for video out, accessories, etc. Similar to how MicroUSB for USB 3.0 is based around a standard MicroUSB connector
It's also a bitch what they did with their new connector. With my iPod I bought a bunch of ipod cables at the dollar store, so I can have one at work, one in my suitcase, one in the car, where the new connector has to have Apple authorized ($$) chipped cables.
Living in Canada, a lot of online retailers ship out of the US, and I prefer shipping using USPS (which goes to Canada Post) wherever possible. Shipping costs are lower, custom charges are a lot lower, and if I'm not home when the parcel arrives, I get a card and pick it up at a postal outlet (a local drug store), which is open until 9PM. Compared to the courier companies where I have to drive 45 minutes to the business park, and they close at 5PM.
Why do the sirens take so long? Are they run by Slashdot?
Slashdot Tornado alarms would ring 2 weeks after the town was devistated, and then a dupe alarm 2 weeks after that. That is if the Javascript loaded at all.
Can't tell if you're serious or not, but there will still be plenty of WindowsXP machines in service come April 2014. I saw an article saying "15% of medium and large enterprises will still have Windows XP running on at least 10% of their PCs after Microsoft support ends in April 2014." I know our large company still has 80%+ PCs on Windows XP (IT-managed PC standard is still XP. Some non-IT managed PCs run 7). Our facility is supposed to be the pilot location to deploy Windows 7. We were supposed to have migrated over by the end of 2012. Windows 7 is still a long way off here. We just migrated off Novell Netware.
Anyways, compliance risks aside, it won't suddenly be the end of the world. Most attack vectors these days are through crappy browser plugins (Java, Adobe Flash and Reader), and since XP-SP2, Windows networking hasn't been exposed to the internet by default, and most people run behind a router anyways. So given IE6 and IE8 on XP will lose support, Firefox and Chrome will continue to support XP as long as there is a userbase, as will these plugins likely. So will AV software.
Compatibility is an important feature that's suitable for portable media. You know ext2 wouldn't get full support from MS, meanwhile (at least new versions) of Windows have full UDF support. UDF unlike FAT/32 offer large file support, and it's not encumbered with patents.
NetBEUI (NBF) was dirt simple to configure on a home network compared to IPX.
No, the preloaded Linux distributions listed stunk. Crappy repos, and limited updates. Aftermarket Linux distros (eg: Ubuntu-based distros, I found Crunchbang worked great, with full repo support) had a really good experience, and would have done well if they were preloaded.
I maintain that OEM's wanted cheap licences from Microsoft, and their approach was to sell Netbooks that shipped with Linux to scare Microsoft. Half my Xandros-preloaded EeePC 701's manual was about how to install XP, and it is what I'd consider "the first Netbook", back when Microsoft was cutting off XP support.
Unfortunately the whole thing went into a death spiral. Microsoft provided cheap licences (XP-Home, then 7-Starter), but eternally limited the platform specs (1GB RAM, 160, then 250GB Hard drive, and crappy Atom-class processors), in collusion with Intel who wanted to sell Ultrabooks at 4x the cost of a Netbook and claim they are what people really want. Over the course of 4 years (2008-2012, the mainstream life of the Atom-HDD-based netbook), the specs didn't improve appreciably. There is a certain niche of an ultraportable, ultralow cost full fledge PC (not a tablet) that Netbooks did indeed fill. And they could have thrived if allowed to grow. If you look around you can find decent low cost ~12" laptops eg This C$370 11.6" Core i3, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/product/acer-acer-aspire-v5-11-6-laptop-silver-intel-core-i3-2365m-500gb-hdd-4gb-ram-windows-8-v5-171-6815/10223555.aspx