You cando something about it, if you care to. The biggest causes of stop and go traffic jams on freways are onramps and offramps, and the "gotta win" mindset that doesn't let people merge into traffic flow or change over to exit flow. Start leaving a few car lengths of space ahead of you when you drive on freeways. By doing this, you're giving people room to merge in and out, and you're also giving the wave time to break up before you reach it. I've gotten into the habit of doing this, and wouldn't you know it that if I leave enough space ahead of me, traffic jams just seem to break up right as I approach. Most times, I don't even have to brake as I come up to them.
Yes, people will move into the gap you're leaving. That's the whole point. Most people in traffic jams don't try to change lanes, so they won't know or care that you have a few car lengths of space ahead of you. For the people that do care, they're free to move into that space (when they do, just open up another car length of space). You don't even have to go slow to do this. A few miles per hour slower than the average speed will easily open up a nice gap you can carry to the next traffic jam. As the traffic clears, you can speed up. If you do find that you misjudged your leading distance and end up having to slow or even stop, just pause a moment before starting again. That will open up a space in front of you.
None of this would be necessary if people actually had adequate driver training, but sadly that's not the case in the States. Driving is consider a "right" rather than a privilege, and driver training suffers because of that (Joe Sixpack or Jane Soccermom will throw fits if they fail a driving test and have to give up their license).
capitalism doesn't work. capitalism collapsed in 1929.
It certainly did not. A capitalist economy is a naturally cyclic process of ups and downs. 1929's crash that caused the Great Depression was not the first low point for capitalist economies, and was certainly not the last. The social welfare programs and government manipulation of the economy introduced during FDR's presidency in an effort to combat the depression have helped to even out the highs and lows of this cyclic nature, but there are still highs (late 90s dot-com craze, mid-80s, etc) and lows (late-80s/early-90s recession, early-00s dot-com bust), and there always will be.
Go out and buy yourself a larger (30+") TV that supports at least 480p (you can find many of these for under $1000, and quite a few for less than $700). Almost every single XBox game supports at least 480p (there are a few that don't, notably the Colin McRae rally series, Hitman 2, and Kung Fu Chaos), and you'll be very happy. No more blurring when you pan the screen, and the picture through the component cables is much better than even an S-video connection.
Some newer PS2 games support 480p, as do many Gamecube games. Also, buying a modern TV will give you a more pleasurable DVD-viewing experience as well, with a progressive-scan DVD player. It used to be that progressive-scan players were prohibitively expensive, but now you can find them for $100 or less (though I'm not sure how good the quality is on the lower priced units). I remember paying $800 for a Sony DVD player a few years ago that didn't have progressive scan (back then, that would've set me back at least $1000, if not more). I upgraded that set not more than a year later to a better model that included progressive scan for only $500. And that's still 2-3 times what you would pay for a good player today.
I think where Tivo will make the most headway will be with smaller cable networks. The problem is, there aren't very many of them left. Why do I say this? The major networks (all of whom either own major cable channels or have major investments in cable providers) are wholly against Tivo poaching "their" ad dollars. Their attitude is that if they're going to allow Tivo to put up adverts (and they need to pass some sort of signal to provide this capability) then they want a cut of the action.
I don't see why networks should have a problem with this. The Tiivo bits are in addition to the ads showing on the networks. Advertisers still have to pay for the spot. They can then decide to pay Tivo a bit extra to show up in the Showcase and get the "More Information" banner. Networks "win" because they're not losing the ad revenue (the ad still has to run). Tivo wins because they're providing a huge benefit for advertisers.
The thing that worries me most about this model is if it runs into the same expectations and problems as web ads. If Tivo is selling Showcase ads with the promise of some number of sales based on hits, that won't work. It's still advertising with the goal of creating recognition, not directly selling product.
I wonder if Tivo's patented this yet, or if the concept is available to other PVR manufacturers?
Very true. However traffic tickets also work because they accumulate. Lots of people shrug at the first one, and only get worked up (usually about 'government thieves' rather than their own law breaking) when they get their nth ticket.
While some people may be chronic offenders and a danger to others, most people complain about 'government thieves' because that's exactly what they are. If I get a speeding ticket for doing 70 in a 60 when everyone around me is doing 70+, then I'm just going to chalk it up as bad luck (well, after I hire a lawyer and successful fight to have the ticket dropped). I'm not going to change the speed I drive, however, because then I would be the danger.
Traffic tickets have become a joke. They're a government revenue source, plain and simple; traffic tickets are rarely issued for public safety concerns anymore (if they ever were at all). City and state governments willfully ignore the Congressionally-recommended 85th percentile speed limits, choosing instead to keep the limits arbitrarily low to continue to rake in cash.
*Some of it may be good, but for every Star Trek or Babylon 5 there are 2 Milleniums or Space:Above and Beyonds
Hey, now! Space: Above and Beyond was 1000x's better than any of the Star Trek crap since TNG (and even then, I'd still have to call S:AaB better).
Also, you're focusing on the wrong points. This is not going to be a sci fi show with lawyering thrown in. It's a lawyer show that just happens to be set in the near future. Whether or not that makes it any better, I don't know. However, that puts it more in the class of The Practice, Law and Order, and maybe even Ally McBeal (depending on the comedy quotient) rather than Star Trek, Babylon 5, and Space: Above and Beyond.
While I'm not completely familiar with Lilypond, from what I understand it's not trying to be the full, end-to-end solution for music typesetting. It's trying to solve the problem of how you can easily represent musical notation in a textual format and get it to print out into a format as close to human engraving as possible. In otherwords, think of it as TeX for music.
Just as there are GUI frontends for TeX (LyX, for instance), it's completely possible to write a GUI frontend for Lilypond. There are already several projects that might fit the bill on Freshmeat, and I'd be willing to bet that there are several more over at SourceForge (whether or not any of them actually make it past the pre-alpha stage is anybody's guess).
One of the things that make Unix truly great is the possibility of piping one program's output into another. Use the full potential of what others have developed, don't reinvent the wheel.
What do you do if you need more control than piping will allow? The difference is between working with data and working with objects. In *nix, you're piping data across processes that act upon that data. If you want to change the password for all of the users on your system, you're iterating through/etc/passwd and passing the username to passwd to make changes. In Windows, you're iterating over a collection of user objects, which have methods you can call to change passwords. You're not reinventing the wheel, because you're not implementing how that password is changed (I've seen the wheel reinvented in unix by trying to encrypt passwords and write those values directly to/etc/passwd or/etc/shadow, bypassing passwd completely). In fact, if you're not using automation objects in your Windows scripting, you're not using "the full potential of what others have developed." If you're writing a unix application, you should make sure it's scriptable via piping. Similarly, if you're writing a Windows application, you should make sure it's scriptable via automation interfaces (IDispatch). One is the standard for *nix and one is the standard for Windows. Nobody is saying that *nix should ditch piping in favor of a COM-like architecture, so why should Windows ditch COM automation in favor of piping?
It was after reading a book on ActiveX that I definitely quit on Windows programming.
I'm curious why. Was it too difficult or obscure? Did you have architectural or security objections? Or were you so entrenched in your *nix ways that you couldn't grasp why you should use a different approach in Windows?
Exactly. What makes shell scripts so much better on Unix isn't really the shell, it's the flexibility of the programs that come with a Unix.
That's true, but the fallacy is that you're assuming Windows should be scripted in the same fashion as *nix. That's simply not the case. Batch/Command scripting is nice for small bits, and can actually be fairly powerful in an obtuse sort of way, but the real power in automating Windows comes by using the Windows Scripting Host, JScript or VBScript, and all of the ActiveX/COM interfaces into the functionality of the OS and other applications. A classic example is iterating through users. In *nix, you write a shell script to parse through/etc/passwd. In Windows, you write a jscript to instantiate the objects that deal with Active Directory, and iterate through user objects (each of which you can perform actions upon, wherein *nix you'd have to invoke other applications). One approach is not necessarily "better" than the other, but you can't assume that your *nix administration experience will directly translate into Windows administration. You'd laugh if a Windows admin felt the reverse was true. What really gets me is when people complain about Windows not being automation-friendly because they're used to *nix scripting. Yes, you cannot pipe notepad.exe into winword.exe, for example, but Word has a very rich automation interface that you can hook into and use from a simple JScript.
Take the DELETE command. It has trouble deleting multiple files at a time. It can't delete directories. Then look at Unix rm. It's easy to see why batch files are a joke.
What? Try running "help del" from a cmd.exe window some time. Also, look at "help rd". If you want to remove a directory tree, you use the "remove directory" command. "del" deletes files. "rd" deletes directories (and can delete files within directories if you tell it to).
The shell itself is definitely more flexible overall, though. Definitely more scriptable. The Bourne way of doing conditions, loops, pipes and whatnot are definitely more intuitive, more flexible, and carry less baggage than command.com or cmd.exe.
Consider cmd.exe to be the functional equivalent of csh. It's a decent interactive shell, and has some good functionality (especially later versions of cmd.exe in win2k and xp), but you'd have to be nuts to do any extensive scripting with it. Just as you'd pull out bash or perl to do more complex tasks in *nix rather than using csh, you should use WSH in Windows for more complicated tasks.
go to wheat feild in the middle of the US and it's silent too
You'd have to find a very remote wheat field. I grew up in the rural Midwest, and even in the middle of a field you could still hear planes flying high overhead, cars driving on the highways miles away, almost-inaudible buzzing from power lines, birds and bugs(depending on the time of year), and more. There are very few places in the world that are truly silent, but I could imagine that the Chernobyl area is one of them.
oh sure, I hear where you're coming from...but RO is a game that's "not like the others". It's different, which is why I like it.
It's different, just like everything else, eh? Counter-strike, Day of Defeat, Rainbow Six, etc are all very popular "realistic" games. Targetting is often difficult, one shot generally will kill you, you get to sit out of the game for five minutes after you've been killed ten seconds into it, etc. Hell, even the old Action Quake mod was a "realistic" mod. One shot in the right place killed you, but if you were shot elsewhere you had to bandage yourself before you bled to death. Jumping from a height would break your legs, etc.
"Realistic" games are nothing new. Some people like them, some people don't. I fall into the latter category, because when I'm playing a game I want to play the game. I don't want to sit around watching other people play the game because I was realistically killed by a sniper as soon as I spawned. RTCW is about as close as I'll come to "realistic", where respawns were queued up every 30 seconds (configurable) and came in the form of "reinforcements". Two or three good shots could kill you, but you also had a decent chance to survive being torched by a flame thrower.
Says who? I only recognize 3 of the games on their list, and the major game engines are all conspicuously absent.
Perhaps you need to play more games? I recognized 10 major games that have either already shipped (Baldur's Gate, MDK2, Homeworld 2, etc), are still in development (Psychonauts, an XBox game, showing Lua's cross-platform abilities), or have been cancelled (Mythica). The list was not just games, either, which is why there are a lot more projects there that you may have never heard of.
theCarmack and Tim Sweeney, the brains behind the two most important engines right now (the Quake and Unreal lines, of course) have their own agendas, and do often suffer from the "Not Invented Here" syndrome (but they're ubersmart and capable of following NIH and still producing excellent technology). Sweeney's UnrealScript could be a separate language in and of itself, and theCarmack just does his own thing. Not having those engines in the Lua list is not a huge problem, given the history behind them and their creators.
Maybe it's a great choice, but it doesn't look like game designers have made it "the language of choice."
My understanding of the project list was that it was just a sample of projects that use Lua. It's not exhaustive, and it's populated on a volunteer basis (from the page, "If you'd like your project to be listed here, please fill in this form."). The fact that there are 10+ major games on the list and a number of independent titles does help lend weight to Lua's place in the game industry. It may not be the scripting language of choice for everybody, but a significant number of developers are using it.
The problem is the monopoly itself, not the specific conditions that Microsoft can impose using that monopoly.
Let me first say that I don't know Japan's antitrust legislation, but at least here in the US you're absolutely and completely wrong. Monopolies are not, and have never been, illegal. In fact, many monopolies are well-supported by governments (think about your cable carrier -- chances are, there's only one in your area, and if you want cable you don't get a choice). Monopolies only become a problem when they are used to impose consumer-harming conditions. Your XP Home example is bad, as the price of Windows XP Home is right on par with the price for Windows ME, 95, 98, 3.1, etc.
The carmaker decides these seat-belt things are kinda neat, so they build them into all their cards.
You're now out of business.
Think out of the box! Adapt your seatbelt technology to racing applications where a stronger harness with more restraining points is necessary, and make big bucks selling and installing them (including necessary hardware like a harness bar or submarine bar -- ultimately cheap to manufacture, and you can charge a premium for "custom" hardware and installation). You've now moved into a niche market, but you can also charge more, and many companies thrive in niche markets (Sparco, for instance, who make their money off of "standard" things like car seats and seatbelts, though they also do shoes, helmets, suits, and other gear).
Alternatively, contract yourself out to the car makers, at least for the short-term. They'll need to retool to start adding seat-belts to their manufacturing process, and they'll probably want to offer a retrofit option to current owners. Contract your company out to do that work for the car manufacturer, while at the same time revamping your own process to target a different market, and by the time the auto manufacturer has retooled you're no longer dependent on the seat-belt market for your livelihood.
While that seems like a simple truth, it isn't. For example, imagine that there is a road through a neighborhood where the speed limit is 25 and everyone always goes 35-45. Now, should the speed limit be change? Keep in mind that there are children playing nearby and several pets have been struck and killed due to speeding motorists. No, the solution isn't always to either remove the law or enforce every infraction. In this case, either speed bumps/ditches could be installed or they should have cops out enforcing the speed limit during times when children are likely to be outside playing.
The road is obviously conducive to speeds higher than 25mph, regardless of the safety issues that may cause. Most likley it's because the road is wide, smooth, and relatively new and well tended. If the road were narrow as in many urban residential areas, there would be no problem (too cramped to go fast). Suburbanites won't accept that kind of narrow road, though, so we need another fix. You can't just change the speed limit and do nothing else, because it's unenforceable. No, the proper thing to do is to put in speed bumps placed at a proper distance and of a proper size to ensure most people can't reach more than 30mph before they hit the next bump, and must slow to 15-20mph to traverse a bump or risk damaging their car (yes, there are some sports cars that could accelerate to 60mph in that time, and there are big 4x4s that could roll over the bump without noticing, but you plan for the average). This cannot be done on a highway, though, so how do you deal with a four-lane divided highway with a posted limit of 55mph and an 85th percentile speed of 70mph? Even if you increase cop coverage you can never catch each infraction because a huge majority (85% or more in this case) of the traffic is breaking the law. The proper solution here is to do surveys to determine what the 85th percentile speed is on the road, and then adjust the speed limit accordingly (and revisit this every several years to make sure the limit is still reasonable). Now you have a just and lawful limit backed by facts, and the occurence of speeders has dropped to 15% or less of the traffic. That's a manageable number for police to enforce, and thus we can keep the speed limit.
Even choosing a proper 85th percentile speed is not always enough. A wide open stretch of desert highway limited to 60mph is insane. You have visibility for miles and generally low traffic (especially if it's a three-lane highway), which means you can safely drive as fast as you and your car can handle. This would be a "reasonable and prudent" limit, where you are expected to judge your own abilities and those of your cars and stay within that limit. Enforcing this would involve discretionary judgement on the part of police officers, but in this case it would be built into the law. The law is not hiding the fact that it's partially up to the office when and where to enforce this law, unlike many laws today that implicitly assume that they will only be enforced sporadically.
There are district attorneys who pressed states to set required punishments for some crimes, leaving no discretion for the judge. The result? Overflowing prisons and grave injustices to the individuals punished in this way (such as the kid serving 10-15 years in prison with no chance of parol for having sex with a girl one year younger than himself (17)).
Thus the absurdity of unenforceable laws. Given your example, what right does the government have to determine at what age two consenting people can have sex? Why give the judge the discression to say a 17 year old having consensual sex with a 16 year old is okay, but a 30 year old having consensual sex with a 16 year old is not? This is also a good example of an unenforceable law because it is impossible to know who is having sex with whom without invading privacy unless one of the parties comes forward (in which case you can come up with some other charges than statutory rape).
The cop had probable suspicion to investigate the claim that Hiibel and his daughter had been fighting, but he:
Never investigated the daughter's physical state to see if she had been battered (turns out, she hit her father, not the other way around...)
Never told Mr. Hiibel why he stopped to investigate
Simply told Mr. Hiibel that he was "investigating an investigation" and asked for ID
What does an ID give a cop in an investigation? Sure, if he has probable cause that something illegal happened, he'll need to ID the person, but that can wait until he's taken back to the station. Probable suspicion is not enough to arrest a person, or even ask for an ID.
The best part? Mimi Hiibel, the daughter, was arrested on a charge of resisting arrest. When Mr. Hiibel asked the judge what charge she was being arrested for that she resisted, he dismissed the case.
Personally, I'd vote in The PS/2 duel-shock controllers as another item like the tivo remote.
I'll disagree. The Playstation dual-shock controllers are just a bit too small and angular for my hands, and end up in cramping after too long of a gaming session. The segmented digital pad leaves a lot to be desired as well, though to be fair most games prefer to use the analog sticks. The dual shoulder triggers are nice in that they give you another pair of buttons to work with, but it can be tricky trying to hold the controller, use both triggers, and still be able to play your game. They're about as useful as the black and white buttons on the XBox controllers, but at least those buttons make it clear that they're obviously secondary controls only (excluding dumb games like Enter the Matrix that use them for key gameplay components like firing your guns; silly Shiny, what were they thinking?).
In my opinion, the best controller available for a console at the moment is the XBox S or Akebono controller. The Duke or original is just a bit too large, and the buttons a little too harsh, though with the proper grip it stays comfortable in the hand for hours. Either way, the large range of motion on the analog triggers is perfect for racing games, which I really enjoy. While the PS2 dual-shock does have analog buttons, the shoulder buttons do not have any more play in them than the face buttons and make fine control very difficult.
The Gamecube controller also has a nice range of motion on the triggers, but is marred somewhat by the extra button click at the end. Since most games will make that final click do something other than the initial sweep of the trigger, you're stuck trying to hold the trigger at full press minus the click, which can be strenuous since the spring in the triggers is much weaker than that of the XBox controllers. Add to that the... funky layout of the face buttons, the useless and poorly positioned Z button, the Gameboy-sized d-pad, and the wonky sticks (the main stick is straight off of the N64 controller, with a bit of added grippy rubber, and the C stick is just... weird), and there's not much more to say about the cube controller except that it's more comfortable than a dual-shock.
Re:Bah, I've done drums so many times as an amateu
on
Hack Your Car
·
· Score: 1
The first few times really weren't that bad, just get a good chiltons/haynes.
I haven't needed to do drums yet, but my truck's brakes are drums and I'll do them myself eventually. However, compared to disks, drums are insanely complex. Newbies (and I'm still very much a car monkey newbie) will feel much more comfortable with trying to change pads on disk brakes rather than drums, just because there are fewer parts and depending on the caliper likely nothing to take apart but a cotter pin, retaining pin, and spring plate.
I've got the Chiltons for my truck, so I'll be ready when the time comes. Chilton doesn't make a manual for my car, and the official shop manuals are crazy ($600!), so I'm sticking to the easy stuff for now (oil, brakes).
Oh, and speaking of brakes, if your car has wear sensors but your replacement pads don't have slots for them, just tie them back against the suspension. Check the thickness of your pads every now and then and otherwise forget about it. Most wear sensors will go off when you still have 35%+ material left. Just another way stealerships milk your wallet.
Don't touch your brakes? Disagree!
on
Hack Your Car
·
· Score: 1
Brakes, for instance, are things that you should be really really sure about before doing anything other than looking at them or refilling fluids
Modern disk brake systems are extremely simplistic and amenable to shade-tree mechanic work. Not counting the time to jack up my car, it takes less than 20 minutes to change brake pads all around. My dealer would charge me 2 hours @ $90/hr. Changing the rotors is not that much more difficult given the proper tools. If I really take my time, I could do an entire brake job (rotors, pads, fluid, and start the process of bedding in the pads) on my car in under two hours. In fact, the most important thing about working on your own brakes is making sure you remember to torque your lug nuts/bolts to the proper spec after you've put on the wheels and lowered the car. Failing to do so will find you wheeless down the street. You won't even have time to find out whether or not your brake job went well.
Drum brakes are a completely different matter, and you should leave those to the pros. Chances are, though, that your most important brakes (the fronts) are disk even if you have drums in the rear. You can still change the pads and rotors on the front yourself, saving money and learning at the same time.
Even if you're not going to do more than just inspect your brakes, you should get gauges to measure the remaining pad material and rotor thickness, and know the tolerances. Many dealers consider brake jobs to be cash cows, because few people really know what's going on. I've heard of more than a few that recommend rotor changes with each pad change, which is complete BS. Also, if you're topping off your fluid, make sure you use the right DOT spec fluid (don't mix DOT 3 and 4, for instance, since they're drastically different formulae) and don't fill past the line. The reservoir needs that empty space for you to be able to brake. If you top right up to the cap you're either going to have a big corrosive mess of spilled fluid or you're not going to be able to brake at all.
Re:Keep in mind the car in question
on
Hack Your Car
·
· Score: 1
So running a 1.8T at boost pressures up to 18 psi with gasoline isn't much different stress-wise than a normally-running Diesel. In short: the 1.8T is fricken' strong.
I'd start to worry about charge temperature at 18psi boost (I'm not familiar enough with the 1.8T setup to know if they typically have quality intercoolers, or any intercooler at all). The diesel-based block may be able to handle it, but what about the rest of the intake/exhaust system? You'll also have to bump up to premium gas if the car didn't require it already to prevent detonation caused by the higher temperatures.
This is a common trait amongst most turboed engines.
Yes and no. Forced Induction (FI) engines must be stronger than NA engines simply due to the nature of forced induction, but that does not necessarily mean that they are strong enough to handle overly increased boost. Just as I would be very wary about bolting a turbo or supercharger onto the NA engine in my car, I'd also be very careful about increasing the boost on a turbo car without doing a lot of investigation first.
Then again, the only turbo I've driven is my big-ass F250 turbo diesel, and it only spools up the turbo past 1500rpm or so (redline at 3000rpm, normal cruising at 1000rpm). However, ECU remapping for my truck could gain me upwards of 50+ hp and lb/ft. My car would be lucky to make an extra 5hp with just a chip change.
Keep in mind the car in question
on
Hack Your Car
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
As many others have pointed out, chipping a car is nothing new. However, many people have unrealistic expectations about reprogramming their ECU. In the article, they mostly mentioned turbocharged vehicles like the Jetta TDI or 944 Turbo. The BMW owner mentioned was unsatisfied with the change because naturally aspirated (NA) cars don't benefit well from remapped ECUs.
Modifying a car's ECU mainly just adjusts air/fuel mixture, but on a turbo car it can also increase boost pressure. This is where the main hp gains can be found, but is also where you'll likely blow your engine. A NA car will need more modifications than just a chip to get anymore than a nominal power increase. Intake, headers, and exhaust are all necessary to increase airflow to take advantage of a performance chip. Even then you can generally only expect to make another 10hp at the very top end of your hp curve, and you might even lose torque at lower rpms (torque gets you up to speed, hp keeps you there).
Slashdot Mirror
You can do something about it, if you care to. The biggest causes of stop and go traffic jams on freways are onramps and offramps, and the "gotta win" mindset that doesn't let people merge into traffic flow or change over to exit flow. Start leaving a few car lengths of space ahead of you when you drive on freeways. By doing this, you're giving people room to merge in and out, and you're also giving the wave time to break up before you reach it. I've gotten into the habit of doing this, and wouldn't you know it that if I leave enough space ahead of me, traffic jams just seem to break up right as I approach. Most times, I don't even have to brake as I come up to them.
Yes, people will move into the gap you're leaving. That's the whole point. Most people in traffic jams don't try to change lanes, so they won't know or care that you have a few car lengths of space ahead of you. For the people that do care, they're free to move into that space (when they do, just open up another car length of space). You don't even have to go slow to do this. A few miles per hour slower than the average speed will easily open up a nice gap you can carry to the next traffic jam. As the traffic clears, you can speed up. If you do find that you misjudged your leading distance and end up having to slow or even stop, just pause a moment before starting again. That will open up a space in front of you.
None of this would be necessary if people actually had adequate driver training, but sadly that's not the case in the States. Driving is consider a "right" rather than a privilege, and driver training suffers because of that (Joe Sixpack or Jane Soccermom will throw fits if they fail a driving test and have to give up their license).
It certainly did not. A capitalist economy is a naturally cyclic process of ups and downs. 1929's crash that caused the Great Depression was not the first low point for capitalist economies, and was certainly not the last. The social welfare programs and government manipulation of the economy introduced during FDR's presidency in an effort to combat the depression have helped to even out the highs and lows of this cyclic nature, but there are still highs (late 90s dot-com craze, mid-80s, etc) and lows (late-80s/early-90s recession, early-00s dot-com bust), and there always will be.
Go out and buy yourself a larger (30+") TV that supports at least 480p (you can find many of these for under $1000, and quite a few for less than $700). Almost every single XBox game supports at least 480p (there are a few that don't, notably the Colin McRae rally series, Hitman 2, and Kung Fu Chaos), and you'll be very happy. No more blurring when you pan the screen, and the picture through the component cables is much better than even an S-video connection.
Some newer PS2 games support 480p, as do many Gamecube games. Also, buying a modern TV will give you a more pleasurable DVD-viewing experience as well, with a progressive-scan DVD player. It used to be that progressive-scan players were prohibitively expensive, but now you can find them for $100 or less (though I'm not sure how good the quality is on the lower priced units). I remember paying $800 for a Sony DVD player a few years ago that didn't have progressive scan (back then, that would've set me back at least $1000, if not more). I upgraded that set not more than a year later to a better model that included progressive scan for only $500. And that's still 2-3 times what you would pay for a good player today.
I don't see why networks should have a problem with this. The Tiivo bits are in addition to the ads showing on the networks. Advertisers still have to pay for the spot. They can then decide to pay Tivo a bit extra to show up in the Showcase and get the "More Information" banner. Networks "win" because they're not losing the ad revenue (the ad still has to run). Tivo wins because they're providing a huge benefit for advertisers.
The thing that worries me most about this model is if it runs into the same expectations and problems as web ads. If Tivo is selling Showcase ads with the promise of some number of sales based on hits, that won't work. It's still advertising with the goal of creating recognition, not directly selling product.
I wonder if Tivo's patented this yet, or if the concept is available to other PVR manufacturers?
While some people may be chronic offenders and a danger to others, most people complain about 'government thieves' because that's exactly what they are. If I get a speeding ticket for doing 70 in a 60 when everyone around me is doing 70+, then I'm just going to chalk it up as bad luck (well, after I hire a lawyer and successful fight to have the ticket dropped). I'm not going to change the speed I drive, however, because then I would be the danger.
Traffic tickets have become a joke. They're a government revenue source, plain and simple; traffic tickets are rarely issued for public safety concerns anymore (if they ever were at all). City and state governments willfully ignore the Congressionally-recommended 85th percentile speed limits, choosing instead to keep the limits arbitrarily low to continue to rake in cash.
Hey, now! Space: Above and Beyond was 1000x's better than any of the Star Trek crap since TNG (and even then, I'd still have to call S:AaB better).
Also, you're focusing on the wrong points. This is not going to be a sci fi show with lawyering thrown in. It's a lawyer show that just happens to be set in the near future. Whether or not that makes it any better, I don't know. However, that puts it more in the class of The Practice, Law and Order, and maybe even Ally McBeal (depending on the comedy quotient) rather than Star Trek, Babylon 5, and Space: Above and Beyond.
While I'm not completely familiar with Lilypond, from what I understand it's not trying to be the full, end-to-end solution for music typesetting. It's trying to solve the problem of how you can easily represent musical notation in a textual format and get it to print out into a format as close to human engraving as possible. In otherwords, think of it as TeX for music.
Just as there are GUI frontends for TeX (LyX, for instance), it's completely possible to write a GUI frontend for Lilypond. There are already several projects that might fit the bill on Freshmeat, and I'd be willing to bet that there are several more over at SourceForge (whether or not any of them actually make it past the pre-alpha stage is anybody's guess).
Try using a modern version of the operating system before bitching, next time.
You can't mention the pusher robot or shover robot without giving credit to Lowtax and his original ICQ prank that started the whole thing.
What do you do if you need more control than piping will allow? The difference is between working with data and working with objects. In *nix, you're piping data across processes that act upon that data. If you want to change the password for all of the users on your system, you're iterating through /etc/passwd and passing the username to passwd to make changes. In Windows, you're iterating over a collection of user objects, which have methods you can call to change passwords. You're not reinventing the wheel, because you're not implementing how that password is changed (I've seen the wheel reinvented in unix by trying to encrypt passwords and write those values directly to /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow, bypassing passwd completely). In fact, if you're not using automation objects in your Windows scripting, you're not using "the full potential of what others have developed." If you're writing a unix application, you should make sure it's scriptable via piping. Similarly, if you're writing a Windows application, you should make sure it's scriptable via automation interfaces (IDispatch). One is the standard for *nix and one is the standard for Windows. Nobody is saying that *nix should ditch piping in favor of a COM-like architecture, so why should Windows ditch COM automation in favor of piping?
I'm curious why. Was it too difficult or obscure? Did you have architectural or security objections? Or were you so entrenched in your *nix ways that you couldn't grasp why you should use a different approach in Windows?
That's true, but the fallacy is that you're assuming Windows should be scripted in the same fashion as *nix. That's simply not the case. Batch/Command scripting is nice for small bits, and can actually be fairly powerful in an obtuse sort of way, but the real power in automating Windows comes by using the Windows Scripting Host, JScript or VBScript, and all of the ActiveX/COM interfaces into the functionality of the OS and other applications. A classic example is iterating through users. In *nix, you write a shell script to parse through /etc/passwd. In Windows, you write a jscript to instantiate the objects that deal with Active Directory, and iterate through user objects (each of which you can perform actions upon, wherein *nix you'd have to invoke other applications). One approach is not necessarily "better" than the other, but you can't assume that your *nix administration experience will directly translate into Windows administration. You'd laugh if a Windows admin felt the reverse was true. What really gets me is when people complain about Windows not being automation-friendly because they're used to *nix scripting. Yes, you cannot pipe notepad.exe into winword.exe, for example, but Word has a very rich automation interface that you can hook into and use from a simple JScript.
What? Try running "help del" from a cmd.exe window some time. Also, look at "help rd". If you want to remove a directory tree, you use the "remove directory" command. "del" deletes files. "rd" deletes directories (and can delete files within directories if you tell it to).
Consider cmd.exe to be the functional equivalent of csh. It's a decent interactive shell, and has some good functionality (especially later versions of cmd.exe in win2k and xp), but you'd have to be nuts to do any extensive scripting with it. Just as you'd pull out bash or perl to do more complex tasks in *nix rather than using csh, you should use WSH in Windows for more complicated tasks.
Ford Thunderbird
Knight Rider
KITT was a Pontiac Firebird with T-tops, not a Ford Thunderbird.
(images shamelessly stolen from whatever Google's image search engine could find; don't blame me if the sites go down)
You'd have to find a very remote wheat field. I grew up in the rural Midwest, and even in the middle of a field you could still hear planes flying high overhead, cars driving on the highways miles away, almost-inaudible buzzing from power lines, birds and bugs(depending on the time of year), and more. There are very few places in the world that are truly silent, but I could imagine that the Chernobyl area is one of them.
It's different, just like everything else, eh? Counter-strike, Day of Defeat, Rainbow Six, etc are all very popular "realistic" games. Targetting is often difficult, one shot generally will kill you, you get to sit out of the game for five minutes after you've been killed ten seconds into it, etc. Hell, even the old Action Quake mod was a "realistic" mod. One shot in the right place killed you, but if you were shot elsewhere you had to bandage yourself before you bled to death. Jumping from a height would break your legs, etc.
"Realistic" games are nothing new. Some people like them, some people don't. I fall into the latter category, because when I'm playing a game I want to play the game. I don't want to sit around watching other people play the game because I was realistically killed by a sniper as soon as I spawned. RTCW is about as close as I'll come to "realistic", where respawns were queued up every 30 seconds (configurable) and came in the form of "reinforcements". Two or three good shots could kill you, but you also had a decent chance to survive being torched by a flame thrower.
John "TheHair" Romero hasn't worked at ION Storm for several years now. You'll never see another Daikraptana, because that was his baby.
System Shock 3 would kick ass, though ... (Looking Glass may be dead, but they're not forgotten.)
Perhaps you need to play more games? I recognized 10 major games that have either already shipped (Baldur's Gate, MDK2, Homeworld 2, etc), are still in development (Psychonauts, an XBox game, showing Lua's cross-platform abilities), or have been cancelled (Mythica). The list was not just games, either, which is why there are a lot more projects there that you may have never heard of.
theCarmack and Tim Sweeney, the brains behind the two most important engines right now (the Quake and Unreal lines, of course) have their own agendas, and do often suffer from the "Not Invented Here" syndrome (but they're ubersmart and capable of following NIH and still producing excellent technology). Sweeney's UnrealScript could be a separate language in and of itself, and theCarmack just does his own thing. Not having those engines in the Lua list is not a huge problem, given the history behind them and their creators.
My understanding of the project list was that it was just a sample of projects that use Lua. It's not exhaustive, and it's populated on a volunteer basis (from the page, "If you'd like your project to be listed here, please fill in this form."). The fact that there are 10+ major games on the list and a number of independent titles does help lend weight to Lua's place in the game industry. It may not be the scripting language of choice for everybody, but a significant number of developers are using it.
Let me first say that I don't know Japan's antitrust legislation, but at least here in the US you're absolutely and completely wrong. Monopolies are not, and have never been, illegal. In fact, many monopolies are well-supported by governments (think about your cable carrier -- chances are, there's only one in your area, and if you want cable you don't get a choice). Monopolies only become a problem when they are used to impose consumer-harming conditions. Your XP Home example is bad, as the price of Windows XP Home is right on par with the price for Windows ME, 95, 98, 3.1, etc.
Think out of the box! Adapt your seatbelt technology to racing applications where a stronger harness with more restraining points is necessary, and make big bucks selling and installing them (including necessary hardware like a harness bar or submarine bar -- ultimately cheap to manufacture, and you can charge a premium for "custom" hardware and installation). You've now moved into a niche market, but you can also charge more, and many companies thrive in niche markets (Sparco, for instance, who make their money off of "standard" things like car seats and seatbelts, though they also do shoes, helmets, suits, and other gear).
Alternatively, contract yourself out to the car makers, at least for the short-term. They'll need to retool to start adding seat-belts to their manufacturing process, and they'll probably want to offer a retrofit option to current owners. Contract your company out to do that work for the car manufacturer, while at the same time revamping your own process to target a different market, and by the time the auto manufacturer has retooled you're no longer dependent on the seat-belt market for your livelihood.
The road is obviously conducive to speeds higher than 25mph, regardless of the safety issues that may cause. Most likley it's because the road is wide, smooth, and relatively new and well tended. If the road were narrow as in many urban residential areas, there would be no problem (too cramped to go fast). Suburbanites won't accept that kind of narrow road, though, so we need another fix. You can't just change the speed limit and do nothing else, because it's unenforceable. No, the proper thing to do is to put in speed bumps placed at a proper distance and of a proper size to ensure most people can't reach more than 30mph before they hit the next bump, and must slow to 15-20mph to traverse a bump or risk damaging their car (yes, there are some sports cars that could accelerate to 60mph in that time, and there are big 4x4s that could roll over the bump without noticing, but you plan for the average). This cannot be done on a highway, though, so how do you deal with a four-lane divided highway with a posted limit of 55mph and an 85th percentile speed of 70mph? Even if you increase cop coverage you can never catch each infraction because a huge majority (85% or more in this case) of the traffic is breaking the law. The proper solution here is to do surveys to determine what the 85th percentile speed is on the road, and then adjust the speed limit accordingly (and revisit this every several years to make sure the limit is still reasonable). Now you have a just and lawful limit backed by facts, and the occurence of speeders has dropped to 15% or less of the traffic. That's a manageable number for police to enforce, and thus we can keep the speed limit.
Even choosing a proper 85th percentile speed is not always enough. A wide open stretch of desert highway limited to 60mph is insane. You have visibility for miles and generally low traffic (especially if it's a three-lane highway), which means you can safely drive as fast as you and your car can handle. This would be a "reasonable and prudent" limit, where you are expected to judge your own abilities and those of your cars and stay within that limit. Enforcing this would involve discretionary judgement on the part of police officers, but in this case it would be built into the law. The law is not hiding the fact that it's partially up to the office when and where to enforce this law, unlike many laws today that implicitly assume that they will only be enforced sporadically.
Thus the absurdity of unenforceable laws. Given your example, what right does the government have to determine at what age two consenting people can have sex? Why give the judge the discression to say a 17 year old having consensual sex with a 16 year old is okay, but a 30 year old having consensual sex with a 16 year old is not? This is also a good example of an unenforceable law because it is impossible to know who is having sex with whom without invading privacy unless one of the parties comes forward (in which case you can come up with some other charges than statutory rape).
The cop had probable suspicion to investigate the claim that Hiibel and his daughter had been fighting, but he:
What does an ID give a cop in an investigation? Sure, if he has probable cause that something illegal happened, he'll need to ID the person, but that can wait until he's taken back to the station. Probable suspicion is not enough to arrest a person, or even ask for an ID.
The best part? Mimi Hiibel, the daughter, was arrested on a charge of resisting arrest. When Mr. Hiibel asked the judge what charge she was being arrested for that she resisted, he dismissed the case.
I'll disagree. The Playstation dual-shock controllers are just a bit too small and angular for my hands, and end up in cramping after too long of a gaming session. The segmented digital pad leaves a lot to be desired as well, though to be fair most games prefer to use the analog sticks. The dual shoulder triggers are nice in that they give you another pair of buttons to work with, but it can be tricky trying to hold the controller, use both triggers, and still be able to play your game. They're about as useful as the black and white buttons on the XBox controllers, but at least those buttons make it clear that they're obviously secondary controls only (excluding dumb games like Enter the Matrix that use them for key gameplay components like firing your guns; silly Shiny, what were they thinking?).
In my opinion, the best controller available for a console at the moment is the XBox S or Akebono controller. The Duke or original is just a bit too large, and the buttons a little too harsh, though with the proper grip it stays comfortable in the hand for hours. Either way, the large range of motion on the analog triggers is perfect for racing games, which I really enjoy. While the PS2 dual-shock does have analog buttons, the shoulder buttons do not have any more play in them than the face buttons and make fine control very difficult.
The Gamecube controller also has a nice range of motion on the triggers, but is marred somewhat by the extra button click at the end. Since most games will make that final click do something other than the initial sweep of the trigger, you're stuck trying to hold the trigger at full press minus the click, which can be strenuous since the spring in the triggers is much weaker than that of the XBox controllers. Add to that the ... funky layout of the face buttons, the useless and poorly positioned Z button, the Gameboy-sized d-pad, and the wonky sticks (the main stick is straight off of the N64 controller, with a bit of added grippy rubber, and the C stick is just ... weird), and there's not much more to say about the cube controller except that it's more comfortable than a dual-shock.
I haven't needed to do drums yet, but my truck's brakes are drums and I'll do them myself eventually. However, compared to disks, drums are insanely complex. Newbies (and I'm still very much a car monkey newbie) will feel much more comfortable with trying to change pads on disk brakes rather than drums, just because there are fewer parts and depending on the caliper likely nothing to take apart but a cotter pin, retaining pin, and spring plate.
I've got the Chiltons for my truck, so I'll be ready when the time comes. Chilton doesn't make a manual for my car, and the official shop manuals are crazy ($600!), so I'm sticking to the easy stuff for now (oil, brakes).
Oh, and speaking of brakes, if your car has wear sensors but your replacement pads don't have slots for them, just tie them back against the suspension. Check the thickness of your pads every now and then and otherwise forget about it. Most wear sensors will go off when you still have 35%+ material left. Just another way stealerships milk your wallet.
Modern disk brake systems are extremely simplistic and amenable to shade-tree mechanic work. Not counting the time to jack up my car, it takes less than 20 minutes to change brake pads all around. My dealer would charge me 2 hours @ $90/hr. Changing the rotors is not that much more difficult given the proper tools. If I really take my time, I could do an entire brake job (rotors, pads, fluid, and start the process of bedding in the pads) on my car in under two hours. In fact, the most important thing about working on your own brakes is making sure you remember to torque your lug nuts/bolts to the proper spec after you've put on the wheels and lowered the car. Failing to do so will find you wheeless down the street. You won't even have time to find out whether or not your brake job went well.
Drum brakes are a completely different matter, and you should leave those to the pros. Chances are, though, that your most important brakes (the fronts) are disk even if you have drums in the rear. You can still change the pads and rotors on the front yourself, saving money and learning at the same time.
Even if you're not going to do more than just inspect your brakes, you should get gauges to measure the remaining pad material and rotor thickness, and know the tolerances. Many dealers consider brake jobs to be cash cows, because few people really know what's going on. I've heard of more than a few that recommend rotor changes with each pad change, which is complete BS. Also, if you're topping off your fluid, make sure you use the right DOT spec fluid (don't mix DOT 3 and 4, for instance, since they're drastically different formulae) and don't fill past the line. The reservoir needs that empty space for you to be able to brake. If you top right up to the cap you're either going to have a big corrosive mess of spilled fluid or you're not going to be able to brake at all.
I'd start to worry about charge temperature at 18psi boost (I'm not familiar enough with the 1.8T setup to know if they typically have quality intercoolers, or any intercooler at all). The diesel-based block may be able to handle it, but what about the rest of the intake/exhaust system? You'll also have to bump up to premium gas if the car didn't require it already to prevent detonation caused by the higher temperatures.
Yes and no. Forced Induction (FI) engines must be stronger than NA engines simply due to the nature of forced induction, but that does not necessarily mean that they are strong enough to handle overly increased boost. Just as I would be very wary about bolting a turbo or supercharger onto the NA engine in my car, I'd also be very careful about increasing the boost on a turbo car without doing a lot of investigation first.
Then again, the only turbo I've driven is my big-ass F250 turbo diesel, and it only spools up the turbo past 1500rpm or so (redline at 3000rpm, normal cruising at 1000rpm). However, ECU remapping for my truck could gain me upwards of 50+ hp and lb/ft. My car would be lucky to make an extra 5hp with just a chip change.
As many others have pointed out, chipping a car is nothing new. However, many people have unrealistic expectations about reprogramming their ECU. In the article, they mostly mentioned turbocharged vehicles like the Jetta TDI or 944 Turbo. The BMW owner mentioned was unsatisfied with the change because naturally aspirated (NA) cars don't benefit well from remapped ECUs.
Modifying a car's ECU mainly just adjusts air/fuel mixture, but on a turbo car it can also increase boost pressure. This is where the main hp gains can be found, but is also where you'll likely blow your engine. A NA car will need more modifications than just a chip to get anymore than a nominal power increase. Intake, headers, and exhaust are all necessary to increase airflow to take advantage of a performance chip. Even then you can generally only expect to make another 10hp at the very top end of your hp curve, and you might even lose torque at lower rpms (torque gets you up to speed, hp keeps you there).