[memtest86] Let me send you my IProc PC-100 SDRAM DIMM... the idiots put the wrong timing values in it's SPD. I've only found one machine, ever, to work properly with that damn thing. Tyan MB's tend to lock as soon as the POST is complete. Memtest86 ran for 7 days and could not find a problem with the DIMM.
Heheh... I've had similar problems with RAM speeds. A couple of years ago, a bunch of SiS shared video/system memory motherboards on FIDS (flight information display systems) that I was administering would cease to work when the displays were pushed to any resolution greater than 640x480.
The symptoms were random garbage and slow refresh of the screen - ie, close a window and artifacts remain. Kick to a shell and they all disappear as the resolution is cut to 640x480.
Took a look at the RAM itself. "PC100" stickers all over the place and 10ns speed ratings on the ICs. "Okay, f = 1/t and t=10ns, so this is 100 MHz rated RAM..."
Tried swapping in another DIMM. Same problem. Tried swapping in another DIMM of another brand - no more problem.
Did a little research when I noticed that the good DIMM had 7ns labels on all the ICs...
Turned out that the PC100 specification requires all the RAM chips to have 7ns or better response speeds... and apparently, the DIMMs which didn't work came from some third-world country where the definition of a nanosecond is somewhat different than ours. (Almost like how a "watt" in computer speakers and car stereos has absolutely nothing to do with the scientific definition. Rule of thumb: amplifiers rated in real watts will tend to weigh 1/4lb per watt. Haven't yet found a similar rule for memory speeds.)
Of course, you must be joking if you're talking about using relays to build digital circuits. They're relatively expensive per gate, noisy, use more power, generate more heat, and fail more easily than your common quad NAND IC.
The noisy part is good. Remember the old VCRs that made all those satisfying metal clicking sounds, not like today's impotent plastic junk.
Finally, you can have solid state relays built out of transistors. They take up more transistors than a basic logic gate like NAND, though.
Don't want to. Want the snaps. The whole point is not practicality, it's fun.
I have a variety including over 50 suitable relays, from tiny little reed relays, general appliance relays, winch-control relays, to a couple of big 200A DPDT contactors used for reversing (relatively small) industrial DC motors. Naturally, they all have different coil voltages, so I'll have to build several power supplies to keep them all happy.
Secondly, the "stupid dinosaur splash screen" (which I loved) has been gone for about 4 release versions of Mozilla now, to be replaced with a hideously drab orange box with 'Mozilla' written in it. Now that we've compromised on an ugly splash screen, no one's happy. Hooray for attempting to pander to everyone!
I loved the dinosaur splash screen, too. But I couldn't show those releases of Mozilla to my boss (a government manager type - think of Lumbergh in Office Space) - because it made Mozilla look like it was designed and built by 16-year-old virgins with anime posters on their walls.
Now, with that dinosaur splash screen, can I honestly deploy Mozilla onto the desktops of dozens of judges, business CEOs, and lawyers who make >$5,000,000 a year? They won't take it seriously and will therefore resist it. At least the drab orange box looks like some sort of corporate logo that they'd see if they went for a drive around the suburbs of Palo Alto - it lends credibility.
Think of people like Frasier Crane - he's a caricature of the middle-aged successful man, the sort of person who makes big purchasing decisions based on tastefulness rather than functionality. "I don't care if you say that I'll get e-mail viruses! I'm *not* going to stare at KMail all day! They don't even have a real spellchecker!"
(NB. The lack of a real spellchecker was fixed in KDE 3.2.)
This is the same sort of problem we have *everywhere* with open source, shareware and free software from Linux to Mozilla, and including things like AVI Preview (comes with Kazaa Lite) - tacky and stupid user interfaces lacking the same features as the Microsoft equivalent we're trying to replace.
However, in the real world, NANDS are cheap (2-3 transistors), so that's what everyone uses.
Well, NANDs are easy to make with MOSFETs or vacuum tubes.
But I suggest that, in order to simplify the learning of digital logic and avoid this whole nastiness of DeMorgan, we should adopt relays as our primary logic device.
Think about it: two relays with their contacts in parallel = OR. Two relays with their contacts in series = AND. A relay with normally-closed contacts = NOT.
In this way, all design work can be done with natural logic (AND, OR, NOT) rather than "efficient" NAND, NOR, etc.
On top of that, your computer would make satisfying clicking sounds reminiscent of a pinball machine's scorekeeping system or an old elevator contoller, while you're crunching SETI@Home units.
I'm building a 4-bit binary full adder with nothing but relays in order to demonstrate their sheer computing power, and was hoping that someone could write me drivers to allow it to have practical uses.
If your surrounds are worn out, chances are your speakers are so old that significant advances in speaker technology would get you better speakers for less money.
Heh... That's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. And I used to work in pro audio. And a lot of that time was spent doing broadcasting and simultaneous interpretation of Canadian federal government meetings. Yours was worthy of an ambassadorship to Portugal, at the very least.
Yes, speaker technology has come a *long* way over the years. But so has manufacturing technology. Ever notice that "they don't build 'em like they used to"? That applies to speakers as much as it applies to cars.
Some of the most highly sought-after audiophile (Note that a real audiophile has technical knowledge. audiophile != the sort of idiot who buys "Monster Cable" because the sound has "more presence") speakers are vintage speakers from brands like Klipsch, Acoustic Research, Celestion. These things tend to have thick and heavy particleboard cases, overbuilt drivers, and big oil-filled non-electrolytic capacitors in the crossovers. And because they're built well, the cabinets are less affected by standing waves, the driver baskets flex less, and the horrible ESR of non-polarized electrolytics in the crossovers isn't an issue.
You will not be able to replace stuff like this by wandering into Best Buy and dropping the Visa card.
What you said is equivalent to saying, "If your tires are worn out, chances are your car is so old that significant advances in automotive technology would get you a better car for less money."
I'll pit a 1968 Dodge Dart Hemi against *any* modern car for acceleration, and if I put on a set of modern shocks and radial tires I'll also take out most competitors in the slalom.
Lots of the time, vintage is better than new. Manufacturers have learned better machining and manufacturing processes, but they've also learned how to optimize a design and cut costs better, too. Guess who that *doesn't* help.
Both with the same actual RMS wattage rating, which one is gonna pump out the bass better:
A modern amplifier with a MOSFET output stage (ooh! MOSFETs! It *must* be good!) mounted on the PC board, 18-gauge wire to the speaker jacks, and a 6lb power transformer, or
A 35-year-old boat anchor with a bipolar output stage hand-wired and bolted to a big heatsink, 12-gauge wire to the speaker jacks, and an 12lb power transformer
Same sorts of stuff applies with speakers...
Now, if your speakers need new surrounds:
Decide if you want to repair the speakers. Generally, if they're a decent brand, it's worth it; a decent pair of bookshelf speakers will cost you >$500 now. (No wonder I spent $200 reconing my 1970s Acoustic Research AR-4x.) If the drivers have transparent polypropylene cones or aren't round (ie. 6x9"), throw out the speakers and pick up a pair of good used speakers on ebay.
Decide if you're the sort of person who can recone/resurround them. If you could do this and have a working Palm afterwards, you're probably capable enough with tools, dexterity and patience to be able to fix the surrounds yourself. Otherwise, don't even attempt it; send out the drivers to be resurrounded.
You need to do both drivers at once. If only your left speaker needs a surround, you still have to do the right one at the same time. Even if the foam in the other one is fine, it will have worn in and won't be as stiff as the new foam you're putting into the other driver. You want to keep them matching. Procure the surrounds and suitable adhesives.
Remove both drivers. Solder a piece of wire across the terminals of each (reduces cone deflection by EMF). Last chance to clean your workbench and get the cat out of the room.
With a very sharp knife (ie. Al Qaeda's Wrecking Ball), remove the dust cap by slicing between it and the cone. Be very careful not to hit the vo
Madagascar Roaches and Former Bosses
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SCO Offline
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· Score: 1
I think we should all send him a present! For example, these guys will ship a big ol' batch of live crickets. For $58, we could ship ol' Darl 5000 crickets and I know that would cheer him up!
They sell Madagascar roaches! Yay!
There was a place on Richmond Street in Toronto which used to sell specialty insects (including hissing roaches) for the film and television business.
And there was once this guy who got a raw deal from his boss, who had an absolute terror of roaches. When he left the company, he visited his former boss's home on a cold winter night, holding a small container under his jacket to keep it warm. With a broom handle through the dryer vent, he was able to dislodge the dryer duct. Opening the little container right beside the dryer vent, the roaches reacted quickly to the warmth and entered the house. 6 males, 6 females, each about 2" long.
This guy's former boss moved out within two months.
I know that a TON of people i DONT know have my email address.. the down side of having a couple semi-popular web sites
Well, I have a couple which are displayed publicly and are aliased to my main e-mail address. My main e-mail address was known by less than 10 people, until one of them apparently decided to read the Unicode message with the.scr extension... [grrr...]
Now, my mailbox is flooded with online headhunters and HR departments: "Your resume has been received and will be kept on file..."
how about we write a worm/virus/whatever and have it look for spamming machines. then use the open ports on the compromised machines and just blow them away....wipe out C/D/E/F drive, / or whatever else gradually (say one file every hour or so) until all the spamming machines die.
anyone want to volunteer for this ?
It should also DDoS any URLs mentioned in spams sent by that spam drone. ie, take out activerx.biz, bastapharma.biz, hell, the whole.biz TLD.
When the writer of such a worm is caught by the FBI and appears in newspaper photographs, I promise I will cut out the photo, frame it, and hang it on my wall with my other heroes (Edison, Newton, Einstein, etc.).
I wish all mail admins.... would TURN OFF those blasted "Your mail has a virus!" auto-replies. They accomplish nothing but the generation of yet more useless traffic.
Well, now at least you know that the virus, running on the machine of an infected third-party acquaintance or friend, has spoofed your e-mail address for Reply-To.
Worrisome: someone who knows my e-mail address, whose machine is currently infected, is broadcasting it all over the Internet and perhaps eventually to spammers.
Isn't It Ironic - Don't You Think?
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More MyDoom Gloom
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Here's a presentation (sorry I could only find a PowerPoint version) that was made by Jonathan Wignall at DefCon last year about this topic. Same conclusion, diversifying is the necessary to combat worms.
How ironic is that? Someone who allegedly knows something about network security, who insists on providing presentations in a format which:
promotes the very monoculture about which he speaks (noting that Microsoft doesn't offer a PowerPoint reader for Linux)
allows the embedding of executable content which could be (and has been) used to carry malicious code
Fine, use PowerPoint for the presentation. But damn well save the slides as HTML, Acrobat, plain text, etc. for public downloading and consumption.
At my university, the only department which saved all lecture notes, etc in proprietary format (and continues to do so!) was the very one which should know better: Systems and Computer Engineering. It's really pathetic.
Wow. One mistake and there goes your food and house. Nice. I'm sure morale is at record levels.
"That's right, AC! Besides, I only had *one beer*!" - said the fired airline pilot.
If your mistake was sufficiently big (ie. circulating the mis-spelled sensationalist even-the-average-secretary-is-smart-enough-to-real ize-it's-B.S. e-mail message to 10,000 employees, thus wasting *loads* of labor and decimating your own credibility), then they *have* no choice except to fire your ass.
And rightly so.
If you'd pull the hammer out of your ass and the sickle out of your urethra, you'd maybe have enough sense to see that... and avoid the snivelling "One mistake and there goes your food and house...". Your next line would probably be telling me that we should each give $100 to the next homeless person we see.
This is the moral equivalent of taking a 1984 Honda Accord and packing the engine and transmission from a 2004 Kia Rio into it - pointless in all aspects.
Heheh... Where's dude's "Powered by Kia" sticker across the windshield of the Accord?
(Actually, all we see around here is "Powered by Honda" across the windshields of rusted-out 1984 Accord rice "rockets". I just want to scream to them, of *COURSE* it's powered by Honda, it's a Honda, you *idiot*! At least the Kia motor would demonstrate mechanical, welding and electronic skill, if not intelligence or taste in cars.)
Good swap that I liked, and got to drool over: 1984 Dodge Aries 4-door sedan, with a 1969 Chrysler 440 (7.2L) 6-pack, driving the rear wheels. Tellin' a friend as we pulled into a car show: "There's something with a big motor around here, but I don't see what it is... wait a minute, that K-Car in front of us has a differential and wide rear tires in the back!" Questionable car, subtle, lightweight, makes a *great* sleeper with a real motor under the hood. Guy was telling me later that it runs in the low 10s on the quarter mile. [wiping drool off keyboard...]
It would have been far cooler if he'd fitted a TFT screen instead of his window. Come to think of it, it would have been better all round if he'd got a modern mac, taken it apart and fitted the gubbins inside the old case.
Yup! The PC motherboard is just wrong.
And what about the Apple 1984/2004 vinyl sign where the screen used to be?
The presence of that sign, with that motherboard visible, implies that Apple has sold out to IBM and the whole PC/AT architecture, in the mere 20 years since the Superbowl ad.
If he'd wanted the insult to be complete, he'd have used Calvin pissing on the Apple.
Wow and to think that I never considered kitchen appliances exciting...
Major appliances are wonderful!
Think about it. Life is too short to wash dishes by hand. Anything which can do those menial tasks for me is wonderful and worthy of affection.
My dishwasher is now 34 years old, the youngest. My dryer is a 1967 Halo-of-Heat, and my washer is a 1954 model. All are Maytags. Last year, after 49 years of washing dirty socks and underpants, the washer was starting to get very noisy during the spin cycle, so I put in a new bottom bearing. While I was at it, I rebuilt the transmission and replaced all the seals and hoses - after its first major overhaul, it's ready for another 50 years. I spent $250 on parts and a few hours, but it'll outlast the $147 Roper I saw advertised on TV by at least an 8:1 margin.
Using the washer as a baseline, I think the dryer has about 10 years before it'll need an overhaul, and the dishwasher about another 15 years.
I'm sure some people really do solve problems in their dreams, and goodness knows a good night's sleep always does help me. But I wonder how many people really solve problems in their dream, and how many people just think they've solved problems. I've managed to drag several ideas from my dreams back into the waking world, including quite a few semi-interesting sci-fi plots, but none of them are worth anything when examined in the light of the sun, except perhaps some entertainment value.
I was irritated by all the crumbs in my toaster. It was really starting to look gross.
In the light of day, it didn't seem so silly. After all, the dishwasher merely sprays hot water.
Now, the toaster can take heat - that's what it's designed to do.
The water was something else. The cord and plug are sealed, and even if they weren't, they'd be fine when they dried out. The nichrome heating elements are very corrosion-resistant, and the mica sheet which supports the nichrome isn't water soluble.
I was worried about the release mechanism. A close look revealed a solenoid, made of about 10 turns of fairly thick enamelled copper wire. When the bimetallic switch warps at the end of the toasting, the contacts open and the full load of the heating element is placed across the solenoid, causing it to release. Worst case, if the dishwasher were to take all the enamel off the solenoid, the toaster wouldn't release, and I'd rewind the solenoid with some old wire kicking around.
Then, detergent - it's quite corrosive and its deposits might be conductive. I decided to skip it, since crumbs are, by and large, going to disappear simply from the water spray.
So into the dishwasher it went, bottom rack. I tied the cord to the rack so it wouldn't get sucked into the pump. Full cycle, pots and pans mode, in my 1970 Maytag WU600.
A sidenote. The WU600 was Maytag's first automatic dishwasher. It has a 1/2hp motor direct driving a two stage centrifugal pump. It will take fried eggs off a poorly-seasoned cast iron frying pan, and it's extraordinarily loud. When it's running, it sounds like the world is coming to an end. When it's draining, the house rumbles like a freight train loaded with lead blocks is speeding by.
(A sidenote)^2. A quiet dishwasher is not a good thing. Since you cannot predict the shapes of the dishes people will stuff into it, nor can you predict *how* they'll stuff dishes into it, you cannot predict the flow of water after it leaves the spray arms. Therefore, you cannot predict the noise the water will make. To counter the noise, you could use insulation for a broad-spectrum white-noise deadening approach - but the dishwasher has to fit in a standard size hole, and 6" of sound deadening all around would massively eat into the dishwasher's capacity for dishes. The other option is to make the water leave the spray arms with less velocity - which will inherently reduce the cleaning power of the dishwasher. Shopping Tactic: Buy the loudest dishwasher you can find, it's the only one which won't require pre-rinsing your dishes.
Waited until the cycle was done. Opened the door, waited for the fog to clear off my glasses, and surveyed the damage... damage to the crumbs, that is. My toaster looked brand new. Even the carmelized brown stains at the edges of the slots were gone.
So, I let the toaster dry for a few hours, clicked down the handle, and plugged it in - briefly. There was a crackle and some smoke. And again... more crackle, more smoke. Seems that water would get between the layers of mica and would boil off when the nichrome heated up. The smoke was coming from fine bits of crumbs which had become wedged between the nichrome elements and the mica. Quick bit of power - more heat, more steam, more smoke, small crackle. Gently, gently tapping it on and off until there was no more crackling sound as water esca
The Ford windsor motors absoloutly DO NOT HAVE A 60 DEGREE BANK ANGLE!
Sorry man, you're right. I misspoke. I was thinking of the GMC 351 motors used in 1960s pickup trucks when I wrote that, and for some reason, the thought stuck in my head.
The Chevy 2.8-3.4 v-6 has a 60 deg angle.
Not to be confused with the 90 degree Buick V6, where the distributor is on the front of the motor, and serious performance parts abound.
The VW sixes have a 15 deg angle, making them almost as narrow as an inline without as much length penalty.
Although there are some questions about the difficulty in designing a compact (ie. not massively tall) intake manifold with good flow or charge velocity characteristics within that constraint. But they are impressive little motors.
You should know this up and down if you have done as many swaps as you claim to have done.
Feh. I didn't build the motor in the Miata; in fact, it wasn't even my car. I just bolted on the motor mount kit, lowered it into position, and installed the EFI system. I'm not a Ford guy.
(While the 302 Miata is a nice swap, left to my own devices, I'm a Mopar guy and would have used a 340.)
I've been toying with the idea of putting an all-aluminum Ford 5.0L V8 (in kit form, believe it or not) into my '91 Miata. 2200 pounds of car, 300+ HP and probably 280+ lb/ft of torque... Mmmmmmmm......
I know there's a Ford 302 (5.0L) motor mount kit for the Miata, I've helped to install them!:) The Ford motor has a 60 degree bank angle, makes for a very narrow motor which fits into a Miata very well. But aluminum is a crappy metal, especially for building car engines.
Besides, for the effort, you might as well go all-out and get the baddest car engine ever made. Click here, go to page 4. Or just go to your local Chrysler dealership and order P5007630 from the parts counter. (Note that this is *NOT* what is going into Durangos.)
Sure, it'll screw up the front/rear balance a bit (more front-heavy), but that's why it's block and heads are all aluminum.
You'd be surprised. If you can set the motor back well enough, you should still be able to get nearly 50/50 weight distribution. The motor in a Miata is already pretty far forward, those cute little rice-burners don't actually weigh anything (nor do they put out any actual power, but that's another story).
Keep in mind, however, that in a short wheelbased car like that, you'll want more weight up front. A 5.0L Miata, if the motor is well built and has good DOT-legal slicks on the back, will paw the front wheels into the air. Doing wheelies during stoplight confrontations is bad; cops won't look the other way, and the steering control is really poor for a few seconds after the front wheels have hit the ground again. Wheelies are acceptable (and fun!) at the drag strip, not on the street. Almost learned that one the hard way with the Chevette.
It's not cheap, and it's not terribly fun to drive in the twisties (not as much fun as, say, a turbo-/supercharged stock motor) due to the F/R balance,
What you have to consider is what you want the car for. If you want the car to have more power for some serious acceleration, you are essentially drag racing. At least you're starting out with a RWD car; most people are idiots who decide that they want to blow the doors off Mustangs with a Honda Civic. Well, the only way to do that is to convert the Civic to RWD and put a big engine under the hood. Weight transfer on acceleration is always to the rear, so a front wheel drive car simply doesn't stand a chance. (Of course, FWD cars don't handle anywhere near as predictably as RWD cars, which is why police and serious performance cars are all RWD. And forget "AWD" cars, if the front wheels are getting more than about 25% of the power, it'll handle more like FWD than RWD.)
but it's certainly fun to surprise the guy in the 'Vette next to you at each and every stoplight!
Yes, it is. The trick is to turn it into a sleeper, but with just enough crap that people who've spent $50,000 on "tuning" their $1500 rusted-out Acura Integras think you're some sort of unemployed hick poseur.
My Chevette had a big hood scoop because it was needed to clear the air filter on the Buick V6. The paint was flat black Tremclad with touch-up primer spots - deliberately. Chevette hubcaps - "dog dishes" without trim rings - were covering the steel rims, hiding the fact that there were 5 lugnuts on each rear wheel's widened steel rim. I spent *hours* with an X-acto knife slicing the "Mickey Thompson" logos off the 12" WIDE rear wheels.
From the side, the car looked like it belonged to a kid who had "souped it up" with a silly hood scoop. (At least it's not flat-out stupid like clear tail lights without cat-eye reflectors, and non-standard lighting colors, either one of which is a good way to get your car rear-ended.)
From the back, the astute might notice the wide rear tires and the fact that the differential's pumpkin looked a little bigger than most Chevettes.
I took it to a Canadian Tire once to get an oil change - didn't have time to do it m
Never got around to building the motor to Buick Grand National specs - turbocharger was no problem to fit in, but I couldn't find any place to put the intercooler.
Hot Rod magazine outdid me in the April 2000 issue, though - Cadillac 500 CID V8 in a Chevette (this picture is from another car, not the one in their 20-page spread). That's 8.3L, bigger than any factory engine in a Corvette, let alone Chevette. Biggest production automobile engine in the smallest and lightest production front-engine RWD body.
It takes a while to break them in but once you do you'll be shocked by how comfortable they are.
Tell me about it.
On the other hand, there's nothing quite like having a pair of steel-toed Doc Marten Oxford-style dress shoes. At work, there's a large machine shop, so CSA/ANSI-rated steel-toed shoes are essential for us office folk who venture out back to hang around with the guys and brake their lathes.
They're comfortable, they look great with anything from jeans to a tuxedo, they last forever AND they set off airport metal detectors. What more could you want?
Of course, the same argument can be made for many things. I have the same feeling about American cars... you're likely to have a Ford or GM last 5 years.
For sure! The design is a little less "optimized" by finite element analysis than a typical Japanese car. Ever notice how a domestic car always feels heavier and more solid than a comparable Japanese model?
I blame scientific calculators, CAD and finite element analysis for the whole feeling of "they don't build 'em like they used to".
With a sliderule, you could only work to three or four significant figures. Every calculation, you'd have to round up forces and round down material strengths. As a result, your final design was always stronger and heavier than it "needed" to be.
With scientific calculators which hold 12+ sig figs in memory - CAD, Matlab, etc. even more - the design can be optimized more. Finite element analysis allows the design to be broken into millions of almost infinitely small points and the forces on each one of those points can be analyzed in minutes or hours with a computer, a job which would have taken years with a sliderule. Armed with this knowledge, the manufacturer can use (thinner, cheaper) 22 gauge sheetmetal instead of the 20 gauge you would have chosen with sliderule calculations. The net effect is that the car/washing machine/VCR/whatever is cheaper to manufacture and cheaper to ship. If it's a car, this also translates into better acceleration and better gas mileage.
But the problem is that the thinner sheetmetal and other heavily-optimized parts makes the design less forgiving of the real-world crap which occurs. A pair of jeans gets stuck under the washing machine's agitator. A videocassette gets jammed angrily into the VCR by a couple of kids who've just argued about what to watch. A guy takes his car to Home Depot and instructs the guy to put 600lbs of fertilizer bags into the trunk.
Real world abuse is not considered in the optimization process. And as a result, the machine breaks.
Now, before everyone floods me about how "my truck has been around for 40 years," let me pre-emptively defend myself: 1) trucks are a little bit different still,
Less so. Full-frame American-made rear-wheel-drive cars (like the Caprice Classic and the Crown Vic) are made of box-section steel frames while pickups are generally C-channel steel frames with comparable gauge steel. The drivetrains are generally exactly the same. Real SUVs (like the Durango/Grand Cherokee, Blazer, Explorer, etc. in contrast to the silly little toys like the RAV-4 and the CR-V) are built similarly. In fact, the only reason I'd buy an SUV is because they don't make the Caprice Classic anymore.
Having said that, if you take a wander through a wrecking yard, you might want to start looking at the cars there carefully. Take a very close look at the cars which don't have obvious accident damage - ie. the cars which were worn out. Wander around and note who built the car, the mileage and the year. Some of each will have had better owners than others. But if you take an average, you'll start to see a pattern emerging.
Whatever it is, they don't build 'em like they used to. A new VCR may sell for $59, and you might be tempted to buy the $200 model from the same brand, reasoning that it will last longer. Flip open the cassette door and point the MAG light in there before you buy it. Typically, it'll use the same mechanism as its cheaper cousin - you're spending the $141 extra for software which enables a few more features.
Washing machines? Mine's a 1954 Maytag. When the spin bearing in the bottom finally let go after 49 years of cleaning dirty underwear, I took apart the transmission to see if it was worth rebuilding. There was no appreciable wear to any of the gear surfaces, etc. So I spent a couple of hundred bucks on bearings, gaskets, hoses and seals. Most of them were perfectly fine when I swapped 'em. I could have spent $147 on the Roper
Do you think that a bunch of poor people in China are all of a sudden picking up laptops and peddling viagra? It's not the Chinese, it's the same people who have always sent spam. They are just buying their hosting/bandwidth from companies overseas, where regulations are non-existant.
More to the point, though. A Chinese friend told me that in Chinese custom, it's unlucky to refuse or discard a business card.
If they view spam as a business card, then they can't possibly understand why you wouldn't want it.
My solution to this particular problem used access.db to remove China, Korea, Japan, etc from the Internet. I don't know anybody in those places, so receiving e-mail from them - and dozens of other countries - is only a liability.
My motorcycle mechanic pointed out, wryly, that his Valkyrie was made in America with enough American parts that it can be labelled as "made in the USA" because for all intents and purposes it is, even though the company is owned by Japanese.
True enough.
However, imported cars which are "Made in the USA" or "Made in Canada" are broadly made of foreign components. Turns out that it's a lot easier to ship 10,000 engine/transmission assemblies, 10,000 complete wiring harnesses, etc. than it is to ship 10,000 completed cars. So, while Honda has a manufacturing plant in Ontario, the cars are no more "Made in Canada" than Ikea furniture is made in your living room.
The failure of Harley and Detroit to be able to manufacture their products entirely domestically is the effect of trade unions and electronics. Paying someone $35/hr to machine brake pistons is a ridiculous part of Detroit's troubles, driven by powerful and unreasonable unions. Having to purchase parts for EFI systems, etc. overseas because there are no longer any electronics manufacturers of note in North America is a tragedy.
I always make a point of buying domestic where possible. Clothing, cars, tools, etc.
As for colitis, doctors aren't sure what aspect of cigarette smoke controls it, but straight nicotine doesn't seem to have the same effect as smoking one or two cigarettes per day. Having had colitis, I can tell you that many people suffering from it would be willing to try anything -- even taking up a 2 cigs per day "habit." I eventually had to have my colon removed, so I don't have an excuse for smoking anymore.;-)
Heheh... Yup. Something in cigarettes is an excellent laxative. It's probably the body detecting the hydrogen cyanide, realizing that shutdown is probably imminent, and deciding to get some of the shutdown tasks (like releasing the sphincter) done before it has to do the really time-consuming jobs like rigor mortis.
Each puff of a cigarette must be kind of like jerking a computer around by starting a shutdown and cancelling it...
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[memtest86] Let me send you my IProc PC-100 SDRAM DIMM... the idiots put the wrong timing values in it's SPD. I've only found one machine, ever, to work properly with that damn thing. Tyan MB's tend to lock as soon as the POST is complete. Memtest86 ran for 7 days and could not find a problem with the DIMM.
Heheh... I've had similar problems with RAM speeds. A couple of years ago, a bunch of SiS shared video/system memory motherboards on FIDS (flight information display systems) that I was administering would cease to work when the displays were pushed to any resolution greater than 640x480.
The symptoms were random garbage and slow refresh of the screen - ie, close a window and artifacts remain. Kick to a shell and they all disappear as the resolution is cut to 640x480.
Took a look at the RAM itself. "PC100" stickers all over the place and 10ns speed ratings on the ICs. "Okay, f = 1/t and t=10ns, so this is 100 MHz rated RAM..."
Tried swapping in another DIMM. Same problem. Tried swapping in another DIMM of another brand - no more problem.
Did a little research when I noticed that the good DIMM had 7ns labels on all the ICs...
Turned out that the PC100 specification requires all the RAM chips to have 7ns or better response speeds... and apparently, the DIMMs which didn't work came from some third-world country where the definition of a nanosecond is somewhat different than ours. (Almost like how a "watt" in computer speakers and car stereos has absolutely nothing to do with the scientific definition. Rule of thumb: amplifiers rated in real watts will tend to weigh 1/4lb per watt. Haven't yet found a similar rule for memory speeds.)
Of course, you must be joking if you're talking about using relays to build digital circuits. They're relatively expensive per gate, noisy, use more power, generate more heat, and fail more easily than your common quad NAND IC.
The noisy part is good. Remember the old VCRs that made all those satisfying metal clicking sounds, not like today's impotent plastic junk.
Finally, you can have solid state relays built out of transistors. They take up more transistors than a basic logic gate like NAND, though.Don't want to. Want the snaps. The whole point is not practicality, it's fun.
I have a variety including over 50 suitable relays, from tiny little reed relays, general appliance relays, winch-control relays, to a couple of big 200A DPDT contactors used for reversing (relatively small) industrial DC motors. Naturally, they all have different coil voltages, so I'll have to build several power supplies to keep them all happy.
Secondly, the "stupid dinosaur splash screen" (which I loved) has been gone for about 4 release versions of Mozilla now, to be replaced with a hideously drab orange box with 'Mozilla' written in it. Now that we've compromised on an ugly splash screen, no one's happy. Hooray for attempting to pander to everyone!
I loved the dinosaur splash screen, too. But I couldn't show those releases of Mozilla to my boss (a government manager type - think of Lumbergh in Office Space) - because it made Mozilla look like it was designed and built by 16-year-old virgins with anime posters on their walls.
Now, with that dinosaur splash screen, can I honestly deploy Mozilla onto the desktops of dozens of judges, business CEOs, and lawyers who make >$5,000,000 a year? They won't take it seriously and will therefore resist it. At least the drab orange box looks like some sort of corporate logo that they'd see if they went for a drive around the suburbs of Palo Alto - it lends credibility.
Think of people like Frasier Crane - he's a caricature of the middle-aged successful man, the sort of person who makes big purchasing decisions based on tastefulness rather than functionality. "I don't care if you say that I'll get e-mail viruses! I'm *not* going to stare at KMail all day! They don't even have a real spellchecker!"
(NB. The lack of a real spellchecker was fixed in KDE 3.2.)
This is the same sort of problem we have *everywhere* with open source, shareware and free software from Linux to Mozilla, and including things like AVI Preview (comes with Kazaa Lite) - tacky and stupid user interfaces lacking the same features as the Microsoft equivalent we're trying to replace.
I've ranted about this a lot over the years.
However, in the real world, NANDS are cheap (2-3 transistors), so that's what everyone uses.
Well, NANDs are easy to make with MOSFETs or vacuum tubes.
But I suggest that, in order to simplify the learning of digital logic and avoid this whole nastiness of DeMorgan, we should adopt relays as our primary logic device.
Think about it: two relays with their contacts in parallel = OR. Two relays with their contacts in series = AND. A relay with normally-closed contacts = NOT.
In this way, all design work can be done with natural logic (AND, OR, NOT) rather than "efficient" NAND, NOR, etc.
On top of that, your computer would make satisfying clicking sounds reminiscent of a pinball machine's scorekeeping system or an old elevator contoller, while you're crunching SETI@Home units.
I'm building a 4-bit binary full adder with nothing but relays in order to demonstrate their sheer computing power, and was hoping that someone could write me drivers to allow it to have practical uses.
If your surrounds are worn out, chances are your speakers are so old that significant advances in speaker technology would get you better speakers for less money.
Heh... That's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. And I used to work in pro audio. And a lot of that time was spent doing broadcasting and simultaneous interpretation of Canadian federal government meetings. Yours was worthy of an ambassadorship to Portugal, at the very least.
Yes, speaker technology has come a *long* way over the years. But so has manufacturing technology. Ever notice that "they don't build 'em like they used to"? That applies to speakers as much as it applies to cars.
Some of the most highly sought-after audiophile (Note that a real audiophile has technical knowledge. audiophile != the sort of idiot who buys "Monster Cable" because the sound has "more presence") speakers are vintage speakers from brands like Klipsch, Acoustic Research, Celestion. These things tend to have thick and heavy particleboard cases, overbuilt drivers, and big oil-filled non-electrolytic capacitors in the crossovers. And because they're built well, the cabinets are less affected by standing waves, the driver baskets flex less, and the horrible ESR of non-polarized electrolytics in the crossovers isn't an issue.
You will not be able to replace stuff like this by wandering into Best Buy and dropping the Visa card.
What you said is equivalent to saying, "If your tires are worn out, chances are your car is so old that significant advances in automotive technology would get you a better car for less money."
I'll pit a 1968 Dodge Dart Hemi against *any* modern car for acceleration, and if I put on a set of modern shocks and radial tires I'll also take out most competitors in the slalom.
Lots of the time, vintage is better than new. Manufacturers have learned better machining and manufacturing processes, but they've also learned how to optimize a design and cut costs better, too. Guess who that *doesn't* help.
Both with the same actual RMS wattage rating, which one is gonna pump out the bass better:
Same sorts of stuff applies with speakers...
Now, if your speakers need new surrounds:
They sell Madagascar roaches! Yay!
There was a place on Richmond Street in Toronto which used to sell specialty insects (including hissing roaches) for the film and television business.
And there was once this guy who got a raw deal from his boss, who had an absolute terror of roaches. When he left the company, he visited his former boss's home on a cold winter night, holding a small container under his jacket to keep it warm. With a broom handle through the dryer vent, he was able to dislodge the dryer duct. Opening the little container right beside the dryer vent, the roaches reacted quickly to the warmth and entered the house. 6 males, 6 females, each about 2" long.
This guy's former boss moved out within two months.
I know that a TON of people i DONT know have my email address.. the down side of having a couple semi-popular web sites
Well, I have a couple which are displayed publicly and are aliased to my main e-mail address. My main e-mail address was known by less than 10 people, until one of them apparently decided to read the Unicode message with the .scr extension... [grrr...]
Now, my mailbox is flooded with online headhunters and HR departments: "Your resume has been received and will be kept on file..."
how about we write a worm/virus/whatever and have it look for spamming machines. then use the open ports on the compromised machines and just blow them away....wipe out C/D/E/F drive, / or whatever else gradually (say one file every hour or so) until all the spamming machines die. anyone want to volunteer for this ?
It should also DDoS any URLs mentioned in spams sent by that spam drone. ie, take out activerx.biz, bastapharma.biz, hell, the whole .biz TLD.
When the writer of such a worm is caught by the FBI and appears in newspaper photographs, I promise I will cut out the photo, frame it, and hang it on my wall with my other heroes (Edison, Newton, Einstein, etc.).
I wish all mail admins..
Well, now at least you know that the virus, running on the machine of an infected third-party acquaintance or friend, has spoofed your e-mail address for Reply-To.
Worrisome: someone who knows my e-mail address, whose machine is currently infected, is broadcasting it all over the Internet and perhaps eventually to spammers.
Here's a presentation (sorry I could only find a PowerPoint version) that was made by Jonathan Wignall at DefCon last year about this topic. Same conclusion, diversifying is the necessary to combat worms.
How ironic is that? Someone who allegedly knows something about network security, who insists on providing presentations in a format which:
Fine, use PowerPoint for the presentation. But damn well save the slides as HTML, Acrobat, plain text, etc. for public downloading and consumption.
At my university, the only department which saved all lecture notes, etc in proprietary format (and continues to do so!) was the very one which should know better: Systems and Computer Engineering. It's really pathetic.
Wow. One mistake and there goes your food and house. Nice. I'm sure morale is at record levels.
"That's right, AC! Besides, I only had *one beer*!" - said the fired airline pilot.
If your mistake was sufficiently big (ie. circulating the mis-spelled sensationalist even-the-average-secretary-is-smart-enough-to-real ize-it's-B.S. e-mail message to 10,000 employees, thus wasting *loads* of labor and decimating your own credibility), then they *have* no choice except to fire your ass.
And rightly so.
If you'd pull the hammer out of your ass and the sickle out of your urethra, you'd maybe have enough sense to see that... and avoid the snivelling "One mistake and there goes your food and house...". Your next line would probably be telling me that we should each give $100 to the next homeless person we see.
This is the moral equivalent of taking a 1984 Honda Accord and packing the engine and transmission from a 2004 Kia Rio into it - pointless in all aspects.
Heheh... Where's dude's "Powered by Kia" sticker across the windshield of the Accord?
(Actually, all we see around here is "Powered by Honda" across the windshields of rusted-out 1984 Accord rice "rockets". I just want to scream to them, of *COURSE* it's powered by Honda, it's a Honda, you *idiot*! At least the Kia motor would demonstrate mechanical, welding and electronic skill, if not intelligence or taste in cars.)
Good swap that I liked, and got to drool over: 1984 Dodge Aries 4-door sedan, with a 1969 Chrysler 440 (7.2L) 6-pack, driving the rear wheels. Tellin' a friend as we pulled into a car show: "There's something with a big motor around here, but I don't see what it is... wait a minute, that K-Car in front of us has a differential and wide rear tires in the back!" Questionable car, subtle, lightweight, makes a *great* sleeper with a real motor under the hood. Guy was telling me later that it runs in the low 10s on the quarter mile. [wiping drool off keyboard...]
It would have been far cooler if he'd fitted a TFT screen instead of his window. Come to think of it, it would have been better all round if he'd got a modern mac, taken it apart and fitted the gubbins inside the old case.
Yup! The PC motherboard is just wrong.
And what about the Apple 1984/2004 vinyl sign where the screen used to be?
The presence of that sign, with that motherboard visible, implies that Apple has sold out to IBM and the whole PC/AT architecture, in the mere 20 years since the Superbowl ad.
If he'd wanted the insult to be complete, he'd have used Calvin pissing on the Apple.
Wow and to think that I never considered kitchen appliances exciting...
Major appliances are wonderful!
Think about it. Life is too short to wash dishes by hand. Anything which can do those menial tasks for me is wonderful and worthy of affection.
My dishwasher is now 34 years old, the youngest. My dryer is a 1967 Halo-of-Heat, and my washer is a 1954 model. All are Maytags. Last year, after 49 years of washing dirty socks and underpants, the washer was starting to get very noisy during the spin cycle, so I put in a new bottom bearing. While I was at it, I rebuilt the transmission and replaced all the seals and hoses - after its first major overhaul, it's ready for another 50 years. I spent $250 on parts and a few hours, but it'll outlast the $147 Roper I saw advertised on TV by at least an 8:1 margin.
Using the washer as a baseline, I think the dryer has about 10 years before it'll need an overhaul, and the dishwasher about another 15 years.
I'm sure some people really do solve problems in their dreams, and goodness knows a good night's sleep always does help me. But I wonder how many people really solve problems in their dream, and how many people just think they've solved problems. I've managed to drag several ideas from my dreams back into the waking world, including quite a few semi-interesting sci-fi plots, but none of them are worth anything when examined in the light of the sun, except perhaps some entertainment value.
I was irritated by all the crumbs in my toaster. It was really starting to look gross.
Then, one night, I had a dream about sticking my toaster into the dishwasher.
In the light of day, it didn't seem so silly. After all, the dishwasher merely sprays hot water.
Now, the toaster can take heat - that's what it's designed to do.
The water was something else. The cord and plug are sealed, and even if they weren't, they'd be fine when they dried out. The nichrome heating elements are very corrosion-resistant, and the mica sheet which supports the nichrome isn't water soluble.
I was worried about the release mechanism. A close look revealed a solenoid, made of about 10 turns of fairly thick enamelled copper wire. When the bimetallic switch warps at the end of the toasting, the contacts open and the full load of the heating element is placed across the solenoid, causing it to release. Worst case, if the dishwasher were to take all the enamel off the solenoid, the toaster wouldn't release, and I'd rewind the solenoid with some old wire kicking around.
Then, detergent - it's quite corrosive and its deposits might be conductive. I decided to skip it, since crumbs are, by and large, going to disappear simply from the water spray.
So into the dishwasher it went, bottom rack. I tied the cord to the rack so it wouldn't get sucked into the pump. Full cycle, pots and pans mode, in my 1970 Maytag WU600.
A sidenote. The WU600 was Maytag's first automatic dishwasher. It has a 1/2hp motor direct driving a two stage centrifugal pump. It will take fried eggs off a poorly-seasoned cast iron frying pan, and it's extraordinarily loud. When it's running, it sounds like the world is coming to an end. When it's draining, the house rumbles like a freight train loaded with lead blocks is speeding by.
(A sidenote)^2. A quiet dishwasher is not a good thing. Since you cannot predict the shapes of the dishes people will stuff into it, nor can you predict *how* they'll stuff dishes into it, you cannot predict the flow of water after it leaves the spray arms. Therefore, you cannot predict the noise the water will make. To counter the noise, you could use insulation for a broad-spectrum white-noise deadening approach - but the dishwasher has to fit in a standard size hole, and 6" of sound deadening all around would massively eat into the dishwasher's capacity for dishes. The other option is to make the water leave the spray arms with less velocity - which will inherently reduce the cleaning power of the dishwasher. Shopping Tactic: Buy the loudest dishwasher you can find, it's the only one which won't require pre-rinsing your dishes.
Waited until the cycle was done. Opened the door, waited for the fog to clear off my glasses, and surveyed the damage... damage to the crumbs, that is. My toaster looked brand new. Even the carmelized brown stains at the edges of the slots were gone.
So, I let the toaster dry for a few hours, clicked down the handle, and plugged it in - briefly. There was a crackle and some smoke. And again... more crackle, more smoke. Seems that water would get between the layers of mica and would boil off when the nichrome heated up. The smoke was coming from fine bits of crumbs which had become wedged between the nichrome elements and the mica. Quick bit of power - more heat, more steam, more smoke, small crackle. Gently, gently tapping it on and off until there was no more crackling sound as water esca
The Ford windsor motors absoloutly DO NOT HAVE A 60 DEGREE BANK ANGLE!
Sorry man, you're right. I misspoke. I was thinking of the GMC 351 motors used in 1960s pickup trucks when I wrote that, and for some reason, the thought stuck in my head.
The Chevy 2.8-3.4 v-6 has a 60 deg angle.Not to be confused with the 90 degree Buick V6, where the distributor is on the front of the motor, and serious performance parts abound.
The VW sixes have a 15 deg angle, making them almost as narrow as an inline without as much length penalty.Although there are some questions about the difficulty in designing a compact (ie. not massively tall) intake manifold with good flow or charge velocity characteristics within that constraint. But they are impressive little motors.
You should know this up and down if you have done as many swaps as you claim to have done.Feh. I didn't build the motor in the Miata; in fact, it wasn't even my car. I just bolted on the motor mount kit, lowered it into position, and installed the EFI system. I'm not a Ford guy.
(While the 302 Miata is a nice swap, left to my own devices, I'm a Mopar guy and would have used a 340.)
I've been toying with the idea of putting an all-aluminum Ford 5.0L V8 (in kit form, believe it or not) into my '91 Miata. 2200 pounds of car, 300+ HP and probably 280+ lb/ft of torque... Mmmmmmmm......
I know there's a Ford 302 (5.0L) motor mount kit for the Miata, I've helped to install them! :) The Ford motor has a 60 degree bank angle, makes for a very narrow motor which fits into a Miata very well. But aluminum is a crappy metal, especially for building car engines.
Besides, for the effort, you might as well go all-out and get the baddest car engine ever made. Click here, go to page 4. Or just go to your local Chrysler dealership and order P5007630 from the parts counter. (Note that this is *NOT* what is going into Durangos.)
Sure, it'll screw up the front/rear balance a bit (more front-heavy), but that's why it's block and heads are all aluminum.
You'd be surprised. If you can set the motor back well enough, you should still be able to get nearly 50/50 weight distribution. The motor in a Miata is already pretty far forward, those cute little rice-burners don't actually weigh anything (nor do they put out any actual power, but that's another story).
Keep in mind, however, that in a short wheelbased car like that, you'll want more weight up front. A 5.0L Miata, if the motor is well built and has good DOT-legal slicks on the back, will paw the front wheels into the air. Doing wheelies during stoplight confrontations is bad; cops won't look the other way, and the steering control is really poor for a few seconds after the front wheels have hit the ground again. Wheelies are acceptable (and fun!) at the drag strip, not on the street. Almost learned that one the hard way with the Chevette.
It's not cheap, and it's not terribly fun to drive in the twisties (not as much fun as, say, a turbo-/supercharged stock motor) due to the F/R balance,
What you have to consider is what you want the car for. If you want the car to have more power for some serious acceleration, you are essentially drag racing. At least you're starting out with a RWD car; most people are idiots who decide that they want to blow the doors off Mustangs with a Honda Civic. Well, the only way to do that is to convert the Civic to RWD and put a big engine under the hood. Weight transfer on acceleration is always to the rear, so a front wheel drive car simply doesn't stand a chance. (Of course, FWD cars don't handle anywhere near as predictably as RWD cars, which is why police and serious performance cars are all RWD. And forget "AWD" cars, if the front wheels are getting more than about 25% of the power, it'll handle more like FWD than RWD.)
but it's certainly fun to surprise the guy in the 'Vette next to you at each and every stoplight!
Yes, it is. The trick is to turn it into a sleeper, but with just enough crap that people who've spent $50,000 on "tuning" their $1500 rusted-out Acura Integras think you're some sort of unemployed hick poseur.
My Chevette had a big hood scoop because it was needed to clear the air filter on the Buick V6. The paint was flat black Tremclad with touch-up primer spots - deliberately. Chevette hubcaps - "dog dishes" without trim rings - were covering the steel rims, hiding the fact that there were 5 lugnuts on each rear wheel's widened steel rim. I spent *hours* with an X-acto knife slicing the "Mickey Thompson" logos off the 12" WIDE rear wheels.
From the side, the car looked like it belonged to a kid who had "souped it up" with a silly hood scoop. (At least it's not flat-out stupid like clear tail lights without cat-eye reflectors, and non-standard lighting colors, either one of which is a good way to get your car rear-ended.)
From the back, the astute might notice the wide rear tires and the fact that the differential's pumpkin looked a little bigger than most Chevettes.
I took it to a Canadian Tire once to get an oil change - didn't have time to do it m
A boring looking car with some serious torque.
How about a 1980 Chevette with a Buick 3.8L V6 stuffed under the hood. Been there, done that: 12.8 seconds on the quarter mile and completely drivable. Nothing that you can't do with a MIG welder and a Sawzall.
Never got around to building the motor to Buick Grand National specs - turbocharger was no problem to fit in, but I couldn't find any place to put the intercooler.
Hot Rod magazine outdid me in the April 2000 issue, though - Cadillac 500 CID V8 in a Chevette (this picture is from another car, not the one in their 20-page spread). That's 8.3L, bigger than any factory engine in a Corvette, let alone Chevette. Biggest production automobile engine in the smallest and lightest production front-engine RWD body.
It's all about power to weight ratio...
(Is "pink" the singer or the color?)
I didn't get the joke.
These are, after all, engineers. Pink is neither a color nor a singer (talented or otherwise).
To an engineer, PINK can only be an acronym.
It takes a while to break them in but once you do you'll be shocked by how comfortable they are.
Tell me about it.
On the other hand, there's nothing quite like having a pair of steel-toed Doc Marten Oxford-style dress shoes. At work, there's a large machine shop, so CSA/ANSI-rated steel-toed shoes are essential for us office folk who venture out back to hang around with the guys and brake their lathes.
They're comfortable, they look great with anything from jeans to a tuxedo, they last forever AND they set off airport metal detectors. What more could you want?
Here's my easier way to accomplish the same thing:
Of course, the same argument can be made for many things. I have the same feeling about American cars... you're likely to have a Ford or GM last 5 years.
For sure! The design is a little less "optimized" by finite element analysis than a typical Japanese car. Ever notice how a domestic car always feels heavier and more solid than a comparable Japanese model?
I blame scientific calculators, CAD and finite element analysis for the whole feeling of "they don't build 'em like they used to".
With a sliderule, you could only work to three or four significant figures. Every calculation, you'd have to round up forces and round down material strengths. As a result, your final design was always stronger and heavier than it "needed" to be.
With scientific calculators which hold 12+ sig figs in memory - CAD, Matlab, etc. even more - the design can be optimized more. Finite element analysis allows the design to be broken into millions of almost infinitely small points and the forces on each one of those points can be analyzed in minutes or hours with a computer, a job which would have taken years with a sliderule. Armed with this knowledge, the manufacturer can use (thinner, cheaper) 22 gauge sheetmetal instead of the 20 gauge you would have chosen with sliderule calculations. The net effect is that the car/washing machine/VCR/whatever is cheaper to manufacture and cheaper to ship. If it's a car, this also translates into better acceleration and better gas mileage.
But the problem is that the thinner sheetmetal and other heavily-optimized parts makes the design less forgiving of the real-world crap which occurs. A pair of jeans gets stuck under the washing machine's agitator. A videocassette gets jammed angrily into the VCR by a couple of kids who've just argued about what to watch. A guy takes his car to Home Depot and instructs the guy to put 600lbs of fertilizer bags into the trunk.
Real world abuse is not considered in the optimization process. And as a result, the machine breaks.
Now, before everyone floods me about how "my truck has been around for 40 years," let me pre-emptively defend myself: 1) trucks are a little bit different still,
Less so. Full-frame American-made rear-wheel-drive cars (like the Caprice Classic and the Crown Vic) are made of box-section steel frames while pickups are generally C-channel steel frames with comparable gauge steel. The drivetrains are generally exactly the same. Real SUVs (like the Durango/Grand Cherokee, Blazer, Explorer, etc. in contrast to the silly little toys like the RAV-4 and the CR-V) are built similarly. In fact, the only reason I'd buy an SUV is because they don't make the Caprice Classic anymore.
Having said that, if you take a wander through a wrecking yard, you might want to start looking at the cars there carefully. Take a very close look at the cars which don't have obvious accident damage - ie. the cars which were worn out. Wander around and note who built the car, the mileage and the year. Some of each will have had better owners than others. But if you take an average, you'll start to see a pattern emerging.
Whatever it is, they don't build 'em like they used to. A new VCR may sell for $59, and you might be tempted to buy the $200 model from the same brand, reasoning that it will last longer. Flip open the cassette door and point the MAG light in there before you buy it. Typically, it'll use the same mechanism as its cheaper cousin - you're spending the $141 extra for software which enables a few more features.
Washing machines? Mine's a 1954 Maytag. When the spin bearing in the bottom finally let go after 49 years of cleaning dirty underwear, I took apart the transmission to see if it was worth rebuilding. There was no appreciable wear to any of the gear surfaces, etc. So I spent a couple of hundred bucks on bearings, gaskets, hoses and seals. Most of them were perfectly fine when I swapped 'em. I could have spent $147 on the Roper
Do you think that a bunch of poor people in China are all of a sudden picking up laptops and peddling viagra? It's not the Chinese, it's the same people who have always sent spam. They are just buying their hosting/bandwidth from companies overseas, where regulations are non-existant.
More to the point, though. A Chinese friend told me that in Chinese custom, it's unlucky to refuse or discard a business card.
If they view spam as a business card, then they can't possibly understand why you wouldn't want it.
My solution to this particular problem used access.db to remove China, Korea, Japan, etc from the Internet. I don't know anybody in those places, so receiving e-mail from them - and dozens of other countries - is only a liability.
My motorcycle mechanic pointed out, wryly, that his Valkyrie was made in America with enough American parts that it can be labelled as "made in the USA" because for all intents and purposes it is, even though the company is owned by Japanese.
True enough.
However, imported cars which are "Made in the USA" or "Made in Canada" are broadly made of foreign components. Turns out that it's a lot easier to ship 10,000 engine/transmission assemblies, 10,000 complete wiring harnesses, etc. than it is to ship 10,000 completed cars. So, while Honda has a manufacturing plant in Ontario, the cars are no more "Made in Canada" than Ikea furniture is made in your living room.
The failure of Harley and Detroit to be able to manufacture their products entirely domestically is the effect of trade unions and electronics. Paying someone $35/hr to machine brake pistons is a ridiculous part of Detroit's troubles, driven by powerful and unreasonable unions. Having to purchase parts for EFI systems, etc. overseas because there are no longer any electronics manufacturers of note in North America is a tragedy.
I always make a point of buying domestic where possible. Clothing, cars, tools, etc.
As for colitis, doctors aren't sure what aspect of cigarette smoke controls it, but straight nicotine doesn't seem to have the same effect as smoking one or two cigarettes per day. Having had colitis, I can tell you that many people suffering from it would be willing to try anything -- even taking up a 2 cigs per day "habit." I eventually had to have my colon removed, so I don't have an excuse for smoking anymore.
Heheh... Yup. Something in cigarettes is an excellent laxative. It's probably the body detecting the hydrogen cyanide, realizing that shutdown is probably imminent, and deciding to get some of the shutdown tasks (like releasing the sphincter) done before it has to do the really time-consuming jobs like rigor mortis.
Each puff of a cigarette must be kind of like jerking a computer around by starting a shutdown and cancelling it...