Yeah, this is just what we need to differentiate linux from Windows.:-p
Agreed. But look at it this way.
At least Microsoft has a budget to sit people down in focus groups and see what they like. If we had that in KDE/Gnome/$any_other_full-service_desktop_metaphor , then it's probable we wouldn't have new stuff being released with color schemes that make corporate users vomit, or xine logos designed by eurotrash 14-year-old Run Lola Run fans from East Berlin.
Microsoft spent millions developing that GUI look and feel. If user Joe Average didn't like it, they wouldn't have released it. We could do far worse than to take Microsoft's lead on UI design - KDE is the best of the free desktop metaphors for Linux, and well, frankly, it sucks.
By copying the good features of Windows software while avoiding their pitfalls of poor security and castrating inflexibility, we have no place to go but up.
The same, of course, applies to analyzing and "sharing" what makes the Macintosh GUI great. But you have to crawl before you can walk...
Finishing off your little essay by saying Linux is 99.8% or whatever ready for Joe Sixpack is like a kid in grade school ending a story with "then I woke up." It makes the savvy reader want to beat you with a sock full of quarters.
I agree completely with you, but I could think of no other way to put a positive spin on it. Without it, my little essay reads like it was written by a truculent MCSE.
Once my sisters login, visitors act as if nothing is wrong. They go about their business. They check their email, write their paper, chat with gaim.
Agreed. It's great, isn't it?
Bet you've got a pretty fast computer to do that.
I find Windows 2000 to be perfectly usable on a Pentium II-233. I find a PIII-500 to be ponderous when running KDE.
The other problem is that perhaps I have higher expectations of functionality. I want an underlining spellchecker, and frankly, it costs us credibility that it's not there. Sure, that's not Linux' fault - KDE runs equally slowly on most other Unix variants.
Same thing at my workplace. We've started installing Debian desktops to replace the aging and incapable web browsing applications that work on Win 3.1 (our platform is DOS). Logins are authenticated against the main Netware server. People go about their business.
Yeah. I considered doing something like that with over 600 computers for the Canadian federal government. Unfortunately, to be as quick as the users were used to, I would have to upgrade a bunch of Pentium III machines, even for users whose most taxing applications were their e-mail clients. (Remember what I said about Ximian's Continental Drift? Ahem... Evolution?)
Sorry, that's unacceptable. I cannot justify buying new machines for e-mail drones.
Questions about Lotus 123 and Open Systems Accounting software are commonly asked daily - this company has been using this software for years! I can count on one hand the number of times I've had to explain to people how to move files, print old faxes, or download and print product datasheets.
Yup. The Unix filesystem is easy enough for new users to understand, especially since most software defaults to their/home directory.
Perhaps I'll buy that free software isn't ready for the desktops of power users.
If it takes a Pentium 4 running Evolution to get the same functionality as a Windows 95 box running Eudora, then surely even you will agree that something is wrong.
No one who needs to use a computer to get something done cares if a program underlines misspelled words when there's an obvious spell check menu or button.
Excuse me? That's probably the single stupidest thing I've ever heard anyone say.
Here's an exercise for you.
Cut and paste a large technical document into KMail. Select "Spell check". Sit and *manually* acknowledge every correct or incorrect word.
Now compare the same task with any software package including a modern spellchecker. Notice how much easier it is to simply glance at an underlined word and see whether it's correct or not? (Oh, the spellchecker doesn't know my customer's 18-letter-long last name. Oh well.)
If a spellchecker is considered to be unimportant, let me remind you that misspelling costs credibility, which causes a company to lose business.
No one that only needs to do real work cares that the scroll wheel doesn't work - people know how to use page up/down, the arrow keys, and scroll bars.
Of course they do. But that doesn't mean that they should. A computer is a tool. A tool should be designed to be as easy and efficient to use as possible. I bet I can scroll through an e-mail faster than you can mouse over and hit the elevator buttons.
In the real world, time is money.
But that's okay. If there's no scroll wheel support, users won't take your new operating system seriously and will resist your every attempt to supplant their familiar and functional (if unreliable) Windows.
You power users don't care that there's a legal liability in making xine work right.
It's a legal liability to have a repeat button? And to have a GUI which doesn't include decorative buttons which don't actually do anything?
You want to play DVDs with free software or facilitate it? You need to be prepared to break federal laws in the US. I will never provide DVD playing software on my family computer. It's not worth breaking the law. Distributions and software authors are even more justified in this fear than system integrators.
Perhaps you should read what I wrote at www.glowingplate.com/dissent. I never said that DVD support should be built into xine, did I? I understand the liability of DeCSS. Sure, the functionality would be nice, but I'm not asking for the impossible. I'm asking for a concentration on matching the features and UI of such defacto software as Quicktime and Windows Media Player before designing GUIs that are so tacky they'd only be enjoyed by empoverished European children.
I've migrated a considerable number of non-technie people to free software. I've seen how people behave when they've only been exposed to Windows.
So've I.
Know what bugs them the most? Logging in and out.
The users I've found haven't been bothered by this. You see, I've actually tried this in a corporate environment where users were already accustomed to logging in and out with their Windows machines.
Don't knock the idea until you have some more substantial experience than a webpage that harps on bugs in individual applications.
You, sir, are an idiot, if you really think that a decent user experience isn't the *absolute* first step towards migrating users from the comfortable embrace of Windows. For fsck's sake, it's not like I'm even citing obscure applications.
Look at Knoppix. Yes, Knoppix is technically brilliant and the single best Linux demo out there. But if you were to show that to the CEO of a bank, he'd laugh you out of his office. The UI is tacky, it lacks comparable features that users are now accustomed to, and its only advantage is that it's free.
The cost of the software pales in the face of the cost of the employee which will be using it. I can't afford to pay employees to sit around and click through Ignore/Ignore/Ignore on their spellcheckers or wait 1/2 an hour for a Pentium 4 to parse a directory of 2,000 MP3s. I'd be out of business.
It's a foregone conclusion that we need a comprehensive desktop environment like KDE. We need an underlining spellchecker in KMail. We need KDE not to be so slow that it takes half an hour to parse my MP3 collection every time I open the folder. We need people to match feature for feature every Windows product, instead of whining about "highly advanced math" like polynomial regressions. We need xine to work, instead of having their developers wandering around talking about changing the default logo to something which looks like it was designed by a 14-year-old Run Lola Run fan from East Berlin.
Is it a fast process? Heck no, but I think it's going to be more successful then just trying to convince mainstream America they don't need Bill Gates.
I think most North Americans have no particular love of either Windows or of Bill Gates, and will jump ship to the (free/reliable) alternative as soon as it's really there.
I run Linux on my primary desktop. While the kernel and system-space stuff is leaps and bounds above Windows, from a UI standpoint, it's still about as painful as going from Windows 2000 to Windows 3.1.
OK, this is really cool, and makes me want to wire my house this way.
And they looked like such a *normal* family.
How are you supposed to know that your neighbors won't do something equally disruptive, if you can't spot the wackos?
Even just 1kW of lights must make it daylight in the living room of the house across the street. Never mind arbitrary blinking, multiple colors, TV crews and tourists driving by...
Volume adjust for Dire_Straits_-_Walk_Of_Life.wav: 4.527
Volume adjust for Dire_Straits_-_Private_Investigation.wav: 5.620
Volume adjust for Dire_Straits_-_Telegraph_Road_-_Live_(Remix).wav: sox: Premature EOF on.wav input file
2730.667
Illegal division by zero at/home/bigblockmopar/crip line 1365, <STDIN> line 13.
I've got a driver's side door for a 1981-1983 DeLorean DMC-12 for sale, and since this is already a DeLorean forum, I though. "What the hey".
Driver's side door, minor dent around the lock cylinder, and a smaller one which looks like it might have been inflicted by an errant shopping cart. (It was replaced because the car was otherwise a 100-point show car.)
This door is great as a conversation piece, or as a replacement door for a driver, though not appropriate for a show car.
Info and photos will be provided to serious enquiries only.
Go to my website and message me with the form.
Re:If this is what a small world is all about....
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ISP Chief on Spam
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· Score: 2
Aln Ralsky and Co. are still offering their "services".
I know.
May cancer cells multiply in his colon like his messages multiply in my in box.
If this is what a small world is all about....
on
ISP Chief on Spam
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· Score: 2, Troll
This happens because the people who are in position to make laws and policies are directly affected... Secondly, to get laws passed, you need a lobby... Unless a lobby is formed and pressure sustained, we can whine all day on/.
Dude, last time I checked my incoming spam, the originating IP address for most of it was from China and other third-world shitholes. You *don't* honestly think that they'll stop because the USA has a new law which will give them a slap on the wrist?
This is NOT a problem which can be legislated away. These are not 20-year-old mothers of 4 living in trailer parks in Florida.
A friend of mine, of Chinese descent, told me that it's unlucky to refuse to take someone's business card, and it's even unluckier to throw it out. This is the tradition with which we're dealing, and if an e-mail is seen as merely an electronic business card....
At this point, I have configured my mailserver to send all incoming mail from.cn,.kr,.pl,.pk and a few other choice hellholes directly to/dev/null. With no apologies. I know nobody in any of those places, and until they stop spamming, I have no interest in knowing anybody in any of those places.
I will tell you this, it sure does take most of the crap out of the mail spool.
Legality of Attacking Spammers?
on
ISP Chief on Spam
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· Score: 3, Interesting
You know, he does make a good point about spam being, essentially, a denial of service attack. It denies me use of a portion of my hard drive, of my server's CPU cycles for SETI@Home, etc.
Here's a question. If I put up a page like this on my website:
Welcome to the glowingplate.com automated security test.
This is a free service provided to Internet users so that they can test the invulnerability of their computer systems.
We accept no liability whatsoever for any damages caused.
In order to test your computer - and ONLY to test your computer, no human ever reads e-mail sent to this address - send an e-mail to $E-MAIL_ADDRESS. We will retrieve your e-mail address from the message headers and immediately begin the test.
And then pound 'em into the ground with a script that runs through every known vulnerability of Windows networking.
I figure that if enough of their address lists can be polluted with enough e-mail addresses which crash their systems, they'll eventually die out.
Does anyone keep any good legal counsel on retainer? Any lawyers out there care to discuss ways that such a thing can be done legally from Canada or the US?
The alternative might be to buy service from a hosting provider in some third-world country with no laws, and take care of it from there.
My recollection of the Slant-6's genesis was that it derived/inspired from/by a Porsche design for a tank/armored vehicle engine. The goal was to get a very long stroke but have a low block height (undersquare bore/stroke ratio).
No, the 170 CID (2.8L) was the first Slant-6. The 198 was a bored 170, allowing owners a larger motor with more power as a low-buck alternative option to the smallblock (273 and 318CID) V8s. I don't think the Valiant was offered with a V8 at all until 1964.
The bored and stroked 225 came out later, with even more available power - but because of the long stroke, the emphasis was more on torque than horsepower.
The 170 was dropped with the advent of EGR and other parasitic energy-wasting emissions control systems. Also, cars were getting heavier because of requirements like 5 MPH crash-absorbing bumpers. With the technology of the day, in a Valiant, that meant a front bumper which was over 100lbs of chromed steel on heavy telescopic steel and rubber supports.
The 170 was discontinued in ~1970 (but it was rare even then) and the 198 was discontinued in ~1972.
I recall the aluminum version - didn't they put out a Sprint pack early on? Friend of mine had (might still have) a 65-6 Valiant convertible with a 225(might have been 200?) and a Hurst 4-spd.
The Hyper Pack, it was called. Yes. There were different varieties, ranging from 3 two-barrel carburetors to one four-barrel carburetor on a very long aluminum tunnel-ram intake manifold. Personally, I've got an aftermarket Offenhauser 4-barrel intake which takes about a 600 CFM Carter AFB or AVS. I think it would also fit a ThermoQuad, but I've never found such a small TQ!
The 200 CID displacement is probably a 198 bored 0.030" over, someone changed the rings along the line. The 198 and 225 blocks can go 0.060" over and then some before you need to resleeve the block.
The 4-speed would be a Chrysler A-833 - the manual transmission designed to stand up to the awesome 426 Hemi - with a Hurst shifter to clean up the slop in the Chrysler/Hurst OEM shifter. So far as I know, all the A-833 transmissions had a Hurst OEM shifter.
Neat car, 300K plus on it's 4th top & first engine.
Well, I dunno about it being *that* fast, but they were certainly respectable cars for theirs or any time. On modern tires, the Valiant also out-handles a lot of mega-buck exotic cars. Even on an economy car like the Valiant, Chrysler didn't skimp on engineering. The adjustable torsion-bar front suspension is living proof of that, and the fact that the knuckles are designed to get the centerline of the wheel as close to the centerline of the balljoints is an extremely impressive feat of design. (Compare it to the distance between the top-plates and the centerlines of the wheels on a modern MacPherson-strut vehicle. They're cheap and light, but MacPherson struts are crap.)
Back in the 1960s ot 70s, Chrysler began designing a new engine, the Slant 6 - Originally, the engine was designed to be made of aluminum for weight reasons.
Yup. Actually, the story is a little more weird than that. Back in the 1950s, there was a factory-sponsored 6 cylinder racing program. In the late 1950s, Chrysler came up with an aluminum-block inline 6-cylinder engine, with a 170 cubic inch displacement, canted toward the passenger side to offset the weight of the driver. It had what effectively amounts to a tunnel-ram intake manifold. It was the Slant-6.
In typical Chrysler do-or-die fashion, in 1959, the *still* hadn't settled on an engine for their new economy car, the 1960 Valiant. Nor did they have the time to design a new engine, and their flathead 6-cylinder would have left them way behind the competition.
Chrysler tried the aluminum Slant-6 and found that it had poor durability for street use. So they simply poured iron into the molds and out came the 170 Slant-6 as we knew it. Over the years, a 198 and a 225 Slant-6 were derived by increasing the bore and the stroke.
The most common Slant-6, the 225, because of its massively oversquare design, doesn't rev high, but it's a torque monster. And because it was designed for aluminum, it's massively stronger than it needs to be.
It is, almost without question, the single most durable car engine.
Same goes for their transmissions - Older Chrysler transmissions (And even recent 3-speed automatics, which have a heritage dating back to the old Torqueflites) were heavy, inefficient, but practically bulletproof.
727, 904, A-833 - yeah, I know them well, I have several of each in my garage. The 727 and A-833 were designed to stand up to the Hemi, so they lasted forever behind a Slant-6 or one of the small 318 (5.2L) V8s.
Chrysler was also the first to actually create a working automatic transmission as we know them today; the 727 was the direct descendent of that. Notably, all their trucks use the 904 but with an overdrive tailshaft unit and a lockup torque converter. The inefficiency of older automatics compared to newer ones is primarily the lack of an overdrive gear and the lack of a lockup torque converter. Both modern pieces can be retrofitted to the old transmissions, allowing far greater gas mileage out of one's old car.
Their 4-speed electronically controlled automatic should theoretically be more reliable - Modern design, electronic monitoring and control, etc. Unfortunately, because it's lighter and more complex, the A604 is nicknamed the sick-oh-four. Actually, the sick-oh-four is probably a good example of your comment in action.
The biggest reason for the failures of the later Mopar transmissions is the use of the wrong transmission fluid. The computer-controlled transmissions toggle some valves open and closed very quickly to adjust fluid pressures in different parts of the transmission - this engages one gear or another with a minimum of vibration (apparently, customers don't like the lurch when a car changes gear). Very critically, these transmissions rely on a very specific viscosity to their transmission fluid, and specify Chrysler's ATF+3 fluid. If the guy at Jiffy Lube tops it up just once with regular ATF, then nasty things happen (like gear overlap, where the transmission is simultaneously in 2nd and 3rd gear), which tends to blow clutch packs. The transmission itself isn't usually the cause of the failure, but point taken. They should have expected that it would get ATF instead of ATF+3, the warning on the dipstick isn't enough, apparently.
As an avionics technician I can attest that consumer electronics is not the only field suffering.
I agree. People here wonder why I rant about my great old cars, but it's the same thing with them. Sure, the assembly quality of a Honda Accord is better than my 1970 Dodge Dart, but the Dart is overbuilt and survives the abuse of daily life far better.
Consumer electronics are the same. Back when manufacturing quality of components was poorer, the standard resistor tolerance was +/-20%! If you were designing a circuit which called for a 1k resistor, you'd have to budget on getting anything from 800 ohms to 1.2k hitting the assembly line. As a result, you specified a better rated transistor or other part. It cost a little bit more, but the net effect was that it lasted better. 5V on the supply to the logic? Okay, we'll use 6.3V electrolytic capacitors to bypass the RF! Not to mention the plastic crap everywhere...
Compare a modern VCR with a 20-year-old top-loading VHS boat anchor. Mechanically, they have to do exactly the same things to the tape. And yet the old VCR was built with steel or cast components, plastic only where it was essential. Idler pucks were sintered bronze and rubber and could be changed in minutes by a competent technician. Now, idlers are little plastic gears on plastic bearings which get loose quickly. Improved sophistication of the electronics have added features but the mechanisms are utter garbage.
Yes, I would pay more for a VCR that would last longer. Yes, I would pay extra for a motherboard that I knew had 25V capacitors on the 5V rails, or where I knew that ICs weren't pushed to their rated maximums everywhere.
I collect 1950s TV sets. Funny thing about them: steel or copper chassis, and 1/2 watt resistors everywhere, even where I calculate 1/8 watt loads. Capacitors were even more fragile then than they are now, so 450V-rated capacitors being used to filter 170V rectified AC line were commonplace. Stuff was built to last. Interestingly, only one of my antique sets came to me frankly broken; the rest needed adjustments or replacements of old (not failed) components. (I don't think I'll count 50 years of ingress of ambient humidity into a paper capacitor as a design flaw.)
I blame CAD software and automated finite element analysis for starting a trend.
If you build 500,000 units (a fairly small production run) and can cut 1 lb off the weight of a vehicle by using thinner sheetmetal in the floor, you've just saved 500,000lbs of raw steel. That's a few bucks... about $30,000, depending on the alloy and stamping considerations. The owner is not going to go out and measure the thickness of the steel of the car's floor.
To protect it from rust, you use today's improved paints to protect the floor. Of course, the underside of the car gets scratched by stones, and rust sets in. Because of the thinner steel, the floor rusts through faster. Most people scrap the car at this point; a premature end. Fine, the dry-cleaning hooks might be beautifully placed, but it's all the same to the car crusher.
To allow engineers to be able to say, "22 gauge steel will do" when instinct calls for 20-gauge, CAD and finite element analysis provide a rigorous mathematical proof that corners can be cut.
Sliderules calculated to three or four significant figures. As you went from step to step in a design calculation, you'd round things up or down automatically, and the compounded error would be far greater than it is now. But through intelligent rounding (ie. "The driver weighs 184.34lbs - call it 185 lbs..."), the error always worked out on the favor of design strength. Now, you park 12 significant digits in a variable on your calculator as you work the problem.
Note that the final design is more accurate, but the rounded-up design from a sliderule is superior in real-world survivability. Unfortunately, as margins get smaller and smaller, manufacturers are forced to adopt this tactic to save raw material.
In 1970, GM tested the first prototype of the Chevrolet Vega, which was GM's first CAD-designed car. It suffered a structural failure after only 8 miles on the test track. They had to add over 8 pounds of steel structure to reinforce the car. (Read John DeLorean's "On A Clear Day, You Can See General Motors".)
Honda cars are built out of such thin sheetmetal that I can - and have - dented them with my thumb. They derive their strength from the shape of the material, not from the material itself - it's just a four-wheeled soft drink can. This cuts cost and raises gas mileage at the expense of long-term durability. If the passenger places his or her foot hard enough on the floor, relatively modern (~1996) Accords flex enough that the brake lights go on. I wouldn't want to know where a Honda would bend if I went to Home Depot and used the trunk to bring home a couple of bags of topsoil for my flower garden.
It's easy to tell if three fat people have ever gone over a bump in the back seat of a 1981-1989 Dodge Aries or Plymouth Reliant four-door. (During the life of a car, if you think about all the weird people you've had in the car, and all the conditions you can expect.) The design budget is typically 200lb per passenger, which means that the expected rear seat load is about 600 lbs. Let's say three people at 250lbs, the load on the car's structure is 150lbs more than rated. That's effectively another person in the back seat. Go over a bump the wrong way, and bingo! You've got those trademark little cracks on the roof, right where they meet the rear pillar.
Computers in design have allowed us great things - faster design cycles, greater sophistication. But they've also taught manufacturers how to cut corners.
The first time I heard of biodegradable pastics manufactured from things usually regarded as food was in the late 1980s.
Things like margarine...
The way my old chemistry professor put it - loosely quoted - "If you hydrogenate a petroleum oil, you call it plastic. If you hydrogenate corn or soy oil, you call it margarine."
Think about it.
I think I'll stick with butter. MmmMmmm... toast deep-fried in butter.
Yes, he's saying he's only found one vendor that makes them, BUT HE'S ASKING IF ANYONE KNOWS OF ANY OTHERS!!!
I don't know of any others. And I can't imagine that, for the moment, there will be too many of them.
Listen, here's the problem. I love LEDs, but with current technology, they're not really appropriate for this application.
First off, let me state that, for Christmas lights, tungsten bulbs - especially parallel-wired with 120V bulbs - are a huge improvement over the previous tradition of candles in the Christmas tree. But they're still not a great idea:
Heat to ignite tinder-dry Christmas tree and the ghastly ornaments the neighbor's kids made
Energy useage
Line power around potentially conductive metallized plastic tinsel
Broken bulbs expose line voltages to user. (This applies even with series strings where the bulb voltage may be as low as 1.8V; when the circuit is opened, there's 120V across the bulb socket, with enough current to kill)
An alternative would be gas discharge lamps, like those little flicker-flame neons. But they're not without their flaws:
Dim
Limited availability
High prices
Limited choice of colors
Broken bulbs still expose 120V, generally without a series resistor to limit current - ie. potentially lethal shock.
LEDs are a great idea, since they run cool. They're commonly available in a bunch of colors, and with triple-die LEDs, the lights could literally be any color and could change on-the-fly. But there's a downside:
Expensive
Require heavy and expensive transformer or switching supply to be practical
Dim
Small viewing angle
Sure, LEDs are cheap, but they're still an order of magnitude more expensive that the little miniature lights on those cheap Made In Bangladesh light strings. Most people won't pay the extra, will they? (If in doubt about whether consumers know or appreciate quality, consider again VHS versus Betamax, or Microsoft versus Apple.)
The transformer or switching supply would absolutely constitute a benefit to consumers, in that it would virtually eliminate the possibility of getting a shock off the string. But try to explain it to consumers: "Point the mouse at the little picture of a computer on your screen. Click twice quickly." "Stop it! You're being too technical!" Therefore, it would really only become an extra burden to manufacturers.
Dim. LEDs are a hell of a lot brighter than they were a few years ago, and while they throw out a lot of light, it's over a fairly small viewing angle (typically under 45 degrees). The net output is miniscule compared to a tungsten bulb. Most LEDs can't even be seen to be lit in direct sunlight - but even my miniature light set is clearly visibly on.
Viewing angle is small. Readily available high-intensity LEDs are generally meant for automotive taillight and traffic signalling duty. They usually only have a viewing angle of 12.5 degrees. Your tree will look pretty dark if each light is only visible for 12.5 degrees of a walkaround.
How could this be solved? Maybe clear LEDs with frosted housings in order to make the light diffuse over the entire surface of the LED? Good idea, but it's still not bright enough to be satisfactory for that purpose. Nor does the frosting, in practice, diffuse light as evenly as you would want.
My perspective? I love LEDs. They're my favorite modern electronic component. (Second is probably the MOSFET. Overall favorite is vacuum tubes.)
I've got a 1960s or early 1970s Sound A-5000 power amplifier (try doing a Google search for that! Anyone got any info on the amp, e-mail me) which blew its tungsten pilot light. The light was a GE #47 - 6V, 150mA pilot light. Consumes 0.9W off the amp's low voltage supply to light up a dim red indicator on the front panel.
So I took a traffic duty red LED that I had kicking around. Clusters of these are used to make brake lights and traffic lights. The LED is rated for 3,000MCD at 12.5 degrees with a forward voltage drop of 2.1V and a peak current of 30mA.
The resistor was calculated as follows: Vin-Vdrop = 6.3V - 2.1V = 4.2V. R = E/I = 4.2V/0.03A = 140 ohms. Next standard value is 150 ohms, and I used that. When I measured the current through the LED, it was (unsurprisingly) 28mA, 93% of the LED's rated maximum. The forward voltage drop was 2.1 volts. The LED is being driven harder than I would like, and it gets warm after a few minutes.
Even so, the dim red indicator on the front panel is still dim. Right on axis, it'll blind you, but from any other angle, the indicator is still too dim to be useful. Improvements were made by actually grinding down the end of the LED and using clear hot-melt glue to attach it to the back of the bezel, but it would still be unacceptably dim on a finished product. Certainly dimmer than the old GE #47 was, not even as bright as the panel LED on the front of my Viewsonic. And that's with a traffic duty LED, pushed hard.
In summary, naked LEDs are great when viewed on axis, used as indicators or when a fine shaft of light is required. But trying to diffuse them or expect behavior similar to an incandescent bulb is still pushing things... for the moment.
....why not switch up to crystal meth? Surely if the "R" drug works a bit, a stronger stimulant will work more;-)
It probably would, yes. That's why there's such a correlation between ADD/ADHD symptoms and drug addiction.
"I don't want someone to love me, Just give me sex whenever I want it, Cause all I ask for is instant pleasure, instant pleasure..."
One of the characteristics of ADD/ADHD is risk-seeking behavior - and that includes illegal drug use. Stimulants - whether caffeine and nicotine or street drugs - tend to alleviate the symptoms of ADD/ADHD, which are every bit as frustrating to sufferers as they are to the people around them.
"Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration!"
You know when you get a tune stuck in your head? I thought it was normal to have music playing endlessly in your head. When my best friend gave me a Dexadrine to keep me awake on a long drive, the tunes in my head stopped, and I could focus clearly on things that had always been impossible - like multiplying two four-digit numbers in my head.
"Show me that smile again, Don't waste another minute on your crying, We're nowhere near the end, The best is ready to begin."
When I told another friend later that the Dexadrine made the music go away, he was surprised at the implication that music - and bits of speeches, movie lines and even mathematical expressions - were normally running through my head. They're usually loosely related to the thought or task at hand, but distracting nonetheless. Asking around, I discovered that this, apparently, is *not* a normal condition for most people.
"It's 106 miles to Chicago. We've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses."
If I had tried cocaine to keep me awake on that long drive and found that it made thought clearer, I'd be a coke addict now.
"Yesterday, December 7th 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and without warning, attacked by the Empire of Japan."
Am I addicted to Dexadrine or Ritalin? Nope, in fact, I haven't had any ADD medications in the house for over a year. But they *do* help. This isn't a condition dreamt up by shrinks to help hausfrau handle poor little Johnny who just can't seem to apply himself.
"Capacitive reactance equals one over two pi eff cee, where eff is frequency in Hertz and cee is capacitance in farads."
If your daughter has these symptoms, look into treatment, at least during the school months so that she doesn't fall behind.
Now, I am a senior Physics/Mechanical Engineering major and don't use medicine much... The downside to my ADHD is that I perform poorly in school and am taking several over again.
Dude... you're *supposed* to fail computational fluid mechanics *and* thermo at least once each.
Heh, your car doesn't feel the windchill! It was probably only -20F air temp, but that's not bad for getting a car to start first time. My friend in high school had a chevette that started always in the cold, but his '78 Satellite didn't.
True.
There's something about Chevettes that always makes them start when they're really cold.
That cold snap lasted about three weeks, and during that time, all you saw on the road were Chevettes, Caprice Classics and other full-size older GM cars, and 1970s Chryslers. Otherwise, they were barren, not a Toyota to be found.
It turns out the reason is simple. First off, there were very few imported cars because at that temperature, you need *every* cranking amp available from your battery. Japanese cars tend to have those lightweight little steel battery post clamps, which have a higher contact resistance than lead terminal clamps used on domestics. They also tend to have smaller battery to starter leads.
Fords seemed to have the same sorts of problems, caused by the external starter relay and the extra cable length on the starter lead.
I was able to get those running for people by using my big-assed 2-gauge jumper cables (which I made from arc-welding ground wires).
Older Chryslers - like the Satellite - had an electronic or points ignition system using an external ballast resistor to limit the current through the ignition coil. The idea was that you'd need a stronger spark to start the engine, so they used a coil rated for about 6V, and put a resistor in series to limit the current. During starting (short term), the resistor was bypassed and the coil was able to deliver one hell of a spark. When the resistor was very cold, its resistance was very low, and when the battery was heavily loaded with the starter, there was usually enough getting through to fire the coil well enough to spark the plugs and get the engine running. I'm surprised the Satellite didn't run - probably needed a good tune-up! (My own Dart, Valiant and Ram all use *exactly* the same electronic ignition system as the Satellite would have had, they start very well in cold weather.)
As for Chevettes, well, I dunno. Big battery to starter leads on all the Chevettes I've ever seen. Large starter motor, with the exception of the orientation of the mounting ears, it's the same starter which brings Chevy rat motors (big block V8, 7.4L) to life. Small (1.6L) engine would have to mean less drag trying to compress the fuel and air. GM's excellent HEI electronic ignition, with short leads between the HEI module and the ignition coil - probably lots of primary current to fire the coil well. Because of good overbuilt design, the Chevette was the shitbox that could!
This attitude of better living through altering chemicals in your brain is bullshit. If your kid won't pay attention, that's a problem, so deal with it (I'm referring to the poster).
I used to feel exactly the same way.
My best friend and I were very similar. We were the guys who'd sit at the back of the class, making fun of the teacher. Everything was more exciting than homework.
After being expelled from high school for driving a motorcycle down the hallway mostly because I was bored, I went out into the real world. So did my best friend.
As roommates for several years, we knew each other very well. Massive career changes were routine, though we worked well for a professional audio and video company where the tasks at hand changed every day and the stress kept us focussed.
The house situation was interesting. I came home one day to find that he'd had a couple of friends over to play guitar. There was stuff everywhere: amps, guitars, guitar strings, cables, sheet music. Only a very select few would wheel an old Ariens snowblower into the living room to clean it up: I did. He came running down the stairs, and with the pressure of a running snowblower dealing with his cheap old acoustic guitar, eveything else was cleaned up quickly.
We drank a case (12) of beer a day, and each smoked over a pack a day. Food was secondary.
Then my best friend was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder.
Much as I was a skeptic, on dexadrine, he became a model of management, confident ability and skill. The creativity remained, but it was nowhere near as impulsive. All of a sudden, there was consideration to the question, "Is it really a good idea to cut the roof off the car I have to drive to work on Monday?".
After a while, I noticed little things like my fidgeting, the fact that I was always told that I was "careless" when doing math problems, I'd slept with most everyone in two large towns mostly because I wasn't interesting in any commitment, was the world's greatest procrastinator, I like to amuse myself by shocking other people, etc. I did an online test, and it showed that had a strong leaning toward ADD, too.
I printed out the test results and took them to my doctor, who *immediately* wrote a prescription. I tried out Ritalin and found that it improved things, but the biggest improvement simply came from knowing the diagnosis.
Yes, I have attention deficit disorder. I pop a pill when I need to be able to focus for something really important, but for the most part, I am as I am.
Is there a benefit to ADD? Yes, absolutely. Most people with ADD are exceptionally creative problem solvers. This isn't a feature that you wish to stifle with medication, but it can cause problems in situations, ie. academia and some workplaces, where conformity is an asset.
And yes, there is a physiological basis for ADD. Look it up. Consider the fact that, outwardly, this is a hyperactivity disorder which is medically controlled with stimulants. It shouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that using stimulants on hyperactive people should only make the problems worse.
Yet, stimulants control ADHD's hyperactivity and ADD's poor impulse control. Many people with ADD/ADHD consume huge quantities of coffee and cigarettes, because caffeine and nicotine help with focus. Stimulants are used because they increase activity in the part of the brain responsible for impulse control, a part which is shown by MRI images to be less active among people with ADD/ADHD.
Finally, there appears to be a genetic predisposition, though there are other factors involved. Much like homosexuality, there is no definitive proof of a genetic origin, however, both Helen Keller and Ray Charles could see a pattern emerging from the data.
As for "rust cancer," most of that comes from poor maintenance. I suspect that hosing down a car that's just been driven through streets that are deiced with salt would go a long way toward keeping rust away.
For sure.
Another part of the problem is that most people think it's a good thing to park their cars in heated indoor garages. As you drive in from 7F to a garage which may be 40F, all the snow melts, and your car has more exposure to saltwater. The expansion and contraction of the car body with the temperature change can also cause tiny cracks in the paint.
Of course, if you keep your car well tuned, it should start even when it's very cold out (lemme tell you about the winter of 1993, -50C in Ottawa, Canada with the windchill, and my faithful little Chevette still started on the first shot). If the car is well maintained, it will start, which renders a reason to keep the car indoors obsolete.
If, OTOH, it's sand that's getting put on the roads, you don't have nearly as much of a problem. A couple of winters in Germany didn't harm what ended up becoming my first car...between regular trips to the car wash in the winter and the Germans' use of sand instead of salt on their roads, no rust developed that could be attributed to slushy roads.
Sand is nasty on the car's paint, but nowhere near as corrosive to the steel as salt is. Salt is profoundly evil, but it's still the most practical de-icer out there.
I'd love to see stainless steel car bodies like the DeLorean had, but it's rather difficult to fix dents in those...
You must not live in state that snows. Or not drive in snow. Most vehciles of that vintage have rust cancer in the east coast.
Actually, this is true. I don't winter drive them, I have a disposable Japanese car for that. I figure the Valiant, Dart and my truck could have pleasant semi-retirements.
Having said that, washing and waxing does go a long way toward preventing rust, as does repairing paint chips the moment you notice them. After all, the wax protects the paint which protects the metal... Though I do wash and wax the undersides of my vehicles, I don't get around to it as aftern as I should.
Something to consider, however, is that some cars will naturally rust more than others, simply due to water-trapping designs. And still others (notably Toyotas) are made of such thin sheetmetal that they perforate very quickly. Then, there's paint quality. Paint has improved a lot over the past 20 years. The Valiant and the Dart were blessed by design - the only place where they really rot is the front fenders, which are still readily available. Even the quarter panels on 25-year-old Valiants are seldom as rusty as the quarters on 10-year-old Honda Accords, and that's even with the advantage of better paint on the Honda. Part of the difference is that there are three weep holes in the Valiant's quarters, where most only have one.
On the other hand, when the snow is fresh and the salt truck hasn't been by, I do enjoy taking them out to a nearby parking lot. Especially my Ram with its 7.2L (440 cubic inch, using real SAE units, not that metric crap) V8. Children can play with their front wheel drive cars by pulling on the parking brake... but real men do donuts with raw horsepower to the rear wheels.
(In all honesty, playing with your vehicle in the snow is a good way to learn how to handle it when the weather is bad.)
Actually, I have started collecting key pieces of computer history (and I know a few other/.'s are doing the same) and I really believe that most of these systems are still quite capable of doing what they were meant to do, namely business software... No you can't play quake on a TRS-80 but it does a great job of running DOS and business applications.
Yeah. They still work as well as they did the day that they were new; unfortunately, our expectations of their abilities have changed too much.
I still have my own little computer museum, just like I collect 1950s TV sets. But since you come to expect certain things (a hard drive, bitmapped graphics, color, maybe a remote control), they're not really practical for daily use.
That doesn't make them any less a testament to their time or to their construction, it's just that, for the most part, they haven't achieved a vintage status by surviving a daily workload for x number of years.
But what about products that actually are better than their predecessors?
There are few. VCRs have more features but aren't as well built as the VCRs of yesteryear. Computers - you can't seriously claim that your P4 is as well built as an original IBM PC, though it may be several orders of magnitude faster.
In fact, I can't think of anything.
While CAD has been a boon to manufacturing and speeding product development cycles, I'd argue that finite element analysis and other techniques have simply taught manufacturers how to skimp on materials and fasteners everywhere.
Many of the products you mention may do the job as well as they did when new, but their replacements do the job *better* -- either directly (like cleaner clothes) or have a lower impact (use less power/fuel/water, are quieter, less polluting), or offer more features (delayed start, surround sound, more inputs/outputs).
Most inexpensive modern appliances lack delayed start.
I don't believe most modern dishwashers handle dirty roasting pans very well. My old Maytag does. Now, the funny thing about cleaning a roasting pan is that it requires lots of hot water and powerful sprays. The Maytag delivers when it's needed. And it cleans the roasting pan. However, because consumers had electric, water and gas bills way back when, the Maytag could run without using its heating element so much, and without three 1/2-hour washes and four rinses - that's dinnerplate mode. 2 washes, 2 rinses. Water about 75C. It might well use more water in both those washes than a modern dishwasher, but incrementally more. ie. Not worth the energy to make a new dishwasher.
Your snowblower is likely 2-cycle -- loads of pollution (noise & particulate).
Uhhh... I'm in Canada. We know snowblowers. I've never seen a two-cycle snowblower. Around here, all snowblowers are 4-cycle with 2-stage blowers.
As it is, the Ariens blew its motor about three years ago - the thing was just worn out. New snowblower of reasonable quality - $500. But my old Ariens chassis was in great shape. So I went to Princess Auto, bought a horizontal crankshaft Tecumseh engine for $200, and bolted it on. Now the Ariens has exactly the same engine as a modern blower.
The only thing the Ariens lacks is dummy guards. You know, those stupid mechanism which are meant to keep Darwin's weaker specimens from putting their hands into running machinery. My reaction is that if you're dumb enough to put your hands into a running snowblower, you deserve to lose them.
Your cars are far more dangerous in accident, pollute, get terrible fuel economy and require far more maintenance, not to mention being less enjoyable to drive (vinyl bench seats, AM radios).
The Valiant and Dart are unibody cars. They're designed to collapse in an accident. However, an SUV is built of a body riding on a box-section steel frame which is very difficult to collapse. I'd take the Valiant or the Dart anyday. Sure, they don't have airbags, but airbags are only an incremental improvement in safety.
The Valiant and the Dart are rear-wheel-drive, making emergency maneouvers far more predictable - why do you think cops liked Caprice Classics and Crown Vics so much?
Energy efficiency and pollution: my Valiant and Dart are both powered by the Slant-6 engine. The Slant-6 is a 225 CID (3.7L) OHV inline 6 cylinder engine designed for economy. Both of those cars get ~28MPG highway, respectable for a modern car of their size. The Valiant came with electronic ignition, the Dart was retrofitted with electronic ignition. They don't have catalytic converters or feedback EFI systems, so they're not quite as clean as a modern car under all conditions. But they're well maintained, and according to my friend who runs the local DriveClean shop, they blow as clean on the tailpipe as the typical 1992-model car. Note that the typical 1992-model car probably isn't as well-maintained as these two. How is that possible? The DriveClean allowance for vehicle wear is greater than the (slight but measurable) influence of EFI and a catalytic converter.
In fact, catalytic converters are restrictions on your exhaust system. If you consider the 4-stroke cycle for a second, you can imagine that anything which restricts the flow of exhaust gases out of your engine will waste crankshaft power. Take the catalytic converter off your car and you'll probably find that you get 20% more gas mileage. Sure, you'll be spitting more CO and HC into the atmosphere, but if you've taken any university-level chemistry classes, you'll be able to calculate the equilibrium for CO2/CO in the atmosphere and how long the HC will take to disintegrate. Catalytic converters are feel-good devices that waste energy themselves.
Maintenance? I wash and wax the Valiant and Dart. I check and change their fluids. When something breaks, I fix it. Both have electronic ignition, so I'm not adjusting their points every week. Both run on modern radial tires, cutting the maintenance of bias-ply tires. In fact, the only maintenance I have to do which is above and beyond that of a more modern car, is adjusting the valve lash on their engines. Until ~1980, the Slant-6 had mechanical valve lifters. Takes a few minutes to do every year. No big deal. Oh, and I lubricate the balljoints and tie-rod ends at the same time.
AM radio and vinyl bench seat? Okay. Well, the Dart has an AM radio and a cloth bench seat. A CD player is hidden in the glove box. If you've only ever gone to the local make-out spot with bucket seats, you don't know what you're missing. The Valiant is a Brougham edition, with crushed velour and leather bucket seats, an AM/FM radio, air conditioning, etc. Basically, it's a miniature version of the 1974 Chrysler New Yorker, with an emphasis on comfort and gas mileage (this was the time of the Arab Oil Embargo). It's cushy.
Your washing machines undoubtedly are too loud and use too much electricity and water and don't wash as good as their modern counterparts.
Loud, yes. Dries clothes well enough that I don't need to use my dryer very often.
The Maytag A-504's mechanism was retained without significant changes through the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. In fact, you can still buy it today in Maytag's commercial coin-operated washing machines. Apparently, it cleans pretty well. Part of that has to do with the fact that it actually uses enough water to clean well.
As for water usage, all vertical basket washing machines will fill the tub up to the appropriate level. They all use about the same amount of water. Yes, it's more than those silly canted (water-efficient) washers, but if water dissolves dirt, do you really think your clothes are going to be as clean?
Electricity. No. The biggest thing running in the washing machine is the motor. I think you'll find that most washing machines, even today, will have the same requirements to whip a heavy tub of damp clothes back and forth. I don't think the motor will have changed too much. Energy efficiency of the motor? Incremental improvements. Moore's Law has not applied to AC induction motors since about the 1920s. Since then, they've remained mostly unchanged.
Your stereo, while perhaps providing a good output signal, doesn't have enough inputs or outputs for conemporary usage and probably uses more electricity.
It's connected to my computer. That's the only place it's ever used. Do I want 5.1 sound for playing MP3s and listening to KMail's New Mail beep? No.
How's the sound quality? Well, I don't know. I think it's pretty good. Seeing as how I used to do professional sound and lighting for a living - having done audio for The Three Tenors, Garth Brooks and Harry Belafonte among others, I feel like I might be qualified to judge.
As for energy usage, what, you think you're gonna power 5.1 channels for free? No way. This amplifier only has two channels. It's rated for 50W RMS at the output, and therefore consumed about 250W at the input when I crank up the volume. The output stages are NOT class A, so when the volume is lower, the input power requirements are lower.
Your speakers probably have paper cones and can't last forever.
As do virtually all good quality loudspeakers. Polypropylene cones might be good for children with car stereos and boom-boxes, but if you go into any good high-end audio store (where you would have found Acoustic Research speakers being sold in the 1970s), you'll find that they're almost all paper.
Sure, the paper cones will eventually die. But they'll be in the same company as Celestions or Klipsche or ElectroVoice speakers. And, like with those speakers, I'll look at their overall condition, and decide whether or not I wish to spend the $200 having them reconed.
I agree that too much of what is made is crap designed to be thrown out far earlier than it could be designed for.
Thank you.
But carefully replacing some stuff every 10 or so years isn't a bad idea, simply to get the improvements in quality and environmental impact.
You've got interesting ideas, which I think will change when you've actually seen how much energy goes into manufacturing something.
built in garbage disposal.
enerygy savings
quiter.
Horrified dinner guests sitting around in the kitchen as I'm tossing stuff into the faithful old Maytag:
"You can't put that roasting pan in there! There's still a chunk of bone stuck in there!"
I tossed it in, filled the detergent cup full of Cascade or Electrasol - whichever is cheaper of two "premium" detergents, because they both clean damned well - closed the door and hit the "Pots and Pans" button.
The dishwasher filled, the 3/4 hp pump motor started up, and a few seconds later there was a familiar grinding sound. I let the cycle run to the end, and took out the roasting pan: clean. They were impressed.
I think it has a built-in garbage disposal. I have to be very careful to make sure that the cutlery stays where it's supposed to. Try to wash a margarine tub without securing it properly to the racks, and it's gone.
"Energy saving" = ineffective. May consume half the power of a real appliance, but you'll have to wash your stuff 6 times to get it clean. (6x0.5=3 times net energy usage.) It's like those stupid water-saving toilets that choke on a good pile.
However, I will give you quieter. All of my Maytags are very loud. The dryer has a loud fan blowing air through the clothes in the drum. The dishwasher's pump screams when it cavitates at the end of a drain cycle. And the washing machine's spin cycle - before there were any requirements that it should be able to stop within x seconds of opening the lid - spins clothes so fast that you end up with little dots from the inside of the tub embossed into all of your clothing. Thankfully, I seldom need the dryer.
Every machine represents a lot of energy to manufacture, and it should have a good lifespan to make it worthwhile. Furthermore, by doing their jobs more effectively than most modern machines, they're saving energy that way. They clean the roasting pan without a soak in hot water, and they spin a tub of underwear so quickly that they're dry enough to go directly into my drawer.
Energy-Savings stickers may make hausfrau feel good, but I'm more concerned with efficiency.
I love it. My 1954 Maytag A-504 washing machine. It's been cleaning dirty underwear for 48 years, and all it's ever asked for is a drivebelt.
Carrying on the tradition:
1954 Ferrograph tape recorder
1967 Maytag dryer
1970 Maytag WU-600 dishwasher
1970 Ariens snowblower
1970 Dodge Dart
1974 Plymouth Valiant Brougham
1976 Dodge Ram (D-350)
1972? Sound A-5000 amplifier
1973 Acoustic Research AR-4x speakers
1964 Pickett N3T sliderule
The moral?
If you buy good quality stuff once, it will last you your lifetime. And just because something may be old (ie, most of this stuff is older than I am), it doesn't make it irrelevent. What does a new dishwasher do that my old Maytag won't? Nothing. And the old Maytag looks really cool installed in a modern kitchen!
So, when my washing machine's 48-year-old rubber belt finally broke, I went to the local Maytag store and bought a new belt at the parts counter. Spent $10 on the belt, then the manager came running out after me. He rented my washing machine from me - paid me good money, provided me with a new washer while mine was there, and tried to buy it outright - so that he could stick it in the showroom that fall.
Unfortunately, you can only try so long to continue to use your desktop computer...
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Yeah, this is just what we need to differentiate linux from Windows.
Agreed. But look at it this way.
At least Microsoft has a budget to sit people down in focus groups and see what they like. If we had that in KDE/Gnome/$any_other_full-service_desktop_metaphor , then it's probable we wouldn't have new stuff being released with color schemes that make corporate users vomit, or xine logos designed by eurotrash 14-year-old Run Lola Run fans from East Berlin.
Microsoft spent millions developing that GUI look and feel. If user Joe Average didn't like it, they wouldn't have released it. We could do far worse than to take Microsoft's lead on UI design - KDE is the best of the free desktop metaphors for Linux, and well, frankly, it sucks.
By copying the good features of Windows software while avoiding their pitfalls of poor security and castrating inflexibility, we have no place to go but up.
The same, of course, applies to analyzing and "sharing" what makes the Macintosh GUI great. But you have to crawl before you can walk...
Linux isn't ready for the desktop.
Finishing off your little essay by saying Linux is 99.8% or whatever ready for Joe Sixpack is like a kid in grade school ending a story with "then I woke up." It makes the savvy reader want to beat you with a sock full of quarters.
I agree completely with you, but I could think of no other way to put a positive spin on it. Without it, my little essay reads like it was written by a truculent MCSE.
Once my sisters login, visitors act as if nothing is wrong. They go about their business. They check their email, write their paper, chat with gaim.
Agreed. It's great, isn't it?
Bet you've got a pretty fast computer to do that.
I find Windows 2000 to be perfectly usable on a Pentium II-233. I find a PIII-500 to be ponderous when running KDE.
The other problem is that perhaps I have higher expectations of functionality. I want an underlining spellchecker, and frankly, it costs us credibility that it's not there. Sure, that's not Linux' fault - KDE runs equally slowly on most other Unix variants.
Same thing at my workplace. We've started installing Debian desktops to replace the aging and incapable web browsing applications that work on Win 3.1 (our platform is DOS). Logins are authenticated against the main Netware server. People go about their business.Yeah. I considered doing something like that with over 600 computers for the Canadian federal government. Unfortunately, to be as quick as the users were used to, I would have to upgrade a bunch of Pentium III machines, even for users whose most taxing applications were their e-mail clients. (Remember what I said about Ximian's Continental Drift? Ahem... Evolution?)
Sorry, that's unacceptable. I cannot justify buying new machines for e-mail drones.
Questions about Lotus 123 and Open Systems Accounting software are commonly asked daily - this company has been using this software for years! I can count on one hand the number of times I've had to explain to people how to move files, print old faxes, or download and print product datasheets.Yup. The Unix filesystem is easy enough for new users to understand, especially since most software defaults to their /home directory.
Perhaps I'll buy that free software isn't ready for the desktops of power users.If it takes a Pentium 4 running Evolution to get the same functionality as a Windows 95 box running Eudora, then surely even you will agree that something is wrong.
No one who needs to use a computer to get something done cares if a program underlines misspelled words when there's an obvious spell check menu or button.Excuse me? That's probably the single stupidest thing I've ever heard anyone say.
Here's an exercise for you.
Cut and paste a large technical document into KMail. Select "Spell check". Sit and *manually* acknowledge every correct or incorrect word.
Now compare the same task with any software package including a modern spellchecker. Notice how much easier it is to simply glance at an underlined word and see whether it's correct or not? (Oh, the spellchecker doesn't know my customer's 18-letter-long last name. Oh well.)
If a spellchecker is considered to be unimportant, let me remind you that misspelling costs credibility, which causes a company to lose business.
No one that only needs to do real work cares that the scroll wheel doesn't work - people know how to use page up/down, the arrow keys, and scroll bars.Of course they do. But that doesn't mean that they should. A computer is a tool. A tool should be designed to be as easy and efficient to use as possible. I bet I can scroll through an e-mail faster than you can mouse over and hit the elevator buttons.
In the real world, time is money.
But that's okay. If there's no scroll wheel support, users won't take your new operating system seriously and will resist your every attempt to supplant their familiar and functional (if unreliable) Windows.
You power users don't care that there's a legal liability in making xine work right.It's a legal liability to have a repeat button? And to have a GUI which doesn't include decorative buttons which don't actually do anything?
You want to play DVDs with free software or facilitate it? You need to be prepared to break federal laws in the US. I will never provide DVD playing software on my family computer. It's not worth breaking the law. Distributions and software authors are even more justified in this fear than system integrators.Perhaps you should read what I wrote at www.glowingplate.com/dissent. I never said that DVD support should be built into xine, did I? I understand the liability of DeCSS. Sure, the functionality would be nice, but I'm not asking for the impossible. I'm asking for a concentration on matching the features and UI of such defacto software as Quicktime and Windows Media Player before designing GUIs that are so tacky they'd only be enjoyed by empoverished European children.
I've migrated a considerable number of non-technie people to free software. I've seen how people behave when they've only been exposed to Windows.So've I.
Know what bugs them the most? Logging in and out.The users I've found haven't been bothered by this. You see, I've actually tried this in a corporate environment where users were already accustomed to logging in and out with their Windows machines.
Don't knock the idea until you have some more substantial experience than a webpage that harps on bugs in individual applications.You, sir, are an idiot, if you really think that a decent user experience isn't the *absolute* first step towards migrating users from the comfortable embrace of Windows. For fsck's sake, it's not like I'm even citing obscure applications.
Look at Knoppix. Yes, Knoppix is technically brilliant and the single best Linux demo out there. But if you were to show that to the CEO of a bank, he'd laugh you out of his office. The UI is tacky, it lacks comparable features that users are now accustomed to, and its only advantage is that it's free.
The cost of the software pales in the face of the cost of the employee which will be using it. I can't afford to pay employees to sit around and click through Ignore/Ignore/Ignore on their spellcheckers or wait 1/2 an hour for a Pentium 4 to parse a directory of 2,000 MP3s. I'd be out of business.
That the route to mainstream approval and acceptance for Linux is through countries like this.
I think the fast route is actually making Linux ready for the desktop.
Linux is NOT a viable alternative to Windows, and you're deluding yourself if you think it is.
It's a foregone conclusion that we need a comprehensive desktop environment like KDE. We need an underlining spellchecker in KMail. We need KDE not to be so slow that it takes half an hour to parse my MP3 collection every time I open the folder. We need people to match feature for feature every Windows product, instead of whining about "highly advanced math" like polynomial regressions. We need xine to work, instead of having their developers wandering around talking about changing the default logo to something which looks like it was designed by a 14-year-old Run Lola Run fan from East Berlin.
Is it a fast process? Heck no, but I think it's going to be more successful then just trying to convince mainstream America they don't need Bill Gates.I think most North Americans have no particular love of either Windows or of Bill Gates, and will jump ship to the (free/reliable) alternative as soon as it's really there.
Linux simply isn't ready for the desktop yet.
I run Linux on my primary desktop. While the kernel and system-space stuff is leaps and bounds above Windows, from a UI standpoint, it's still about as painful as going from Windows 2000 to Windows 3.1.
OK, this is really cool, and makes me want to wire my house this way.
And they looked like such a *normal* family.
How are you supposed to know that your neighbors won't do something equally disruptive, if you can't spot the wackos?
Even just 1kW of lights must make it daylight in the living room of the house across the street. Never mind arbitrary blinking, multiple colors, TV crews and tourists driving by...
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2730.667 /home/bigblockmopar/crip line 1365, <STDIN> line 13.
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sox: Premature EOF on
Illegal division by zero at
Hey all,
I've got a driver's side door for a 1981-1983 DeLorean DMC-12 for sale, and since this is already a DeLorean forum, I though. "What the hey".
Driver's side door, minor dent around the lock cylinder, and a smaller one which looks like it might have been inflicted by an errant shopping cart. (It was replaced because the car was otherwise a 100-point show car.)
This door is great as a conversation piece, or as a replacement door for a driver, though not appropriate for a show car.
Info and photos will be provided to serious enquiries only.
Go to my website and message me with the form.
Aln Ralsky and Co. are still offering their "services".
I know.
May cancer cells multiply in his colon like his messages multiply in my in box.
This happens because the people who are in position to make laws and policies are directly affected... Secondly, to get laws passed, you need a lobby... Unless a lobby is formed and pressure sustained, we can whine all day on
Dude, last time I checked my incoming spam, the originating IP address for most of it was from China and other third-world shitholes. You *don't* honestly think that they'll stop because the USA has a new law which will give them a slap on the wrist?
This is NOT a problem which can be legislated away. These are not 20-year-old mothers of 4 living in trailer parks in Florida.
A friend of mine, of Chinese descent, told me that it's unlucky to refuse to take someone's business card, and it's even unluckier to throw it out. This is the tradition with which we're dealing, and if an e-mail is seen as merely an electronic business card....
At this point, I have configured my mailserver to send all incoming mail from .cn, .kr, .pl, .pk and a few other choice hellholes directly to /dev/null. With no apologies. I know nobody in any of those places, and until they stop spamming, I have no interest in knowing anybody in any of those places.
I will tell you this, it sure does take most of the crap out of the mail spool.
You know, he does make a good point about spam being, essentially, a denial of service attack. It denies me use of a portion of my hard drive, of my server's CPU cycles for SETI@Home, etc.
Here's a question. If I put up a page like this on my website:
Welcome to the glowingplate.com automated security test.
This is a free service provided to Internet users so that they can test the invulnerability of their computer systems.
We accept no liability whatsoever for any damages caused.
In order to test your computer - and ONLY to test your computer, no human ever reads e-mail sent to this address - send an e-mail to $E-MAIL_ADDRESS. We will retrieve your e-mail address from the message headers and immediately begin the test.
And then pound 'em into the ground with a script that runs through every known vulnerability of Windows networking.
I figure that if enough of their address lists can be polluted with enough e-mail addresses which crash their systems, they'll eventually die out.
Does anyone keep any good legal counsel on retainer? Any lawyers out there care to discuss ways that such a thing can be done legally from Canada or the US?
The alternative might be to buy service from a hosting provider in some third-world country with no laws, and take care of it from there.
My recollection of the Slant-6's genesis was that it derived/inspired from/by a Porsche design for a tank/armored vehicle engine. The goal was to get a very long stroke but have a low block height (undersquare bore/stroke ratio).
No, the 170 CID (2.8L) was the first Slant-6. The 198 was a bored 170, allowing owners a larger motor with more power as a low-buck alternative option to the smallblock (273 and 318CID) V8s. I don't think the Valiant was offered with a V8 at all until 1964.
The bored and stroked 225 came out later, with even more available power - but because of the long stroke, the emphasis was more on torque than horsepower.
The 170 was dropped with the advent of EGR and other parasitic energy-wasting emissions control systems. Also, cars were getting heavier because of requirements like 5 MPH crash-absorbing bumpers. With the technology of the day, in a Valiant, that meant a front bumper which was over 100lbs of chromed steel on heavy telescopic steel and rubber supports.
The 170 was discontinued in ~1970 (but it was rare even then) and the 198 was discontinued in ~1972.
I recall the aluminum version - didn't they put out a Sprint pack early on? Friend of mine had (might still have) a 65-6 Valiant convertible with a 225(might have been 200?) and a Hurst 4-spd.The Hyper Pack, it was called. Yes. There were different varieties, ranging from 3 two-barrel carburetors to one four-barrel carburetor on a very long aluminum tunnel-ram intake manifold. Personally, I've got an aftermarket Offenhauser 4-barrel intake which takes about a 600 CFM Carter AFB or AVS. I think it would also fit a ThermoQuad, but I've never found such a small TQ!
The 200 CID displacement is probably a 198 bored 0.030" over, someone changed the rings along the line. The 198 and 225 blocks can go 0.060" over and then some before you need to resleeve the block.
The 4-speed would be a Chrysler A-833 - the manual transmission designed to stand up to the awesome 426 Hemi - with a Hurst shifter to clean up the slop in the Chrysler/Hurst OEM shifter. So far as I know, all the A-833 transmissions had a Hurst OEM shifter.
Neat car, 300K plus on it's 4th top & first engine.Well, I dunno about it being *that* fast, but they were certainly respectable cars for theirs or any time. On modern tires, the Valiant also out-handles a lot of mega-buck exotic cars. Even on an economy car like the Valiant, Chrysler didn't skimp on engineering. The adjustable torsion-bar front suspension is living proof of that, and the fact that the knuckles are designed to get the centerline of the wheel as close to the centerline of the balljoints is an extremely impressive feat of design. (Compare it to the distance between the top-plates and the centerlines of the wheels on a modern MacPherson-strut vehicle. They're cheap and light, but MacPherson struts are crap.)
Back in the 1960s ot 70s, Chrysler began designing a new engine, the Slant 6 - Originally, the engine was designed to be made of aluminum for weight reasons.
Yup. Actually, the story is a little more weird than that. Back in the 1950s, there was a factory-sponsored 6 cylinder racing program. In the late 1950s, Chrysler came up with an aluminum-block inline 6-cylinder engine, with a 170 cubic inch displacement, canted toward the passenger side to offset the weight of the driver. It had what effectively amounts to a tunnel-ram intake manifold. It was the Slant-6.
In typical Chrysler do-or-die fashion, in 1959, the *still* hadn't settled on an engine for their new economy car, the 1960 Valiant. Nor did they have the time to design a new engine, and their flathead 6-cylinder would have left them way behind the competition.
Chrysler tried the aluminum Slant-6 and found that it had poor durability for street use. So they simply poured iron into the molds and out came the 170 Slant-6 as we knew it. Over the years, a 198 and a 225 Slant-6 were derived by increasing the bore and the stroke.
The most common Slant-6, the 225, because of its massively oversquare design, doesn't rev high, but it's a torque monster. And because it was designed for aluminum, it's massively stronger than it needs to be.
It is, almost without question, the single most durable car engine.
Same goes for their transmissions - Older Chrysler transmissions (And even recent 3-speed automatics, which have a heritage dating back to the old Torqueflites) were heavy, inefficient, but practically bulletproof.727, 904, A-833 - yeah, I know them well, I have several of each in my garage. The 727 and A-833 were designed to stand up to the Hemi, so they lasted forever behind a Slant-6 or one of the small 318 (5.2L) V8s.
Chrysler was also the first to actually create a working automatic transmission as we know them today; the 727 was the direct descendent of that. Notably, all their trucks use the 904 but with an overdrive tailshaft unit and a lockup torque converter. The inefficiency of older automatics compared to newer ones is primarily the lack of an overdrive gear and the lack of a lockup torque converter. Both modern pieces can be retrofitted to the old transmissions, allowing far greater gas mileage out of one's old car.
Their 4-speed electronically controlled automatic should theoretically be more reliable - Modern design, electronic monitoring and control, etc. Unfortunately, because it's lighter and more complex, the A604 is nicknamed the sick-oh-four. Actually, the sick-oh-four is probably a good example of your comment in action.The biggest reason for the failures of the later Mopar transmissions is the use of the wrong transmission fluid. The computer-controlled transmissions toggle some valves open and closed very quickly to adjust fluid pressures in different parts of the transmission - this engages one gear or another with a minimum of vibration (apparently, customers don't like the lurch when a car changes gear). Very critically, these transmissions rely on a very specific viscosity to their transmission fluid, and specify Chrysler's ATF+3 fluid. If the guy at Jiffy Lube tops it up just once with regular ATF, then nasty things happen (like gear overlap, where the transmission is simultaneously in 2nd and 3rd gear), which tends to blow clutch packs. The transmission itself isn't usually the cause of the failure, but point taken. They should have expected that it would get ATF instead of ATF+3, the warning on the dipstick isn't enough, apparently.
As an avionics technician I can attest that consumer electronics is not the only field suffering.
I agree. People here wonder why I rant about my great old cars, but it's the same thing with them. Sure, the assembly quality of a Honda Accord is better than my 1970 Dodge Dart, but the Dart is overbuilt and survives the abuse of daily life far better.
Consumer electronics are the same. Back when manufacturing quality of components was poorer, the standard resistor tolerance was +/-20%! If you were designing a circuit which called for a 1k resistor, you'd have to budget on getting anything from 800 ohms to 1.2k hitting the assembly line. As a result, you specified a better rated transistor or other part. It cost a little bit more, but the net effect was that it lasted better. 5V on the supply to the logic? Okay, we'll use 6.3V electrolytic capacitors to bypass the RF! Not to mention the plastic crap everywhere...
Compare a modern VCR with a 20-year-old top-loading VHS boat anchor. Mechanically, they have to do exactly the same things to the tape. And yet the old VCR was built with steel or cast components, plastic only where it was essential. Idler pucks were sintered bronze and rubber and could be changed in minutes by a competent technician. Now, idlers are little plastic gears on plastic bearings which get loose quickly. Improved sophistication of the electronics have added features but the mechanisms are utter garbage.
Yes, I would pay more for a VCR that would last longer. Yes, I would pay extra for a motherboard that I knew had 25V capacitors on the 5V rails, or where I knew that ICs weren't pushed to their rated maximums everywhere.
I collect 1950s TV sets. Funny thing about them: steel or copper chassis, and 1/2 watt resistors everywhere, even where I calculate 1/8 watt loads. Capacitors were even more fragile then than they are now, so 450V-rated capacitors being used to filter 170V rectified AC line were commonplace. Stuff was built to last. Interestingly, only one of my antique sets came to me frankly broken; the rest needed adjustments or replacements of old (not failed) components. (I don't think I'll count 50 years of ingress of ambient humidity into a paper capacitor as a design flaw.)
I blame CAD software and automated finite element analysis for starting a trend.
If you build 500,000 units (a fairly small production run) and can cut 1 lb off the weight of a vehicle by using thinner sheetmetal in the floor, you've just saved 500,000lbs of raw steel. That's a few bucks... about $30,000, depending on the alloy and stamping considerations. The owner is not going to go out and measure the thickness of the steel of the car's floor.
To protect it from rust, you use today's improved paints to protect the floor. Of course, the underside of the car gets scratched by stones, and rust sets in. Because of the thinner steel, the floor rusts through faster. Most people scrap the car at this point; a premature end. Fine, the dry-cleaning hooks might be beautifully placed, but it's all the same to the car crusher.
To allow engineers to be able to say, "22 gauge steel will do" when instinct calls for 20-gauge, CAD and finite element analysis provide a rigorous mathematical proof that corners can be cut.
Sliderules calculated to three or four significant figures. As you went from step to step in a design calculation, you'd round things up or down automatically, and the compounded error would be far greater than it is now. But through intelligent rounding (ie. "The driver weighs 184.34lbs - call it 185 lbs..."), the error always worked out on the favor of design strength. Now, you park 12 significant digits in a variable on your calculator as you work the problem.
Note that the final design is more accurate, but the rounded-up design from a sliderule is superior in real-world survivability. Unfortunately, as margins get smaller and smaller, manufacturers are forced to adopt this tactic to save raw material.
In 1970, GM tested the first prototype of the Chevrolet Vega, which was GM's first CAD-designed car. It suffered a structural failure after only 8 miles on the test track. They had to add over 8 pounds of steel structure to reinforce the car. (Read John DeLorean's "On A Clear Day, You Can See General Motors".)
Honda cars are built out of such thin sheetmetal that I can - and have - dented them with my thumb. They derive their strength from the shape of the material, not from the material itself - it's just a four-wheeled soft drink can. This cuts cost and raises gas mileage at the expense of long-term durability. If the passenger places his or her foot hard enough on the floor, relatively modern (~1996) Accords flex enough that the brake lights go on. I wouldn't want to know where a Honda would bend if I went to Home Depot and used the trunk to bring home a couple of bags of topsoil for my flower garden.
It's easy to tell if three fat people have ever gone over a bump in the back seat of a 1981-1989 Dodge Aries or Plymouth Reliant four-door. (During the life of a car, if you think about all the weird people you've had in the car, and all the conditions you can expect.) The design budget is typically 200lb per passenger, which means that the expected rear seat load is about 600 lbs. Let's say three people at 250lbs, the load on the car's structure is 150lbs more than rated. That's effectively another person in the back seat. Go over a bump the wrong way, and bingo! You've got those trademark little cracks on the roof, right where they meet the rear pillar.
Computers in design have allowed us great things - faster design cycles, greater sophistication. But they've also taught manufacturers how to cut corners.
The first time I heard of biodegradable pastics manufactured from things usually regarded as food was in the late 1980s.
Things like margarine...
The way my old chemistry professor put it - loosely quoted - "If you hydrogenate a petroleum oil, you call it plastic. If you hydrogenate corn or soy oil, you call it margarine."
Think about it.
I think I'll stick with butter. MmmMmmm... toast deep-fried in butter.
...for this purpose.
Yes, he's saying he's only found one vendor that makes them, BUT HE'S ASKING IF ANYONE KNOWS OF ANY OTHERS!!!
I don't know of any others. And I can't imagine that, for the moment, there will be too many of them.
Listen, here's the problem. I love LEDs, but with current technology, they're not really appropriate for this application.
First off, let me state that, for Christmas lights, tungsten bulbs - especially parallel-wired with 120V bulbs - are a huge improvement over the previous tradition of candles in the Christmas tree. But they're still not a great idea:
An alternative would be gas discharge lamps, like those little flicker-flame neons. But they're not without their flaws:
LEDs are a great idea, since they run cool. They're commonly available in a bunch of colors, and with triple-die LEDs, the lights could literally be any color and could change on-the-fly. But there's a downside:
Sure, LEDs are cheap, but they're still an order of magnitude more expensive that the little miniature lights on those cheap Made In Bangladesh light strings. Most people won't pay the extra, will they? (If in doubt about whether consumers know or appreciate quality, consider again VHS versus Betamax, or Microsoft versus Apple.)
The transformer or switching supply would absolutely constitute a benefit to consumers, in that it would virtually eliminate the possibility of getting a shock off the string. But try to explain it to consumers: "Point the mouse at the little picture of a computer on your screen. Click twice quickly." "Stop it! You're being too technical!" Therefore, it would really only become an extra burden to manufacturers.
Dim. LEDs are a hell of a lot brighter than they were a few years ago, and while they throw out a lot of light, it's over a fairly small viewing angle (typically under 45 degrees). The net output is miniscule compared to a tungsten bulb. Most LEDs can't even be seen to be lit in direct sunlight - but even my miniature light set is clearly visibly on.
Viewing angle is small. Readily available high-intensity LEDs are generally meant for automotive taillight and traffic signalling duty. They usually only have a viewing angle of 12.5 degrees. Your tree will look pretty dark if each light is only visible for 12.5 degrees of a walkaround.
How could this be solved? Maybe clear LEDs with frosted housings in order to make the light diffuse over the entire surface of the LED? Good idea, but it's still not bright enough to be satisfactory for that purpose. Nor does the frosting, in practice, diffuse light as evenly as you would want.
My perspective? I love LEDs. They're my favorite modern electronic component. (Second is probably the MOSFET. Overall favorite is vacuum tubes.)
I've got a 1960s or early 1970s Sound A-5000 power amplifier (try doing a Google search for that! Anyone got any info on the amp, e-mail me) which blew its tungsten pilot light. The light was a GE #47 - 6V, 150mA pilot light. Consumes 0.9W off the amp's low voltage supply to light up a dim red indicator on the front panel.
So I took a traffic duty red LED that I had kicking around. Clusters of these are used to make brake lights and traffic lights. The LED is rated for 3,000MCD at 12.5 degrees with a forward voltage drop of 2.1V and a peak current of 30mA.
The resistor was calculated as follows: Vin-Vdrop = 6.3V - 2.1V = 4.2V. R = E/I = 4.2V/0.03A = 140 ohms. Next standard value is 150 ohms, and I used that. When I measured the current through the LED, it was (unsurprisingly) 28mA, 93% of the LED's rated maximum. The forward voltage drop was 2.1 volts. The LED is being driven harder than I would like, and it gets warm after a few minutes.
Even so, the dim red indicator on the front panel is still dim. Right on axis, it'll blind you, but from any other angle, the indicator is still too dim to be useful. Improvements were made by actually grinding down the end of the LED and using clear hot-melt glue to attach it to the back of the bezel, but it would still be unacceptably dim on a finished product. Certainly dimmer than the old GE #47 was, not even as bright as the panel LED on the front of my Viewsonic. And that's with a traffic duty LED, pushed hard.
In summary, naked LEDs are great when viewed on axis, used as indicators or when a fine shaft of light is required. But trying to diffuse them or expect behavior similar to an incandescent bulb is still pushing things... for the moment.
It probably would, yes. That's why there's such a correlation between ADD/ADHD symptoms and drug addiction.
"I don't want someone to love me, Just give me sex whenever I want it, Cause all I ask for is instant pleasure, instant pleasure..."
One of the characteristics of ADD/ADHD is risk-seeking behavior - and that includes illegal drug use. Stimulants - whether caffeine and nicotine or street drugs - tend to alleviate the symptoms of ADD/ADHD, which are every bit as frustrating to sufferers as they are to the people around them.
"Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration!"
You know when you get a tune stuck in your head? I thought it was normal to have music playing endlessly in your head. When my best friend gave me a Dexadrine to keep me awake on a long drive, the tunes in my head stopped, and I could focus clearly on things that had always been impossible - like multiplying two four-digit numbers in my head.
"Show me that smile again, Don't waste another minute on your crying, We're nowhere near the end, The best is ready to begin."
When I told another friend later that the Dexadrine made the music go away, he was surprised at the implication that music - and bits of speeches, movie lines and even mathematical expressions - were normally running through my head. They're usually loosely related to the thought or task at hand, but distracting nonetheless. Asking around, I discovered that this, apparently, is *not* a normal condition for most people.
"It's 106 miles to Chicago. We've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses."
If I had tried cocaine to keep me awake on that long drive and found that it made thought clearer, I'd be a coke addict now.
"Yesterday, December 7th 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and without warning, attacked by the Empire of Japan."
Am I addicted to Dexadrine or Ritalin? Nope, in fact, I haven't had any ADD medications in the house for over a year. But they *do* help. This isn't a condition dreamt up by shrinks to help hausfrau handle poor little Johnny who just can't seem to apply himself.
"Capacitive reactance equals one over two pi eff cee, where eff is frequency in Hertz and cee is capacitance in farads."
If your daughter has these symptoms, look into treatment, at least during the school months so that she doesn't fall behind.
Now, I am a senior Physics/Mechanical Engineering major and don't use medicine much... The downside to my ADHD is that I perform poorly in school and am taking several over again.
Dude... you're *supposed* to fail computational fluid mechanics *and* thermo at least once each.
Heh, your car doesn't feel the windchill! It was probably only -20F air temp, but that's not bad for getting a car to start first time. My friend in high school had a chevette that started always in the cold, but his '78 Satellite didn't.
True.
There's something about Chevettes that always makes them start when they're really cold.
That cold snap lasted about three weeks, and during that time, all you saw on the road were Chevettes, Caprice Classics and other full-size older GM cars, and 1970s Chryslers. Otherwise, they were barren, not a Toyota to be found.
It turns out the reason is simple. First off, there were very few imported cars because at that temperature, you need *every* cranking amp available from your battery. Japanese cars tend to have those lightweight little steel battery post clamps, which have a higher contact resistance than lead terminal clamps used on domestics. They also tend to have smaller battery to starter leads.
Fords seemed to have the same sorts of problems, caused by the external starter relay and the extra cable length on the starter lead.
I was able to get those running for people by using my big-assed 2-gauge jumper cables (which I made from arc-welding ground wires).
Older Chryslers - like the Satellite - had an electronic or points ignition system using an external ballast resistor to limit the current through the ignition coil. The idea was that you'd need a stronger spark to start the engine, so they used a coil rated for about 6V, and put a resistor in series to limit the current. During starting (short term), the resistor was bypassed and the coil was able to deliver one hell of a spark. When the resistor was very cold, its resistance was very low, and when the battery was heavily loaded with the starter, there was usually enough getting through to fire the coil well enough to spark the plugs and get the engine running. I'm surprised the Satellite didn't run - probably needed a good tune-up! (My own Dart, Valiant and Ram all use *exactly* the same electronic ignition system as the Satellite would have had, they start very well in cold weather.)
As for Chevettes, well, I dunno. Big battery to starter leads on all the Chevettes I've ever seen. Large starter motor, with the exception of the orientation of the mounting ears, it's the same starter which brings Chevy rat motors (big block V8, 7.4L) to life. Small (1.6L) engine would have to mean less drag trying to compress the fuel and air. GM's excellent HEI electronic ignition, with short leads between the HEI module and the ignition coil - probably lots of primary current to fire the coil well. Because of good overbuilt design, the Chevette was the shitbox that could!
This attitude of better living through altering chemicals in your brain is bullshit. If your kid won't pay attention, that's a problem, so deal with it (I'm referring to the poster).
I used to feel exactly the same way.
My best friend and I were very similar. We were the guys who'd sit at the back of the class, making fun of the teacher. Everything was more exciting than homework.
After being expelled from high school for driving a motorcycle down the hallway mostly because I was bored, I went out into the real world. So did my best friend.
As roommates for several years, we knew each other very well. Massive career changes were routine, though we worked well for a professional audio and video company where the tasks at hand changed every day and the stress kept us focussed.
The house situation was interesting. I came home one day to find that he'd had a couple of friends over to play guitar. There was stuff everywhere: amps, guitars, guitar strings, cables, sheet music. Only a very select few would wheel an old Ariens snowblower into the living room to clean it up: I did. He came running down the stairs, and with the pressure of a running snowblower dealing with his cheap old acoustic guitar, eveything else was cleaned up quickly.
We drank a case (12) of beer a day, and each smoked over a pack a day. Food was secondary.
We mutilated several Chevettes, including building a V6 Chevette, a Chevette targa (a convertible with no top) and a Chevette with the back end of a 1956 Dodge Custom Royal welded on. Short-term creativity was a hallmark.
Then my best friend was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder.
Much as I was a skeptic, on dexadrine, he became a model of management, confident ability and skill. The creativity remained, but it was nowhere near as impulsive. All of a sudden, there was consideration to the question, "Is it really a good idea to cut the roof off the car I have to drive to work on Monday?".
After a while, I noticed little things like my fidgeting, the fact that I was always told that I was "careless" when doing math problems, I'd slept with most everyone in two large towns mostly because I wasn't interesting in any commitment, was the world's greatest procrastinator, I like to amuse myself by shocking other people, etc. I did an online test, and it showed that had a strong leaning toward ADD, too.
I printed out the test results and took them to my doctor, who *immediately* wrote a prescription. I tried out Ritalin and found that it improved things, but the biggest improvement simply came from knowing the diagnosis.
Yes, I have attention deficit disorder. I pop a pill when I need to be able to focus for something really important, but for the most part, I am as I am.
Is there a benefit to ADD? Yes, absolutely. Most people with ADD are exceptionally creative problem solvers. This isn't a feature that you wish to stifle with medication, but it can cause problems in situations, ie. academia and some workplaces, where conformity is an asset.
And yes, there is a physiological basis for ADD. Look it up. Consider the fact that, outwardly, this is a hyperactivity disorder which is medically controlled with stimulants. It shouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that using stimulants on hyperactive people should only make the problems worse.
Yet, stimulants control ADHD's hyperactivity and ADD's poor impulse control. Many people with ADD/ADHD consume huge quantities of coffee and cigarettes, because caffeine and nicotine help with focus. Stimulants are used because they increase activity in the part of the brain responsible for impulse control, a part which is shown by MRI images to be less active among people with ADD/ADHD.
Finally, there appears to be a genetic predisposition, though there are other factors involved. Much like homosexuality, there is no definitive proof of a genetic origin, however, both Helen Keller and Ray Charles could see a pattern emerging from the data.
It's not the condition-of-the-week, it's real.
As for "rust cancer," most of that comes from poor maintenance. I suspect that hosing down a car that's just been driven through streets that are deiced with salt would go a long way toward keeping rust away.
For sure.
Another part of the problem is that most people think it's a good thing to park their cars in heated indoor garages. As you drive in from 7F to a garage which may be 40F, all the snow melts, and your car has more exposure to saltwater. The expansion and contraction of the car body with the temperature change can also cause tiny cracks in the paint.
Of course, if you keep your car well tuned, it should start even when it's very cold out (lemme tell you about the winter of 1993, -50C in Ottawa, Canada with the windchill, and my faithful little Chevette still started on the first shot). If the car is well maintained, it will start, which renders a reason to keep the car indoors obsolete.
If, OTOH, it's sand that's getting put on the roads, you don't have nearly as much of a problem. A couple of winters in Germany didn't harm what ended up becoming my first car...between regular trips to the car wash in the winter and the Germans' use of sand instead of salt on their roads, no rust developed that could be attributed to slushy roads.Sand is nasty on the car's paint, but nowhere near as corrosive to the steel as salt is. Salt is profoundly evil, but it's still the most practical de-icer out there.
I'd love to see stainless steel car bodies like the DeLorean had, but it's rather difficult to fix dents in those...
You must not live in state that snows. Or not drive in snow. Most vehciles of that vintage have rust cancer in the east coast.
Actually, this is true. I don't winter drive them, I have a disposable Japanese car for that. I figure the Valiant, Dart and my truck could have pleasant semi-retirements.
Having said that, washing and waxing does go a long way toward preventing rust, as does repairing paint chips the moment you notice them. After all, the wax protects the paint which protects the metal... Though I do wash and wax the undersides of my vehicles, I don't get around to it as aftern as I should.
Something to consider, however, is that some cars will naturally rust more than others, simply due to water-trapping designs. And still others (notably Toyotas) are made of such thin sheetmetal that they perforate very quickly. Then, there's paint quality. Paint has improved a lot over the past 20 years. The Valiant and the Dart were blessed by design - the only place where they really rot is the front fenders, which are still readily available. Even the quarter panels on 25-year-old Valiants are seldom as rusty as the quarters on 10-year-old Honda Accords, and that's even with the advantage of better paint on the Honda. Part of the difference is that there are three weep holes in the Valiant's quarters, where most only have one.
On the other hand, when the snow is fresh and the salt truck hasn't been by, I do enjoy taking them out to a nearby parking lot. Especially my Ram with its 7.2L (440 cubic inch, using real SAE units, not that metric crap) V8. Children can play with their front wheel drive cars by pulling on the parking brake... but real men do donuts with raw horsepower to the rear wheels.
(In all honesty, playing with your vehicle in the snow is a good way to learn how to handle it when the weather is bad.)
Actually, I have started collecting key pieces of computer history (and I know a few other
Yeah. They still work as well as they did the day that they were new; unfortunately, our expectations of their abilities have changed too much.
I still have my own little computer museum, just like I collect 1950s TV sets. But since you come to expect certain things (a hard drive, bitmapped graphics, color, maybe a remote control), they're not really practical for daily use.
That doesn't make them any less a testament to their time or to their construction, it's just that, for the most part, they haven't achieved a vintage status by surviving a daily workload for x number of years.
But what about products that actually are better than their predecessors?
There are few. VCRs have more features but aren't as well built as the VCRs of yesteryear. Computers - you can't seriously claim that your P4 is as well built as an original IBM PC, though it may be several orders of magnitude faster.
In fact, I can't think of anything.
While CAD has been a boon to manufacturing and speeding product development cycles, I'd argue that finite element analysis and other techniques have simply taught manufacturers how to skimp on materials and fasteners everywhere.
Many of the products you mention may do the job as well as they did when new, but their replacements do the job *better* -- either directly (like cleaner clothes) or have a lower impact (use less power/fuel/water, are quieter, less polluting), or offer more features (delayed start, surround sound, more inputs/outputs).Most inexpensive modern appliances lack delayed start.
I don't believe most modern dishwashers handle dirty roasting pans very well. My old Maytag does. Now, the funny thing about cleaning a roasting pan is that it requires lots of hot water and powerful sprays. The Maytag delivers when it's needed. And it cleans the roasting pan. However, because consumers had electric, water and gas bills way back when, the Maytag could run without using its heating element so much, and without three 1/2-hour washes and four rinses - that's dinnerplate mode. 2 washes, 2 rinses. Water about 75C. It might well use more water in both those washes than a modern dishwasher, but incrementally more. ie. Not worth the energy to make a new dishwasher.
Your snowblower is likely 2-cycle -- loads of pollution (noise & particulate).
Uhhh... I'm in Canada. We know snowblowers. I've never seen a two-cycle snowblower. Around here, all snowblowers are 4-cycle with 2-stage blowers.
As it is, the Ariens blew its motor about three years ago - the thing was just worn out. New snowblower of reasonable quality - $500. But my old Ariens chassis was in great shape. So I went to Princess Auto, bought a horizontal crankshaft Tecumseh engine for $200, and bolted it on. Now the Ariens has exactly the same engine as a modern blower.
The only thing the Ariens lacks is dummy guards. You know, those stupid mechanism which are meant to keep Darwin's weaker specimens from putting their hands into running machinery. My reaction is that if you're dumb enough to put your hands into a running snowblower, you deserve to lose them.
Your cars are far more dangerous in accident, pollute, get terrible fuel economy and require far more maintenance, not to mention being less enjoyable to drive (vinyl bench seats, AM radios).The Valiant and Dart are unibody cars. They're designed to collapse in an accident. However, an SUV is built of a body riding on a box-section steel frame which is very difficult to collapse. I'd take the Valiant or the Dart anyday. Sure, they don't have airbags, but airbags are only an incremental improvement in safety.
The Valiant and the Dart are rear-wheel-drive, making emergency maneouvers far more predictable - why do you think cops liked Caprice Classics and Crown Vics so much?
Energy efficiency and pollution: my Valiant and Dart are both powered by the Slant-6 engine. The Slant-6 is a 225 CID (3.7L) OHV inline 6 cylinder engine designed for economy. Both of those cars get ~28MPG highway, respectable for a modern car of their size. The Valiant came with electronic ignition, the Dart was retrofitted with electronic ignition. They don't have catalytic converters or feedback EFI systems, so they're not quite as clean as a modern car under all conditions. But they're well maintained, and according to my friend who runs the local DriveClean shop, they blow as clean on the tailpipe as the typical 1992-model car. Note that the typical 1992-model car probably isn't as well-maintained as these two. How is that possible? The DriveClean allowance for vehicle wear is greater than the (slight but measurable) influence of EFI and a catalytic converter.
In fact, catalytic converters are restrictions on your exhaust system. If you consider the 4-stroke cycle for a second, you can imagine that anything which restricts the flow of exhaust gases out of your engine will waste crankshaft power. Take the catalytic converter off your car and you'll probably find that you get 20% more gas mileage. Sure, you'll be spitting more CO and HC into the atmosphere, but if you've taken any university-level chemistry classes, you'll be able to calculate the equilibrium for CO2/CO in the atmosphere and how long the HC will take to disintegrate. Catalytic converters are feel-good devices that waste energy themselves.
Maintenance? I wash and wax the Valiant and Dart. I check and change their fluids. When something breaks, I fix it. Both have electronic ignition, so I'm not adjusting their points every week. Both run on modern radial tires, cutting the maintenance of bias-ply tires. In fact, the only maintenance I have to do which is above and beyond that of a more modern car, is adjusting the valve lash on their engines. Until ~1980, the Slant-6 had mechanical valve lifters. Takes a few minutes to do every year. No big deal. Oh, and I lubricate the balljoints and tie-rod ends at the same time.
AM radio and vinyl bench seat? Okay. Well, the Dart has an AM radio and a cloth bench seat. A CD player is hidden in the glove box. If you've only ever gone to the local make-out spot with bucket seats, you don't know what you're missing. The Valiant is a Brougham edition, with crushed velour and leather bucket seats, an AM/FM radio, air conditioning, etc. Basically, it's a miniature version of the 1974 Chrysler New Yorker, with an emphasis on comfort and gas mileage (this was the time of the Arab Oil Embargo). It's cushy.
Your washing machines undoubtedly are too loud and use too much electricity and water and don't wash as good as their modern counterparts.Loud, yes. Dries clothes well enough that I don't need to use my dryer very often.
The Maytag A-504's mechanism was retained without significant changes through the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. In fact, you can still buy it today in Maytag's commercial coin-operated washing machines. Apparently, it cleans pretty well. Part of that has to do with the fact that it actually uses enough water to clean well.
As for water usage, all vertical basket washing machines will fill the tub up to the appropriate level. They all use about the same amount of water. Yes, it's more than those silly canted (water-efficient) washers, but if water dissolves dirt, do you really think your clothes are going to be as clean?
Electricity. No. The biggest thing running in the washing machine is the motor. I think you'll find that most washing machines, even today, will have the same requirements to whip a heavy tub of damp clothes back and forth. I don't think the motor will have changed too much. Energy efficiency of the motor? Incremental improvements. Moore's Law has not applied to AC induction motors since about the 1920s. Since then, they've remained mostly unchanged.
Your stereo, while perhaps providing a good output signal, doesn't have enough inputs or outputs for conemporary usage and probably uses more electricity.
It's connected to my computer. That's the only place it's ever used. Do I want 5.1 sound for playing MP3s and listening to KMail's New Mail beep? No.
How's the sound quality? Well, I don't know. I think it's pretty good. Seeing as how I used to do professional sound and lighting for a living - having done audio for The Three Tenors, Garth Brooks and Harry Belafonte among others, I feel like I might be qualified to judge.
As for energy usage, what, you think you're gonna power 5.1 channels for free? No way. This amplifier only has two channels. It's rated for 50W RMS at the output, and therefore consumed about 250W at the input when I crank up the volume. The output stages are NOT class A, so when the volume is lower, the input power requirements are lower.
Your speakers probably have paper cones and can't last forever.As do virtually all good quality loudspeakers. Polypropylene cones might be good for children with car stereos and boom-boxes, but if you go into any good high-end audio store (where you would have found Acoustic Research speakers being sold in the 1970s), you'll find that they're almost all paper.
Sure, the paper cones will eventually die. But they'll be in the same company as Celestions or Klipsche or ElectroVoice speakers. And, like with those speakers, I'll look at their overall condition, and decide whether or not I wish to spend the $200 having them reconed.
I agree that too much of what is made is crap designed to be thrown out far earlier than it could be designed for.
Thank you.
But carefully replacing some stuff every 10 or so years isn't a bad idea, simply to get the improvements in quality and environmental impact.You've got interesting ideas, which I think will change when you've actually seen how much energy goes into manufacturing something.
built in garbage disposal. enerygy savings quiter.
Horrified dinner guests sitting around in the kitchen as I'm tossing stuff into the faithful old Maytag:
"You can't put that roasting pan in there! There's still a chunk of bone stuck in there!"
I tossed it in, filled the detergent cup full of Cascade or Electrasol - whichever is cheaper of two "premium" detergents, because they both clean damned well - closed the door and hit the "Pots and Pans" button.
The dishwasher filled, the 3/4 hp pump motor started up, and a few seconds later there was a familiar grinding sound. I let the cycle run to the end, and took out the roasting pan: clean. They were impressed.
I think it has a built-in garbage disposal. I have to be very careful to make sure that the cutlery stays where it's supposed to. Try to wash a margarine tub without securing it properly to the racks, and it's gone.
"Energy saving" = ineffective. May consume half the power of a real appliance, but you'll have to wash your stuff 6 times to get it clean. (6x0.5=3 times net energy usage.) It's like those stupid water-saving toilets that choke on a good pile.
However, I will give you quieter. All of my Maytags are very loud. The dryer has a loud fan blowing air through the clothes in the drum. The dishwasher's pump screams when it cavitates at the end of a drain cycle. And the washing machine's spin cycle - before there were any requirements that it should be able to stop within x seconds of opening the lid - spins clothes so fast that you end up with little dots from the inside of the tub embossed into all of your clothing. Thankfully, I seldom need the dryer.
Every machine represents a lot of energy to manufacture, and it should have a good lifespan to make it worthwhile. Furthermore, by doing their jobs more effectively than most modern machines, they're saving energy that way. They clean the roasting pan without a soak in hot water, and they spin a tub of underwear so quickly that they're dry enough to go directly into my drawer.
Energy-Savings stickers may make hausfrau feel good, but I'm more concerned with efficiency.
I love it. My 1954 Maytag A-504 washing machine. It's been cleaning dirty underwear for 48 years, and all it's ever asked for is a drivebelt.
Carrying on the tradition:
The moral?
If you buy good quality stuff once, it will last you your lifetime. And just because something may be old (ie, most of this stuff is older than I am), it doesn't make it irrelevent. What does a new dishwasher do that my old Maytag won't? Nothing. And the old Maytag looks really cool installed in a modern kitchen!
So, when my washing machine's 48-year-old rubber belt finally broke, I went to the local Maytag store and bought a new belt at the parts counter. Spent $10 on the belt, then the manager came running out after me. He rented my washing machine from me - paid me good money, provided me with a new washer while mine was there, and tried to buy it outright - so that he could stick it in the showroom that fall.
Unfortunately, you can only try so long to continue to use your desktop computer...