Another way to go is to find an electric car conversion shop or individual. Purchase a cheap ICE vehicle, spend another $6-$10K converting it and you have a vehicle that will last as long as the body holds up that looks like everyone elses car, but needs far less maintenence and no gasoline.
Or you could just do the whole thing yourself. If done right your range will be between 40 and 60 miles per charge.
Remember Optima Yellow Top deep cycle batteries are your friends.
Re:EBay and PayPal ... not my favorites
on
Ebay buys PayPal
·
· Score: 1
It has been my experience that most people that lose their accounts to "hackers" whether they be eBay accounts, MMPOG accounts, PayPal, etc; do so because they have been foolish enough to allow their systems to become infected by Sub7 or some other trojan. Getting such a program past security measures is usually a matter of simple social engineering and the use of an instant messenger or e-mail.
PayPal has been a fairly decent service for the most part. People foolish enough to treat it as a bank and have been burned have no one to blame but themselves. PayPal is no different from other non-FDIC insured money transfer services such as Western Union.
If someone is removing funds from your bank account or credit card using PayPal your recourse is the same as if someone was doing this using your debit card/credit card number. You are protected not by PayPal, but by your bank and credit card company. Yes this sort of thing is a royal pain in the ass, but anytime your accounts are compromised (and it can happen in a myriad of ways on and off line) it is a pain. That does not make it PayPal's fault. Most of the complaints I have seen stem from people making mistakes of procedure and screwing themselves over; then freaking out at PayPal. It reminds me very much of the same sort of behaviour exhibited by young adults playing online games and handing out their account information to strangers then demanding that the game creators compensate them for their own stupidity when the account is cleaned out.
Yes I have also heard of fairly major screwups on PayPal's part, but with no more frequency than I see such happening at banks or credit card companies. This is not to trivialize the frustration and anger of those that have experienced such problems feel, just to put it in a bit more perspective.
Konami (the same people behind Dance Dance Revolution)has been putting out quite a few games that can burn some calories.
Police 911 uses an image tracking system to move your on screen character based on your actual body position. In order to reload during the otherwise typical gun game you need to duck behind something. In order to duck, you have to squat/duck in the real world.
MoCap Boxing has you put on a pair of weighted gloves and actually punch and block in a first person boxing match. This will tire out more than just geeks. I've watched as macho buffed guys with their girlfriends walk up to the machine and brag about how easy it will be. Within minutes they are barely able to keep their arms up.
If game designers can keep coming up with creative and well done games like these maybe the arcade is not as endangered as it has appeared.
My Uncle used to design automated systems used for package and luggage sorting at various institutions. Often he was called in to observe and suggest solutions to previously installed systems. Here are some of the things he encountered in airport luggage handling systems:
1) A second terminal was added to a small airport and they needed to find a way to send bags to the correct terminal with minimal effort and cost. So a couple of maintainence staff scavenged a large piece of aircraft aluminum (essentially it was part of an airplane wing) and mounted it onto a swing arm so that it would divert luggage down one ramp or another as they approached.
In order to sort the luggage what they did was put a scanner ahead of the fork if a bag destined for a different terminal than the current path allowed headed down the ramp; the wing would swing to the other side of the conveyor.Well the problem was the staff had mistimed the gate. So a package would happily wander down the conveyor till it hit the sensor. The senor read the package's destination as the package continued along till about the time it came even with the tip of the wing being used a diverter. The wing would then finally move, late, crushing the bag against the far wall. When the next package came down destined for the now blocked path the wing would move freeing the first package (now headed down the wrong ramp) and crush the new package.
Changing the timing of the gate was a simple fix, but it was scary how long it had lasted before anyone bothered to get look into it.
2) Another example was at a modern large city airport. They had installed a super deluxe expensive baggage handling system with the usual barcode reading sorting machines to ensure luggage arrived at the correct gate.
My Uncle was called in to survey the problem that the airport was having(what the problem was they were being rather cagey about). When he arrived they lead him to the baggage sorting area where the system was currently turned off.
The airport rep handed my Uncle and his co-workers hardhats (never a good sign) and hit the start switch for the system. Klaxons and flashing lights then ensued. As the observers raised their eyebrows in question and concern, the first pieces of baggage started moving along on the upper wall conveyor heading for the gravity fed ramps to the individual gates.
As the baggage reached its designated gate a big push plate at the top of each ramp would shove the packages down the ramp. At first everything seems to be operating smoothly. But the force needed to propel a 50lb suitcase off a ledge and down a ramp is not the same as that needed for a 5lb vanity case. And in short order baggage was soaring through the air; sometimes clear passed the end of the baggage catches at the end of the ramps. Often bags tumbled even further off course.
Through all of this baggage handlers in hardhats are running across the open space of the sorting room in a crouched position trying not to get pummeled by ballistic luggage.
My Uncles company wrote up a proposal to fix the problem but the airport decided that it was too expensive and left the system as is. I never found out what airport it was, but my Uncle said that as of a few years ago the system was still operating the same way.
No wonder luggage gets destroyed or "lost" so frequently.
Moz is way the heck less bloated in "complete" form than any similar browser package is.
And if you want slim and streamlined with all the rendering speed of Gecko checkout Galeon.
Re:Something interesting about Moz on Windows XP
on
Mozilla RC3 Released
·
· Score: 1
*waits for slash's two minute timer to rundown so that people can flame before he corrects his last post*
I should define "load times" better. I was not refering to render times. I meant the time it takes to launch the browser.
IE wins here only because it is integrated into the OS.
Re:Something interesting about Moz on Windows XP
on
Mozilla RC3 Released
·
· Score: 1
On all the Windows systems I run Mozilla on (debug code still in and everything) it runs as fast or faster than IE. Load times are slightly longer, but then again Moz is not built into the OS.
And Gecko sure as hell renders faster than IE. What build did you last run?
Spy Software really irritates me. It's probably one of the main reasons I almost never use P2P services.
I can't believe these folks get away with claiming their self installing, cladestine software is in no way related to a computer virus/worm/trojan.
"Sure we break into people's computers. But the crucial differenc is we do it for _profit_ which is capitalism at its best and the american way. You try and shut us down and you're unamerican I tell you! And you don't want to be unamerican do you."
Re:A mini-P2P between yourself and friends
on
KaZaA Collapses
·
· Score: 1
An interesting solution.
But it looks like the communal based Direct Connect mentioned by others here offers the best solution.
It appears that you get to maintain the option of utilizing a huge P2P while being able to lock off your little section of it and have a private "hub" comprised only of those folks that you wish to include.
I want something more freeform than Client-Server applications like FTP, but more controllable than raw open P2P. Direct Connect mentioned by the above folks sounds more along the lines of what I was looking for, but I have yet to try it as I am at work currently.
However this makes everyone reliant on one persons server or fragments the file sharing into a bunch of small FTP servers running on seperate machines with seperate logins and seperate maintainers.
You can use your same argument to say why the hell do we have P2P services in the first place? It can all be replicated by Clinet-Server systems.
What it comes down to is a nice clean GUI interface to a series of distributed files amongst a group or small group of friends has usuability and bandwidth advantages that centralized systems do not.
Now with the friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend sort of free form P2P you start getting a bit unweildy.
The best way I can describe what I am talking about is something akin to the differences between IRC, AIM, and ICQ.
IRC is the central server password protected access sort of model (private channels and varying levels of user control). (FTP)
AIM is the free for all anyone can bug anyone else at any time way of things. (Full on P2P)
ICQ has some minor permissions setup for individual person to person chat. You set whether you want anyone in the world to talk to you or only people that you authorize. (Small Group P2P)
"In a related story...
on
KaZaA Collapses
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
...Spy Software companies and makers of other beneficial consumer products wholly unrelated to virus software announce that they expect a downturn in profits and expect to lay off 75% of personnel."
Seriously folks, is this really a bad thing?
P2P software is a nice idea, but I would be more interested in them if they were more user controllable. I'd much rather have a P2P network comprised solely of individuals that I trust than to be connected to a sea of people do not know eating my bandwidth searching for things I do not have and do not want.
Give me a P2P solution that allows me to selectively authorize requests to my system and communicate only with those other people that I wish to communicate with. A mini P2P between myself and my friends.
The actual chance of accident would remain constant (if one assumes that greater riders does not equate to more difficult maintenance and sloppy safety handling by operators) while the number of incidents would (probably) rise.
Boiling water will cause 1st and second degree burns. Not a shock.
Frsh coffe is just below boiling temp.
Handicapped indeividuals may need to rely on non-handicapped individuals for assistance in performing certain actions. This is not demeaning, it is merely common sense.
Attempting to remove a coffee lid (which by the time you are 87 I hope you know is designed to stay on the cup to prevent spilling and can be difficult to remove) without the full use of your fingers while it is clasped between your legs in an awkward position while sitting in a car is not wise.
Particularly when you have another person in the car who is perfectly capable of doing that for you.
Basically they sued after she made a number of poor judgement calls and burned her self severely. The accident is not amusing, but the law suit was incredibly stupid. That she won is just further indication that we've reached a point where americans are so self involved that when the world does not work for them they must instantly blame someone else.
Take care with statistics. They are next to useless for anything other than broad generalizations unless taken in context. And the context may be far more complicated that it first seems.
If there was a boom in coaster building it follows that there were more people riding coasters. More people riding coasters means greater chance of accident.
But there can be any number of additional factors. To make any real use of the numbers each accident would have to be sub-categorized into the exact nature of the accident and cause as well as what measures were in place to prevent such incidents and whether the patron ignored these measures.
Patron error != coaster engineer responsibility anymore than loosening all your lug nuts on purpose and then driving at high speed while wearing no belt makes the resulting accident (and your probable death) the auto manufacturers fault.
Regulating G-Forces is all well and good. But I would rather that if new laws were to be passed they be of the more sane variety such as enforcing requirements to have g-forces (negative and positive) listed on a sign near each coaster as well as warnings for that those with health problems should not ride.
Not funny. True. Austin, Texas has the same sort of law. I moved down here not too long ago and was totally unaware of this particular bit of law till I was grumbling at the people on the opposite side of a divided road stopping for the bus across the street and my passenger informed me of it.
Stopping both directions on a residential street makes sense. On a divided road especially one with a large median it seems a bit excessive.
No need to skip work. My company rented out a mid-afternoon showing on opening day for us. As did a number of other companies in the area such as Origin and Dell.
Ah. I don't know what the exchange rate was back then or how bad the price difference was between countries (PC games in the UK used to be around 70 pounds when it was $1.75 USD to the pound and in the US the games were $49), but games went for about $40-$50 USD in the states.
The guy (actually there are several of them) in the white dreadlocks is one of the "Viruses" which if I remember correctly were created by the Matrix to defeat Neo and the resistance, but mutate on their own and now threaten everyone, including the Matrix itself.
Also in the movie are "The Twins" which are a pair of Neo-like super guards for some CEO in the virtual real world.
Slashdot Mirror
While the waiting list is pretty long and the price is high, you can get an electric car with a 100+ mile range that does the quarter mile faster than a late 90's Vette. Go see the T-Zero at A/C Propulsion's site.
Another way to go is to find an electric car conversion shop or individual. Purchase a cheap ICE vehicle, spend another $6-$10K converting it and you have a vehicle that will last as long as the body holds up that looks like everyone elses car, but needs far less maintenence and no gasoline.
Or you could just do the whole thing yourself. If done right your range will be between 40 and 60 miles per charge.
Remember Optima Yellow Top deep cycle batteries are your friends.
It has been my experience that most people that lose their accounts to "hackers" whether they be eBay accounts, MMPOG accounts, PayPal, etc; do so because they have been foolish enough to allow their systems to become infected by Sub7 or some other trojan. Getting such a program past security measures is usually a matter of simple social engineering and the use of an instant messenger or e-mail.
PayPal has been a fairly decent service for the most part. People foolish enough to treat it as a bank and have been burned have no one to blame but themselves. PayPal is no different from other non-FDIC insured money transfer services such as Western Union.
If someone is removing funds from your bank account or credit card using PayPal your recourse is the same as if someone was doing this using your debit card/credit card number. You are protected not by PayPal, but by your bank and credit card company. Yes this sort of thing is a royal pain in the ass, but anytime your accounts are compromised (and it can happen in a myriad of ways on and off line) it is a pain. That does not make it PayPal's fault. Most of the complaints I have seen stem from people making mistakes of procedure and screwing themselves over; then freaking out at PayPal. It reminds me very much of the same sort of behaviour exhibited by young adults playing online games and handing out their account information to strangers then demanding that the game creators compensate them for their own stupidity when the account is cleaned out.
Yes I have also heard of fairly major screwups on PayPal's part, but with no more frequency than I see such happening at banks or credit card companies. This is not to trivialize the frustration and anger of those that have experienced such problems feel, just to put it in a bit more perspective.
Redwolf Airsoft
And best of all they are legal to import with mild modification.
Konami (the same people behind Dance Dance Revolution)has been putting out quite a few games that can burn some calories.
Police 911 uses an image tracking system to move your on screen character based on your actual body position. In order to reload during the otherwise typical gun game you need to duck behind something. In order to duck, you have to squat/duck in the real world.
MoCap Boxing has you put on a pair of weighted gloves and actually punch and block in a first person boxing match. This will tire out more than just geeks. I've watched as macho buffed guys with their girlfriends walk up to the machine and brag about how easy it will be. Within minutes they are barely able to keep their arms up.
If game designers can keep coming up with creative and well done games like these maybe the arcade is not as endangered as it has appeared.
My Uncle used to design automated systems used for package and luggage sorting at various institutions. Often he was called in to observe and suggest solutions to previously installed systems. Here are some of the things he encountered in airport luggage handling systems:
1) A second terminal was added to a small airport and they needed to find a way to send bags to the correct terminal with minimal effort and cost. So a couple of maintainence staff scavenged a large piece of aircraft aluminum (essentially it was part of an airplane wing) and mounted it onto a swing arm so that it would divert luggage down one ramp or another as they approached.
In order to sort the luggage what they did was put a scanner ahead of the fork if a bag destined for a different terminal than the current path allowed headed down the ramp; the wing would swing to the other side of the conveyor.Well the problem was the staff had mistimed the gate. So a package would happily wander down the conveyor till it hit the sensor. The senor read the package's destination as the package continued along till about the time it came even with the tip of the wing being used a diverter. The wing would then finally move, late, crushing the bag against the far wall. When the next package came down destined for the now blocked path the wing would move freeing the first package (now headed down the wrong ramp) and crush the new package.
Changing the timing of the gate was a simple fix, but it was scary how long it had lasted before anyone bothered to get look into it.
2) Another example was at a modern large city airport. They had installed a super deluxe expensive baggage handling system with the usual barcode reading sorting machines to ensure luggage arrived at the correct gate.
My Uncle was called in to survey the problem that the airport was having(what the problem was they were being rather cagey about). When he arrived they lead him to the baggage sorting area where the system was currently turned off.
The airport rep handed my Uncle and his co-workers hardhats (never a good sign) and hit the start switch for the system. Klaxons and flashing lights then ensued. As the observers raised their eyebrows in question and concern, the first pieces of baggage started moving along on the upper wall conveyor heading for the gravity fed ramps to the individual gates.
As the baggage reached its designated gate a big push plate at the top of each ramp would shove the packages down the ramp. At first everything seems to be operating smoothly. But the force needed to propel a 50lb suitcase off a ledge and down a ramp is not the same as that needed for a 5lb vanity case. And in short order baggage was soaring through the air; sometimes clear passed the end of the baggage catches at the end of the ramps. Often bags tumbled even further off course.
Through all of this baggage handlers in hardhats are running across the open space of the sorting room in a crouched position trying not to get pummeled by ballistic luggage.
My Uncles company wrote up a proposal to fix the problem but the airport decided that it was too expensive and left the system as is. I never found out what airport it was, but my Uncle said that as of a few years ago the system was still operating the same way.
No wonder luggage gets destroyed or "lost" so frequently.
lol OH NO! No 20 MEGA-bytes od space used. Whatever shall I do!
Ummm...does this minor amount of space really matter on any system built in the last 7 years?
I mean I was horrified that Wing Commander II used 5MB of drive space. But at the time that was 1/4 of the drive space on my 20MB 386 notebook's HDD.
hehe sad thing is I doubt most /. readers will recognize an ST:TOS quote from the awesome NOMAD episode.
"I'm...NOT...the creator. You are in error!"
We'd be in serious trouble if all our 20th century devices exploded when put into a logical loop.
Moz is way the heck less bloated in "complete" form than any similar browser package is.
And if you want slim and streamlined with all the rendering speed of Gecko checkout Galeon.
*waits for slash's two minute timer to rundown so that people can flame before he corrects his last post*
I should define "load times" better. I was not refering to render times. I meant the time it takes to launch the browser.
IE wins here only because it is integrated into the OS.
On all the Windows systems I run Mozilla on (debug code still in and everything) it runs as fast or faster than IE. Load times are slightly longer, but then again Moz is not built into the OS.
And Gecko sure as hell renders faster than IE. What build did you last run?
Spy Software really irritates me. It's probably one of the main reasons I almost never use P2P services.
I can't believe these folks get away with claiming their self installing, cladestine software is in no way related to a computer virus/worm/trojan.
"Sure we break into people's computers. But the crucial differenc is we do it for _profit_ which is capitalism at its best and the american way. You try and shut us down and you're unamerican I tell you! And you don't want to be unamerican do you."
An interesting solution.
But it looks like the communal based Direct Connect mentioned by others here offers the best solution.
It appears that you get to maintain the option of utilizing a huge P2P while being able to lock off your little section of it and have a private "hub" comprised only of those folks that you wish to include.
Yeah nothing like piecing together large UUENCODE files together by hand after download all 47 parts over your TIA Socket 14.4 connection. :P
But heck that's still better than the poor ole fogey's that had to use 300 baud modems.
See my above comment.
I want something more freeform than Client-Server applications like FTP, but more controllable than raw open P2P. Direct Connect mentioned by the above folks sounds more along the lines of what I was looking for, but I have yet to try it as I am at work currently.
Ah Excellent. If it behaves as you describe this is exactly the sort of thing I was looking for.
I will have to check it and it's Linux ports out later.
Sure FTP is no biggie for me to setup.
However this makes everyone reliant on one persons server or fragments the file sharing into a bunch of small FTP servers running on seperate machines with seperate logins and seperate maintainers.
You can use your same argument to say why the hell do we have P2P services in the first place? It can all be replicated by Clinet-Server systems.
What it comes down to is a nice clean GUI interface to a series of distributed files amongst a group or small group of friends has usuability and bandwidth advantages that centralized systems do not.
Now with the friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend sort of free form P2P you start getting a bit unweildy.
The best way I can describe what I am talking about is something akin to the differences between IRC, AIM, and ICQ.
IRC is the central server password protected access sort of model (private channels and varying levels of user control). (FTP)
AIM is the free for all anyone can bug anyone else at any time way of things. (Full on P2P)
ICQ has some minor permissions setup for individual person to person chat. You set whether you want anyone in the world to talk to you or only people that you authorize. (Small Group P2P)
...Spy Software companies and makers of other beneficial consumer products wholly unrelated to virus software announce that they expect a downturn in profits and expect to lay off 75% of personnel."
Seriously folks, is this really a bad thing?
P2P software is a nice idea, but I would be more interested in them if they were more user controllable. I'd much rather have a P2P network comprised solely of individuals that I trust than to be connected to a sea of people do not know eating my bandwidth searching for things I do not have and do not want.
Give me a P2P solution that allows me to selectively authorize requests to my system and communicate only with those other people that I wish to communicate with. A mini P2P between myself and my friends.
ROFL.
This is true.
The actual chance of accident would remain constant (if one assumes that greater riders does not equate to more difficult maintenance and sloppy safety handling by operators) while the number of incidents would (probably) rise.
Eh? I hate this case.
Boiling water will cause 1st and second degree burns. Not a shock.
Frsh coffe is just below boiling temp.
Handicapped indeividuals may need to rely on non-handicapped individuals for assistance in performing certain actions. This is not demeaning, it is merely common sense.
Attempting to remove a coffee lid (which by the time you are 87 I hope you know is designed to stay on the cup to prevent spilling and can be difficult to remove) without the full use of your fingers while it is clasped between your legs in an awkward position while sitting in a car is not wise.
Particularly when you have another person in the car who is perfectly capable of doing that for you.
Basically they sued after she made a number of poor judgement calls and burned her self severely. The accident is not amusing, but the law suit was incredibly stupid. That she won is just further indication that we've reached a point where americans are so self involved that when the world does not work for them they must instantly blame someone else.
Take care with statistics. They are next to useless for anything other than broad generalizations unless taken in context. And the context may be far more complicated that it first seems.
If there was a boom in coaster building it follows that there were more people riding coasters. More people riding coasters means greater chance of accident.
But there can be any number of additional factors. To make any real use of the numbers each accident would have to be sub-categorized into the exact nature of the accident and cause as well as what measures were in place to prevent such incidents and whether the patron ignored these measures.
Patron error != coaster engineer responsibility anymore than loosening all your lug nuts on purpose and then driving at high speed while wearing no belt makes the resulting accident (and your probable death) the auto manufacturers fault.
Regulating G-Forces is all well and good. But I would rather that if new laws were to be passed they be of the more sane variety such as enforcing requirements to have g-forces (negative and positive) listed on a sign near each coaster as well as warnings for that those with health problems should not ride.
Not funny. True. Austin, Texas has the same sort of law. I moved down here not too long ago and was totally unaware of this particular bit of law till I was grumbling at the people on the opposite side of a divided road stopping for the bus across the street and my passenger informed me of it.
Stopping both directions on a residential street makes sense. On a divided road especially one with a large median it seems a bit excessive.
No need to skip work. My company rented out a mid-afternoon showing on opening day for us. As did a number of other companies in the area such as Origin and Dell.
Why skip when work will pay you to watch a movie?
:)
Ah. I don't know what the exchange rate was back then or how bad the price difference was between countries (PC games in the UK used to be around 70 pounds when it was $1.75 USD to the pound and in the US the games were $49), but games went for about $40-$50 USD in the states.
The guy (actually there are several of them) in the white dreadlocks is one of the "Viruses" which if I remember correctly were created by the Matrix to defeat Neo and the resistance, but mutate on their own and now threaten everyone, including the Matrix itself.
Also in the movie are "The Twins" which are a pair of Neo-like super guards for some CEO in the virtual real world.
For all those people looking for the title of a song that is used for 2 tenths of a second in a trailer... ...try here.