'Once' before? That name has dragged down several companies. There is the original flameout. There was poor little JTS. And what happened to Williams? How is Hasbro's stock doing? Why anyone would still touch that company's name is far beyond me. It's like being excited about picking up a great deal on the Necronomicon that you overlook the fact that all of the previous owners are dead.
Must I point out that the XBox 2 is confirmed to be shipping with IBM's Power PC chip line? That development machines have come on Apple G5's with a special version of Windows loaded?
You can't just swap out the iron and expect everything to work hunky-dorey. That's got to break a lot of drivers, high-end applications, etc, etc... I'd doubt many programs would run without a re-compile.
You're not visiting websites, you don't go to the library. You haven't traveled outside the country, you don't travel inside the country. You don't belong to any politically active groups, you have never donated to a candidate. You don't talk to weird people. You are not a potential threat. All you do is watch television. And you just aren't living.
I wear my FAA yellow flag as a mark of pride.
But on a more serious note, how is having 300 million suspects better than having none?
He's not actually paying for good reviews. He's charging for bad reviews. There is a big difference. Nearly all games these days recieve a 70% or higher. A truly atrocious game like UFC has earned a 61% on metacritic. Resident Evil: Outbreak even breaks above 70%.
With the tremendous score bloat these days if a game gets below %70 its pretty safe to assume it's junk. Heck, Shrek 2 is above that mark. The only excuse to release a below-70 game is running out of funding, and even that's a mark of bad management.
Honestly, the movie studios taking notice and demanding a little bit of quality is a great thing. Movie licensed games bring in a large number of non-gamers to our world, yet turn off people in droves. The poverty of gameplay is legendary. Now, if only we could make the same arrangement on game to movie licenses...
What exactly are they giving up by only being able to copy once?
For one, the ability to shape the perception of the culture around you. I have an inkling to do a personal project called "Red Sand," a play on "Red Asphault." Horrific photographs and newsreels from Gulf War 1, 2, and 3 would be spliced together with interviews of President Bush in an attempt to recreate the feel of the now infamous Driver's Ed training video. If the broadcast flag prevented me from collecting footage from over-the-air sources, I would need to go begging to CNN or the Rupert-Murdoch owned Fox News channel to get that footage, essentially pricing me out of the cultural exchange of ideas.
Images and ideas significant to a democracy belong to everyone.
You didn't create the content, you dont own it so what divine rights do you have to it?
Divine rights? I believe the term you are looking for is "inalienable." Copyright controls exist to encourage the production of material, in part to stimulate the creative arts and in part to foster discussions significant to society. But they don't extend to ownership of the material. For example, I didn't create your post, and I don't own it, but I violated your copyright without your permission in order to properly discuss the issues at hand. No court in the land would consider that anything other than fair.
Miyamoto was probably counting on the diamond configuration to provide enough tactile feedback to know where your fingers are placed. The SNES controller was a genius of design. The introduction of L/R buttons was really intuitive, and the positioning of the 4 buttons in a diamond (like a D-pad) was so simple that people intuitively "got" which button they were over. Those four buttons were easier to use than the Genesis' 3 buttons.
It's so good that every controller after it has borrowed all of its conventions. Diamond button configuration with shoulder buttons? Cube, Xbox, PS2? Dreamcast, PS1, N64? Even though it messed up my Street Fighter playing for years, the SNES controller really was the best.
Lastly, system splash screens on modern consoles can serve multiple purposes on top of hiding disc load times (if that).
If there was the option for instant boot, would you? Splash screens can be mildly interesting... they can display gameplay hints, serve up humorous in-game advertisements, or even play their own games... but there is no reason why someone would actively want to sit and watch a static image for fifteen seconds. And until techniques improve for more dynamic background loading, that's all people are going to get.
If a sound was perfectly accurate except for an instantaneous annoying pop every few seconds, it would probably average as the best codec, but it would be useless as a consumer standard. I remember a codec shootout years ago where Mp3Pro sounded "tinny," WMA sounded "flat," and MP3 sounded "fuzzy." Was being objectively closer to the source material more important than the type of distortion introduced? Not at all.
When dealing with sound equipment, from pre-amps to encoders, the tone of the introduced distortion is very important. Everything introduces distortion, in some way or another. You just want it to make the sound better, not worse.
The record industry just did a lot of work to set up information toll booths, just to discover that there's a very easy and legal way to work around them.
That's the thing... they didn't even do that much work. They just figured it would all go away, then figured they were entitled to payment despite not having done any work. The RIAA was dragged kicking and screaming into the world of Ringtones, just like it was the world of digital music. Cry not a tear for them, for people turned to illegal content because no legal content was available.
If you really want to keep your batteries in good condition though, you want to look into a microprocessor-based smart charger, which actually checks the voltage level of the battery to determine when it's topped off. The nicest ones even detect the type of battery based on its charge response curve.
But most smart chargers (and nearly all chargers qualify these days) will trickle-charge a set of batteries to keep them topped off. This trickle-charging is nice for pulling a set of AA's out of a charger in the morning and having full power available, but if you're leaving on vacation the constant trickle heats the battery enough to cause it to vent, losing it's ability to hold a charge. This is the same effect you see with people who leave their cell-phones plugged in. In an effort to keep their batteries constantly charged, they're actually heating them enough to break them.
It has been a year or two since I looked at NiMH chargers seriously, and they may have changed to a more intelligent, less constant system. But somehow I doubt this limitation of the technology will be overcome.
Not because the technology isn't there (remember, we DID go to the moon 35 years ago), but because there might be a.001% chance of something going wrong, and we just can't have that!!
Actually, the shuttle has a roughly %2 failure rate. By comparison, SARS killed about %4 of the people it infected. And the shuttle is about as stable and mature a space launcher as you will find. So in other words, the technology is still gambling with the lives of astronauts, though it is more vegas roulette than russian roulette.
As for being terribly expensive and taking lots of time... You're building a space ship. A space ship. How long would it take you to build a plane from scratch? How long would it take you to build a plane from scratch that people could live in? How long would it take you to build a plane from scratch that can work without oxygen, fly above our atmosphere, and let passengers out in the middle of a vaccuum? Did I mention protect the occupants from solar radiation, withstand several thousand degrees of heat, and recycle all body excretia into drinkable water?
The space plane program is taking forever because the technology isn't there. The kinds of weight-to-thrust ratio to take off without boosters isn't possible without a lot more development of our engine technologies. Remember, our trip to the moon DID cost roughly 200 billion dollars, or 5% of the GDP for several years.
Fox News is no more biased than CNN. They just have a few commentators who lean right.
But unlike CNN, Fox gives them their own show, and tells them to be as overtly political as they like. Fox has never had a problem with Bill O'Reiley for making wild assertions without the slightest bit of supporting evidence. Have you seen such a thing on CNN?
Don't get me wrong, there are commentators on the right who can make a compelling argument involving hard evidence and logic, but none of them are on Fox News.
Most manuals for devices using NiMH and Lithium Ion say the batteries last longer if you keep them charged up (topped off). Otherwise, the deep charge/discharge cycles put a lot of wear on the batteries.
Just for clarity's sake, the "best" way to keep NiMH batteries alive is to keep using them. Charge them up, let them sit, use them a bit, then re-charge after a month or so. If you leave a NiMH battery totally drained, you will hurt the battery... and NiMH batteries drain themselves over time. However, if you leave it charging, you will kill the battery. There is just no good fire and forget storage solution. If you go on an extended vacation, consider giving your lighting equipment to a friend to babysit.
Don't expect any rechargable battery system to last for more than a year or two. Very few stand up to regular use. Think about replacement battery availability carefully when buying new equipment.
I don't think anyone ever told me about it. I discovered it one day while taking caffeen pills to stay awake, then immediately giving up and succombing to sleep. Jacobhoupt is the first other person I've heard of who used to do that. I don't think it's a big thing (yet), though I've been telling anyone about it who will listen in the hopes that some enterprising med student will do a rat study to determine just how terrible for you it is. I hate losing those 8* hours a day to just lying in bed, when there is so much more that could be done.
Sleeping in chairs is another secret to getting up and doing work, though I don't think that has to do with being refreshed so much as being uncomfortable.
*Thanks to E3, I don't think I've slept 8 hours in about two months.
Why not get actual Caffeine or pure Guarana? Of course, I once saw a girl who ate roughly 1 gram of caffeen in a night stay up for 4 days straight while crying and dribbling at the mouth, so don't overdo it.
And as for straight coffee beans... Try instant. Just shovel a few spoonfuls into your mouth, and wash it down with water. 10 seconds and you're super caffinated.
Of course the other secret is to eat 20mg of caffeine immediately before falling asleep. You will awake totally refreshed in about two hours, as if you had a full night's sleep. You do have to make very sure you fall asleep before the caffeine kicks in, or you just won't sleep at all. Long-term effects include improved GPA and complete cardiopulmonary collapse.
I'm a bit disappointed that the propeller is at the front though. It would have been so cool at the back of the main "exhaust". Perhaps even inside it, but I can't really tell from the video if it would be large enough for a small prop.
From the video it looks like the tail-end is dragging down quite a bit. My guess is that the plane gets some of its lift from the propellor being at a slight upward angle, pulling the plane up. In fact, the lower the lift from the ship, the higher the angle of the propellor thereby creating sufficient lift. Plus, with the stability issues it looks like it is having, a propellor in front will tend to straighten the aircraft quite a bit more than a propellor in the back would.
...if you are not yet convinced in XHTML with CSS is artistically pleasing enough for you. It's a better standard than many websites around.
Artistically is one thing, but how about simplifying the development side? The ability to insert separate blocks of HTML seamlessly into a single document without relying upon a perl script or some unlikely-to-work DHTML hack would save people a lot of time, and would let them be a lot more creative with their designs. CSS touches upon this separation of content and layout, but doesn't quite get the concept that layout consists of content.
There are still good reasons to improve the standard.
Actually, the weight of the bike is roughly 24 lbs. It's using pretty much the same solid-but-heavy stuff Giant uses for their low-end hybrids, but with an additional motor and battery setup. The 39 lb figure does not include the battery, but does include the motor and driving system. 15 lbs for a motor with real torque and a pressure-sensitive drivetrain isn't that much, really.
There are actually some excellent heavier motorcross electric bicycles, though I can't seem to find the link right now, that hit 40 MPH. Even in the realm of regular cycling, you have the freeride bikes that are up in the 30 lbs range.
Furthermore, weight isn't the be-all-end-all of cycling. As you mentioned, the bike goes from 1/6th to 1/3rd of the weight of the rider. That means the mass of the system goes from being roughly 170 lbs to 190 lbs... a total increase of about 10%. That number is a little deceptive, because the nimbleness of the rider + bike system is altered by having more mass on the bike, but it really isn't that bad if the bike is driving the rider.
Quality (wheel) bearings aren't all they're cracked up to be. A high-quality drivetrain and average bearings will save more kinetic energy then high-quality bearings and an average drivetrain. I always find it amusing when people put 200 dollar hubs on tires that have any kind of tread pattern. A 100 dollar pair of Michelins will shave a lot more time. Besides, the top-of-the-line is intended to be stripped apart, cleaned, and re-assembled between every race. Without that, they break down quickly. Ever see a Dura-Ace bottom bracket of a weekend cyclist?
Top speed really isn't a function of the quality of bearings at all... roll time is. But in this case roll time is increased by the additional mass. Hill-climbing likewise isn't about higher-pressure tires, but torque. For this bike a pair of $10 toe clips would go a long way to greatly increasing the hill-climbing abilities, top speed, and cruising speed of this bike.
If he hasn't already, the original poster should visit electric-bikes.com. Good resource of available toys, albeit a little out of date.
Not to start a flamewar, but Debian's installer isn't as bad as it used to be by a long shot. The 3.x branch doesn't autodetect as much as it should (give up on sound) but it does work more often than not, with little end-user knowledge. Besides the incessant babysitting required, it's pretty easy.
Now, configuring Debian... you're on your own. Apt-Get is also very nice, but it also prevents you from knowing what is going on under the hood, which keeps you from fixing things when they break. And if you're a new linux user in a non-production environment, they will break. I'd consider Debian bad for learning.
If you want to learn about Linux, start with a Mandrake download and stay away from the auto-install software routines. Do things on your own, with the knowledge that whatever you setup will be lost when you advance to Gentoo (or whatever)
Yes, there would be a lot of ethical questions about paying our Nintendo Superstars more than our teachers or our police or what have you. But people don't seem to mind that much with professional athletes. Why think of pro gamers any differently?
To put this in perspective, Albert Bell signed a 5-year, 65 million dollar contract. The median income in MLB is 800,000 dollars per season. Tiger Woods made an estimated 78 million for 2002-2003, including endorsements. This #1 highest ranked korean professional videogame player is making less than 200k per year.
If conjecture and heresay are true, it is the rare US "professional" player that earns as much as a teacher. South Korea has always been a little ahead of the curve when it comes to integrating videogames and society, but even then 100,000 dollars is lower than the top bracket in most professions. True, it is the rare public school teacher that makes 180k, but school superintendents do on occasion make that much. And what about corporate training programs, or inspirational speakers?
There was actually an audio-only game released in Japan for the Saturn and Dreamcast, Kaze no Regret. Sadly, it is Japan only,
Harmonix Music also makes Karaoke Revolution, a game which could have far more accessable menus, but once the player gets through the menu structure the game is all about singing, which anyone can do (though generally poorly).
I had been getting bad parts from MicroCenter for several weeks, had been dutifully diagnosing them and returning things that didn't work as I was desperately trying to complete a system that did. As I had bought the processor and motherboard as a pair, and the motherboard wasn't working, they wanted to refund only the total deal cost minus the non-sale cost of processor, leaving me with a processor costing about 20 dollars more than the identical ones they had on sale.
"We can take back the motherboard, but not the processor" "Why can't you take back the processor?" "Because you've opened it. We only take returns if it is unopened, or we can exchange it if it is defective." "Can I at least get the sale price for the processor?" "No, because you bought the 'bundle' processor, not the 'sale' processor." "That doesn't make sense. They're the same processor, in the same box, with the same SKU..." "Sorry." "If I tell you it's defective, are you going to take my word for it like the other half-dozen parts I've returned." "Yes." "And if I get that exchange processor, the exchange processor is in a returnable, unopened state, correct?" "...Yes..." "Can you see where I'm going with this?"
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'Once' before? That name has dragged down several companies. There is the original flameout. There was poor little JTS. And what happened to Williams? How is Hasbro's stock doing? Why anyone would still touch that company's name is far beyond me. It's like being excited about picking up a great deal on the Necronomicon that you overlook the fact that all of the previous owners are dead.
Must I point out that the XBox 2 is confirmed to be shipping with IBM's Power PC chip line? That development machines have come on Apple G5's with a special version of Windows loaded?
You can't just swap out the iron and expect everything to work hunky-dorey. That's got to break a lot of drivers, high-end applications, etc, etc... I'd doubt many programs would run without a re-compile.
Probability: not bloody likely.
Next.
You're not visiting websites, you don't go to the library. You haven't traveled outside the country, you don't travel inside the country. You don't belong to any politically active groups, you have never donated to a candidate. You don't talk to weird people. You are not a potential threat. All you do is watch television. And you just aren't living.
I wear my FAA yellow flag as a mark of pride.
But on a more serious note, how is having 300 million suspects better than having none?
He's not actually paying for good reviews. He's charging for bad reviews. There is a big difference. Nearly all games these days recieve a 70% or higher. A truly atrocious game like UFC has earned a 61% on metacritic. Resident Evil: Outbreak even breaks above 70%.
With the tremendous score bloat these days if a game gets below %70 its pretty safe to assume it's junk. Heck, Shrek 2 is above that mark. The only excuse to release a below-70 game is running out of funding, and even that's a mark of bad management.
Honestly, the movie studios taking notice and demanding a little bit of quality is a great thing. Movie licensed games bring in a large number of non-gamers to our world, yet turn off people in droves. The poverty of gameplay is legendary. Now, if only we could make the same arrangement on game to movie licenses...
What exactly are they giving up by only being able to copy once?
For one, the ability to shape the perception of the culture around you. I have an inkling to do a personal project called "Red Sand," a play on "Red Asphault." Horrific photographs and newsreels from Gulf War 1, 2, and 3 would be spliced together with interviews of President Bush in an attempt to recreate the feel of the now infamous Driver's Ed training video. If the broadcast flag prevented me from collecting footage from over-the-air sources, I would need to go begging to CNN or the Rupert-Murdoch owned Fox News channel to get that footage, essentially pricing me out of the cultural exchange of ideas.
Images and ideas significant to a democracy belong to everyone.
You didn't create the content, you dont own it so what divine rights do you have to it?
Divine rights? I believe the term you are looking for is "inalienable." Copyright controls exist to encourage the production of material, in part to stimulate the creative arts and in part to foster discussions significant to society. But they don't extend to ownership of the material. For example, I didn't create your post, and I don't own it, but I violated your copyright without your permission in order to properly discuss the issues at hand. No court in the land would consider that anything other than fair.
Miyamoto was probably counting on the diamond configuration to provide enough tactile feedback to know where your fingers are placed. The SNES controller was a genius of design. The introduction of L/R buttons was really intuitive, and the positioning of the 4 buttons in a diamond (like a D-pad) was so simple that people intuitively "got" which button they were over. Those four buttons were easier to use than the Genesis' 3 buttons.
It's so good that every controller after it has borrowed all of its conventions. Diamond button configuration with shoulder buttons? Cube, Xbox, PS2? Dreamcast, PS1, N64? Even though it messed up my Street Fighter playing for years, the SNES controller really was the best.
Lastly, system splash screens on modern consoles can serve multiple purposes on top of hiding disc load times (if that).
If there was the option for instant boot, would you? Splash screens can be mildly interesting... they can display gameplay hints, serve up humorous in-game advertisements, or even play their own games... but there is no reason why someone would actively want to sit and watch a static image for fifteen seconds. And until techniques improve for more dynamic background loading, that's all people are going to get.
If a sound was perfectly accurate except for an instantaneous annoying pop every few seconds, it would probably average as the best codec, but it would be useless as a consumer standard. I remember a codec shootout years ago where Mp3Pro sounded "tinny," WMA sounded "flat," and MP3 sounded "fuzzy." Was being objectively closer to the source material more important than the type of distortion introduced? Not at all.
When dealing with sound equipment, from pre-amps to encoders, the tone of the introduced distortion is very important. Everything introduces distortion, in some way or another. You just want it to make the sound better, not worse.
The record industry just did a lot of work to set up information toll booths, just to discover that there's a very easy and legal way to work around them.
That's the thing... they didn't even do that much work. They just figured it would all go away, then figured they were entitled to payment despite not having done any work. The RIAA was dragged kicking and screaming into the world of Ringtones, just like it was the world of digital music. Cry not a tear for them, for people turned to illegal content because no legal content was available.
If you really want to keep your batteries in good condition though, you want to look into a microprocessor-based smart charger, which actually checks the voltage level of the battery to determine when it's topped off. The nicest ones even detect the type of battery based on its charge response curve.
But most smart chargers (and nearly all chargers qualify these days) will trickle-charge a set of batteries to keep them topped off. This trickle-charging is nice for pulling a set of AA's out of a charger in the morning and having full power available, but if you're leaving on vacation the constant trickle heats the battery enough to cause it to vent, losing it's ability to hold a charge. This is the same effect you see with people who leave their cell-phones plugged in. In an effort to keep their batteries constantly charged, they're actually heating them enough to break them.
It has been a year or two since I looked at NiMH chargers seriously, and they may have changed to a more intelligent, less constant system. But somehow I doubt this limitation of the technology will be overcome.
Not because the technology isn't there (remember, we DID go to the moon 35 years ago), but because there might be a .001% chance of something going wrong, and we just can't have that!!
Actually, the shuttle has a roughly %2 failure rate. By comparison, SARS killed about %4 of the people it infected. And the shuttle is about as stable and mature a space launcher as you will find. So in other words, the technology is still gambling with the lives of astronauts, though it is more vegas roulette than russian roulette.
As for being terribly expensive and taking lots of time... You're building a space ship. A space ship. How long would it take you to build a plane from scratch? How long would it take you to build a plane from scratch that people could live in? How long would it take you to build a plane from scratch that can work without oxygen, fly above our atmosphere, and let passengers out in the middle of a vaccuum? Did I mention protect the occupants from solar radiation, withstand several thousand degrees of heat, and recycle all body excretia into drinkable water?
The space plane program is taking forever because the technology isn't there. The kinds of weight-to-thrust ratio to take off without boosters isn't possible without a lot more development of our engine technologies. Remember, our trip to the moon DID cost roughly 200 billion dollars, or 5% of the GDP for several years.
Fox News is no more biased than CNN. They just have a few commentators who lean right.
But unlike CNN, Fox gives them their own show, and tells them to be as overtly political as they like. Fox has never had a problem with Bill O'Reiley for making wild assertions without the slightest bit of supporting evidence. Have you seen such a thing on CNN?
Don't get me wrong, there are commentators on the right who can make a compelling argument involving hard evidence and logic, but none of them are on Fox News.
Most manuals for devices using NiMH and Lithium Ion say the batteries last longer if you keep them charged up (topped off). Otherwise, the deep charge/discharge cycles put a lot of wear on the batteries.
Just for clarity's sake, the "best" way to keep NiMH batteries alive is to keep using them. Charge them up, let them sit, use them a bit, then re-charge after a month or so. If you leave a NiMH battery totally drained, you will hurt the battery... and NiMH batteries drain themselves over time. However, if you leave it charging, you will kill the battery. There is just no good fire and forget storage solution. If you go on an extended vacation, consider giving your lighting equipment to a friend to babysit.
Don't expect any rechargable battery system to last for more than a year or two. Very few stand up to regular use. Think about replacement battery availability carefully when buying new equipment.
If so, I wonder why I've never heard of it...
I don't think anyone ever told me about it. I discovered it one day while taking caffeen pills to stay awake, then immediately giving up and succombing to sleep. Jacobhoupt is the first other person I've heard of who used to do that. I don't think it's a big thing (yet), though I've been telling anyone about it who will listen in the hopes that some enterprising med student will do a rat study to determine just how terrible for you it is. I hate losing those 8* hours a day to just lying in bed, when there is so much more that could be done.
Sleeping in chairs is another secret to getting up and doing work, though I don't think that has to do with being refreshed so much as being uncomfortable.
*Thanks to E3, I don't think I've slept 8 hours in about two months.
Whatever! You'd think the guy was smoking crystal meth or something.
Wasn't that the active ingredient in Crystal Pepsi?
Why not get actual Caffeine or pure Guarana? Of course, I once saw a girl who ate roughly 1 gram of caffeen in a night stay up for 4 days straight while crying and dribbling at the mouth, so don't overdo it.
And as for straight coffee beans... Try instant. Just shovel a few spoonfuls into your mouth, and wash it down with water. 10 seconds and you're super caffinated.
Of course the other secret is to eat 20mg of caffeine immediately before falling asleep. You will awake totally refreshed in about two hours, as if you had a full night's sleep. You do have to make very sure you fall asleep before the caffeine kicks in, or you just won't sleep at all. Long-term effects include improved GPA and complete cardiopulmonary collapse.
I'm a bit disappointed that the propeller is at the front though. It would have been so cool at the back of the main "exhaust". Perhaps even inside it, but I can't really tell from the video if it would be large enough for a small prop.
From the video it looks like the tail-end is dragging down quite a bit. My guess is that the plane gets some of its lift from the propellor being at a slight upward angle, pulling the plane up. In fact, the lower the lift from the ship, the higher the angle of the propellor thereby creating sufficient lift. Plus, with the stability issues it looks like it is having, a propellor in front will tend to straighten the aircraft quite a bit more than a propellor in the back would.
...if you are not yet convinced in XHTML with CSS is artistically pleasing enough for you. It's a better standard than many websites around.
Artistically is one thing, but how about simplifying the development side? The ability to insert separate blocks of HTML seamlessly into a single document without relying upon a perl script or some unlikely-to-work DHTML hack would save people a lot of time, and would let them be a lot more creative with their designs. CSS touches upon this separation of content and layout, but doesn't quite get the concept that layout consists of content.
There are still good reasons to improve the standard.
Looking back at the past few years, games have looked incredibly similar.
Well, somebody needs to talk to their art director...
It just won't accelerate in a vacuum.
Oh, it will accelerate allright. But I don't think angular acceleration is what you want.
Actually, the weight of the bike is roughly 24 lbs. It's using pretty much the same solid-but-heavy stuff Giant uses for their low-end hybrids, but with an additional motor and battery setup. The 39 lb figure does not include the battery, but does include the motor and driving system. 15 lbs for a motor with real torque and a pressure-sensitive drivetrain isn't that much, really.
There are actually some excellent heavier motorcross electric bicycles, though I can't seem to find the link right now, that hit 40 MPH. Even in the realm of regular cycling, you have the freeride bikes that are up in the 30 lbs range.
Furthermore, weight isn't the be-all-end-all of cycling. As you mentioned, the bike goes from 1/6th to 1/3rd of the weight of the rider. That means the mass of the system goes from being roughly 170 lbs to 190 lbs... a total increase of about 10%. That number is a little deceptive, because the nimbleness of the rider + bike system is altered by having more mass on the bike, but it really isn't that bad if the bike is driving the rider.
Quality (wheel) bearings aren't all they're cracked up to be. A high-quality drivetrain and average bearings will save more kinetic energy then high-quality bearings and an average drivetrain. I always find it amusing when people put 200 dollar hubs on tires that have any kind of tread pattern. A 100 dollar pair of Michelins will shave a lot more time. Besides, the top-of-the-line is intended to be stripped apart, cleaned, and re-assembled between every race. Without that, they break down quickly. Ever see a Dura-Ace bottom bracket of a weekend cyclist?
Top speed really isn't a function of the quality of bearings at all... roll time is. But in this case roll time is increased by the additional mass. Hill-climbing likewise isn't about higher-pressure tires, but torque. For this bike a pair of $10 toe clips would go a long way to greatly increasing the hill-climbing abilities, top speed, and cruising speed of this bike.
If he hasn't already, the original poster should visit electric-bikes.com. Good resource of available toys, albeit a little out of date.
Not to start a flamewar, but Debian's installer isn't as bad as it used to be by a long shot. The 3.x branch doesn't autodetect as much as it should (give up on sound) but it does work more often than not, with little end-user knowledge. Besides the incessant babysitting required, it's pretty easy.
Now, configuring Debian... you're on your own. Apt-Get is also very nice, but it also prevents you from knowing what is going on under the hood, which keeps you from fixing things when they break. And if you're a new linux user in a non-production environment, they will break. I'd consider Debian bad for learning.
If you want to learn about Linux, start with a Mandrake download and stay away from the auto-install software routines. Do things on your own, with the knowledge that whatever you setup will be lost when you advance to Gentoo (or whatever)
Yes, there would be a lot of ethical questions about paying our Nintendo Superstars more than our teachers or our police or what have you. But people don't seem to mind that much with professional athletes. Why think of pro gamers any differently?
To put this in perspective, Albert Bell signed a 5-year, 65 million dollar contract. The median income in MLB is 800,000 dollars per season. Tiger Woods made an estimated 78 million for 2002-2003, including endorsements. This #1 highest ranked korean professional videogame player is making less than 200k per year.
If conjecture and heresay are true, it is the rare US "professional" player that earns as much as a teacher. South Korea has always been a little ahead of the curve when it comes to integrating videogames and society, but even then 100,000 dollars is lower than the top bracket in most professions. True, it is the rare public school teacher that makes 180k, but school superintendents do on occasion make that much. And what about corporate training programs, or inspirational speakers?
To me, 200,000k sounds "fair."
There was actually an audio-only game released in Japan for the Saturn and Dreamcast, Kaze no Regret. Sadly, it is Japan only,
Harmonix Music also makes Karaoke Revolution, a game which could have far more accessable menus, but once the player gets through the menu structure the game is all about singing, which anyone can do (though generally poorly).
I had been getting bad parts from MicroCenter for several weeks, had been dutifully diagnosing them and returning things that didn't work as I was desperately trying to complete a system that did. As I had bought the processor and motherboard as a pair, and the motherboard wasn't working, they wanted to refund only the total deal cost minus the non-sale cost of processor, leaving me with a processor costing about 20 dollars more than the identical ones they had on sale.
"We can take back the motherboard, but not the processor"
"Why can't you take back the processor?"
"Because you've opened it. We only take returns if it is unopened, or we can exchange it if it is defective."
"Can I at least get the sale price for the processor?"
"No, because you bought the 'bundle' processor, not the 'sale' processor."
"That doesn't make sense. They're the same processor, in the same box, with the same SKU..."
"Sorry."
"If I tell you it's defective, are you going to take my word for it like the other half-dozen parts I've returned."
"Yes."
"And if I get that exchange processor, the exchange processor is in a returnable, unopened state, correct?"
"...Yes..."
"Can you see where I'm going with this?"
"...Sales price it is."
.xxx - I hate having to wade through all of those medical sites looking for real naughty bits.
.gog - why go to the site when you can go to google's cache of the site?
.sucks - Want to know the other side of the story? For that matter, want to pay a cybersquatter to make sure that nobody else does?
.con - Make it far easier to scam unwitting illiterate computer users. Only compatible with Outlook.
.© - Hide your most valuable works behind an impenetrable shield of people's incompetence with a keyboard.