Seriously. My wife is a librarian, and was quite enthralled with the hotel -- until she actually looked at the list of rooms. The DDC numbers are not correct. For example:
General Knowledge is 000, not 1000. Philosophy is 100, not 1100. Religion is 200, not 1200. Biography is not 900.006, it's 920. Computers are 004, not 600.005. If pornography has a classification, it is definately not 800.001.
The major classifications are close, but all the subclassifications are completely incorrect. I know this sounds like nitpicking crap, but librarians are more anal about their classification systems than geeks are about Linux kernals.
I remembered this, so I went looking for it. Amazing what you can pull up on google. The shed did not glow. He did however, make a makeshift breeder reactor and enough radioactive material to be detected from five houses down.
The F1 wasn't hard to federalize, and there have been examples over here almost since the introduction. There's a guy in Dallas who uses one for his daily driver.
First, my commute at one time was nearly 100 miles one way, and except for a few miles in dense city traffic, driving under 80 was a laughbale concept.
Now, just for the record, I'm going to compare the Civic Hybrid with the Civic LX because other than the powerplant, these are roughly comparable cars.
So, to make up the price difference, let's say that fuel costs $1.50 a gallon, which is about average this year. That's 3,333 gallons of fuel you can buy with the $5,000 premium you pay on the Hybrid. Which should carry you about 113,300 miles in the Civic LX. Somewhere just north of 300,000 miles, you'll recoup your initial investment. Or, to quote Car and Driver: "If you drive 15,000 miles every year, and gas is $1.50 a gallon, you'll save about $240 a year. To realize this saving, you will have paid a solid $5000 more than the price of an LX. Put that increment in a money-market account at five percent, and you'll earn $250 every year. You will never save enough gas to pay back the premium." Not exactly what I'd call economical.
Now, let's look at performance. I'll start with 0-30, since you seem to think that will be SO much better.
Don't get me wrong, the hybrids are a neat trick and an interesting tech toy. However, they are much more expensive and much slower than a comparable car, and as such, do not have any real advantages over conventional transportation. In my mind, you currently have to give up a lot of things, including intangible things like luxury items, for the sake of feeling good about saving the environment. I say 'feeling good'because both vehicles are ULEVs, and the differences in emissions between the two are minute even over 100,000 miles.
You're forgetting the weight of the Smart and Lupo, and the weight penalty for having a hybrid.
For the record: Honda DX Coupe: 2403 lbs Honda Civic Hybrid: 2698 lbs Toyota Prius: 2765 lbs Smart City-Coupe: 1601 lbs Volkswagon Lupo: 1685 lbs
You don't need as much horsepower when you're lugging around a car that weighs almost half as much. I'd also argue that driving in Europe is completely different than driving in the states, and these are very niche vehicles that would not be practical for most Americans. These cars are typically very slow 0-60, and not really suited for the autobahn. However, they are great for navigating congested cities with street grids designed in the middle ages.
9.3 is just a bit slower than class average for an economy car. Class average is about 8.9 seconds to 60. These are also typically among the slowest cars available, due to the small engines tuned for fuel economy.
Even so, an Insight is 20% slower than your already slow Civic. You may not feel your Civic is slow, but when 90% of available consumer cars, trucks, and SUV's are faster, it is indeed slow. In the consumer space, there are two cars slower than the Insight, the Prius, and the original Hummer (slower than both by a long shot), which is arguably a commercial, off-road, or military vehicle.
Acceleration is not the end-all, be-all of a car, but there are times when it is desperately needed, and many more times when it is greatly desired. As the original author was trying to suggest that these cars should have decent acceleration, I think it's quite relevant to point out they are the slowest cars you can buy.
Sure, that goes for just about any car. They've got a certain amount of safety engineered into that maximum weight limit, just like anything else. An elevator may support 2000 pounds, but you can probably put 2200 in there without any real problems. You could probably do it day in and day out, but you will accelerate wear on that machine, and you may break or wear out parts that would otherwise never need replacing. Hell, when I was college we once put a pallet of concrete in the bed of a 3/4 ton pickup with no damage. That's forty 80 pound bags of concrete. I'll let you do the math. No damage done, but I wouldn't have done it twice.
So, you can certainly exceed that limit, and I know I've done in nearly every car I've ever owned, but I wouldn't recommend making a habit out of it. Plus, as low as the Insight's weight limit is, you can easily exceed it without realizing, and I would imagine you don't have a lot of leeway for overloading. Even a 30% margin of safety only gives you 475 pounds of cargo. I know a few couples who would exceed that without any 'cargo' to speak of.
You're forgetting the cost of replacing the battery pack in ten years. Unlike an engine that you can baby forever, these battery packs will die and will nessessitate replacement. The cost of replacement is estimated to be around five thousand dollars. When the car is worth $2000 in ten years with a good battery, replacement isn't going to be economical.
Remember too, the Insight has a maximum payload of 365 pounds -- including passengers. Hope you don't know anyone who's even slightly overweight.
Sorry, Corvette AND Hummer. That'll teach me to just click "submit". For the record, they are in there only to bracket out "extremely slow" and "extremely fast".
Sure, it has maximum torque at zero RPM (the torque curve is actually flat), but generating that power takes a lot of juice, and delivering it to electric motors without completely draining the batteries hasn't really been solved yet. So, while the car will feel faster than it actually is, it will still be quite slow unless you're willing to trade off a lot of battery life.
For the record, using Car and Driver's data, here's the 0-60 and 1/4 mile times for the hybrids and a few comparisons (Ford Escape/Mazda Tribute Hybrid not tested).
Toyota Prius: 13.0 0-60 and 19.2 1/4 mile Honda Insight: 11.1 0-60 and 18.3 1/4 mile Hummer H2: 10.7 0-60 and 17.6 1/4 mile Honda Civic: 9.3 0-60 and 17.2 1/4 mile Mazda Protege: 9.2 0-60 and 17.0 1/4 mile Toyota Corolla: 8.2 0-60 and 16.4 1/4 mile Ford SVT Focus: 7.8 0-60 and 16.1 1/4 mile MazdaSpeed Protege: 6.9 0-60 and 15.4 1/4 mile Honda Accord: 7.0 0-60 and 15.5 1/4 mile Mini Cooper S: 7.0 0-60 and 15.5 1/4 mile Mitsubishi Eclipse GTS: 6.7 0-60 and 15.2 1/4 mile Subaru Impreza WRX: 5.4 0-60 and 14.1 1/4 mile Chevrolet Corvette: 4.5 0-60 and 13.1 1/4 mile
So, yes, these hybrids are indeed slow. Slower, in fact, than almost any car you can buy. With the exception of the Corvette, which I put in for comparison only, all of the above cars are within a few thousand dollars of either hybrid, and most are cheaper. Just a thought.
Stealing an ambulance seems to work better and quicker. Or, finding a heart icon.
Honestly, I've gotten 100% on both GTA3 and GTA: Vice City, and I've never used the hooker trick in the course of the game. I used it once or twice in GTA3, just to see how it worked, and probably a half dozen times to show friends who wanted to know what all the hoopla was about. It's far from an intergal part of the game.
That won't always work, since most of those terminals now allow manual input, and they don't use the imprint tool unless the power is out. It's simply too easy to 'charge' a stolen, over the limit, closed account, whatever, with the imprint machine.
Some stores will do an imprint of the card on the receipt to show that you actually had the card in your possession, but that really doesn't solve the problem.
Yes, that's all true. However, the DMCA is federal law, and that means you will have to appear in federal court. Have you ever tried to find a lawyer to take on a case for you in federal court? You'll be lucky to find one to take the case without an initial retainer of about $5,000, and you'll likely need something like $10,000. That's just the initial retainer. If he blows through that, you'll have to pay more.
Of course, federal court also doesn't move very fast. So, you can expect to be in there at least a year or so with your lawyer just trying to get to summary judgement. And then, God forbid, if there are appeals, or you lose. It is possible to lose a case in federal civil court even when you are in the right, as the burden of proof is much less than in a criminal case. Oh, and just because you do manage to win, that doesn't automatically mean you'll get your money back either. You'll have to go to federal court again and win it back.
Can you afford to tie up five or ten grand of your money for year or more fighting this thing out, especially when there's no promise you'll ever see the money again -- and you may have to pay additional money in fines if you lose? Or will you just take the 'settlement offer' and be done with it?
I know what the answer is, because DirecTV has been prosecuting cases under the DMCA for the past year and a half, and I've been watching it very closely. They have done almost exactly what the RIAA is doing, filing lawsuits on end users without any evidence that will hold up in a court of law. One of these persons has fought the case and won, in Michigan. He did not win back his court fees, lost wages, legal fess, or anything else. All that fight came out of his pocket. Cases have been thrown out in California and South Carolina -- but whatever those defendants paid in legal fees, they have not seen a dime of it back either, and the California cases were settled over a year ago.
No, most people chose to settle, because at $3500, it was just cheaper to pay up than to fight it out. Thousands have already settled. The ones who didn't pay attention to what they were signing have also opened themselves up to criminal prosecution because they freely admit that they have stolen and decrypted satellite signals. DirecTV claims they will not share this information with a federal prosecuter, but what they don't tell you is that they do not have a choice. If the federal prosecuter asks for the list of people who have sworn in a signed legal document that they have committed a crime, DirecTV must turn over their names. Then, it's up to the federal government, not DirecTV, if they want to pursue a case.
Oh, and the people who settled in California, before all the lawsuits were thrown out for lack of evidence? They filed a class action suit to get their 'extortion' money back from DirecTV. They lost.
Yes, content providers need to be able to protect their content, but they shouldn't be able to use the court system as a set of brass knuckles. "You're innocent? Fuck you. Pay me."
OK, let me put it another way. When these consoles first came out, you couldn't get a decent DVD player for $60. Not only that, but as a kid, it was simply easier for me to ask for one $200 item for Christmas than it was to ask for a $150 item and a $60 item. I was very likely to get the $200 item, but I was very unlikey to get both the $150 and $60 items, even though their prices were nearly the same. I also know that I can justify one piece of electronic equipment to my wife easier than I can justify two, even if the prices are almost exactly the same.
I also know that there is a sizeable amount of the population who can't afford a DVD player and a game console -- unless they are bundled together.
Sure, for most of us, we'd rather have a real DVD player, but for some, they see some real value in the mediocre PS2 or X-Box DVD players. They get a game console for the kids or themselves or the family, and the whole family gets a DVD player.
Also, thinking back to when I was a child, getting a DVD player and a separate game console would have taken two major holidays or a lot of sacrifice to scrape up the money. Even if the games were better on the GameCube, I'd be seriously tempted to purchase a PS2 or X-Box just for the embedded DVD player.
It seems like these guys lay low so that geeks like us can't find them and harrass them. But, this has always begged the question in my mind, how do their customers find them?
Not that I want to spam mind you, but it seems like they have more than a few customers, and yet, it seems next to impossible to find a point of contact for these people.
Something tells me that SCO isn't going after companies that deploy Linux on 1,000 or 10,000 servers. I would be willing to bet that most companies sued under this 'policy' will have less than 10 servers -- or will get some kind of special site license deal.
The idea in lawsuits like these is not to charge hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. The point is to keep the final 'extortion'fee under about $10,000. At that point, it's simply more economical to choose to pay than to try to fight this out in federal court (and if you think they are going to try you at the local magistrate, you're sadly mistaken).
Yes, it's true that many larger companies have lawers on staff, but I've worked for many companies that weren't small and didn't have a full time corporate lawyer. Most moderate sized companies will keep a lawyer on retainer, and bring them in every so often to discuss contracts and other legal things. Remember though, that keeping a lawyer on retainer only costs when you use them, but when you decide to use them as you would in this case, it comes directly out of your pocketbook. Add to that fact that it's difficult for a lawyer to get out of representing you once they've been named as councel in federal court, and few lawyers will even accept the case unless you have about $5,000 in retainer fees for them to burn through.
Oh, and not every lawyer is licensed to practice in federal court.
Really? Please, point me to a lawyer that will handle a defense case on contingency. I know several lawyers personally, including one who works almost exclusively on contingency, and not one of them will take do a defense case without money up front.
I mentioned earlier that I didn't think these cases could survive discovery. However, unless you have a corporate lawyer on staff, it will likely cost you more than $700 just to get to discovery. And, that's why these businesses will pay up -- because it's cheaper to just pay the $700 extortion fee than to spend thousands of dollars just to prove that you shouldn't have to pay the fee.
I'm not a big fan of the 'loser pays' court system, but something has to be done to stop these extortion lawsuits (SCO isn't the only one doing this) that have absolutely no legal merit.
Maybe, but if the 'small time offenders' settle, there's no legal precedence. I think it's a money fishing campaign, where they say, "send us $700 or we'll sue you in federal court." Everyone knows that just going to court will cost you far more than $700 even if you win, so rather than fight the extortion, they just pay.
It doesn't set precedent, but SCO gets their money and that's what they really want.
Of course, if someone does go to court, they won't be able to put up the kind of legal assault that IBM will, and possibly precedent will end up being set, but I highly suspect that IBM's case will be settled before any of these cases make it through the court system. I also wonder if SCO's case would survive discovery.
I love the way that proponents of global warming keep changing the definition.
In the 70's, it was global cooling, the impending ice age.
Then, global warming became the chic model.
Then, when some said "locally, things don't seem to be any warmer", it became "that's because global warming causes global cooling as well. You know, extreme weather patterns."
Later, some said, "well, overall, the earth doesn't seem to be heating up." That was countered with "global warming doesn't cause warming everywhere.
So what is it? Does global warming truely warm up the globe? Or does it cool it down? Or do we just get 'extreme weather' -- none of which, mind you, is as extreme as it's been in the past, like the Dust Bowl of the 1930's.
I'm still not convinced that global warming is occuring. I'm even less convinced that it's not within the realm of normal fluctuation.
The world has been much colder and much warmer in the past thousand or so years. There was an unusually warm period from 950-1045, with temperatures warmer than they are today. You'll find increased food production during that period, and parts of Europe grew crops that are not sustainable in today's climate. Also during this time, the Vikings took advantage of ice-free seas to colonize Greenland and other outlying lands of the far north. The period was followed by the Little Ice Age, a period of cooling that lasted until the 18th century.
The Little Ice Age brought bitterly cold winters to many parts of the world, but is most thoroughly documented in Europe and North America. In the mid-17th century, glaciers in the Swiss Alps advanced, gradually engulfing farms and crushing entire villages. The Thames river and the canals and rivers of the Netherlands often froze over during the winter, and people skated and even held fairs on the ice. In the winter of 1780, New York Harbor froze, allowing people to walk from Manhattan to Staten Island. Sea ice surrounding Iceland extended for miles in every direction, closing that island nation's harbors to shipping.
Let us not forget that that big ball of fire in our sky does not have a thermostat. It is sometimes cooler and sometimes warmer. The earth also does not contain a thermostat, and its climate has fluctuated over time as well. Even your house, which does have a thermostat, doesn't maintain a constant temperature, it still fluctuates several degrees around the setpoint -- and can be overwhelmed by factors outside the 'climate' of the house itself.
I know I had more fun creatively killing the cannonballer than I did getting him into the water tank. Past a certain point, getting him into the tank wasn't much of a challenge.
Put all your sensitive data on a seperate server and encrypt it with a very complex and strong password that you never write down or commit to memory. Never shut that machine down.
When the feds come, they'll shut your computer down to take it with them. At that point, everything is locked away with a password that you don't know and never knew.
Have you ever looked under the hood of your Chevy? Chances are that it is running a Mitsubishi engine!
Actually, it's more likely it would be a Saab, Opel, Holden, Vauxhall, Fiat, Subaru, Isuzu, or Suzuki power plant, since those are foreign companies in which GM owns a controlling share and commonly shares parts with. You'd likely find Mitsubishi power plants in Chrysler cars, and Mazda engines in Ford products, but I digress.
I'm not saying that certain engines can't be dropped into certain cars with little or no modification. I'm also not saying that you won't find domestic cars with foreign engines or foreign cars with domestic engines. What I am saying is that you can't just take any old engine and just drop it into any old car and expect it to work with little modification. You can't even always do that when you stick to cars in the same product line. You can't put the wonderful Mazda MX-6 (Ford Probe) V-6 powerplant into a Mazda Miata. Sure, it'll fit. You can even overcome the fact that the MX-6 is a front wheel drive car, and the Miata is rear wheel drive. What you can't overcome is the fact that the engine was tilted to the rear in the original application for hood clearance. When you stand it up straight for rear wheel drive, you have problems with oil flow through the engine, and the engine burns up.
You can also cram a Corvette V-8 into your RX-7 or your Miata, but no one's gotten the latter to actually run yet, and judging from past motor swaps I've seen, they are very rarely as trouble free as the original motor. Not that the motor itself is to blame, but modern engines have a lot of inputs provided to them by various electronic and mechanical bits inside the car, all of which you must find a way to interface (it's not a common interface, remember), and then you have to somehow match everything up to the driveline, fuel systems, etc. Very rarely is an engine conversion a 'bolt-on' operation, and even then, it's usually because the two engines share a common chassis somewhere in the original manufacturer's catalog.
The motorhome industry has been operating like this for years, you chose the interior, the engine, instrumentation, accessories, placement of the windows, type of chairs etc. At the end of the process you have D.O.T. approved vehicle on the road. Of course, you pay for the custom options.
Yes, they do, and have you checked into how much a motorhome costs? Granted, they are big, but they are very expensive because a lot of stuff is custom fabricated and custom ordered. They also don't deal in the bulk that most car manufacturers do, which enables them to take more time with each vehicle. You also don't get a huge range of choices, in the lower lines, you may only get one(!) floorplan and one engine choice. Even in the upper lines, you may only get five choices of floorplans and five engine choices, and your engine choices are usually those offered in whatever vehicle the original chassis came from. You don't just get to pick any engine. I've seen full sized pickups with more options.
A far better comparison would have been a Maybach or a Rolls-Royce. They do plenty of personalization, allowing you to pick any color your want and any wood and fabric you want -- even if they don't have it. They'll even modify the car within reason. They also cost a ton of money, and a big part of that is the custom service you're getting. However, it's a bit like comparing apples and oranges. These BTO cars are meant to compete at low prices. Maybach can charge pretty much whatever it wants.
You need to hang out at the local performance shop. Cars, trucks, and cycles were hacked long before the first Univac.
Do you mean the local rice boy shop, or do you mean a shop where they do serious work? I'm not going to claim I hang out with Jesse James or anything, but I know my way around a
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously. My wife is a librarian, and was quite enthralled with the hotel -- until she actually looked at the list of rooms. The DDC numbers are not correct. For example:
General Knowledge is 000, not 1000.
Philosophy is 100, not 1100.
Religion is 200, not 1200.
Biography is not 900.006, it's 920.
Computers are 004, not 600.005.
If pornography has a classification, it is definately not 800.001.
The major classifications are close, but all the subclassifications are completely incorrect. I know this sounds like nitpicking crap, but librarians are more anal about their classification systems than geeks are about Linux kernals.
I remembered this, so I went looking for it. Amazing what you can pull up on google. The shed did not glow. He did however, make a makeshift breeder reactor and enough radioactive material to be detected from five houses down.
The tale of the radioactive boyscout
The F1 wasn't hard to federalize, and there have been examples over here almost since the introduction. There's a guy in Dallas who uses one for his daily driver.
First, my commute at one time was nearly 100 miles one way, and except for a few miles in dense city traffic, driving under 80 was a laughbale concept.
Now, just for the record, I'm going to compare the Civic Hybrid with the Civic LX because other than the powerplant, these are roughly comparable cars.
First, price.
Civic LX: $15,570
Civic Hybrid: $20,550
Already, we're a sizeable premium just for the hybrid power plant.
Fuel economy:
Civic LX: 34 mpg
Civic Hybrid: 51 mpg
So, to make up the price difference, let's say that fuel costs $1.50 a gallon, which is about average this year. That's 3,333 gallons of fuel you can buy with the $5,000 premium you pay on the Hybrid. Which should carry you about 113,300 miles in the Civic LX. Somewhere just north of 300,000 miles, you'll recoup your initial investment. Or, to quote Car and Driver: "If you drive 15,000 miles every year, and gas is $1.50 a gallon, you'll save about $240 a year. To realize this saving, you will have paid a solid $5000 more than the price of an LX. Put that increment in a money-market account at five percent, and you'll earn $250 every year. You will never save enough gas to pay back the premium." Not exactly what I'd call economical.
Now, let's look at performance. I'll start with 0-30, since you seem to think that will be SO much better.
Civic LX: 3.1 seconds
Civic Hybrid (full charge): 3.4 seconds
Civic Hybrid (half charge): 4.2 seconds
Not a huge difference, but the hybrid is still not faster, and if it's not fully charged, it's quite a bit slower. But, lets look at 0-60.
Civic LX: 9.3 seconds
Civic Hybrid (full charge): 10.9
Civic Hybrid (half charge): 13.1
Personally for me, 13.1 0-60 is getting into the "I've got to be really careful merging into traffic or passing" category. But wait! There's more!
Top Gear Acceleration 30-50 mph
Civic LX: 13.9 seconds
Civic Hybrid (full charge): 15.9 seconds
Civic Hybrid (half charge): 22.9 seconds
Don't get me wrong, the hybrids are a neat trick and an interesting tech toy. However, they are much more expensive and much slower than a comparable car, and as such, do not have any real advantages over conventional transportation. In my mind, you currently have to give up a lot of things, including intangible things like luxury items, for the sake of feeling good about saving the environment. I say 'feeling good'because both vehicles are ULEVs, and the differences in emissions between the two are minute even over 100,000 miles.
You're forgetting the weight of the Smart and Lupo, and the weight penalty for having a hybrid.
For the record:
Honda DX Coupe: 2403 lbs
Honda Civic Hybrid: 2698 lbs
Toyota Prius: 2765 lbs
Smart City-Coupe: 1601 lbs
Volkswagon Lupo: 1685 lbs
You don't need as much horsepower when you're lugging around a car that weighs almost half as much. I'd also argue that driving in Europe is completely different than driving in the states, and these are very niche vehicles that would not be practical for most Americans. These cars are typically very slow 0-60, and not really suited for the autobahn. However, they are great for navigating congested cities with street grids designed in the middle ages.
9.3 is just a bit slower than class average for an economy car. Class average is about 8.9 seconds to 60. These are also typically among the slowest cars available, due to the small engines tuned for fuel economy.
Even so, an Insight is 20% slower than your already slow Civic. You may not feel your Civic is slow, but when 90% of available consumer cars, trucks, and SUV's are faster, it is indeed slow. In the consumer space, there are two cars slower than the Insight, the Prius, and the original Hummer (slower than both by a long shot), which is arguably a commercial, off-road, or military vehicle.
Acceleration is not the end-all, be-all of a car, but there are times when it is desperately needed, and many more times when it is greatly desired. As the original author was trying to suggest that these cars should have decent acceleration, I think it's quite relevant to point out they are the slowest cars you can buy.
Sure, that goes for just about any car. They've got a certain amount of safety engineered into that maximum weight limit, just like anything else. An elevator may support 2000 pounds, but you can probably put 2200 in there without any real problems. You could probably do it day in and day out, but you will accelerate wear on that machine, and you may break or wear out parts that would otherwise never need replacing. Hell, when I was college we once put a pallet of concrete in the bed of a 3/4 ton pickup with no damage. That's forty 80 pound bags of concrete. I'll let you do the math. No damage done, but I wouldn't have done it twice.
So, you can certainly exceed that limit, and I know I've done in nearly every car I've ever owned, but I wouldn't recommend making a habit out of it. Plus, as low as the Insight's weight limit is, you can easily exceed it without realizing, and I would imagine you don't have a lot of leeway for overloading. Even a 30% margin of safety only gives you 475 pounds of cargo. I know a few couples who would exceed that without any 'cargo' to speak of.
You're forgetting the cost of replacing the battery pack in ten years. Unlike an engine that you can baby forever, these battery packs will die and will nessessitate replacement. The cost of replacement is estimated to be around five thousand dollars. When the car is worth $2000 in ten years with a good battery, replacement isn't going to be economical.
Remember too, the Insight has a maximum payload of 365 pounds -- including passengers. Hope you don't know anyone who's even slightly overweight.
Sorry, Corvette AND Hummer. That'll teach me to just click "submit". For the record, they are in there only to bracket out "extremely slow" and "extremely fast".
Sure, it has maximum torque at zero RPM (the torque curve is actually flat), but generating that power takes a lot of juice, and delivering it to electric motors without completely draining the batteries hasn't really been solved yet. So, while the car will feel faster than it actually is, it will still be quite slow unless you're willing to trade off a lot of battery life.
/Mazda Tribute Hybrid not tested).
For the record, using Car and Driver's data, here's the 0-60 and 1/4 mile times for the hybrids and a few comparisons (Ford Escape
Toyota Prius: 13.0 0-60 and 19.2 1/4 mile
Honda Insight: 11.1 0-60 and 18.3 1/4 mile
Hummer H2: 10.7 0-60 and 17.6 1/4 mile
Honda Civic: 9.3 0-60 and 17.2 1/4 mile
Mazda Protege: 9.2 0-60 and 17.0 1/4 mile
Toyota Corolla: 8.2 0-60 and 16.4 1/4 mile
Ford SVT Focus: 7.8 0-60 and 16.1 1/4 mile
MazdaSpeed Protege: 6.9 0-60 and 15.4 1/4 mile
Honda Accord: 7.0 0-60 and 15.5 1/4 mile
Mini Cooper S: 7.0 0-60 and 15.5 1/4 mile
Mitsubishi Eclipse GTS: 6.7 0-60 and 15.2 1/4 mile
Subaru Impreza WRX: 5.4 0-60 and 14.1 1/4 mile
Chevrolet Corvette: 4.5 0-60 and 13.1 1/4 mile
So, yes, these hybrids are indeed slow. Slower, in fact, than almost any car you can buy. With the exception of the Corvette, which I put in for comparison only, all of the above cars are within a few thousand dollars of either hybrid, and most are cheaper. Just a thought.
Stealing an ambulance seems to work better and quicker. Or, finding a heart icon.
Honestly, I've gotten 100% on both GTA3 and GTA: Vice City, and I've never used the hooker trick in the course of the game. I used it once or twice in GTA3, just to see how it worked, and probably a half dozen times to show friends who wanted to know what all the hoopla was about. It's far from an intergal part of the game.
That won't always work, since most of those terminals now allow manual input, and they don't use the imprint tool unless the power is out. It's simply too easy to 'charge' a stolen, over the limit, closed account, whatever, with the imprint machine.
Some stores will do an imprint of the card on the receipt to show that you actually had the card in your possession, but that really doesn't solve the problem.
Yes, that's all true. However, the DMCA is federal law, and that means you will have to appear in federal court. Have you ever tried to find a lawyer to take on a case for you in federal court? You'll be lucky to find one to take the case without an initial retainer of about $5,000, and you'll likely need something like $10,000. That's just the initial retainer. If he blows through that, you'll have to pay more.
Of course, federal court also doesn't move very fast. So, you can expect to be in there at least a year or so with your lawyer just trying to get to summary judgement. And then, God forbid, if there are appeals, or you lose. It is possible to lose a case in federal civil court even when you are in the right, as the burden of proof is much less than in a criminal case. Oh, and just because you do manage to win, that doesn't automatically mean you'll get your money back either. You'll have to go to federal court again and win it back.
Can you afford to tie up five or ten grand of your money for year or more fighting this thing out, especially when there's no promise you'll ever see the money again -- and you may have to pay additional money in fines if you lose? Or will you just take the 'settlement offer' and be done with it?
I know what the answer is, because DirecTV has been prosecuting cases under the DMCA for the past year and a half, and I've been watching it very closely. They have done almost exactly what the RIAA is doing, filing lawsuits on end users without any evidence that will hold up in a court of law. One of these persons has fought the case and won, in Michigan. He did not win back his court fees, lost wages, legal fess, or anything else. All that fight came out of his pocket. Cases have been thrown out in California and South Carolina -- but whatever those defendants paid in legal fees, they have not seen a dime of it back either, and the California cases were settled over a year ago.
No, most people chose to settle, because at $3500, it was just cheaper to pay up than to fight it out. Thousands have already settled. The ones who didn't pay attention to what they were signing have also opened themselves up to criminal prosecution because they freely admit that they have stolen and decrypted satellite signals. DirecTV claims they will not share this information with a federal prosecuter, but what they don't tell you is that they do not have a choice. If the federal prosecuter asks for the list of people who have sworn in a signed legal document that they have committed a crime, DirecTV must turn over their names. Then, it's up to the federal government, not DirecTV, if they want to pursue a case.
Oh, and the people who settled in California, before all the lawsuits were thrown out for lack of evidence? They filed a class action suit to get their 'extortion' money back from DirecTV. They lost.
Yes, content providers need to be able to protect their content, but they shouldn't be able to use the court system as a set of brass knuckles. "You're innocent? Fuck you. Pay me."
OK, let me put it another way. When these consoles first came out, you couldn't get a decent DVD player for $60. Not only that, but as a kid, it was simply easier for me to ask for one $200 item for Christmas than it was to ask for a $150 item and a $60 item. I was very likely to get the $200 item, but I was very unlikey to get both the $150 and $60 items, even though their prices were nearly the same. I also know that I can justify one piece of electronic equipment to my wife easier than I can justify two, even if the prices are almost exactly the same.
I also know that there is a sizeable amount of the population who can't afford a DVD player and a game console -- unless they are bundled together.
Sure, for most of us, we'd rather have a real DVD player, but for some, they see some real value in the mediocre PS2 or X-Box DVD players. They get a game console for the kids or themselves or the family, and the whole family gets a DVD player.
Also, thinking back to when I was a child, getting a DVD player and a separate game console would have taken two major holidays or a lot of sacrifice to scrape up the money. Even if the games were better on the GameCube, I'd be seriously tempted to purchase a PS2 or X-Box just for the embedded DVD player.
It seems like these guys lay low so that geeks like us can't find them and harrass them. But, this has always begged the question in my mind, how do their customers find them?
Not that I want to spam mind you, but it seems like they have more than a few customers, and yet, it seems next to impossible to find a point of contact for these people.
Something tells me that SCO isn't going after companies that deploy Linux on 1,000 or 10,000 servers. I would be willing to bet that most companies sued under this 'policy' will have less than 10 servers -- or will get some kind of special site license deal.
The idea in lawsuits like these is not to charge hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. The point is to keep the final 'extortion'fee under about $10,000. At that point, it's simply more economical to choose to pay than to try to fight this out in federal court (and if you think they are going to try you at the local magistrate, you're sadly mistaken).
Yes, it's true that many larger companies have lawers on staff, but I've worked for many companies that weren't small and didn't have a full time corporate lawyer. Most moderate sized companies will keep a lawyer on retainer, and bring them in every so often to discuss contracts and other legal things. Remember though, that keeping a lawyer on retainer only costs when you use them, but when you decide to use them as you would in this case, it comes directly out of your pocketbook. Add to that fact that it's difficult for a lawyer to get out of representing you once they've been named as councel in federal court, and few lawyers will even accept the case unless you have about $5,000 in retainer fees for them to burn through.
Oh, and not every lawyer is licensed to practice in federal court.
Really? Please, point me to a lawyer that will handle a defense case on contingency. I know several lawyers personally, including one who works almost exclusively on contingency, and not one of them will take do a defense case without money up front.
I mentioned earlier that I didn't think these cases could survive discovery. However, unless you have a corporate lawyer on staff, it will likely cost you more than $700 just to get to discovery. And, that's why these businesses will pay up -- because it's cheaper to just pay the $700 extortion fee than to spend thousands of dollars just to prove that you shouldn't have to pay the fee.
I'm not a big fan of the 'loser pays' court system, but something has to be done to stop these extortion lawsuits (SCO isn't the only one doing this) that have absolutely no legal merit.
Maybe, but if the 'small time offenders' settle, there's no legal precedence. I think it's a money fishing campaign, where they say, "send us $700 or we'll sue you in federal court." Everyone knows that just going to court will cost you far more than $700 even if you win, so rather than fight the extortion, they just pay.
It doesn't set precedent, but SCO gets their money and that's what they really want.
Of course, if someone does go to court, they won't be able to put up the kind of legal assault that IBM will, and possibly precedent will end up being set, but I highly suspect that IBM's case will be settled before any of these cases make it through the court system. I also wonder if SCO's case would survive discovery.
I love the way that proponents of global warming keep changing the definition.
In the 70's, it was global cooling, the impending ice age.
Then, global warming became the chic model.
Then, when some said "locally, things don't seem to be any warmer", it became "that's because global warming causes global cooling as well. You know, extreme weather patterns."
Later, some said, "well, overall, the earth doesn't seem to be heating up." That was countered with "global warming doesn't cause warming everywhere.
So what is it? Does global warming truely warm up the globe? Or does it cool it down? Or do we just get 'extreme weather' -- none of which, mind you, is as extreme as it's been in the past, like the Dust Bowl of the 1930's.
I'm still not convinced that global warming is occuring. I'm even less convinced that it's not within the realm of normal fluctuation.
The world has been much colder and much warmer in the past thousand or so years. There was an unusually warm period from 950-1045, with temperatures warmer than they are today. You'll find increased food production during that period, and parts of Europe grew crops that are not sustainable in today's climate. Also during this time, the Vikings took advantage of ice-free seas to colonize Greenland and other outlying lands of the far north. The period was followed by the Little Ice Age, a period of cooling that lasted until the 18th century.
The Little Ice Age brought bitterly cold winters to many parts of the world, but is most thoroughly documented in Europe and North America. In the mid-17th century, glaciers in the Swiss Alps advanced, gradually engulfing farms and crushing entire villages. The Thames river and the canals and rivers of the Netherlands often froze over during the winter, and people skated and even held fairs on the ice. In the winter of 1780, New York Harbor froze, allowing people to walk from Manhattan to Staten Island. Sea ice surrounding Iceland extended for miles in every direction, closing that island nation's harbors to shipping.
Let us not forget that that big ball of fire in our sky does not have a thermostat. It is sometimes cooler and sometimes warmer. The earth also does not contain a thermostat, and its climate has fluctuated over time as well. Even your house, which does have a thermostat, doesn't maintain a constant temperature, it still fluctuates several degrees around the setpoint -- and can be overwhelmed by factors outside the 'climate' of the house itself.
I know I had more fun creatively killing the cannonballer than I did getting him into the water tank. Past a certain point, getting him into the tank wasn't much of a challenge.
However,
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ch" never failed to delight.
Put all your sensitive data on a seperate server and encrypt it with a very complex and strong password that you never write down or commit to memory. Never shut that machine down.
When the feds come, they'll shut your computer down to take it with them. At that point, everything is locked away with a password that you don't know and never knew.
Sorry, here's a running Corvette LS-1 V-8 shoehorned into a Miata and running. I know nothing else about the car, except that it's a great deal of custom work and not something you can cheaply do.
Have you ever looked under the hood of your Chevy? Chances are that it is running a Mitsubishi engine!
Actually, it's more likely it would be a Saab, Opel, Holden, Vauxhall, Fiat, Subaru, Isuzu, or Suzuki power plant, since those are foreign companies in which GM owns a controlling share and commonly shares parts with. You'd likely find Mitsubishi power plants in Chrysler cars, and Mazda engines in Ford products, but I digress.
I'm not saying that certain engines can't be dropped into certain cars with little or no modification. I'm also not saying that you won't find domestic cars with foreign engines or foreign cars with domestic engines. What I am saying is that you can't just take any old engine and just drop it into any old car and expect it to work with little modification. You can't even always do that when you stick to cars in the same product line. You can't put the wonderful Mazda MX-6 (Ford Probe) V-6 powerplant into a Mazda Miata. Sure, it'll fit. You can even overcome the fact that the MX-6 is a front wheel drive car, and the Miata is rear wheel drive. What you can't overcome is the fact that the engine was tilted to the rear in the original application for hood clearance. When you stand it up straight for rear wheel drive, you have problems with oil flow through the engine, and the engine burns up.
You can also cram a Corvette V-8 into your RX-7 or your Miata, but no one's gotten the latter to actually run yet, and judging from past motor swaps I've seen, they are very rarely as trouble free as the original motor. Not that the motor itself is to blame, but modern engines have a lot of inputs provided to them by various electronic and mechanical bits inside the car, all of which you must find a way to interface (it's not a common interface, remember), and then you have to somehow match everything up to the driveline, fuel systems, etc. Very rarely is an engine conversion a 'bolt-on' operation, and even then, it's usually because the two engines share a common chassis somewhere in the original manufacturer's catalog.
The motorhome industry has been operating like this for years, you chose the interior, the engine, instrumentation, accessories, placement of the windows, type of chairs etc. At the end of the process you have D.O.T. approved vehicle on the road. Of course, you pay for the custom options.
Yes, they do, and have you checked into how much a motorhome costs? Granted, they are big, but they are very expensive because a lot of stuff is custom fabricated and custom ordered. They also don't deal in the bulk that most car manufacturers do, which enables them to take more time with each vehicle. You also don't get a huge range of choices, in the lower lines, you may only get one(!) floorplan and one engine choice. Even in the upper lines, you may only get five choices of floorplans and five engine choices, and your engine choices are usually those offered in whatever vehicle the original chassis came from. You don't just get to pick any engine. I've seen full sized pickups with more options.
A far better comparison would have been a Maybach or a Rolls-Royce. They do plenty of personalization, allowing you to pick any color your want and any wood and fabric you want -- even if they don't have it. They'll even modify the car within reason. They also cost a ton of money, and a big part of that is the custom service you're getting. However, it's a bit like comparing apples and oranges. These BTO cars are meant to compete at low prices. Maybach can charge pretty much whatever it wants.
You need to hang out at the local performance shop. Cars, trucks, and cycles were hacked long before the first Univac.
Do you mean the local rice boy shop, or do you mean a shop where they do serious work? I'm not going to claim I hang out with Jesse James or anything, but I know my way around a