I always wondered why many states require passenger cars to pass through strict emissions tests, however it is perfectly OK to have trains, dump trucks, buses, and large vehicles spew columns of dark black diesel exhaust into the sky....
As the short answer to that, well-maintained big diesel engines have a useful lifetime measured in millions of miles. Decades of use.
Believe it or not, (most) emissions rules do apply to those vile soot-belchers (at least, the non-road ones); It will just take literally 50 years to cycle through the worst-of-the-worst currently in service.
Yes, and the standards are getting more stringent. I think the most strict rules go into effect in 2015, and at that point the railroad engines will require DEF to meet the emissions standards, unless someone comes up with something amazing between now and then.
Your other point is right on target, too - old locomotives are often rebuilt and reused, which is probably better for the environment than building a new one would be, even if the new one is more fuel efficient or runs cleaner. There are locomotives in service from manufacturers that have been out of business for 40 years.
I'm paying for 4GB too. I was wondering about this article - putting the "unlimited" thing aside, it sounds like they're not even selling me the 4GB they claimed they are.
But I never get anywhere near that. After having a 25 megabit connection at home, 3G feels painfully slow.
3.1 wasn't an operating system. You booted DOS, then ran windows from the command line. Putting c:\windows\win.com in your autoexec.bat was a noob move.
I know it wasn't an OS. I didn't say it was. But it took forever to load once it became the standard desktop.
Also, Win95 booted reasonably fast if you didn't run 9 tons of crap on top of it. Much like Windows 7 today.
This is true, as long as you had a mid- or higher-level machine. If you didn't have much RAM though, it was ugly.
Nor did my PCjr or the PC XT machine we had, even when booting from floppy and having to enter the date (remember, "only XT users know that January 1, 1980 was a Tuesday"), especially since we usually didn't bother entering the date and time. The 15 minutes thing didn't start until Windows made it happen, but I can't remember if 3.1 or 95 was worse...they were both pretty bad unless you had a top of the line machine.
For instance, eventually I come across articles in the newspapers reporting some stories which I have witnessed myself. Every single one of them until today have had factual errors, and some of them quite gross.
I've been in the know on a couple situations (both personally and professionally) that were reported in the press, so I wanted to echo what you said. The media gets it wrong. A lot. It makes you wonder how many articles are factually incorrect for topics you aren't intimately familiar with.
No business wants to compete in a fair market. Who do you think starts all those "grass roots" (note quotes) movements to influence lawmakers? Recent example: I love the railroads and keep up with the news from the world of railroading, but the American Association of Railroads recently put links on Facebook and the like to the "stop larger trucks" website. They claim they're worried about safety (and given the number of recent train/truck collisions, they may be on to something), but let's face it: The railroads would love to do anything they can to make the trucking industry less profitable. And I'm sure the trucking industry does the same thing to the railroads whenever they can. This is, unfortunately, how the game is played, and it's been this way for a long time. Do you know who bought up many the streetcar companies in the 1930s-1950s so they could shut down the rail system and sell more buses? General Motors. In short, I'm not sure why Apple gets singled out for this hate - every company does this kind of thing. Hate 'em all, or hate none of them.
We were looking at the D7000 last October, originally planning to buy one in early January. We went into the camera store, and they told us they were out of stock due to the flooding (but, a few weeks after Christmas, they filed bankruptcy, so I suspect there was more to the story than flooding). Fearing there would be a shortage and we wouldn't be able to get one when we were planning, we went online and bought the camera immediately.
Looks like it's a good thing we bought when we did. Of course that probably means we contributed to the price jump...
FWIW, there are other apps that do this. I have two of them on my 3GS - Google's and another one. Both were free. I haven't played with them much, though, so I can't say how well they work.
On a related note, I wonder if Slashdot paid for the rights to use the term "Super Bowl" - the NFL defends that term pretty vigorously. This is why places that have, for example, televisions on sale this week have signs up that say, "Get your new TV for the big game!" Grocery stores refer to food for the "big game" party. And so on.
The other day, I even heard a DJ on Sirius (satellite radio) saying he wasn't sure what he could say in regards to the game. The odd part is that Sirius will be carrying the game, so even within companies that ARE actually affiliated with the NFL, it's not clear.
The problem with this line of logic is that those events (Olympics, prince wedding, world cup) all have very good security too - check '72 Munich Olympics to see why. So trying to say the Super Bowl isn't a high-value target because there are others, and so doesn't deserve good security, doesn't make sense.
I did this, too. I rolled my own. About half of our guests responded this way. It worked extremely well, too. I had controls in it to lock them out if they changed the answer more than a few times, with a friendly message to let us know directly what they planned to do, and it logged every IP address that tried to hit it.
My brother suggested I go into business doing it, but frankly I didn't want to deal with it - most of the people are fine, but one bridezilla would really ruin it. And you have to keep in mind you're messing with people's WEDDING so it HAS to be right, or you'll be sued into oblivion.
I need fore and aft GoPro cameras in my car - record my drives. What amazing things I could turn over to the CHP! The people passing on the shoulder, tailgating, yakking on phones. putting on make-up, shaving, picking noses...
I want the same. My idea is to at least have a camera on the back of the rearview mirror, facing out the windshield, just recording everything I see like a DVR. Then, I'd hit a button when I see something stupid to have it save the last 30 seconds or so of video. In the DC area, I would have new videos for a website demonstrating aggressive and/or stupid behavior DAILY. And it'd be great evidence if I'm involved in an accident, since, the last time, the other driver lied about what he was doing and it all got blamed on me.
Why do I need insurance if I'm not actually driving the car? I don't need insurance as a passenger on an airplane or ride the subway. In fact I don't even need insurance to be a passenger in a car, which is exactly what I'd be in a driverless car.
Some areas (including mine) have gone to single-stream recycling. Throw everything that is recyclable in one bin, and the rest goes in the trash. Very easy. We usually have as much in recyclables every week as we do in the trash.
I have Nikon equipment only because the day I went into the camera shop to buy my first SLR (a Canon, mind you), the guy at the shop showed me that the competing Nikon SLR had a metal mount ring, while the Canon had a plastic ring. Seriously...it was that close. So, I really don't have a Nikon>Canon mentality...it's just what I happened to buy first. And like I said, my wife's point-and-shoot Canons have been pretty decent cameras.
Perhaps not, but they're very close. My wife has a Canon SX130is (I think the current model is 150), and it's a pretty nice camera - and I'm an SLR guy (I recently got a Nikon D7000, but I've taken over 10,000 pictures with my D70). The other thing is, as someone pointed out above, it's much easier to carry around, so you're a lot more likely to have it for that perfect moment. We were on a photo safari with it a while back, and the professional photographer commented to my wife that we were all jealous, because she was getting shots as good as the rest of us, but much more cheaply.
Spoken like someone who's never been beaten by a parent before. Also, like the GP, you decided to ignore the point I was making, too, in favor of attacking an irrelevant point.
My wife and I thought through this, and the only thing we felt we HAD to put offsite was our pictures. So we have an account with a backup provider that allows rsync, and I have it set up to update nightly. Works great so far.
We also discussed building three 'backup boxes' that we could place at some relative's houses...then everyone with one of the backup boxes could back up to the other two. We decided not to do it for the expense, though, and we didn't think the relatives would be that interested.
Yeah. I went through this myself, looking for a good Linux laptop. I couldn't find anything I really liked - they seemed overpriced for the specs, or they were from a company that seems to have just appeared yesterday and could be gone tomorrow. I wanted a light laptop that was easy to travel with. I finally bought a Macbook Pro, figuring I could install Linux on it if I didn't like OS X. I'm very happy with it, two years later... my only regret is not getting a larger hard drive. I love Linux and have been using it since the mid-90s - I'm typing this on my Slackware desktop machine, which accesses the internet through a Slackware server - but the laptop offerings are lacking.
On the other hand...still no Blu-Ray, Apple? C'mon...
There was an article in the Washington Post this morning about people who are afraid to go to public events for fear of terrorist attack. I'm sure many of those very same people don't think twice about getting in a car.
In many areas (including mine), they still haven't solved the issue of power outages dropping out your VoIP service.
We switched to FiOS a couple years back and this is one of the things I don't like about it (I knew this was an issue going in, of course). The battery backup does hold for several hours. I've considered plugging the box into a UPS so that it'll continue to receive power for somewhat longer when the power dies; I don't think it draws much current so it should last at least a couple more hours even with a small UPS.
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I always wondered why many states require passenger cars to pass through strict emissions tests, however it is perfectly OK to have trains, dump trucks, buses, and large vehicles spew columns of dark black diesel exhaust into the sky.... As the short answer to that, well-maintained big diesel engines have a useful lifetime measured in millions of miles. Decades of use. Believe it or not, (most) emissions rules do apply to those vile soot-belchers (at least, the non-road ones); It will just take literally 50 years to cycle through the worst-of-the-worst currently in service.
Yes, and the standards are getting more stringent. I think the most strict rules go into effect in 2015, and at that point the railroad engines will require DEF to meet the emissions standards, unless someone comes up with something amazing between now and then.
Your other point is right on target, too - old locomotives are often rebuilt and reused, which is probably better for the environment than building a new one would be, even if the new one is more fuel efficient or runs cleaner. There are locomotives in service from manufacturers that have been out of business for 40 years.
I'm paying for 4GB too. I was wondering about this article - putting the "unlimited" thing aside, it sounds like they're not even selling me the 4GB they claimed they are.
But I never get anywhere near that. After having a 25 megabit connection at home, 3G feels painfully slow.
3.1 wasn't an operating system. You booted DOS, then ran windows from the command line. Putting c:\windows\win.com in your autoexec.bat was a noob move.
I know it wasn't an OS. I didn't say it was. But it took forever to load once it became the standard desktop.
Also, Win95 booted reasonably fast if you didn't run 9 tons of crap on top of it. Much like Windows 7 today.
This is true, as long as you had a mid- or higher-level machine. If you didn't have much RAM though, it was ugly.
Nor did my PCjr or the PC XT machine we had, even when booting from floppy and having to enter the date (remember, "only XT users know that January 1, 1980 was a Tuesday"), especially since we usually didn't bother entering the date and time. The 15 minutes thing didn't start until Windows made it happen, but I can't remember if 3.1 or 95 was worse...they were both pretty bad unless you had a top of the line machine.
For instance, eventually I come across articles in the newspapers reporting some stories which I have witnessed myself. Every single one of them until today have had factual errors, and some of them quite gross.
I've been in the know on a couple situations (both personally and professionally) that were reported in the press, so I wanted to echo what you said. The media gets it wrong. A lot. It makes you wonder how many articles are factually incorrect for topics you aren't intimately familiar with.
No business wants to compete in a fair market. Who do you think starts all those "grass roots" (note quotes) movements to influence lawmakers? Recent example: I love the railroads and keep up with the news from the world of railroading, but the American Association of Railroads recently put links on Facebook and the like to the "stop larger trucks" website. They claim they're worried about safety (and given the number of recent train/truck collisions, they may be on to something), but let's face it: The railroads would love to do anything they can to make the trucking industry less profitable. And I'm sure the trucking industry does the same thing to the railroads whenever they can. This is, unfortunately, how the game is played, and it's been this way for a long time. Do you know who bought up many the streetcar companies in the 1930s-1950s so they could shut down the rail system and sell more buses? General Motors. In short, I'm not sure why Apple gets singled out for this hate - every company does this kind of thing. Hate 'em all, or hate none of them.
We were looking at the D7000 last October, originally planning to buy one in early January. We went into the camera store, and they told us they were out of stock due to the flooding (but, a few weeks after Christmas, they filed bankruptcy, so I suspect there was more to the story than flooding). Fearing there would be a shortage and we wouldn't be able to get one when we were planning, we went online and bought the camera immediately.
Looks like it's a good thing we bought when we did. Of course that probably means we contributed to the price jump...
FWIW, there are other apps that do this. I have two of them on my 3GS - Google's and another one. Both were free. I haven't played with them much, though, so I can't say how well they work.
On a related note, I wonder if Slashdot paid for the rights to use the term "Super Bowl" - the NFL defends that term pretty vigorously. This is why places that have, for example, televisions on sale this week have signs up that say, "Get your new TV for the big game!" Grocery stores refer to food for the "big game" party. And so on.
The other day, I even heard a DJ on Sirius (satellite radio) saying he wasn't sure what he could say in regards to the game. The odd part is that Sirius will be carrying the game, so even within companies that ARE actually affiliated with the NFL, it's not clear.
The problem with this line of logic is that those events (Olympics, prince wedding, world cup) all have very good security too - check '72 Munich Olympics to see why. So trying to say the Super Bowl isn't a high-value target because there are others, and so doesn't deserve good security, doesn't make sense.
I did this, too. I rolled my own. About half of our guests responded this way. It worked extremely well, too. I had controls in it to lock them out if they changed the answer more than a few times, with a friendly message to let us know directly what they planned to do, and it logged every IP address that tried to hit it.
My brother suggested I go into business doing it, but frankly I didn't want to deal with it - most of the people are fine, but one bridezilla would really ruin it. And you have to keep in mind you're messing with people's WEDDING so it HAS to be right, or you'll be sued into oblivion.
I need fore and aft GoPro cameras in my car - record my drives. What amazing things I could turn over to the CHP! The people passing on the shoulder, tailgating, yakking on phones. putting on make-up, shaving, picking noses...
I want the same. My idea is to at least have a camera on the back of the rearview mirror, facing out the windshield, just recording everything I see like a DVR. Then, I'd hit a button when I see something stupid to have it save the last 30 seconds or so of video. In the DC area, I would have new videos for a website demonstrating aggressive and/or stupid behavior DAILY. And it'd be great evidence if I'm involved in an accident, since, the last time, the other driver lied about what he was doing and it all got blamed on me.
Why do I need insurance if I'm not actually driving the car? I don't need insurance as a passenger on an airplane or ride the subway. In fact I don't even need insurance to be a passenger in a car, which is exactly what I'd be in a driverless car.
Some areas (including mine) have gone to single-stream recycling. Throw everything that is recyclable in one bin, and the rest goes in the trash. Very easy. We usually have as much in recyclables every week as we do in the trash.
I have Nikon equipment only because the day I went into the camera shop to buy my first SLR (a Canon, mind you), the guy at the shop showed me that the competing Nikon SLR had a metal mount ring, while the Canon had a plastic ring. Seriously...it was that close. So, I really don't have a Nikon>Canon mentality...it's just what I happened to buy first. And like I said, my wife's point-and-shoot Canons have been pretty decent cameras.
Perhaps not, but they're very close. My wife has a Canon SX130is (I think the current model is 150), and it's a pretty nice camera - and I'm an SLR guy (I recently got a Nikon D7000, but I've taken over 10,000 pictures with my D70). The other thing is, as someone pointed out above, it's much easier to carry around, so you're a lot more likely to have it for that perfect moment. We were on a photo safari with it a while back, and the professional photographer commented to my wife that we were all jealous, because she was getting shots as good as the rest of us, but much more cheaply.
Spoken like someone who's never been beaten by a parent before. Also, like the GP, you decided to ignore the point I was making, too, in favor of attacking an irrelevant point.
Classic. You can't dispute my point so you attack something irrelevant. Also, how do you know her pants weren't filled?
By beating the shit out of her with a belt? This is far worse than anything the MAFIAA (note: that's the term YOU used) did.
My wife and I thought through this, and the only thing we felt we HAD to put offsite was our pictures. So we have an account with a backup provider that allows rsync, and I have it set up to update nightly. Works great so far.
We also discussed building three 'backup boxes' that we could place at some relative's houses...then everyone with one of the backup boxes could back up to the other two. We decided not to do it for the expense, though, and we didn't think the relatives would be that interested.
Yeah. I went through this myself, looking for a good Linux laptop. I couldn't find anything I really liked - they seemed overpriced for the specs, or they were from a company that seems to have just appeared yesterday and could be gone tomorrow. I wanted a light laptop that was easy to travel with. I finally bought a Macbook Pro, figuring I could install Linux on it if I didn't like OS X. I'm very happy with it, two years later... my only regret is not getting a larger hard drive. I love Linux and have been using it since the mid-90s - I'm typing this on my Slackware desktop machine, which accesses the internet through a Slackware server - but the laptop offerings are lacking.
On the other hand...still no Blu-Ray, Apple? C'mon...
My brother has a KITT-voiced GPS unit. I think it was made by Garmin.
There was an article in the Washington Post this morning about people who are afraid to go to public events for fear of terrorist attack. I'm sure many of those very same people don't think twice about getting in a car.
In many areas (including mine), they still haven't solved the issue of power outages dropping out your VoIP service.
We switched to FiOS a couple years back and this is one of the things I don't like about it (I knew this was an issue going in, of course). The battery backup does hold for several hours. I've considered plugging the box into a UPS so that it'll continue to receive power for somewhat longer when the power dies; I don't think it draws much current so it should last at least a couple more hours even with a small UPS.
We're going through a process of dumbening.