And the Insight has a teeny track, so you're always hitting ruts in the road, Honda specifies zero toe on the front wheels, so you'll change directions if a mouse sneezes in your direction, etc. For practical uses, the Civic hybrid is much better than the Insight.
which really means that there's no reason anyone (who doesn't need a minivan) can't get a hybrid vehicles these days.
Yes, hybrids such as the Civic do provide the same amount of room as a standard Civic. But if you stuff 5 people into one, you're going to hear complaints. Until these systems mature further, they're be limited to the smallest of boxes. For bigger vehicles, technology like Ford's hydraulic accumulator system are going to be the way to go.
Now, you can show the world how environmentally friendly you are by driving your hybrid Civic, but let's look at the facts: you have to spend a premium of about $3500 for the hybrid over a similarly equipped LX. All so you can get about 48 MPG vs. 38. You're only going to save about $100 to $200 per year on gas if you drive 12,000 miles per year, and that's only if you drive it very gently to maximize fuel economy.
Buy a diesel Volkswagen instead, enjoy better fuel economy, more power, and you don't need special compound tires.
It also contains less energy per gallon, so your MPG goes down when burning ethanol. So you have to have more tanker runs to the gas station, more electricity spent pumping that fuel into your car, etc. for the same number of miles driven.
I've dealt with quite a few systems that have had dead fans for unknown periods of time. Worst case is the system locks or a drive fails from heat. I've never seen a fire.
My big gripe is cheap cooling fans. Now, I don't really complain about the nasty sleeve bearing fans used on cheap power supplies, because...they're cheap. You expect it.
Now, take my Quantum DLT changer. One of the cheapo sleeve bearing cooling fans dies. Tape drive overheats. Tape that was loaded is shot. The two tapes nearest the drive in the magazine threw lots of errors. And for a while, I wasn't even sure if the drive had survived, but it appears to have worked. So I order a $25 fan from Mouser, snip out the piece of shit that was in there, and put in the new fan. Because somebody at Quantum decided to save a couple of dollars on a multi-thousand dollar piece of equipment, I lost three DLT tapes and hours of time, not to mention a night's backups.
What I'd really like to see is more use of paddles with microswitches. A lot of telecom equipment uses these little sheet metal paddles in the airstream of each fan. If the air stops, the paddle moves to resting position, and switches a microswitch. From there, it's alarm, cut power to the system, or whatever is appropriate.
In my experience, the single biggest killer of PCs is secondhand smoke.
And what about disks? I've never seen a hard drive die this way, but at a place I used to work a lot of smoke filtered through from the warehouse area. A couple of Syquest removeable platters suddenly gave up the ghost. Couldn't prove a connection there, but they had always worked fine before being in that environment.
On a more serious note, uou should just fucking unplug everything when you're done with it. And don't just plug everything into a power strip and use that as a master switch: I mean, unplug it -all-. Surge protectors are fire hazards [rbs2.com], by themselves.
I've seen some boneheaded strip designs. In one case a nice Antennacraft brand strip (not a surge protector) had a lovely extruded aluminum case. The load on this thing was pretty close to the rating. The power switch on it overheated and started melting. This allowed one of the leads to start arcing against the case. Unfortunately, the damn circuit breaker on this strip was downstream of the switch. Fortunately, this was in a situation where it couldn't do much damage, but the bad power it was sending along to the devices plugged into it wasn't wonderful, and the stink of the melting switch was horrible...
Information Week recently ran a piece on the major IT transition at General Motors. While not using this kind of hologram technology, they are making good use of projected 3-D models combined with VR headsets.
Here's a little more detail on the system and how to use it to frighten children. (And no, it doesn't involve 3-D displays of Pontiac Azteks....) If you read this article, note the slip of the car name...the article says it's "Solaris", when it it's actually "Solstice"
Well, if you're sitting in Rolla over the summer, you probably aren't keeping up with much news at all. That's the way Rolla works...you completely lose track of the outside world.
Being closer to STL, and not being a news junkie, I've heard plenty about the Smart case. I'm sure it will continue to be featured heavily on the commercial news outlets here, unless another person affiliated with the Cardinals dies.
Service interval counters have been around for years. Nothing new there. They are usually for items that have a limited life and impact emissions, such as O2 sensors.
On more recent cars, the EPA requires an emission warranty that exceeds the life of some emission control components. On our Ford Ranger, for example, the PCV valve is to be replaced at 60K, which is done for free by the dealer. (No check engine light triggered by mileage though.) So it's very possible the 60K light that this car had was for such a component that should have been replaced for free, but the dealer wanted to get some more money out of them...
Usually what Bentley publishes are the factory manuals, which assume a certain level of diagnostic and mechanical competence, so they just give you the important details specific to that car. (At least this is the case with the British-Leyland era manuals.)
The Haynes books are written for the home mechanic, so go into much more detail. Unfortunately, Haynes sometimes gets things wrong, so it's always good to have the factory book handy as well.
Yes, you can keep copies of all network print jobs. But what about when printing the material is a part of their normal work activity? Ok...Bob printed schematics of our next project. Did he safely destroy them, file them in his office, or stuff them in his pants on the way out the door?
Or they'll bring in their magazines/newspaper and sit on the can all day....
One place I worked at allowed access to sites like CNN over the lunch hour - noon to 1. I frequently worked hours like 7-4, so my lunch was usually at 11. No CNN for me during lunch, but when I was supposed to be working again, I could catch up on all the news I wanted... the time spent by IS on these systems seemed completely wasted...
Crap. My calculation was off. I read the rate as being two cents per performance, rather that 0.02 cents per performance. Further, the linked document makes mention of estimating use to date and has the figure of 15 performances per hour. They don't say if this is 15 performances per connected user per hour, or a total of 15 performances for all users.
Also, what am I missing with the label Non-Commercial Broadcaster"?
Radio stations are licensed by the FCC as commercial or non-commercial. If non-commercial, there are strict rules over what can be aired in terms of sponsorship notices (underwriting), etc.
If you are a non-commercial broadcaster who is affiliated with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, these rules don't apply, as the CPB negotiated it's own rates already.
However, that leaves all kinds of college and community radio stations to deal with these rates. These are the stations that have something unique and interesting going for them, and this is going to kill their rebroadcast of their terrestrial signal.
A quick calculation using 10 connections per hour would cost a non-commercial station $1752 per year in fees, which, IIRC, is more than my former college station pays to ASCAP and BMI for a performance license. Then you have the extra administrative task of collecting data and reporting it.
This whole situation really pisses me off, because a different standard is being applied to net broadcasting. A regular broadcaster only has to pay performance license fees to the groups that represent the composers (ASCAP or BMI), with no money going to the RIAA. (The RIAA member companies are in fact spending big money to get the stations to play the bands they want played...) All of a sudden, because the audio is going over the 'net instead of the airwaves, the RIAA gets it's hand in things.
The parallels to file swapping are there. Yeah, I could record music from a crappy audio stream. But *gasp* I can also record whatever I want to from my local radio station...
and it's only a matter of time before satellite imaging will make even that impossible
Satellite tech is already that far. They don't show any higher res on TerraServer because the companies that have the high-res birds make their money by selling those images. And those companies are limited to the resolution they can acquire by the feds. So the technical ability to get much better satellite images is out there, just not publicly available.
Yeah, but the magazine publisher isn't gonna go into your bathroom, remove the old magazine content, and replace it with new stuff, which is in effect what happens with web sites.
Can you imagine the $$ involved in protecting New Orleans alone?
Uh, New Orleans is already below sea level. If the pumps stop, they're wet.
This is why we build flood control systems. It may be a natural event, but we still act to mitigate the damage caused.
Except that flood control systems have effects of their own. Flood control tends to destroy the natural cycle of rivers, which causes loss of habitat for many animals. And flood control protects one location, while making the flooding worse elsewhere. Flood control is a good example of the solution creating many other problems. I'd rather not go creating 'solutions' on a global scale....
But WTF does warning people not to go out in the sun and get skin cancer have to do with global warming?
Absolutely nothing. But it's amazing how many people out there think that global warming and thinning of the ozone layer are related concepts....then again, it shouldn't be too suprising...
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The only difference is that by driving the "3-series" you have about 50000 other cars on the road that look exactly like yours.
A Honda driver actually wrote this? Pot...kettle...black...
yeah...you've gotta watch out for that terrorist regime of Canada...since they're our largest supplier of imported oil...
And the Insight has a teeny track, so you're always hitting ruts in the road, Honda specifies zero toe on the front wheels, so you'll change directions if a mouse sneezes in your direction, etc. For practical uses, the Civic hybrid is much better than the Insight.
which really means that there's no reason anyone (who doesn't need a minivan) can't get a hybrid vehicles these days.
Yes, hybrids such as the Civic do provide the same amount of room as a standard Civic. But if you stuff 5 people into one, you're going to hear complaints. Until these systems mature further, they're be limited to the smallest of boxes. For bigger vehicles, technology like Ford's hydraulic accumulator system are going to be the way to go.
Now, you can show the world how environmentally friendly you are by driving your hybrid Civic, but let's look at the facts: you have to spend a premium of about $3500 for the hybrid over a similarly equipped LX. All so you can get about 48 MPG vs. 38. You're only going to save about $100 to $200 per year on gas if you drive 12,000 miles per year, and that's only if you drive it very gently to maximize fuel economy.
Buy a diesel Volkswagen instead, enjoy better fuel economy, more power, and you don't need special compound tires.
It also contains less energy per gallon, so your MPG goes down when burning ethanol. So you have to have more tanker runs to the gas station, more electricity spent pumping that fuel into your car, etc. for the same number of miles driven.
I've dealt with quite a few systems that have had dead fans for unknown periods of time. Worst case is the system locks or a drive fails from heat. I've never seen a fire.
My big gripe is cheap cooling fans. Now, I don't really complain about the nasty sleeve bearing fans used on cheap power supplies, because...they're cheap. You expect it.
Now, take my Quantum DLT changer. One of the cheapo sleeve bearing cooling fans dies. Tape drive overheats. Tape that was loaded is shot. The two tapes nearest the drive in the magazine threw lots of errors. And for a while, I wasn't even sure if the drive had survived, but it appears to have worked. So I order a $25 fan from Mouser, snip out the piece of shit that was in there, and put in the new fan. Because somebody at Quantum decided to save a couple of dollars on a multi-thousand dollar piece of equipment, I lost three DLT tapes and hours of time, not to mention a night's backups.
What I'd really like to see is more use of paddles with microswitches. A lot of telecom equipment uses these little sheet metal paddles in the airstream of each fan. If the air stops, the paddle moves to resting position, and switches a microswitch. From there, it's alarm, cut power to the system, or whatever is appropriate.
In my experience, the single biggest killer of PCs is secondhand smoke.
And what about disks? I've never seen a hard drive die this way, but at a place I used to work a lot of smoke filtered through from the warehouse area. A couple of Syquest removeable platters suddenly gave up the ghost. Couldn't prove a connection there, but they had always worked fine before being in that environment.
On a more serious note, uou should just fucking unplug everything when you're done with it. And don't just plug everything into a power strip and use that as a master switch: I mean, unplug it -all-. Surge protectors are fire hazards [rbs2.com], by themselves.
I've seen some boneheaded strip designs. In one case a nice Antennacraft brand strip (not a surge protector) had a lovely extruded aluminum case. The load on this thing was pretty close to the rating. The power switch on it overheated and started melting. This allowed one of the leads to start arcing against the case. Unfortunately, the damn circuit breaker on this strip was downstream of the switch. Fortunately, this was in a situation where it couldn't do much damage, but the bad power it was sending along to the devices plugged into it wasn't wonderful, and the stink of the melting switch was horrible...
Information Week recently ran a piece on the major IT transition at General Motors. While not using this kind of hologram technology, they are making good use of projected 3-D models combined with VR headsets.
Here's a little more detail on the system and how to use it to frighten children. (And no, it doesn't involve 3-D displays of Pontiac Azteks....) If you read this article, note the slip of the car name...the article says it's "Solaris", when it it's actually "Solstice"
Well, if you're sitting in Rolla over the summer, you probably aren't keeping up with much news at all. That's the way Rolla works...you completely lose track of the outside world.
Being closer to STL, and not being a news junkie, I've heard plenty about the Smart case. I'm sure it will continue to be featured heavily on the commercial news outlets here, unless another person affiliated with the Cardinals dies.
The "flag" is representative of the principles of the US, liberty and justice.
Which is what makes it all the more ironic that "under God" was forced upon us....
Service interval counters have been around for years. Nothing new there. They are usually for items that have a limited life and impact emissions, such as O2 sensors.
On more recent cars, the EPA requires an emission warranty that exceeds the life of some emission control components. On our Ford Ranger, for example, the PCV valve is to be replaced at 60K, which is done for free by the dealer. (No check engine light triggered by mileage though.) So it's very possible the 60K light that this car had was for such a component that should have been replaced for free, but the dealer wanted to get some more money out of them...
Usually what Bentley publishes are the factory manuals, which assume a certain level of diagnostic and mechanical competence, so they just give you the important details specific to that car. (At least this is the case with the British-Leyland era manuals.)
The Haynes books are written for the home mechanic, so go into much more detail. Unfortunately, Haynes sometimes gets things wrong, so it's always good to have the factory book handy as well.
Yes, you can keep copies of all network print jobs. But what about when printing the material is a part of their normal work activity? Ok...Bob printed schematics of our next project. Did he safely destroy them, file them in his office, or stuff them in his pants on the way out the door?
Or they'll bring in their magazines/newspaper and sit on the can all day....
One place I worked at allowed access to sites like CNN over the lunch hour - noon to 1. I frequently worked hours like 7-4, so my lunch was usually at 11. No CNN for me during lunch, but when I was supposed to be working again, I could catch up on all the news I wanted... the time spent by IS on these systems seemed completely wasted...
Or print them off and stuff 'em in his briefcase....
Crap. My calculation was off. I read the rate as being two cents per performance, rather that 0.02 cents per performance. Further, the linked document makes mention of estimating use to date and has the figure of 15 performances per hour. They don't say if this is 15 performances per connected user per hour, or a total of 15 performances for all users.
Also, what am I missing with the label Non-Commercial Broadcaster"?
Radio stations are licensed by the FCC as commercial or non-commercial. If non-commercial, there are strict rules over what can be aired in terms of sponsorship notices (underwriting), etc.
If you are a non-commercial broadcaster who is affiliated with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, these rules don't apply, as the CPB negotiated it's own rates already.
However, that leaves all kinds of college and community radio stations to deal with these rates. These are the stations that have something unique and interesting going for them, and this is going to kill their rebroadcast of their terrestrial signal.
A quick calculation using 10 connections per hour would cost a non-commercial station $1752 per year in fees, which, IIRC, is more than my former college station pays to ASCAP and BMI for a performance license. Then you have the extra administrative task of collecting data and reporting it.
This whole situation really pisses me off, because a different standard is being applied to net broadcasting. A regular broadcaster only has to pay performance license fees to the groups that represent the composers (ASCAP or BMI), with no money going to the RIAA. (The RIAA member companies are in fact spending big money to get the stations to play the bands they want played...) All of a sudden, because the audio is going over the 'net instead of the airwaves, the RIAA gets it's hand in things.
The parallels to file swapping are there. Yeah, I could record music from a crappy audio stream. But *gasp* I can also record whatever I want to from my local radio station...
Yeah...this thread made that damn El DeBarge song pop into my head too....
and it's only a matter of time before satellite imaging will make even that impossible
Satellite tech is already that far. They don't show any higher res on TerraServer because the companies that have the high-res birds make their money by selling those images. And those companies are limited to the resolution they can acquire by the feds. So the technical ability to get much better satellite images is out there, just not publicly available.
Well, the default is to not plug your server into the Internet the first place, now isn't it?
That's quite possibly the most perfect comeback I've ever seen....
Yeah, but the magazine publisher isn't gonna go into your bathroom, remove the old magazine content, and replace it with new stuff, which is in effect what happens with web sites.
Can you imagine the $$ involved in protecting
New Orleans alone?
Uh, New Orleans is already below sea level. If the pumps stop, they're wet.
This is why we build flood control systems. It may be a natural event, but we still act to mitigate the damage caused.
Except that flood control systems have effects of their own. Flood control tends to destroy the natural cycle of rivers, which causes loss of habitat for many animals. And flood control protects one location, while making the flooding worse elsewhere. Flood control is a good example of the solution creating many other problems. I'd rather not go creating 'solutions' on a global scale....
But WTF does warning people not to go out in the sun and get skin cancer have to do with global warming?
Absolutely nothing. But it's amazing how many people out there think that global warming and thinning of the ozone layer are related concepts....then again, it shouldn't be too suprising...
Bravo!