Marshac: I listen to NPR for hours every day on my daily drive to/from work.
Same here. I hear more and more of this, "Who needs radio?" stuff now days, and while I agree that between TV, movie cross promotion, soda cross promotions, magazines, and the internet I'm sure that radio has become a very meaning less way to promote artists... But the writer of this article is looking at the whole system backwards. Radio isn't to promote artists, it's to sell ads. The artists, and their music are just there to keep you tuned in between the ads people...
So, is Netscape (err... Gecko based browser) a part of it or what? I mean, does it use I.E. alone or does it ship with Netscape? News.com says, "...the Netscape service will be a significantly smaller file download...". So what does that mean?
If no Netscape, then how do we refer to the browser if we don't mean the ISP now? (Mozilla...:-P)
But seriously... What will become of Netscape.com? I mean logically it will become the portal site for the ISP...
On the other hand, if it ships with I.E. (or at least an I.E. preferences changer) then this might be the first instance of a company setting I.E. users homepages to Netscape.com...
King TJ said: "Great... Now people will assume they've already got an ISP because they see a "Netscape" icon on their desktop."
What newbie out there has Netscape installed and would think such a thing? I mean come on, it's 2003. Netscape hasn't came with anything in the Mac/Windows world in years, and if they do have it installed, then they downloaded it... ergo...
each manufacturer developed their own implementation using whatever protocol they thought best.
Yeah, and those dealers really want to standardize all the ODB diagnostics. Cause they don't want to charge you $100 just to run the diagnostic. GM only standardized because it was easier for them for two reasons, a)because all the cars were easier to manufacture if the only part that was different was the Chevy, Pontiac, or what have you emblem; and b) it was becoming a nightmare for the dealers who mostly sold in combinations (John Smith's Chevy-Cadillac-Olds Town... sort of stuff) to have to keep five or more testers around.
Listen people, no auto manufacture in the world is wanting to make things easy for you to fix or to work on. There will never be a standard between ODB systems or anything else for that matter! Your kidding yourself if you think that cars are gonna get more and more reliable to, because guess what folks their not. You think GM wants you to come in and buy a nice, easily reliable, cheaply fixable Cavalier (sorry Cavalier was discontinued this year, read Cobalt)? One that you can drive for 30 years and it always be dependable so you never have to come back for repairs again? No! Ford, Honda, GM, it doesnt matter. They want you to come on the lot, finance a car for $20k pay it off over 6~7 years then the thing starts failing... Plastic tensioner pulley dry-rots and the serpentine belt comes off, transmission needs servicing, plastic fluid reservoirs start breaking, seats start to brake, and the car rolls say 150,000 miles, so you come in, trade it in and finance another 20k for another 6~7 years... Hell, they don't really even want you changing your own oil. Most American auto companies, like Ford, with cars in the mid $20k's don't even want you to buy. They want you to finance. I was recently on a BMW/Mini lot and they wouldn't even talk to me about financing to buy. Companies like Kia and Hyundai have even gone so far as to basically make their cars disposable. $5K, you drive it for three years, then scrap it and get something else...
The cars basically are designed to have a shelf life of 10 years at best, and just to make sure the shade tree mechanic goes away, the newest auto manufacturing fad is to make the engine compartment just big enough that you drop the damn wrench every time you try to get to any component, and none of your tools fit anyways. You can't even get to the sparkplugs, which with a V6 or V8 half are now located behind the engine up against the firewall so they can mount the engine sideways where you can have front wheel drive so you get to replace your CV-Axles every 60k miles... and on and on. Or if it's a 4-cyl like the VW Beetle (new Beetle) the sparkplugs are wedged up in the engine housing so far you start thinking about dismantling the dash just to get to the things.
The other thing I am now enjoying is these new hybrid cars and alternate fuel cars... You know what, go onto a Honda dealership or Toyota and tell a salesperson you want a Hybrid-Civic or Prius and you want to be driving them 10 years from now... They'll tell you that you won't, cause in about 8 years the batteries stop holding charges (about $800 to replace them according to my local Honda dealer), and that's TODAY, who knows what it will cost in 2011 when they don't even make them anymore. Not to mention the whole plethora of new and special tools you need and the fun aspect of working on TWO engines in an engine bay that used to barely hold one.
Looking down the road to the future is just a bleak sadly, GM's skateboard concept vehicles [gm.com](or AUTOnomy) contain all the parts underneath the car in the chassis and EVERYTHING is drive-by-wire. So I guess you won't have to buy any more tools to work on the car in a few years.
Now, I know a lot of you are gonna post back and whine in usual Slashdot-Automotive piece fashion, So what, I don't want the same car in five years
Your missing the point. It's a Star Trek: The Next Generation boxed set. Not a Star Trek: Voyager boxed set... You'd want a hooker dressed like Councilor Troi... Or maybe a Klingon female... If your into that sort of thing...
I got an iPaq a while back working for a dot.com, it was neat at first, but I got tired of fighting Microsoft's POS sync software. Then I used it to dump a few MP3s to for drivetime to work, but that was ended when I finally got around to putting an MP3 CD player in the car. Now days it just a bloated contact list, and calender with some street map software that rarely comes in handy and is just awkard to use. I've looked into doing more with it, like getting a GPS addon, and integrating it into my car, but it's small and again, awkward to really display any useful information on. Plus, I hate the idea of leaving something like that out in the open for someone to break my window for. I don't mind them stealing it, just breaking my window...
Got to say, the contact list comes in use though, but even the most basic Palm could do that. Then again, it could handle the calender to, but I tend to know when and what is coming up that's important so it's really just becoming a phone list and something to remind me when things come on TV...
Many a times, I have considered getting rid of it and just going in search of an old Apple Newton, just for the novelty of it. As it will more than do everything I need it to...
Take Red Dwarf, expand cast 300%. Reduce silly to 20%. Reset universe for human expansion. Add near equal parts western. Shake. Serves about 2 - 3 million.
I just got finished watching this thing, and I do have to say, it's pretty good as crap this fall is going so far, but it's still below par. It's almost like market research at Fox showed that the same demographic wanted westerns and space ship adventure. Well, have to wait and see how it goes though, as long as Sci-Fi is running reruns at 8pm (EST) I'll be watching this...
Speaking of sci-fi westerns and the sci-fi channel... Stargate SG-1 stars Richard Dean Anderson... who also stared and I believe produced Legend. And Fox placed Firefly on Fridays in a time slot where it wouldn't go head-to-head with Stargate SG-1... Maybe I'm seeing a pattern where there isn't one... Maybe not... Maybe I should just get more sleep...
I'm still extatic they cancelled The Secret Life of Desmond Pfeiffer. Made an excellent, obscure reference for another short lived show, Clerks: The Animated Series. With Farscape and Battlebots gone, all they have to do is get rid of Junkyard Wars, Monk, Stargate SG-1, and most of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, and I'm getting rid of cable... Oh, and by the way. So no more Farscape, and SG-1 is wrapping up in a year, maybe two... So I guess Sci-Fi channels whole flagship "Sci-Friday" is just going to be what? The Dead Zone? Maybe they can bring back that really crappy Twilight Zone rip-off they used to have before Dead Zone... Grrr... Nevermind me, I'm still pissed from when Sci-Fi canned Mystery Science Theater 3000.
I for one live in a market where our weekly episode of Enterprise is sydicated (no UPN affiliate) and airs during primetime on Saturday, a time when I am almost always out and about. With the absence of a Tivo at the house and a constant inability to remember to set the damn VCR I have taken to pulling the episodes from Gnutella and burning them as V(ideo)CDs to watch on my DVD player. Now I not only see them when I want, I have a VCD archive of every episode to date.
It's not that improbable that the Klingon's would have never made it off world or such. The Klingon's are after all, warriors, so all it would take is one off-world visitor to come and cause trouble and the Klingon's would advance quickly so they could compete with such a foe. After all, we human are not warriors, but the computer I type on right now is an off-shoot of WWII weapon research... By a parallel logic it only seems fitting that by the time of Enterprise, the Klingons would be deep-space travellers already.
On a side note though, anyone else ever notice, there dosen't seem to be a lot of other races in the Klingon 'empire'. I mean, who are they ruling? Isn't that the definition of 'empire'? Conquered lands and all?
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AntiPasto : Props to: The World Cafe, This American Life, Fresh Air, Morning Edition, and All Things Considered.
What about Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me ?
Marshac: I listen to NPR for hours every day on my daily drive to/from work.
Same here. I hear more and more of this, "Who needs radio?" stuff now days, and while I agree that between TV, movie cross promotion, soda cross promotions, magazines, and the internet I'm sure that radio has become a very meaning less way to promote artists... But the writer of this article is looking at the whole system backwards. Radio isn't to promote artists, it's to sell ads. The artists, and their music are just there to keep you tuned in between the ads people...
So, is Netscape (err... Gecko based browser) a part of it or what? I mean, does it use I.E. alone or does it ship with Netscape? News.com says, "...the Netscape service will be a significantly smaller file download...". So what does that mean?
:-P)
If no Netscape, then how do we refer to the browser if we don't mean the ISP now? (Mozilla...
But seriously... What will become of Netscape.com? I mean logically it will become the portal site for the ISP...
On the other hand, if it ships with I.E. (or at least an I.E. preferences changer) then this might be the first instance of a company setting I.E. users homepages to Netscape.com...
King TJ said: "Great... Now people will assume they've already got an ISP because they see a "Netscape" icon on their desktop."
What newbie out there has Netscape installed and would think such a thing? I mean come on, it's 2003. Netscape hasn't came with anything in the Mac/Windows world in years, and if they do have it installed, then they downloaded it... ergo...
each manufacturer developed their own implementation using whatever protocol they thought best.
Yeah, and those dealers really want to standardize all the ODB diagnostics. Cause they don't want to charge you $100 just to run the diagnostic. GM only standardized because it was easier for them for two reasons, a)because all the cars were easier to manufacture if the only part that was different was the Chevy, Pontiac, or what have you emblem; and b) it was becoming a nightmare for the dealers who mostly sold in combinations (John Smith's Chevy-Cadillac-Olds Town... sort of stuff) to have to keep five or more testers around.
Listen people, no auto manufacture in the world is wanting to make things easy for you to fix or to work on. There will never be a standard between ODB systems or anything else for that matter! Your kidding yourself if you think that cars are gonna get more and more reliable to, because guess what folks their not. You think GM wants you to come in and buy a nice, easily reliable, cheaply fixable Cavalier (sorry Cavalier was discontinued this year, read Cobalt)? One that you can drive for 30 years and it always be dependable so you never have to come back for repairs again? No! Ford, Honda, GM, it doesnt matter. They want you to come on the lot, finance a car for $20k pay it off over 6~7 years then the thing starts failing... Plastic tensioner pulley dry-rots and the serpentine belt comes off, transmission needs servicing, plastic fluid reservoirs start breaking, seats start to brake, and the car rolls say 150,000 miles, so you come in, trade it in and finance another 20k for another 6~7 years... Hell, they don't really even want you changing your own oil. Most American auto companies, like Ford, with cars in the mid $20k's don't even want you to buy. They want you to finance. I was recently on a BMW/Mini lot and they wouldn't even talk to me about financing to buy. Companies like Kia and Hyundai have even gone so far as to basically make their cars disposable. $5K, you drive it for three years, then scrap it and get something else...
The cars basically are designed to have a shelf life of 10 years at best, and just to make sure the shade tree mechanic goes away, the newest auto manufacturing fad is to make the engine compartment just big enough that you drop the damn wrench every time you try to get to any component, and none of your tools fit anyways. You can't even get to the sparkplugs, which with a V6 or V8 half are now located behind the engine up against the firewall so they can mount the engine sideways where you can have front wheel drive so you get to replace your CV-Axles every 60k miles... and on and on. Or if it's a 4-cyl like the VW Beetle (new Beetle) the sparkplugs are wedged up in the engine housing so far you start thinking about dismantling the dash just to get to the things.
The other thing I am now enjoying is these new hybrid cars and alternate fuel cars... You know what, go onto a Honda dealership or Toyota and tell a salesperson you want a Hybrid-Civic or Prius and you want to be driving them 10 years from now... They'll tell you that you won't, cause in about 8 years the batteries stop holding charges (about $800 to replace them according to my local Honda dealer), and that's TODAY, who knows what it will cost in 2011 when they don't even make them anymore. Not to mention the whole plethora of new and special tools you need and the fun aspect of working on TWO engines in an engine bay that used to barely hold one.
Looking down the road to the future is just a bleak sadly, GM's skateboard concept vehicles [gm.com](or AUTOnomy) contain all the parts underneath the car in the chassis and EVERYTHING is drive-by-wire. So I guess you won't have to buy any more tools to work on the car in a few years.
Now, I know a lot of you are gonna post back and whine in usual Slashdot-Automotive piece fashion, So what, I don't want the same car in five years
Your missing the point. It's a Star Trek: The Next Generation boxed set. Not a Star Trek: Voyager boxed set... You'd want a hooker dressed like Councilor Troi... Or maybe a Klingon female... If your into that sort of thing...
"...when I can get it on Kazaa..."
This would make it the Orion Pirate edition I believe...
I got an iPaq a while back working for a dot.com, it was neat at first, but I got tired of fighting Microsoft's POS sync software. Then I used it to dump a few MP3s to for drivetime to work, but that was ended when I finally got around to putting an MP3 CD player in the car. Now days it just a bloated contact list, and calender with some street map software that rarely comes in handy and is just awkard to use. I've looked into doing more with it, like getting a GPS addon, and integrating it into my car, but it's small and again, awkward to really display any useful information on. Plus, I hate the idea of leaving something like that out in the open for someone to break my window for. I don't mind them stealing it, just breaking my window...
Got to say, the contact list comes in use though, but even the most basic Palm could do that. Then again, it could handle the calender to, but I tend to know when and what is coming up that's important so it's really just becoming a phone list and something to remind me when things come on TV...
Many a times, I have considered getting rid of it and just going in search of an old Apple Newton, just for the novelty of it. As it will more than do everything I need it to...
Me thinks Mr. Whedon may work for Fox...
Take Red Dwarf, expand cast 300%. Reduce silly to 20%. Reset universe for human expansion. Add near equal parts western. Shake. Serves about 2 - 3 million.
I just got finished watching this thing, and I do have to say, it's pretty good as crap this fall is going so far, but it's still below par. It's almost like market research at Fox showed that the same demographic wanted westerns and space ship adventure. Well, have to wait and see how it goes though, as long as Sci-Fi is running reruns at 8pm (EST) I'll be watching this...
Speaking of sci-fi westerns and the sci-fi channel... Stargate SG-1 stars Richard Dean Anderson... who also stared and I believe produced Legend. And Fox placed Firefly on Fridays in a time slot where it wouldn't go head-to-head with Stargate SG-1... Maybe I'm seeing a pattern where there isn't one... Maybe not... Maybe I should just get more sleep...
I'm still extatic they cancelled The Secret Life of Desmond Pfeiffer. Made an excellent, obscure reference for another short lived show, Clerks: The Animated Series. With Farscape and Battlebots gone, all they have to do is get rid of Junkyard Wars, Monk, Stargate SG-1, and most of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, and I'm getting rid of cable... Oh, and by the way. So no more Farscape, and SG-1 is wrapping up in a year, maybe two... So I guess Sci-Fi channels whole flagship "Sci-Friday" is just going to be what? The Dead Zone? Maybe they can bring back that really crappy Twilight Zone rip-off they used to have before Dead Zone... Grrr... Nevermind me, I'm still pissed from when Sci-Fi canned Mystery Science Theater 3000.
I for one live in a market where our weekly episode of Enterprise is sydicated (no UPN affiliate) and airs during primetime on Saturday, a time when I am almost always out and about. With the absence of a Tivo at the house and a constant inability to remember to set the damn VCR I have taken to pulling the episodes from Gnutella and burning them as V(ideo)CDs to watch on my DVD player. Now I not only see them when I want, I have a VCD archive of every episode to date.
It's not that improbable that the Klingon's would have never made it off world or such. The Klingon's are after all, warriors, so all it would take is one off-world visitor to come and cause trouble and the Klingon's would advance quickly so they could compete with such a foe. After all, we human are not warriors, but the computer I type on right now is an off-shoot of WWII weapon research... By a parallel logic it only seems fitting that by the time of Enterprise, the Klingons would be deep-space travellers already.
On a side note though, anyone else ever notice, there dosen't seem to be a lot of other races in the Klingon 'empire'. I mean, who are they ruling? Isn't that the definition of 'empire'? Conquered lands and all?
Anyone catch the new anti-clippy (the paperclip Office assistant) site over at Microsoft? Never seen them turn on one of their own like that...