As long as it has 10.5 on it in some fashion then 10.6 should be happy. There was no upgrade option to 10.5 so the 10.5 disk you used you can use again to install and then install 10.6 update on that.
There are probably going to be a lot of "cracks" immediately floating around to turn the upgrader into a full installer. (but it's possible that the upgrade process may require 10.5 on the hard drive just by the way it's designed to do the update, on purpose I'm sure, we'll see)
No matter what you as an individual do, it's nice knowing that as a whole, it's becoming a lot more dangerous to steal expensive toys, it's providing a deterrent for everyone. Built-in cameras and GPS, internet connected, really, you'd have to be quite a gambler nowadays to steal things with these features. We keep reading articles about thieves getting their pictures emailed to the owners, gadgets can brick themselves with a remote command, as well as the clandestine remote back into the owner's server with their current IP etc. I'm all for it.
My laptop's practically got a mind of its own if it takes a walk. Doesn't make me feel like I can be any less cautious with it, but sure makes me a little more at peace when I hear someone else lost their gear and there's nothing they can do about it short of file an insurance claim.
also 4) for $170 you can get the 10.6 box set that includes ilife and iwork. that is the only option apple will offer you if you get stuck with a 10.4 intel after the 28th.
1) this is an update, not a full installation. There is no "full price" edition, you MUST have mac os 10.5 on it now
2) 10.6 drops support for PPC (already mentioned previously here) so if they have older versions of Mac OS X on them it doesn't matter. However, some of the earliest intel macbooks and imacs shipped with 10.4.7-9 and their owners have not upgraded to 10.5 so there are some intels floating around without leopard on them.
3) VERY IMPORTANT - Apple will stop selling 10.5 the day they release 10.6. So if you have a macbook or intel imac with 10.4(.11) on it and don't get it updated to 10.5 before the 28th you cannot install Snow Leopard. The AASPs are going to go mad as of today trying to order as many 10.5 retail packs as they can get their hands on. If you will be needing one, you'd better get it NOW.
1R) looking back at all the movies, I have NEVER seen anyone slide a light sabor across another. I speculate that there's something about the blade of a sabor that has a very high resistance on another similar blade. Every time they clash, they always have to withdraw to swing again. So in that respect, a hilt is pointless.
2) poorly designed blasters
2R) getting back to the unknowns, I think we can safely assume despite the appearance, they're not shooting lasers. Whatever it is, (plasma?) it's probably going as fast as it can as a projectile. And the sound it makes may be a factor of what it is. How silent is winging a blob of plasma? One thing they have going for them is I haven't ever seen anyone with a blaster run out of ammo or sport a bandolier.
3) unshielded exhaust port leading directly to the central reactor
3R) considering how icky the stuff coming OUT of a reactor exhaust port probably is, it's not too surprising if it's hard to put a shield around. (you certainly don't want to keep it IN, and most people aren't interested in getting TO it) And they did say it was small. (3M?) Consider the size of the deathstar. That's like a pinhole in a buick. Would a pinhole in your car worry you? And DS2 wasn't even 60% complete, it's no wonder there were some open shafts still in it, to get materials installed. DS2 was also relying on the planet based shield generator to keep it safe from attack.
4) stormtrooper uniforms
4R) I was thinking about this, and they do seem to suck for blaster-resistance. But then blasters seem to shoot through just about anything short of walls, so there may not be a point to trying to stop it. And I don't see them as bulletproof, they're more for trauma resistance, against people with bladed or blunt weapons, maybe primatives. (tho they had problems with ewoks...) Luke couldn't see well out of his helmet, but remember "aren't you a little short for a storm tropper?" He was wearing gear for someone a lot taller than him, he was probably looking out the nosehole.
5) Star Destroyer bridge towers
5R) that's hard to defend. We'll just give you that one. But then look at say the older aircraft carriers with the brdige up on top? I believe they've moved those to the bowels of the ship, but they didn't used to be there. In that time though they needed to be able to see the battlefield, but with electronics and screens now that's just a bad idea.
6) R2D2 can't talk
6R) he talks with luke via the display in his cockpit just fine. He's designed to plug into the back of the xwing and fix things, or move about inside a larger ship and fix things. Why should he need to talk to anyone any other time? His legs are only there as a convenience so they don't have to get out a dolly to move him from one ship to another or around the inside to get where he needs to fix stuff. He's a mechanic, not a conversationalist. Try chatting with a mechanic while he tries to change your alternator, he'll probably tell you to go read a magazine in the lounge and get out of his hair.
But that still doesn't give you free reign to copy anything anywhere and slap a political twist on it and turn it into fair use. I can't just take a harry potter book and slap a picture of Bush boxing with Obama on the cover and call it fair use due to its political interpretations.
Now if he had drawn the picture himself instead of copying off Time, I'm all for that.
tho if it was taken from the cover of Time magazine, someone made the original image with some photoshopping, it may not be far enough separated from the original to be considered a derivative. It's not parody either.
It's possible that Time (whoever makes the mag) themselves contacted Flickr with a takedown?
this whole mess has a lot farther reaching impact than you'd see on first impression. It affects the most unexpected markets.
Case in point. Birdseed. Yes, birdseed. really.
I buy a 50lb bag of medium chipped sunflower hearts once a month or so to keep my birdfeeder full, the birds and squirrels are all over it. The price not too long ago went from about $38/bag to pushing $70. I get them from a small shop nearby and talked with the owner about it.
She said the price of sunflower seed has gone way up because less farmers are planting sunflowers. The reason? They're all planting corn because the price of corn has gone way up because of all the ethanol production that uses corn. Ethanol is in demand because it's a cheap way to 'cut' the gas, which is now very much in demand due to higher gas prices.
so ya, oil prices going up is really hitting my birdseed budget, hard...
a) he took a colleague of his to check out his new diggs just after he signed the papers (yes, after)
b) if he did, someone would have to pay, mainly whoever was the legal owner (which at the time, was him)
c) he was able to take advantage of a small loophole in the contract and escape. it was small enough though that they could have fought it, which is why no (b). Better to let them try to dump it on another sucker than to risk BEING the sucker that gets stuck with the bill.
d) for all we know they managed to pawn it off on some unsuspecting person. Depending on how things roll legally, it's possible for ALL previous owners that were aware of the condition to get slapped with a piece of the bill when it's formally discovered, no matter how brief your ownership was, so again (b) would be more risk than it was worth even now. They can go back decades on that sort of thing.
The way the system works, the more times you can hand it off before someone finally is forced to deal with it, the better your odds are in reducing your financial liability. It's possible that ten years from now he could get hauled into court and be forced to split the bill among several dozen previous owners. This means the system encourages new owners to continue the coverup by hunting for a new sucker, and to hope it goes a long time (and several more suckers) before coming to a head.
if I can find a reliable source of used veggie oil.
The restaurants that use fryers theoretically are a good source, but you can't have sugar in the fuel (mcd uses sugar in their fry oil) and the filters will be an ongoing expense. (you can't just dump the dryer into the tank, the oil has to be clean)
TFA says the transformer exploded while being "serviced". A good wild guess would be they were welding on it and sparked some combustable gasses inside the case. (so it was probably partially drained at the time of the explosion) That air pocked inside the transformer would be an ideal condition for an explosion like that. Rapid expansion of gases inside an otherwise mostly sealed container like that would send multi-ton pieces of metal in all directions, it'd be like a giant frag grenade. You thought exploding batteries in DSLAM cabinets were bad, these are quite a bit worse.
As for age, there are PCBs in 1/4 of the trashcans on the poles today. Just because they don't manufacture with it anymore doesn't mean it's not still out there. Transformers are expensive, and I don't even know if you can change from PCB to mineral oil practically speaking. (it's gotta be hard to get PCB fluid out of saturated paper windings) BIG transformers like that are outrageously expensive and are only manufactured in a handful of places on earth, so much that price AND availability are problems when obtaining them. Odds of it being a PCB-containing unit are actually very high since big transformers are not only incredibly expensive but are also one of the longest life electronic components in existence. (they are also one of the most efficient)
PCBs are a lot cheaper than the alternatives, and it's a lot easier to justify storing it in a transformer than using it somewhere external. Transformers that are working properly and maintained are sealed quite well and unless one blows up (like this) there's no danger or health hazards to anyone.
Pity the folk that get to work on those transformers though. I know someone that was looking for a building to move his small business into, and found a cheap place that had these rows of benches all around its inside perimiter... heavy benches, with 2-3ft holes all the way down the row. What are whose for? They didn't know what the former owner used them for. (suuuuure they didn't) Turned out to be formerly owned (several owners ago in VERY short succession) by the city's electric works. It was a building for transformer repair for the units you see up on the telephone poles. Place was loaded with PCBs, soaked into the wood of the beams, benches, and walls, even the dirt was a love canal. He almost got stuck with it too. In those games, whoever "discovers" (formally) the contamination while in ownership is left "holding the bag" and is responsible for cleanup. That "bargain" would have bankrupt him and then some. The guy that clued him in was even cleaning off his shoes after they left the building, it was baaad.
the transformer uses oil as an insulating coolant, to move the heat out of the core and windings of the transformer to the cooling fins and radiators
usually nasty (cancer-causing) PCB stuff too. A LOT worse to the environment than 10W-40.
I would NOT be happy to be in a town whose main river is about to get a major dump of that. The fish won't be safe for months, and it's probably going to cause a fishkill all the way to the ocean/lake it empties into. Governments are well known to say "no really, it's safe, no problem, nothing to see here" when they know it's all kinds of bad news, just to avoid a PR nightmare.
One has to wonder, slightly or greatly, if the petroleum industry has any hand in this, trying to keep vehicles as fuel-inefficient as possible? Besides large bribes from rich arabs, what other motivation would a troubled auto industry have for not taking advantage of this sort of improvement?
I got the car from my parents when I was old enough to drive. At the time they bought it, it was a nice car aside from being diesel. (it was their "brohm" model, with power everything) They bought it because it was a lot more fuel efficient than the gas cars of the time, and at the time the fuel cost a lot less. (I wanna say something like 20% cheaper on the average?) At the start the only problem with it was the smell and the noise. It really sounded like a tractor (or semi) when it idled. Tailgators were easily dispatched by romping on the pedal, causing the car to emit a large blue cloud that would send them back about 60 feet while desperately cranking down their windows. heh...
Also being diesel in iowa meant it had to be plugged in at night. The block heater died some years later and I had to attach a magnetic heater to the oil pan instead. Not plugged in meant it was not going to start if it was below zero.
But at some point every state realized they could jack up the fuel tax on diesel through the roof to increase revenue because truckers don't necessarily live in your state and many aren't around to vote down fuel tax increases. (and the majority of the voters don't care, it just free money to them, they don't realize 98% of what's at their grocery store got there by semi and they're paying for the fuel tax increase in the end) So we saw diesel prices slowly come up to match, and then surpass gasoline. Pre-tax diesel is still a good deal cheaper than gas, and still costs usually 20-40c/gal more at the pump because of the lopsided fuel taxes. So in the end that better fuel economy meant nothing.
I drove a cutlass cierra diesel for several years. It was loud and stunk. It sounded like a tractor. Though nowadays with so many people driving diesel pickup trucks in the area it would cause more confusion than surprise I think.
It was heavy, and since it was also front-wheel-drive, 80% of the weight of the vehicle was on the front tires. (diesels are heavy on their own, FWD makes it a lot worse up front) But it was great in the snow here, it was almost impossible to get stuck. I always had traction, and could take turns with 90 degree pivots at the intersection with proper steering and braking due to the traction and weight up front. Its only issue was the front suspension was massive and low, and it could get hung up on tree stumps and other things. (I went offroad a lot with it...)
It had poor acceleration, but good power. I could tow about anything - I pulled a van out that was in mud deep enough to be sitting on its frame from front to back. (I'm sure that didn't do the transmission any favors but I didn't care) Fuel economy was around 18 in town, 23 highway. (not good for now, but this was an '82)
Because that particular (diesel) model was only made for a single year, parts were hard to come by. It had a reoccurring problem with the fuel injector pump, and it had to be replaced three times. Finding a mechanic to work on it was also a challenge at the time, there was only one place in town that would do it - the dealership wouldn't even touch it.
Over the years I've seen four others just like mine that had their engine pulled and replaced with a gas engine. I finally got rid of it when it blew a head gasket. I'm assuming that was the instigating factor in the others I'd seen getting gas engine blocks. That and the "why don't we just tax the truckers again" mentality for fuel taxation.
If I had to call it something I'd call it a "redneck car". Not particularly bright, pretty, or fast, but solid, powerful, and practical.
Bluetooth is probably going to bury IR eventually. The only benefit that IR has over BT is it requires line of sight which can increase security. (theoretically it can be quite a bit faster also, but it rarely works out that way, and there are two conflicting standards to boot) But if there's a confirmation on both devices to initiate the connection, that's moot.
The cited reason, though dubious, was to for example, register your business under a dozen variations of domain names, wait a few weeks or a month, let things hit the search engines etc, and see which one or two get you the most traffic, register those few, and cancel the rest.
The reality of course, due to low and nonexistent abuse provisions, was that the domain squatters moved in en masse and tasted a few hundred thousand domains a month each, on a rotating basis, causing every reasonable unregistered domain name to be perpetually under taste by a squatter, that would be more than happy to sell you the domain for a few hundred or few thousand dollars.
I see this as a good thing for several reasons. Firstly, domain squatters need to die anyway and another nail in their coffin is fine by me. Secondly, I am tired of mistyping a url or poking around with probables looking for something, only to land on "what I need, when I need it." That about makes me want to vomit at this point. Before this enforcement, practically ANY domain name you could enter in was either taken and had content possibly in your interest, (10%) or was under taste. (90%) Now we can start seeing our browser's domain-not-found page once in awhile again.
But then again now we will experience the return of those "helpful DNS redirections" from microsoft and your local ISP.
Slashdot Mirror
As long as it has 10.5 on it in some fashion then 10.6 should be happy. There was no upgrade option to 10.5 so the 10.5 disk you used you can use again to install and then install 10.6 update on that.
There are probably going to be a lot of "cracks" immediately floating around to turn the upgrader into a full installer. (but it's possible that the upgrade process may require 10.5 on the hard drive just by the way it's designed to do the update, on purpose I'm sure, we'll see)
Just don't plan on being able to move your desk.
Copper would be a waste of money tho. Use one of the many types of plastic hose already made for this application.
Yes, because plastic is a muuch better conductor for heat than say, copper.
Doesn't OS X already run ClamAV internally? At least as of 10.4, Server does but I haven't heard about client.
I've seen some really nasty stuff people have done with custom ROMS on their cellphones
no 900 numbers constantly from 2-6am? amateurs...
No matter what you as an individual do, it's nice knowing that as a whole, it's becoming a lot more dangerous to steal expensive toys, it's providing a deterrent for everyone. Built-in cameras and GPS, internet connected, really, you'd have to be quite a gambler nowadays to steal things with these features. We keep reading articles about thieves getting their pictures emailed to the owners, gadgets can brick themselves with a remote command, as well as the clandestine remote back into the owner's server with their current IP etc. I'm all for it.
My laptop's practically got a mind of its own if it takes a walk. Doesn't make me feel like I can be any less cautious with it, but sure makes me a little more at peace when I hear someone else lost their gear and there's nothing they can do about it short of file an insurance claim.
also 4) for $170 you can get the 10.6 box set that includes ilife and iwork. that is the only option apple will offer you if you get stuck with a 10.4 intel after the 28th.
1) this is an update, not a full installation. There is no "full price" edition, you MUST have mac os 10.5 on it now
2) 10.6 drops support for PPC (already mentioned previously here) so if they have older versions of Mac OS X on them it doesn't matter. However, some of the earliest intel macbooks and imacs shipped with 10.4.7-9 and their owners have not upgraded to 10.5 so there are some intels floating around without leopard on them.
3) VERY IMPORTANT - Apple will stop selling 10.5 the day they release 10.6. So if you have a macbook or intel imac with 10.4(.11) on it and don't get it updated to 10.5 before the 28th you cannot install Snow Leopard. The AASPs are going to go mad as of today trying to order as many 10.5 retail packs as they can get their hands on. If you will be needing one, you'd better get it NOW.
The thermal exhaust port is said to be "ray-shielded, but not particle-shielded"
What that means is a ray (blaster or higher caliber of same from fighter ship) can't get through, but particles (objects... torpedoes) can.
1) hiltless light sabors
1R) looking back at all the movies, I have NEVER seen anyone slide a light sabor across another. I speculate that there's something about the blade of a sabor that has a very high resistance on another similar blade. Every time they clash, they always have to withdraw to swing again. So in that respect, a hilt is pointless.
2) poorly designed blasters
2R) getting back to the unknowns, I think we can safely assume despite the appearance, they're not shooting lasers. Whatever it is, (plasma?) it's probably going as fast as it can as a projectile. And the sound it makes may be a factor of what it is. How silent is winging a blob of plasma? One thing they have going for them is I haven't ever seen anyone with a blaster run out of ammo or sport a bandolier.
3) unshielded exhaust port leading directly to the central reactor
3R) considering how icky the stuff coming OUT of a reactor exhaust port probably is, it's not too surprising if it's hard to put a shield around. (you certainly don't want to keep it IN, and most people aren't interested in getting TO it) And they did say it was small. (3M?) Consider the size of the deathstar. That's like a pinhole in a buick. Would a pinhole in your car worry you? And DS2 wasn't even 60% complete, it's no wonder there were some open shafts still in it, to get materials installed. DS2 was also relying on the planet based shield generator to keep it safe from attack.
4) stormtrooper uniforms
4R) I was thinking about this, and they do seem to suck for blaster-resistance. But then blasters seem to shoot through just about anything short of walls, so there may not be a point to trying to stop it. And I don't see them as bulletproof, they're more for trauma resistance, against people with bladed or blunt weapons, maybe primatives. (tho they had problems with ewoks...) Luke couldn't see well out of his helmet, but remember "aren't you a little short for a storm tropper?" He was wearing gear for someone a lot taller than him, he was probably looking out the nosehole.
5) Star Destroyer bridge towers
5R) that's hard to defend. We'll just give you that one. But then look at say the older aircraft carriers with the brdige up on top? I believe they've moved those to the bowels of the ship, but they didn't used to be there. In that time though they needed to be able to see the battlefield, but with electronics and screens now that's just a bad idea.
6) R2D2 can't talk
6R) he talks with luke via the display in his cockpit just fine. He's designed to plug into the back of the xwing and fix things, or move about inside a larger ship and fix things. Why should he need to talk to anyone any other time? His legs are only there as a convenience so they don't have to get out a dolly to move him from one ship to another or around the inside to get where he needs to fix stuff. He's a mechanic, not a conversationalist. Try chatting with a mechanic while he tries to change your alternator, he'll probably tell you to go read a magazine in the lounge and get out of his hair.
Sounds a lot like Lights Out Management eh. Seen this in Sun and HP too.
But that still doesn't give you free reign to copy anything anywhere and slap a political twist on it and turn it into fair use. I can't just take a harry potter book and slap a picture of Bush boxing with Obama on the cover and call it fair use due to its political interpretations.
Now if he had drawn the picture himself instead of copying off Time, I'm all for that.
tho if it was taken from the cover of Time magazine, someone made the original image with some photoshopping, it may not be far enough separated from the original to be considered a derivative. It's not parody either.
It's possible that Time (whoever makes the mag) themselves contacted Flickr with a takedown?
this whole mess has a lot farther reaching impact than you'd see on first impression. It affects the most unexpected markets.
Case in point. Birdseed. Yes, birdseed. really.
I buy a 50lb bag of medium chipped sunflower hearts once a month or so to keep my birdfeeder full, the birds and squirrels are all over it. The price not too long ago went from about $38/bag to pushing $70. I get them from a small shop nearby and talked with the owner about it.
She said the price of sunflower seed has gone way up because less farmers are planting sunflowers. The reason? They're all planting corn because the price of corn has gone way up because of all the ethanol production that uses corn. Ethanol is in demand because it's a cheap way to 'cut' the gas, which is now very much in demand due to higher gas prices.
so ya, oil prices going up is really hitting my birdseed budget, hard...
a) he took a colleague of his to check out his new diggs just after he signed the papers (yes, after)
b) if he did, someone would have to pay, mainly whoever was the legal owner (which at the time, was him)
c) he was able to take advantage of a small loophole in the contract and escape. it was small enough though that they could have fought it, which is why no (b). Better to let them try to dump it on another sucker than to risk BEING the sucker that gets stuck with the bill.
d) for all we know they managed to pawn it off on some unsuspecting person. Depending on how things roll legally, it's possible for ALL previous owners that were aware of the condition to get slapped with a piece of the bill when it's formally discovered, no matter how brief your ownership was, so again (b) would be more risk than it was worth even now. They can go back decades on that sort of thing.
The way the system works, the more times you can hand it off before someone finally is forced to deal with it, the better your odds are in reducing your financial liability. It's possible that ten years from now he could get hauled into court and be forced to split the bill among several dozen previous owners. This means the system encourages new owners to continue the coverup by hunting for a new sucker, and to hope it goes a long time (and several more suckers) before coming to a head.
if I can find a reliable source of used veggie oil.
The restaurants that use fryers theoretically are a good source, but you can't have sugar in the fuel (mcd uses sugar in their fry oil) and the filters will be an ongoing expense. (you can't just dump the dryer into the tank, the oil has to be clean)
TFA says the transformer exploded while being "serviced". A good wild guess would be they were welding on it and sparked some combustable gasses inside the case. (so it was probably partially drained at the time of the explosion) That air pocked inside the transformer would be an ideal condition for an explosion like that. Rapid expansion of gases inside an otherwise mostly sealed container like that would send multi-ton pieces of metal in all directions, it'd be like a giant frag grenade. You thought exploding batteries in DSLAM cabinets were bad, these are quite a bit worse.
As for age, there are PCBs in 1/4 of the trashcans on the poles today. Just because they don't manufacture with it anymore doesn't mean it's not still out there. Transformers are expensive, and I don't even know if you can change from PCB to mineral oil practically speaking. (it's gotta be hard to get PCB fluid out of saturated paper windings) BIG transformers like that are outrageously expensive and are only manufactured in a handful of places on earth, so much that price AND availability are problems when obtaining them. Odds of it being a PCB-containing unit are actually very high since big transformers are not only incredibly expensive but are also one of the longest life electronic components in existence. (they are also one of the most efficient)
PCBs are a lot cheaper than the alternatives, and it's a lot easier to justify storing it in a transformer than using it somewhere external. Transformers that are working properly and maintained are sealed quite well and unless one blows up (like this) there's no danger or health hazards to anyone.
Pity the folk that get to work on those transformers though. I know someone that was looking for a building to move his small business into, and found a cheap place that had these rows of benches all around its inside perimiter... heavy benches, with 2-3ft holes all the way down the row. What are whose for? They didn't know what the former owner used them for. (suuuuure they didn't) Turned out to be formerly owned (several owners ago in VERY short succession) by the city's electric works. It was a building for transformer repair for the units you see up on the telephone poles. Place was loaded with PCBs, soaked into the wood of the beams, benches, and walls, even the dirt was a love canal. He almost got stuck with it too. In those games, whoever "discovers" (formally) the contamination while in ownership is left "holding the bag" and is responsible for cleanup. That "bargain" would have bankrupt him and then some. The guy that clued him in was even cleaning off his shoes after they left the building, it was baaad.
the transformer uses oil as an insulating coolant, to move the heat out of the core and windings of the transformer to the cooling fins and radiators
usually nasty (cancer-causing) PCB stuff too. A LOT worse to the environment than 10W-40.
I would NOT be happy to be in a town whose main river is about to get a major dump of that. The fish won't be safe for months, and it's probably going to cause a fishkill all the way to the ocean/lake it empties into. Governments are well known to say "no really, it's safe, no problem, nothing to see here" when they know it's all kinds of bad news, just to avoid a PR nightmare.
One has to wonder, slightly or greatly, if the petroleum industry has any hand in this, trying to keep vehicles as fuel-inefficient as possible? Besides large bribes from rich arabs, what other motivation would a troubled auto industry have for not taking advantage of this sort of improvement?
I got the car from my parents when I was old enough to drive. At the time they bought it, it was a nice car aside from being diesel. (it was their "brohm" model, with power everything) They bought it because it was a lot more fuel efficient than the gas cars of the time, and at the time the fuel cost a lot less. (I wanna say something like 20% cheaper on the average?) At the start the only problem with it was the smell and the noise. It really sounded like a tractor (or semi) when it idled. Tailgators were easily dispatched by romping on the pedal, causing the car to emit a large blue cloud that would send them back about 60 feet while desperately cranking down their windows. heh...
Also being diesel in iowa meant it had to be plugged in at night. The block heater died some years later and I had to attach a magnetic heater to the oil pan instead. Not plugged in meant it was not going to start if it was below zero.
But at some point every state realized they could jack up the fuel tax on diesel through the roof to increase revenue because truckers don't necessarily live in your state and many aren't around to vote down fuel tax increases. (and the majority of the voters don't care, it just free money to them, they don't realize 98% of what's at their grocery store got there by semi and they're paying for the fuel tax increase in the end) So we saw diesel prices slowly come up to match, and then surpass gasoline. Pre-tax diesel is still a good deal cheaper than gas, and still costs usually 20-40c/gal more at the pump because of the lopsided fuel taxes. So in the end that better fuel economy meant nothing.
I drove a cutlass cierra diesel for several years. It was loud and stunk. It sounded like a tractor. Though nowadays with so many people driving diesel pickup trucks in the area it would cause more confusion than surprise I think.
It was heavy, and since it was also front-wheel-drive, 80% of the weight of the vehicle was on the front tires. (diesels are heavy on their own, FWD makes it a lot worse up front) But it was great in the snow here, it was almost impossible to get stuck. I always had traction, and could take turns with 90 degree pivots at the intersection with proper steering and braking due to the traction and weight up front. Its only issue was the front suspension was massive and low, and it could get hung up on tree stumps and other things. (I went offroad a lot with it...)
It had poor acceleration, but good power. I could tow about anything - I pulled a van out that was in mud deep enough to be sitting on its frame from front to back. (I'm sure that didn't do the transmission any favors but I didn't care) Fuel economy was around 18 in town, 23 highway. (not good for now, but this was an '82)
Because that particular (diesel) model was only made for a single year, parts were hard to come by. It had a reoccurring problem with the fuel injector pump, and it had to be replaced three times. Finding a mechanic to work on it was also a challenge at the time, there was only one place in town that would do it - the dealership wouldn't even touch it.
Over the years I've seen four others just like mine that had their engine pulled and replaced with a gas engine. I finally got rid of it when it blew a head gasket. I'm assuming that was the instigating factor in the others I'd seen getting gas engine blocks. That and the "why don't we just tax the truckers again" mentality for fuel taxation.
If I had to call it something I'd call it a "redneck car". Not particularly bright, pretty, or fast, but solid, powerful, and practical.
It's still missing an infrared port
Bluetooth is probably going to bury IR eventually. The only benefit that IR has over BT is it requires line of sight which can increase security. (theoretically it can be quite a bit faster also, but it rarely works out that way, and there are two conflicting standards to boot) But if there's a confirmation on both devices to initiate the connection, that's moot.
But it'll make a great deterrent won't it? That's all the excuse we need right?
morons.
We need you to write us a blank check signing away your rights in case we need them to protect you (us). We promise not to abuse it.
Is anyone else tired of hearing this?
What was the purpose of "domain testing" anyway??
The cited reason, though dubious, was to for example, register your business under a dozen variations of domain names, wait a few weeks or a month, let things hit the search engines etc, and see which one or two get you the most traffic, register those few, and cancel the rest.
The reality of course, due to low and nonexistent abuse provisions, was that the domain squatters moved in en masse and tasted a few hundred thousand domains a month each, on a rotating basis, causing every reasonable unregistered domain name to be perpetually under taste by a squatter, that would be more than happy to sell you the domain for a few hundred or few thousand dollars.
I see this as a good thing for several reasons. Firstly, domain squatters need to die anyway and another nail in their coffin is fine by me. Secondly, I am tired of mistyping a url or poking around with probables looking for something, only to land on "what I need, when I need it." That about makes me want to vomit at this point. Before this enforcement, practically ANY domain name you could enter in was either taken and had content possibly in your interest, (10%) or was under taste. (90%) Now we can start seeing our browser's domain-not-found page once in awhile again.
But then again now we will experience the return of those "helpful DNS redirections" from microsoft and your local ISP.