I have a 2003 Civic hybrid, and right on cue to the warranty on the battery expiring (80k) it's performance dropped fairly significantly.
It's still completely functional, but depletes it's charge *much* faster. My mileage has dropped from about 45-48 to 42-45 as well.
The conspiracy nut in me says they programmed it that way;-)
in any event it's what they said it would do (80k) so i can't be terribly upset. And it's fully functional and still getting better mileage than most other cars out there.
nice straw man there. If Congress suspected or knew about Pearl Harbor in advance, they could quite easily issue laws that said "if we're attacked, we're at war". No POTUS needs to be involved.
Unless you were saying Congress should just write a blank check for POTUS to cash however and whenever he wants? Oh wait, that's basically what happened and why we're in this mess. Dubya/Cheney are at fault for starting this 'war', but Congress is just as at fault for allowing it to continue.
As for the '15 minute' threat. You don't think that 'MAD' as you say wasn't run through Congress? Specific threats are enumerated as they are discovered and *deliberated* as to the proper response. (see how your Pearl Harbor example fits this situation?)
The President does have 'limited' authority to act unilaterally on a temporary basis, as you say we can't always wait for congress to come into session. But ongoing operations can and must require more approval than just "the president says so". (note, my previous stmt on congress' fault in the current situation)
The Constitution was created to prevent madmen (both internal and external) from running roughshod over civil liberties.
remember that rule that evidence obtained via torture wasn't admissable? ooops, they just created an *entire* separate legal system to handle those cases...
not legal, certainly not just, but sadly it is our current reality
nice straw man arguement. There are plenty of laws governing how much of certain items you should have, food isn't a really good choice to make your claim. Nor are guns, funny how the constitution handles that issue already.
Prescription Drugs for instance?
Homes can be declared unfit for habitation for too much garbage
Do you want to be living next to 5000 gallons of highly reactive unknown substances, just waiting for a 'made for TV' explosion moment?
We live in communities, communities have rules. Don't like them, leave, or work to change them, but violating them isn't something I'd suggest we champion on a regular basis.
Bad laws are passed every day. Most Americans can't be bothered to be involved in community civics anymore. This is what you get, bad laws passed by power hungry twits. But if they run unopposed, well someone could have run against them.
Sorry, but that's how life works. We live in communities. Communities have rules.
Either this guy has lived there for many years and did nothing as (in your opinion) bad laws were enacted, or he moved into a house without checking (or caring) what the existing laws were.
Either way, yes he bears the responsibility.
along with the community if they indeed disapprove of these laws, but if they do approve of the laws, well as I said, we live in communities.
Last time I checked none of the equipment in the computer industry generally doesn't have the possibility of explosions and noxious gas clouds (laptop batteries and cabbage diets not withstanding;-).
If it's zoned residential, it's residential. Lots and lots of examples exist on both sides of the argument as you suggest. But I think most people would probably not have a problem with keeping an industrial type chem lab out of their neighborhood.
"Mr. Deeb declined to comment yesterday. Authorities say he has patents pending and had been using his basement as a science lab to conduct experiments, possibly for many years.
Firefighters found more than 1,500 vials, jars, cans, bottles and boxes in the basement Tuesday afternoon, after they responded to an unrelated fire in an air conditioner on the second floor of the home.
Pamela A. Wilderman, Marlboroâ(TM)s code enforcement officer, said Mr. Deeb was doing scientific research and development in a residential area, which is a violation of zoning laws."
so the firefighters were at the house legally and found the stuff (he may have told them about it to make them aware of the chemicals when fighting the fire) and the 'residential' community in question has zoning laws that prevent people from developing A-bombs and other such crazy stuff; i.e. serious research and development.
This was not just a small backyard tinkerer. He has patents pending and is a retired chemist.
Right or wrong, ff you don't like the zoning laws, change them or move.
Gas/Petrol engines are more efficient at relatively low RPMs.
That's the whole point of hybrids, use the low rpm rates to charge the batteries and then re-use that efficiently generated power during the relatively short periods of inefficiency when it's needed; i.e. acceleration.
Bigger engines are a liability in fuel consumption, always will be because they're 'bigger';-) But they're useful in that they produce more power, hence why you have 6-10 liter engines in trucks and such.
Just for fun compare with other developed countries:
Percent of population in prison? US leads
Percent of population without healthcare? US leads
Percent of handgun related deaths? US leads
Percent of population obese? US leads
I think the poster meant the 'pencil eraser' type joystick/mouse I most commonly associated with IBM ThinkPads back in the day. It was pretty common before laptops had the small touchpads.
Who is whining? I was simply telling the GP that his experience was legit since the change was made in the last two months.
As for not poking around, it's piss poor customer mgmt to make people jump though hoops to find basic options like what OS to install. I'm not talking about getting a freebie on a special keyboard or upgraded video card, it's the friggin OS.
The whining (from Dell) will commence when starts wondering why it's losing customers. If customers can't find what they want quickly, they won't stick around to see if it's maybe just *hidden* somewhere.
The whole point of buying from Dell or another company is to *not* do it yourself. if it can be legally done, then Dell should be doing it if customers want it. If Dell doesn't want to do things customers are asking for, well that's just dumb business practice.
This changed within the last 2 months. I ordered and XPS back in May, no problem having XP listed with no extra 'fee' to downgrade.
Just purchased 2 more computers and the XP option is gone. i didn't poke around the site much, I just went to a local retailer that still had pre-installed machines available and got my XP boxen.
So you think that a government bureaucracy could run things more efficiently?
The legal depts of the various companies providing service on the network would be more than happy to hound the gov't and network provider into doing a decent job.
Wouldnt this affect customer service negatively?
You're claiming customer service of Cable Cos, Mobile Phone Co's and land line phone Co's is any good at all? By having your connection with a service provider instead of the network provider you are insulated from that. And you can switch service providers anytime you like. (Hint: look at Europe and GSM phones)
If i dont have the option of taking my business elsewhere, what incentive do they have to provide good service?
Same as above, you can always go to another service provider on the network. The service providers will be the ones hounding the network provider keep the network running.
Who determines how much to charge for the services? Perhaps you think that because its nationalized that it would be "free"?
Try reading your electric or phone bill. it's all regulated (or used to be) rates. The network provider and gov't will determine 'reasonable' rates and pass them on to the service providers. It's already done with many services that are 'natural monopolies' like land line phone service and such things.
So in short, it's already being done we're just suffering the effects of not having it here.
I'll feed the troll. Maybe the 'dumb' are the ones who switch from Dem to GOP as they get older, forgetting that you do actually have to 'invest' in your people and infrastructure, not expect private industry to do it.
Then again, maybe the dumb are the people who generalize parties and vote party line regardless of the actual people they are voting for, putting incompetent corrupt people in power, Dem or GOP.
That's the big issue. *where* are the profits coming from, no one in Congress seems to ask that simple question during the quarterly roast of big oil execs on capital hill. And the execs sure aren't wanting to explain it. It seems like it should be a pretty easy thing to track down...where are the massive profits coming from in the last 6 years compared with the 6 before that? these are *business* people right? if you don't know where your profits are coming from your not worth the MBA you paid for.
My thought is they make their money in the refining process. They are the ones that control it and it's capacity hasn't gone up all that much in the last 30 years.
The cost of crude isn't where they make their money, they buy it at record high prices so one would expect them to sell the finished product at higher prices; the REVENUE part of my original post.
But with profits going through the roof consistently for 6 years, the money is coming from somewhere else...which I think is marking up the cost of the gas they sell to the stations..i.e. the refining process. Maybe it's like car dealers. They claim the 'invoice' is what they pay the manufacturers, but we all know it's way below that. So maybe the price they're selling to the stations is marked up a large amount from it's costs.
ANWR is *not* the solution to this problem. Getting ourselves off of OIL is the only solution.
ANWR reserves will only provide enough oil for 2 years of current US consumption. facts here.
and that's the HIGH end of estimates.
Better to spend the money getting off of oil than to further the lining of big oil's profits, no?
You claim that big oil is only making 4% profit but offer no proof. The simple fact that prices are going up and their profits are at record levels consistently for multiple years says they are gouging.
Their REVENUE can go up without profits going up, that's what happens when your costs go up. But their PROFITS go up only when charging more than their paying for product.
Please explain how profits can go up wihtout them charging more then they are paying? we aren't buying significantly more oil then 5 years ago so the extra profit money isn't coming from increased sales...
yep, I got a C&D letter from my ISP for grabbing Stargate: Atlantis back when it first came out.
They don't care whether it's movies or tv or music. it's money they seem to think they're losing so send in the lawyers!
The funny thing is I *was* a huge SG1 fan, even had seasons 1-7 on DVD. I missed the first half of SG: Atlantis due to being without cable for a few months, so I just went online to catch up and figured I'd be 'nice' and do the same for other people in the same boat.
I still have the downloaded episodes, and you know what? I've never watched them, nor have I watched SG1 since.
Left a really bad taste in my mouth so I'm doing the best thing I can...NOT watching them anymore. Of course if I was more motivated I'd write them a letter but hey...haha
If you're simply 'downloading' content you've already purchased, no there really isn't a big problem.
The 'problem' is that if you're using bittorrent and haven't hacked the protocol to only leech or another 'sharing' app, then you're also uploading the file to people who perhaps haven't legally purchased the content. That makes it illegal.
File sharing is illegal when copyrighted works are involved, plain and simple. The laws are antiquated and the business models obsolete, but that doesn't mean we get to ignore the laws. Simply don't share copyrighted material until the laws and the content producers change their ways.
It may be hard, but continuing to suckle at the RIAA/MPAA nipples while complaining about their business model isn't a rational argument.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a 2003 Civic hybrid, and right on cue to the warranty on the battery expiring (80k) it's performance dropped fairly significantly.
;-)
It's still completely functional, but depletes it's charge *much* faster. My mileage has dropped from about 45-48 to 42-45 as well.
The conspiracy nut in me says they programmed it that way
in any event it's what they said it would do (80k) so i can't be terribly upset. And it's fully functional and still getting better mileage than most other cars out there.
So they'll attack her on political corruption then:
http://www.adn.com/politics/story/469135.html
nothing like firing someone because they won't fire your ex brother-in-law when you repeatedly ask them to.
More importantly, how durable is the memory?
Doesn't flash memory have a limit on the # of accesses before it starts to fail?
Puhleaze,
nice straw man there. If Congress suspected or knew about Pearl Harbor in advance, they could quite easily issue laws that said "if we're attacked, we're at war". No POTUS needs to be involved.
Unless you were saying Congress should just write a blank check for POTUS to cash however and whenever he wants? Oh wait, that's basically what happened and why we're in this mess. Dubya/Cheney are at fault for starting this 'war', but Congress is just as at fault for allowing it to continue.
As for the '15 minute' threat. You don't think that 'MAD' as you say wasn't run through Congress? Specific threats are enumerated as they are discovered and *deliberated* as to the proper response. (see how your Pearl Harbor example fits this situation?)
The President does have 'limited' authority to act unilaterally on a temporary basis, as you say we can't always wait for congress to come into session. But ongoing operations can and must require more approval than just "the president says so". (note, my previous stmt on congress' fault in the current situation)
The Constitution was created to prevent madmen (both internal and external) from running roughshod over civil liberties.
remember that rule that evidence obtained via torture wasn't admissable? ooops, they just created an *entire* separate legal system to handle those cases...
not legal, certainly not just, but sadly it is our current reality
nice straw man arguement. There are plenty of laws governing how much of certain items you should have, food isn't a really good choice to make your claim. Nor are guns, funny how the constitution handles that issue already.
Prescription Drugs for instance?
Homes can be declared unfit for habitation for too much garbage
Do you want to be living next to 5000 gallons of highly reactive unknown substances, just waiting for a 'made for TV' explosion moment?
We live in communities, communities have rules. Don't like them, leave, or work to change them, but violating them isn't something I'd suggest we champion on a regular basis.
Bad laws are passed every day. Most Americans can't be bothered to be involved in community civics anymore. This is what you get, bad laws passed by power hungry twits. But if they run unopposed, well someone could have run against them.
Sorry, but that's how life works. We live in communities. Communities have rules.
Either this guy has lived there for many years and did nothing as (in your opinion) bad laws were enacted, or he moved into a house without checking (or caring) what the existing laws were.
Either way, yes he bears the responsibility.
along with the community if they indeed disapprove of these laws, but if they do approve of the laws, well as I said, we live in communities.
Last time I checked none of the equipment in the computer industry generally doesn't have the possibility of explosions and noxious gas clouds (laptop batteries and cabbage diets not withstanding ;-).
If it's zoned residential, it's residential. Lots and lots of examples exist on both sides of the argument as you suggest. But I think most people would probably not have a problem with keeping an industrial type chem lab out of their neighborhood.
from TFA:
"Mr. Deeb declined to comment yesterday. Authorities say he has patents pending and had been using his basement as a science lab to conduct experiments, possibly for many years.
Firefighters found more than 1,500 vials, jars, cans, bottles and boxes in the basement Tuesday afternoon, after they responded to an unrelated fire in an air conditioner on the second floor of the home.
Pamela A. Wilderman, Marlboroâ(TM)s code enforcement officer, said Mr. Deeb was doing scientific research and development in a residential area, which is a violation of zoning laws."
so the firefighters were at the house legally and found the stuff (he may have told them about it to make them aware of the chemicals when fighting the fire) and the 'residential' community in question has zoning laws that prevent people from developing A-bombs and other such crazy stuff; i.e. serious research and development.
This was not just a small backyard tinkerer. He has patents pending and is a retired chemist.
Right or wrong, ff you don't like the zoning laws, change them or move.
Gas/Petrol engines are more efficient at relatively low RPMs.
;-) But they're useful in that they produce more power, hence why you have 6-10 liter engines in trucks and such.
That's the whole point of hybrids, use the low rpm rates to charge the batteries and then re-use that efficiently generated power during the relatively short periods of inefficiency when it's needed; i.e. acceleration.
Bigger engines are a liability in fuel consumption, always will be because they're 'bigger'
Just for fun compare with other developed countries:
;-)
Percent of population in prison? US leads
Percent of population without healthcare? US leads
Percent of handgun related deaths? US leads
Percent of population obese? US leads
lets just say the *best* is pretty subjective
and yes I live in the US too
I think the poster meant the 'pencil eraser' type joystick/mouse I most commonly associated with IBM ThinkPads back in the day. It was pretty common before laptops had the small touchpads.
Who is whining? I was simply telling the GP that his experience was legit since the change was made in the last two months.
As for not poking around, it's piss poor customer mgmt to make people jump though hoops to find basic options like what OS to install. I'm not talking about getting a freebie on a special keyboard or upgraded video card, it's the friggin OS.
The whining (from Dell) will commence when starts wondering why it's losing customers. If customers can't find what they want quickly, they won't stick around to see if it's maybe just *hidden* somewhere.
The whole point of buying from Dell or another company is to *not* do it yourself. if it can be legally done, then Dell should be doing it if customers want it. If Dell doesn't want to do things customers are asking for, well that's just dumb business practice.
Yeah but do you want 4 grocery sales guys sitting in your kitchen watching you drink milk? ;-)
This changed within the last 2 months. I ordered and XPS back in May, no problem having XP listed with no extra 'fee' to downgrade.
Just purchased 2 more computers and the XP option is gone. i didn't poke around the site much, I just went to a local retailer that still had pre-installed machines available and got my XP boxen.
Congrats Dell you just lost 2 computer purchases.
So you think that a government bureaucracy could run things more efficiently?
The legal depts of the various companies providing service on the network would be more than happy to hound the gov't and network provider into doing a decent job.
Wouldnt this affect customer service negatively?
You're claiming customer service of Cable Cos, Mobile Phone Co's and land line phone Co's is any good at all? By having your connection with a service provider instead of the network provider you are insulated from that. And you can switch service providers anytime you like. (Hint: look at Europe and GSM phones)
If i dont have the option of taking my business elsewhere, what incentive do they have to provide good service?
Same as above, you can always go to another service provider on the network. The service providers will be the ones hounding the network provider keep the network running.
Who determines how much to charge for the services? Perhaps you think that because its nationalized that it would be "free"?
Try reading your electric or phone bill. it's all regulated (or used to be) rates. The network provider and gov't will determine 'reasonable' rates and pass them on to the service providers. It's already done with many services that are 'natural monopolies' like land line phone service and such things.
So in short, it's already being done we're just suffering the effects of not having it here.
I'll feed the troll. Maybe the 'dumb' are the ones who switch from Dem to GOP as they get older, forgetting that you do actually have to 'invest' in your people and infrastructure, not expect private industry to do it.
Then again, maybe the dumb are the people who generalize parties and vote party line regardless of the actual people they are voting for, putting incompetent corrupt people in power, Dem or GOP.
That's the big issue. *where* are the profits coming from, no one in Congress seems to ask that simple question during the quarterly roast of big oil execs on capital hill. And the execs sure aren't wanting to explain it. It seems like it should be a pretty easy thing to track down...where are the massive profits coming from in the last 6 years compared with the 6 before that? these are *business* people right? if you don't know where your profits are coming from your not worth the MBA you paid for.
My thought is they make their money in the refining process. They are the ones that control it and it's capacity hasn't gone up all that much in the last 30 years.
The cost of crude isn't where they make their money, they buy it at record high prices so one would expect them to sell the finished product at higher prices; the REVENUE part of my original post.
But with profits going through the roof consistently for 6 years, the money is coming from somewhere else...which I think is marking up the cost of the gas they sell to the stations..i.e. the refining process. Maybe it's like car dealers. They claim the 'invoice' is what they pay the manufacturers, but we all know it's way below that. So maybe the price they're selling to the stations is marked up a large amount from it's costs.
ANWR is *not* the solution to this problem. Getting ourselves off of OIL is the only solution.
ANWR reserves will only provide enough oil for 2 years of current US consumption. facts here.
and that's the HIGH end of estimates.
Better to spend the money getting off of oil than to further the lining of big oil's profits, no?
You claim that big oil is only making 4% profit but offer no proof. The simple fact that prices are going up and their profits are at record levels consistently for multiple years says they are gouging.
Their REVENUE can go up without profits going up, that's what happens when your costs go up. But their PROFITS go up only when charging more than their paying for product.
Please explain how profits can go up wihtout them charging more then they are paying? we aren't buying significantly more oil then 5 years ago so the extra profit money isn't coming from increased sales...
please provide your paypal info as I need a new monitor now...
;-)
oh and thank you
yep, I got a C&D letter from my ISP for grabbing Stargate: Atlantis back when it first came out.
They don't care whether it's movies or tv or music. it's money they seem to think they're losing so send in the lawyers!
The funny thing is I *was* a huge SG1 fan, even had seasons 1-7 on DVD. I missed the first half of SG: Atlantis due to being without cable for a few months, so I just went online to catch up and figured I'd be 'nice' and do the same for other people in the same boat. I still have the downloaded episodes, and you know what? I've never watched them, nor have I watched SG1 since.
Left a really bad taste in my mouth so I'm doing the best thing I can...NOT watching them anymore. Of course if I was more motivated I'd write them a letter but hey...haha
Some will smoke less sure. Some will also pull out a gun and shoot people to get what they can no longer afford.
If we think the wars today are bad, imagine when nuclear armed states start getting testy about access to oil...
What can Bush do to stop it when he has no official power
Shrub has already overruled past presidents who would like to release information.
I won't put it past him to produce an executive order prevent release of his papers once he's out of office.
If you're simply 'downloading' content you've already purchased, no there really isn't a big problem.
The 'problem' is that if you're using bittorrent and haven't hacked the protocol to only leech or another 'sharing' app, then you're also uploading the file to people who perhaps haven't legally purchased the content. That makes it illegal.
File sharing is illegal when copyrighted works are involved, plain and simple. The laws are antiquated and the business models obsolete, but that doesn't mean we get to ignore the laws. Simply don't share copyrighted material until the laws and the content producers change their ways.
It may be hard, but continuing to suckle at the RIAA/MPAA nipples while complaining about their business model isn't a rational argument.