What is this, a post for the sake of posting something? References? How about thousands of years of documented literature, lore, endangered species cries (you know, kill tiger, take penis, leave remains to rot. Ditto rhino and horn), black market crackdowns, illegal imports into North America, Europe et al?
You demanded references, I ask that you wait until you have something constructive to contribute before wailing on the Reply link.
Which hybrid is that? Will it replace the Escape Hybrid, or is it a passenger car?
until they get rid of that silly little "No Warranty Whatsoever" on all the firmware for their car
Do you have a source for this? If you do some research, you'll probably find that the automotive industry is highly regulated and that it's llegal for a manufacturer to release a vehicle without warranting the core components.
Interesting. You're incorrect, but it's an interesting article. Yes, Ford did develop their own system in-house. Problem is there are only so many ways to get from point-A to point-B. Ford's system so closely resembled Toyota's they had no choice but to pay royalties for its use; the royalties, you see, were less expensive than the potential for lawsuits.
Ford is developing the WHOLE system in house this time around,
"Is developing"? Sitting across from me in the showroom is a Dark Shadow Grey Escape Hybrid. In our lot there is a Red Fire and a Sonic Blue version of same. I've taken the Red Fire out on several test drives.
The Escape Hybrid isn't "in development" - it's on the showroom floor.
the reason: they don't want to buy old technology
"old technology"? Most technology that goes into production vehicles is 3-20 years old! In automotive terms the Toyota Synergy Drive system is revolutionary; the first and best full-hybrid system on the market. Where Ford has an advantage, though, is the first company to install the system in an SUV.
From what I've heard, Ford's bug is opposite. My ex had an explorer and one day the pedal slammed itself to the floor and she couldn't stop the car with all of her weight on the brake and had to ram it into someone to get it to stop.
That's not "Ford's" problem so much as any number of cars that have experienced accelerator sticks.
BTW - if you're still on speaking terms with your ex, you should let her know that if that happens in the future she should have
Shifted into neutral (which, as a safety feature, has no 'lock' so you don't have to press the button - just push the shifter)
Turned off the ignition
Aimed for a passage of empty space, rather than a potential casualty
And what does that have to do with the Toyota Prius software crashing? Was this article about a Ford car having hardware problems?
Why you're responding to me and not the parent is beyond me, but nevertheless;
Ford's Escape Hybrid uses the same technology as the Prius. The Escape Hybrid is in its first model year, therefore it is conceivable that it too could experience the same problems.
as I understand it, the Prius has an interesting transmission that doesn't really use gears. I'm not entirely clear on how it works, but I guess it's a smooth continuum rather than the distinct steps of gears.
In a nutshell, it's a chain-driven set of pulleys that resemble a pair of cones that move together and apart to give you a near infinite number of ratio combinations. This maintains a constant RPM level in the engine for better fuel economy as well as less strain on the mechanics and better performance because your engine doesn't have to torque up, shift gears, then torque back into a power band again - you're always in a power band.
If you don't have a Toyota dealership in your area that has a Prius on the lot, check out the Ford Five Hundred or Freestyle and see what it's like to drive without gears.:)
Actually in this case Ford is paying Toyota royalties to use their Synergy Drive System (the gas/electric hybrid technology at the core of the Escape Hybrid)
No, if I can run any code I want then I can run any binaries I sign (or people/companies I have decided to trust sign).
With TCPA being proposed as far down as the firmware level; how will you be able to sign/launch your bootloader of choice? Will it recognize/permit you to boot from a Linux/UNIX/*BSD (WSEB?) CD, or will those vendors have to go to great lengths to get themselves certified with BIOS manufacturer(s)? What of source code compiled systems? How will the process be implemented to sign user-compiled binaries?
When you consider a system like BSD's Ports or Gentoo's Portage/ebuild, granted the process could (would, out of neccesity) become automated, but then aren't you just asking for trouble? Current incarnations of *nix viruses already take advantage of local compilers to present themselves to the plethora of available platforms - wouldn't exploiting that be the next logical step?
Of course if I'm way off track here, I encourage clarification - I'm just trying to understand how this wouldn't affect the current OSS model.
Have you ever actually looked into TCPA? What about it makes you think you cannot run any code you want?
Perhaps its intent? If you can run "any code you want", you can run trojans, worms, pirated software and software designed to circumvent copyright.
Of course as a side effect, you can't run free hippie operating systems unless and until their code is certified to be corporate-friendly. Now, how this would affect kernels and software packages (including, I would imagine, boot loaders) that are re-compiled from source on a regular basis is left to the imagination.
I don't run Firefox because I find it inferior to IE in rendering pages as they were intended (yes, we live in an IE world, deal with it).
I used to think the same thing, but I stuck it out and just dealt with the incorrectly rendered pages. Of course there have always been / will always be people who think like you, but the fact is many (most) pages now render correctly in FireFox.
As alternate browsers are again being recognized as statistically significant companies and even hobbyist webmasters are starting to realize their value. If you see a site that isn't rendering correctly, contact the site owner and inform them. Your message might not turn the tide, but perhaps combined with the 5-6 they received last week yours will be enough to convince them of the advantage of compliance.
Please, though, don't send a nasty-gram espousing the virtues of open source, criticizing Microsoft (no need to even mention MS/IE) as it destroys all of our credibility.
Re:"Merge onto I-5 HAL" "Sorry Dave, I can't do th
on
Cars that Can't Crash?
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· Score: 1
Geez...I hope they don't EVEN think of putting crap like this on the new Shelby Cobra Mustang due out in '06. 450 'blown' horses bone stock....
Uhm, the 06's are already arriving on the lots. Or did you mean the 07's (which are already mostly through the R&D stage and nearly ready to go to production)?
Not that I believe 15% of Americans use rabbit ears, I certainly don't know anyone who does. If I only knew 100 people, that would mean that 15 of them do.
How many of those aquaintances live >50km (~20m) from a major metropolitan area?
But when you get right down to it, the largest proportion of ingredients on the pizza is the flour+water+oil dough, which, although Pizza Bob's may be an Ann Arbor institution, just doesn't justify $25+ for a large pizza with a ??? items; especially when you realize a pizza is really just a flat, baked submarine sandwich.
You can't justify spending $25 to feed a family of four?
The problem with some Mom & Pop shops is that they don't put sizes in inches or feet next to their pizzas... While the big chains have somewhat standardized on their sizes, the smarter Mom & Pops have followed suit and re-did their sizes as well, or started putting the sizes on their menus.
We have sizes in our yellow-pages ad, as well as instructions on how many people our pizza will feed. The problem with some people is that they just don't believe us. A large is a large is a large, and four guys need atleast two larges! (even though a large will feed 4 adults; 3 if they're ravished).
Our small is 10", medium is 14", large is 16" and extra large is 18".
Nothing annoys me more than having to ask the people on the phone what size is their large pizza, only to find out that it's enormous and have to re-think what and how many I want to order on the fly.
You could instead ask them how much pizza you require to feed x adults and y children. Tell them whether you want leftovers (hello-oo up-size!) and they should have a pretty good idea how much food you need.
A hint to everybody trying out a small shop; if you're feeding 4 people and you order enough to feed 10-12, please don't complain about the price. If you only need a two-seater car yet you buy a bus you're going to pay more than you expected.
Oh, btw, cheese is not the secret to good pizza - it's the sauce!!! I actually order pizza w/o cheese on it sometimes - tasted it by accident once, 'cause we had a lactose intolerant person in our company, and loved it ever since.
Oh yes, our sauce is excellent. Homemade from a blend of 27 spices in a secret family recipe (and not even all members of the family know it). The point I was making, however, was in the quality of the most expensive, therefore the first item to be cut in a cost-cutting bid; the cheese. One chain store uses an oil-based cheese substitute (non-dairy) that comes pre-shredded in a bag and retains its shape even when fully cooked/melted. We use a custom blend of two gourmet mozerella cheeses, grated in-house daily and applied generously to every pizza.
Papa Johns Rocks, but it's the only one of the big chains that I will ever eat. Some of the Mom & Pop shops offer a much more superior product as another poster mentioned.
I work for a Mom & Pop shop, and unfortunately the big chains are using our generous portions against us. Most people in large cities have become convinced that you need two medium/large pizzas to feed your family, whereas a single large or extra large from our shop will more than suffice (often with leftovers). Our pizza sizes have remained the same for ~26 years where our medium is the size of the chain stores' large, large to extra large, and our extra large is almost unmatched. Of course, you also get anywhere from half to one and a half kilograms of cheese, the crust is much thicker and the toppings are exponentially more generous.
As a result, our medium costs more than two at a chain store, but since I can eat an entire chain store large but struggle to eat half of our medium, that's almost moot.
If only we had more people like you and the parent poster, maybe Mom & Pop would make enough money to take a few days off here and there and people would figure out what real pizza is supposed to taste like.
Please; continue driving past the chain store and remember; Mom & Pop shops put the pizza IN the cardboard...
I've seen it time and time again, especially with electronics, umbrellas, and of course, digital watches, which, for some reason, seem like a good idea.
I pay less than $70 for a Timex that lasts me upwards of 7-8 years on its original battery. I could pay in the neighborhood of $1000 for a watch which would last, oh, 7-8 years on its original battery. n.b. Watch batteries tend to carry a pretty standard cost, however it'll cost me $5 to have it replaced at a watch kiosk - a specialty watch shop isn't likely to be that inexpensive. Remember that if you pay more for an item, you're apt to pay more to have it fixed. Consider the auto market; if you purchase a low-cost domestic or import you'll pay reasonably the same rates to have it repaired. As soon as you enter the high-end market (Lexus, Cadillac, etc.) you're going to pay exponentially more for the same services.
Like everything else there is a point where cheap surpasses value and quality is lost. It's not always best to buy the cheapest or the most expensive item. In fact, it's usually best to find the point in the middle to maximize value. Where music is concerned, a song isn't neccesarily a song. Would you rather consistently pay $0.05 for a 64kbit MP3 or $0.10 for a 160KBit version? Granted, there is no 'breaking' involved (however there remains the risk of a hard disk failure which leaves all qualities equally vulnerable), however as your sound system improves you'll better notice the lack of quality. If you graduate to studio equipment, you may not even want to use a lossy format so you'll be buying CDs after all.
BTW - digital watches are a good idea because we live in a society where we no longer require the sun to tell time.:)
The majority of new technology has allowed us to live longer, healthier lives.
Yes, under the constant threat of better, more efficient possibilities to die.
Of course the "cancer" comment pretty clearly identifies you as a troll, I suppose. So don't bother replying.
Sorry for my apparent ignorance, but I've searched through all my recent postings that I made as far back as Slashdot will allow and I can't find a single reference to cancer, save for a discussion of Camel's marketting strategies. Would you care to enlighten me as to which comment you're talking about and tell me how it is that I am a "troll"?
That's false. We're still here. Throughout history we have only increased our population (well, modern history). This seems to show the exact opposite of what you so shamelessly present as fact.
Yes, but with every technological revolution we come up with newer, more efficient methods of eliminating members of our own species.
Not to mention, of course (hey, topic!) the natural disasters that are stepping up in size, scope and magnitude. How was last year's hurricane season? Tsunami, anyone? However you want to slice it, the planet is getting pissed off. It's a race to see what will wipe out the virus known as humanity first. Nature, or ourselves.
Well, you do not know if there's life unless and until you do research. What if you jump the gun and change Mars before you complete all research?
Sounds like a pretty pessimistic approach to me, considering we're still researching our own planet.
If we follow that logic, we'd basically postpone habitation of Mars indefinately. At the very least our great grandchildren wouldn't have a hope of ever setting foot on Martian soil.
Ah, but you can't instantly change which SMTP server the mail goes to
10 MX mail.snerk.org 20 MX mail.somewherelse.com
Not only do I have built-in redundancy, I have protection against one of our ISPs going "out of business or turns out to be run by a crook".
and then you can wait a couple of days for DNS to propagate the change around the world.
Even if your TTLs are set to 24 hours (87480 seconds:P ), that means 1 day of e-mail bouncing/queuing on remote sites (many/most users probably won't even notice). If you're at all worried, set the TTLs to 1 hour and you're up and running before your next pot of coffee's brewed. Furthermore, if you're planning a heirarchal change in your domain you could (should) drop the TTLs to 5-15 minutes. Your DNS server load will go up (but on a vanity domain that's completely negligible) but if you do it right, nobody will notice anything with regards to your e-mail delivery.
Or pay $12 a year for pobox.com redirection and spam filtering. No ads, and you can send the mail to whatever real e-mail account you like, and change it at a moment's notice (unlike personal domains).
If I add a line to my "aliases" file, I'll create an alias to my account. Within seconds I can create one or several e-mail accounts. I can create upwards of a hundred million unique e-mail addresses at my personal domain. I can then create, likewise, up to a hundred million unique sub-domains, each of which can carry hundreds of millions of unique e-mail addresses.
It is my "real e-mail account" without paying for each address, I can host or forward it to any destination that suits my fancy - again with a one-liner in an alias or forward file. (I can also use a fandazzled web based interface to accomplish the same goal).
All I have to pay is $30/year for my domain and the cost of the bandwidth I'm already using. If I wanted to, I could charge friends/family a flat or even annual fee for a selection of addresses. ($5/year for 10 addresses with high storage volume, IMAP(s), POP3(s), SMTP (with secure login), secure shell with Pine, and web mail sounds like a good deal, no? 10 people taking advantage of that 'deal' and I've paid for my domain and put $30 in my pocket)
The best part? I don't have to worry about anybody going out of business, changing business models, changing their ad structure, or changing ownership. If the.org registry goes belly up, well, it's about quits for a large chunk of the Internet anyways and my vanity domain is the least of my worries.;)
Broadband ISPs are a dime-a-dozen in Ontario so if one folds I can be connected in hours to a new one (there's already a line-card installed, so I can have a login with a new DSL provider in minutes, actually).
It all depends on how much you're willing to put up with. Free webmail providers come and go. Some are better than others, some are better at earning money. E-mail forwarders are in the same boat - throw a cookie and you'll hit a dozen of 'em. If we got a thousand people in a room we'd probably get a thousand different reccomendations. Me, I'm happy with my Snerk.
Slashdot Mirror
I'vegotoneofthosekeyboards,itworksreallywelltoen forceexcersize.I'vebeenusingitforsixmonthsnowbutIh aven't lostanyweight.
What is this, a post for the sake of posting something? References? How about thousands of years of documented literature, lore, endangered species cries (you know, kill tiger, take penis, leave remains to rot. Ditto rhino and horn), black market crackdowns, illegal imports into North America, Europe et al?
You demanded references, I ask that you wait until you have something constructive to contribute before wailing on the Reply link.
Which hybrid is that? Will it replace the Escape Hybrid, or is it a passenger car?
Do you have a source for this? If you do some research, you'll probably find that the automotive industry is highly regulated and that it's llegal for a manufacturer to release a vehicle without warranting the core components.
Interesting. You're incorrect, but it's an interesting article. Yes, Ford did develop their own system in-house. Problem is there are only so many ways to get from point-A to point-B. Ford's system so closely resembled Toyota's they had no choice but to pay royalties for its use; the royalties, you see, were less expensive than the potential for lawsuits.
"Is developing"? Sitting across from me in the showroom is a Dark Shadow Grey Escape Hybrid. In our lot there is a Red Fire and a Sonic Blue version of same. I've taken the Red Fire out on several test drives.
The Escape Hybrid isn't "in development" - it's on the showroom floor.
"old technology"? Most technology that goes into production vehicles is 3-20 years old! In automotive terms the Toyota Synergy Drive system is revolutionary; the first and best full-hybrid system on the market. Where Ford has an advantage, though, is the first company to install the system in an SUV.
That's not "Ford's" problem so much as any number of cars that have experienced accelerator sticks.
BTW - if you're still on speaking terms with your ex, you should let her know that if that happens in the future she should have
Why you're responding to me and not the parent is beyond me, but nevertheless;
Ford's Escape Hybrid uses the same technology as the Prius. The Escape Hybrid is in its first model year, therefore it is conceivable that it too could experience the same problems.
Big picture, y'know? :)
It's called a Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT) and is the same technology as used in your friendly, every-day snowmobile.
In a nutshell, it's a chain-driven set of pulleys that resemble a pair of cones that move together and apart to give you a near infinite number of ratio combinations. This maintains a constant RPM level in the engine for better fuel economy as well as less strain on the mechanics and better performance because your engine doesn't have to torque up, shift gears, then torque back into a power band again - you're always in a power band.
If you don't have a Toyota dealership in your area that has a Prius on the lot, check out the Ford Five Hundred or Freestyle and see what it's like to drive without gears. :)
Actually in this case Ford is paying Toyota royalties to use their Synergy Drive System (the gas/electric hybrid technology at the core of the Escape Hybrid)
Better still;
"She wants to sleep with... common people ... ... ... common people... like... me..."
With TCPA being proposed as far down as the firmware level; how will you be able to sign/launch your bootloader of choice? Will it recognize/permit you to boot from a Linux/UNIX/*BSD (WSEB?) CD, or will those vendors have to go to great lengths to get themselves certified with BIOS manufacturer(s)? What of source code compiled systems? How will the process be implemented to sign user-compiled binaries?
When you consider a system like BSD's Ports or Gentoo's Portage/ebuild, granted the process could (would, out of neccesity) become automated, but then aren't you just asking for trouble? Current incarnations of *nix viruses already take advantage of local compilers to present themselves to the plethora of available platforms - wouldn't exploiting that be the next logical step?
Of course if I'm way off track here, I encourage clarification - I'm just trying to understand how this wouldn't affect the current OSS model.
Perhaps its intent? If you can run "any code you want", you can run trojans, worms, pirated software and software designed to circumvent copyright.
Of course as a side effect, you can't run free hippie operating systems unless and until their code is certified to be corporate-friendly. Now, how this would affect kernels and software packages (including, I would imagine, boot loaders) that are re-compiled from source on a regular basis is left to the imagination.
I used to think the same thing, but I stuck it out and just dealt with the incorrectly rendered pages. Of course there have always been / will always be people who think like you, but the fact is many (most) pages now render correctly in FireFox.
As alternate browsers are again being recognized as statistically significant companies and even hobbyist webmasters are starting to realize their value. If you see a site that isn't rendering correctly, contact the site owner and inform them. Your message might not turn the tide, but perhaps combined with the 5-6 they received last week yours will be enough to convince them of the advantage of compliance.
Please, though, don't send a nasty-gram espousing the virtues of open source, criticizing Microsoft (no need to even mention MS/IE) as it destroys all of our credibility.
Uhm, the 06's are already arriving on the lots. Or did you mean the 07's (which are already mostly through the R&D stage and nearly ready to go to production)?
How many of those aquaintances live >50km (~20m) from a major metropolitan area?
You're absolutely right. The rights of the rich always supercede those of the poor.
You can't justify spending $25 to feed a family of four?
We have sizes in our yellow-pages ad, as well as instructions on how many people our pizza will feed. The problem with some people is that they just don't believe us. A large is a large is a large, and four guys need atleast two larges! (even though a large will feed 4 adults; 3 if they're ravished).
Our small is 10", medium is 14", large is 16" and extra large is 18".
You could instead ask them how much pizza you require to feed x adults and y children. Tell them whether you want leftovers (hello-oo up-size!) and they should have a pretty good idea how much food you need.
A hint to everybody trying out a small shop; if you're feeding 4 people and you order enough to feed 10-12, please don't complain about the price. If you only need a two-seater car yet you buy a bus you're going to pay more than you expected.
Oh yes, our sauce is excellent. Homemade from a blend of 27 spices in a secret family recipe (and not even all members of the family know it). The point I was making, however, was in the quality of the most expensive, therefore the first item to be cut in a cost-cutting bid; the cheese. One chain store uses an oil-based cheese substitute (non-dairy) that comes pre-shredded in a bag and retains its shape even when fully cooked/melted. We use a custom blend of two gourmet mozerella cheeses, grated in-house daily and applied generously to every pizza.
I work for a Mom & Pop shop, and unfortunately the big chains are using our generous portions against us. Most people in large cities have become convinced that you need two medium/large pizzas to feed your family, whereas a single large or extra large from our shop will more than suffice (often with leftovers). Our pizza sizes have remained the same for ~26 years where our medium is the size of the chain stores' large, large to extra large, and our extra large is almost unmatched. Of course, you also get anywhere from half to one and a half kilograms of cheese, the crust is much thicker and the toppings are exponentially more generous.
As a result, our medium costs more than two at a chain store, but since I can eat an entire chain store large but struggle to eat half of our medium, that's almost moot.
If only we had more people like you and the parent poster, maybe Mom & Pop would make enough money to take a few days off here and there and people would figure out what real pizza is supposed to taste like.
Please; continue driving past the chain store and remember; Mom & Pop shops put the pizza IN the cardboard...
I pay less than $70 for a Timex that lasts me upwards of 7-8 years on its original battery. I could pay in the neighborhood of $1000 for a watch which would last, oh, 7-8 years on its original battery. n.b. Watch batteries tend to carry a pretty standard cost, however it'll cost me $5 to have it replaced at a watch kiosk - a specialty watch shop isn't likely to be that inexpensive. Remember that if you pay more for an item, you're apt to pay more to have it fixed. Consider the auto market; if you purchase a low-cost domestic or import you'll pay reasonably the same rates to have it repaired. As soon as you enter the high-end market (Lexus, Cadillac, etc.) you're going to pay exponentially more for the same services.
Like everything else there is a point where cheap surpasses value and quality is lost. It's not always best to buy the cheapest or the most expensive item. In fact, it's usually best to find the point in the middle to maximize value. Where music is concerned, a song isn't neccesarily a song. Would you rather consistently pay $0.05 for a 64kbit MP3 or $0.10 for a 160KBit version? Granted, there is no 'breaking' involved (however there remains the risk of a hard disk failure which leaves all qualities equally vulnerable), however as your sound system improves you'll better notice the lack of quality. If you graduate to studio equipment, you may not even want to use a lossy format so you'll be buying CDs after all.
BTW - digital watches are a good idea because we live in a society where we no longer require the sun to tell time. :)
Yes, under the constant threat of better, more efficient possibilities to die.
Sorry for my apparent ignorance, but I've searched through all my recent postings that I made as far back as Slashdot will allow and I can't find a single reference to cancer, save for a discussion of Camel's marketting strategies. Would you care to enlighten me as to which comment you're talking about and tell me how it is that I am a "troll"?
Yes, but with every technological revolution we come up with newer, more efficient methods of eliminating members of our own species.
Not to mention, of course (hey, topic!) the natural disasters that are stepping up in size, scope and magnitude. How was last year's hurricane season? Tsunami, anyone? However you want to slice it, the planet is getting pissed off. It's a race to see what will wipe out the virus known as humanity first. Nature, or ourselves.
Sounds like a pretty pessimistic approach to me, considering we're still researching our own planet.
If we follow that logic, we'd basically postpone habitation of Mars indefinately. At the very least our great grandchildren wouldn't have a hope of ever setting foot on Martian soil.
Not only do I have built-in redundancy, I have protection against one of our ISPs going "out of business or turns out to be run by a crook".
Even if your TTLs are set to 24 hours (87480 seconds :P ), that means 1 day of e-mail bouncing/queuing on remote sites (many/most users probably won't even notice). If you're at all worried, set the TTLs to 1 hour and you're up and running before your next pot of coffee's brewed. Furthermore, if you're planning a heirarchal change in your domain you could (should) drop the TTLs to 5-15 minutes. Your DNS server load will go up (but on a vanity domain that's completely negligible) but if you do it right, nobody will notice anything with regards to your e-mail delivery.
I can fully understand why they can't hold their beer. I drink 4 bottles of it and I'm at the urinal for 3 minutes!
Oh, and north of the 49th we don't call it "American Beer", we call it "Evian".
If I add a line to my "aliases" file, I'll create an alias to my account. Within seconds I can create one or several e-mail accounts. I can create upwards of a hundred million unique e-mail addresses at my personal domain. I can then create, likewise, up to a hundred million unique sub-domains, each of which can carry hundreds of millions of unique e-mail addresses.
It is my "real e-mail account" without paying for each address, I can host or forward it to any destination that suits my fancy - again with a one-liner in an alias or forward file. (I can also use a fandazzled web based interface to accomplish the same goal).
All I have to pay is $30/year for my domain and the cost of the bandwidth I'm already using. If I wanted to, I could charge friends/family a flat or even annual fee for a selection of addresses. ($5/year for 10 addresses with high storage volume, IMAP(s), POP3(s), SMTP (with secure login), secure shell with Pine, and web mail sounds like a good deal, no? 10 people taking advantage of that 'deal' and I've paid for my domain and put $30 in my pocket)
The best part? I don't have to worry about anybody going out of business, changing business models, changing their ad structure, or changing ownership. If the .org registry goes belly up, well, it's about quits for a large chunk of the Internet anyways and my vanity domain is the least of my worries. ;)
Broadband ISPs are a dime-a-dozen in Ontario so if one folds I can be connected in hours to a new one (there's already a line-card installed, so I can have a login with a new DSL provider in minutes, actually).
It all depends on how much you're willing to put up with. Free webmail providers come and go. Some are better than others, some are better at earning money. E-mail forwarders are in the same boat - throw a cookie and you'll hit a dozen of 'em. If we got a thousand people in a room we'd probably get a thousand different reccomendations. Me, I'm happy with my Snerk.