A lot of people - myself included - figure it's not worth getting an Xbox360 or PS3 unless I have a good high definition TV to go along with it.
So instead of contemplating a move from a game console that cost $200 new to one that costs $400 (360 premium) or $600 (PS3 premium) new, I'm effectively looking at spending that plus another $400 or more on a reasonably cheap 26" HDTV. I'm sure a lot of enthusiasts would be looking for a 36" plasma set or something similar.
I could budget $800 or $1000 plus the price of some new games. But even though I can afford it, I don't spend two weeks' worth of net pay at the drop of a hat. It will easily be another year or two before I decide between a PS3 or Xbox360.
Two of Robert Howard's other famous characters were Bran Mak Morn and Solomon Kane, and all of Howard's writings for each were recently rebundled into new books with the same names. He also wrote about Kull the Konqueror, a king in ancient Atlantis that preceded Conan by thousands of years. In addition to that, he wrote dozens of independent short stories, some suprisingly good poetry, and Westerns. He was also friends with HP Lovecraft, one of the most famous horror writers of the 20th century, and Clark Ashton Smith, another popular science fiction writer.
If Conan was Howard's only character that had a large number of stories, or Howard only wrote sword and sorcery fiction, or Howard was a complete recluse, or Howard never tried to publish his stories but only recorded them, I would give some credence to the idea he believed Conan himself actually told the stories. As it is, I think at best it's an urban legend, at worst it's a marketing campaign Howard or someone else invented to boost sales.
I hope the movie does not influence the game.
on
Eidos Picks Up Conan MMOG
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· Score: 4, Informative
The Conan films with Schwarzennegger are an easy way to waste a few hours, but aside from roughly following the ethnic stereotypes of the original stories, they don't fit the literary character at all.
Conan is brutal, lightning fast, crafty, and bloodthirsty in addition to being muscular. He used the best equipment he could get, and fought for fun, wealth, and women. The literary character would have escaped slavery. He would have engaged in pit fighting for fun and profit. He would have worn armor and not stalked around with a loincloth.
Does this sound like a boring, stupid, lumbering brute to you? "The fighting madness of his race was upon him, and with a red mist of unreasoning fury wavering before his blazing eyes, he cleft skulls, smashed breasts, severed limbs, ripped out entrails, and littered the deck like a shambles with a ghastly harvest of brains and blood."
Capturing that kind of intensity in the game will mean the difference between making something that does well, and something that offers Diablo 1 with better graphics. I like the Arnold flick as much as anyone, but it doesn't represent the fun of Conan at all. It also gives Sword and Sorcery writers and fans a worse stereotype than they deserve.
I believe you. Just another indicator that too many corporate hierarchies rely upon abstract and often useless standards.
I would bet that your ability to do good work did not change substantially because you earned a PhD. But you have those three magic letters on your resume, so now they give you free reign. I'm sure all of us know some people with PhDs that are useless or brilliant but focused on topics outside the business domain. Just like we know college undergraduates or perhaps even just high school graduates that do excellent work but are held back from major responsibilities for lack of a diploma.
But they stopped updating it. In 2000 the 3800 had already been making 200 peak horsepower from its 3.8 liters for several model years. The 3.4 liter V6 in some sedans and minivans was rated at 180 peak horsepower. The current GM vehicles that use the 3800, the LaCrosse, Lucerne, and Grand Prix, all still have the 200 horsepower version. This summer, Saturn starts selling the new Aura sedan. In XE trim, it will have a 3.5 liter pushrod V6 engine that makes 224 horsepower.
If GM had put a proportionate amount of work updating the 3800 as they did the 3.4, it might be making 243 horsepower today. Not class leading, but still much more competitive than 200.
It doesn't really matter how they rate the numbers. Call it a.04 liter engine if you like. The other facts are: 1. The total vehicle weighs 3050 lbs (good). 2. The engine makes 238 peak horsepower (impressive). 3. Fuel economy on premium fuel is 18/24 (disappointing). As a sports car, it's a good design. As an engine for widespread use, it's not there yet.
Thanks very much for the info. I will definitely keep an eye out. I'm not in the market for the moment though. My 2001 Impala is boring but fuel efficient and (thus far, 113,000 miles) quite reliable. One bad wire connected to the coolant sensor at 42,000 miles has been the only unscheduled maintenance.
Something else that may be related is that the current RX8 engine has anemic low end torque. They offset that with very short gearing (i.e. the engine is making weak power, but maybe it has to spin 12 times to turn the wheel once, so the force multiplier to the ground is high). For example, from Wikipedia the 2004 Corvette Z06 has a 2.97 first gear ratio and a 3.42 differential ratio, for a 10.16 multiplier at the wheels. The 2006 RX8 has a 3.76 first gear and a 4.44 differential ratio, for a combined 16.7 multiplier at the wheels. The Z06 is blazingly fast despite the taller gearing, because the big V8 makes gobs of torque. The RX8 is still quite quick due to the shorter gearing, but constantly running at high engine RPMS hinders fuel economy.
I wonder if proper use of forced induction through supercharging or turbocharging might actually improve fuel economy for the Wankel. Increased torque at low RPM might permit taller gearing. I've no idea whether the efficiency gains from taller gearing can offset the efficiency losses from *charging. I'd love to see this engine become more popular, so I'm hopeful.
I think the RX8 looks cool. It's on the verge of cartoonish, but I like it. And it's supposed to handle superbly. The Wankel has two big performance advantages. Its small size lets them put it closer to the center of the car, giving it better stability, a lower center of gravity, and lighter weight. It also revs right to 9000 RPM, higher than even the new BMW M5. For people big on high-revving engines, that's a nice bonus.
Not that it's a better performance car than the Corvette. It isn't. But it's not bad for $27,000 until you factor in the comparatively disappointing fuel economy.
ChronosWS largely agreed with this, writing that "cars like the Porsche Carerra and the Bugatti Veyron (mentioned in a related article) are consummate sports cars -- they exemplify not only speed but styling, handling and quality expected of a car with their price tag. Cars such as the Corvette, especially the most recent incarnation, do so relatively inexpensively. But regardless, 0-60 acceleration is not the most important statistic, and often isn't an important statistic at all except to people who don't know better (I refer the undereducated to the more useful 0-100-0 or 0-150-0 tests, as well as relevant agility tests such as emergency lane change, slalom and skid pad.)
Even skidpad, 0-100-0, slalom, and other tests don't paint the whole picture. The best way to judge is driving experience. The 2006 Corvette is a spectacular performance machine. But I've met people who just find the BMW 330 or the base trim Porsche Boxter (both substantially slower) much more fun to drive. People spending $100,000+ for a Porsche 911 or a Ferrari actually are getting more than just a badge. (Maybe not $150,000 worth in sport, but a lot.)
0-100-0 (Accelerate from a standing start to 100 mph, then slam on the brakes to a full stop) tests will rule out things like a performance truck. The RAM SRT-10 can accelerate like a beast, but it is too heavy to stop in a short distance like a sports car. That's a good start. But a Mustang GT 500 will ace that test without offering a driving experience like a Porsche or Lotus.
Slalom tests are weight towards smaller, narrower cars. If one car is 65 inches wide and the other is 82 inches wide, the former will have an easier time weaving around cones. It has 34 inches less of lateral movement to handle as it goes forward. That's a big deal around cones, but it may not reflect their comparative handling on a road course.
I'm a big fan of the Wankel engine. But the RX8 weighs 3050 pounds, has 232 horsepower (it used to be listed at 238, but the Society of Automotive Engineers released a stricter standard of measurement last year), and is EPA rated for mileage 18/24.
Compare that to the 2006 Toyota Camry V6. 268 horsepower (under the same SAE standard), a several hundred pound weight disadvantage, and EPA mileage 22/31 on 87 octane fuel. The Chevy Corvette weighs 200 pounds more than the RX8 and has a huge 400 horsepower V8, and its EPA mileage rating is 18/26.
Now, Toyota can chew up Mazda and spit them out with the amount of money Toyota spends on research and development each year. So it's at least possible that future research will product Wankel rotary engines that offer superior power and efficiency versus piston competition. But right now, there's no efficiency advantage to the Wankel.
A large minority of the kids at college drive a relatively new car that their parents bought them.
Take a trip through a big mall in California, and it looks like 50% of the women between the ages of 18 and 30 have surgically enhanced breasts.
And everybody has an iPod. That's $300+, plus accessories, plus downloads.
A big portion of the population would never spend $600 on a game console.. but another big portion certainly could. It's not a question of cost, it's a question of whether it has enough appeal versus the Wii and 360.
Thanks for the info. I did not realize the LT1 Caprice was that fuel efficient. My father had a used 87 Cadillac and my brother had a used 93 Mercury Grand Marquis, and even after tuneups their fuel economy was disappointing. About 18 and 13 mpg, respectively. My 2001 Impala gets in the high 20s even after 110,000 miles.
Well, if you only use its off-roading or tow capacity on rare occasions, then you probably don't need a high quality vehicle. Get a beater. (I'm using Chevy as an example, but this applies for any brand.) Instead of a $45,000 2006 Chevy Suburban, get a $20,000 2006 Chevy Impala and a $2,000 1985 Suburban. The old Suburban won't be as nice as a brand new model, but there are $23,000 reasons to prefer it. Just use it when you need it.
Let's say you drive 15,000 miles in a year. If your average speed is 55 mph, that's 272 hours in a car. If your average speed is 75 mph, that's 200 hours in a car.
Like it or not, most people would gladly pay an extra 30% in annual fuel costs in return for an extra 72 hours of free time.
Your vehicle has a higher rollover rating, and it also won't fare as well in an impact with a stationary object or barrier.
F-350 versus Camry in a crash, there's no question that you win. F-350 versus Camry in a high speed emergency maneuver, and there's a good chance you'll flip a few times. The Camry almost certainly will not flip. If you both run into a concrete wall at the same speed, the occupants of the Camry are likely to fare better. It has superior crumple zones to absorb the impact, while the average truck has a more rigid structure that passes more of the impact forces to the occupants.
Ideally, you want a very large vehicle that has excellent crumple zones but is also quite low to the ground with an equally low center of gravity. Then you have the advantage of mass but also a low rollover risk and better crumple zones. The Maybach 62 sedan is 20 feet long and 6300 pounds - just a few hundred pounds lighter than your truck. That's a spectacular choice. If only I had a spare $400,000.
The CRV actually has an impressive 140 cubic feet of total interior volume - better than most station wagons available today and just a bit behind smaller minivans like the Chevy Uplander, the short wheelbase Dodge Caravan, or the Mazda MPV. An old, gas guzzler Buick Roadmaster or Chevy Caprice has more interior room. A Mercury Sable Wagon has about the same. The Ford Focus wagon, Volkswagen Passat wagon, Subaru Legacy Wagon, Mazda6 wagon, Chevrolet HHR, and even the Dodge Magnum all have less. Look up the numbers for yourself at Yahoo Autos, if you like.
Plus, the CRV gets its 22 mpg with all wheel drive, which was not available on many station wagons a few years ago. It can't stand up to real off road use, but it's quite handy in slippery conditions. We have a sloped driveway, and I need to shovel the entire length to get my front wheel drive sedan in and out in the winter. That's true even though I use Michelin IceX snow tires. The CRV can handle the incline with eight inches of snow without problems on regular all season tires.
Last but not least, as of 2003 the CRV got the highest score in every US crash test in use at the time. It was one of the safest vehicles for its size available at any price, let alone its ~$17,000 base MSRP. The National Insurance Institute (hwysafety.org) added a side impact test with tall vehicles, which the CRV rated very poorly. Honda modified the model for 2005 to ace that test too. It really is a very practical family vehicle. Most of the available station wagons that have nearly as much interior room cost quite a bit more.
They are restricted to a far smaller number of third party companies who can provide support. A good support contract from Microsoft costs a fortune. A company with 1000 employees and a reasonable operating profit won't have a problem. A small business would.
so they really want everyone to start forking their own version of the OS, not But if a home hobbyist or any other group does a fork of the OS that they like, they can get it free.
one day's fiddling with downloaded images costs about as much as a new PC with Windows pre-installed Absolutely true. But in the small companies I've worked, management often isn't rational enough in their cost benefit analyses. They'll force three employees to waste a week's pay doing things in an inefficient manner before authorizing a $100 purchase to make things easier.
In addition, they have to retrain all their in-house staff, which is tricky given that there are no training courses and no manuals, and they have to retrain every MS Certified Engineer who joins them from that point on. This would only work if ReactOS was mature enough to be a drop-in replacement for XP. Training would only be required for features ReactOS have in addition to full XP compatibility - like the liveCD.
Whenever they have a problem with any third-party application, Adobe, Lotus or the guy down the road who writes VB in his lunch break will all swear blind that the problem is down to the unsupported OS, not their application, and point them to the EULA of the third-party software before hanging up. Install application on XP and try to reproduce the bug. If you can, file bug report with application vendor. If you cannot, file bug report with ReactOS.
Moving to a system that does some of what XP does when they have XP already really doesn't make a lot of sense, unless they want to get out of the whole MS system (in which case the existence or otherwise of Vista is largely irrelevant, and an XP clone would be an odd way to go).
Not at all.
Third party companies can provide top to bottom support for ReactOS. You can even put them into bidding wars with each other. For some aspects of Windows, if you don't like the way Microsoft does things you're stuck.
You not only don't have to pay for the software. You also don't have to handle the bookkeeping and the licensing management. Ideally you'll be able to slap the software on almost any PC built in the last six years.
You have the full source to the OS. You can freely modify, disable, or replace anything you want.
Anyone anywhere can create a custom installation disk or liveCD with defaults of their choice and pre-installed, preconfigured applications (freely redistributable, of course). Anyone anywhere else can download and install that image as many times as they like.
Old hardware that may not have been worth the hassle or cost of upgrading to XP becomes free to upgrade with ReactOS.
I'm not saying ReactOS is there yet. It may never be really good enough to be a valid XP substitute for most applications. But if it does reach that point, I really can see it taking off.
How does 'tight integration', which is a function of how easy the sysop maintains the system, affect the efficiency of a running 'stack'. Does the stack know it is better 'integrated' and therefore runs like a happy bunny?
They probably meant that Microsoft takes advantage of the fact that they own the full source to the database, the operating system, the compiler, and the webserver and integrate them together. So in, say, LAMP, MySQL asks the kernel for a memory buffer, the kernel provides it, MySQL puts data in it, passes the data to Apache, who feeds it to PHP. There is probably some buffer copies along the way and maybe also some parsing and formatting of the data. 4 levels of communication. And really, it's exceedingly difficult for Apache developers to optimize communications with, say, PHP because they don't control the PHP development team.
Microsoft integrates pieces of IIS, SQL Server, and the.NET framework right into the kernel and controls all four. They might be able to set up common tasks in ASP.net (or whatever) so that the kernel allocates a buffer which SQL Server writes data to, and IIS and some.NET application read the data directly without any parsing, formatting, or buffer copies. Even if Microsoft doesn't do extensive tweaks/changes to make all four items interoperate seamlessly, it's likely that they've done things here and there to facilitate passing information between them and sharing processor cycles in an efficient way.
I think that's a very realistic explanation for good performance from the fully Microsoft stack. But I still think the article is suspicious because the OSS software stacks performed so much better on Windows than on Linux. I'm betting the performance tweaks they skipped on Linux were performed on Windows.
The 350z is pretty quick. There are plenty of 'rice' imports (and stock Neons and Cavaliers, for that matter) that are all show and no go. This particular car is no slouch. Now if only someone nice would buy me one.
Probably. Similar horsepower but the Mustang has a colossal edge in torque. Still, the Nissan is 200 pounds lighter and has closer gear spacing with its six speed manual (versus a 5 speed in the Mustang).
Either way, it wouldn't be a blowout. If the Nissan was limited to two gears, it wouldn't even be close.
That's a poor analogy. Microsoft software is a Ferrari, and by comparison Open Source is a Mini? I don't think so.
A better analogy is this, because they refused to do any tuning on the OSS technologies: They bought a Mustang GT and a Nissan 350z and put them in a race. Then they told the driver of the Nissan that he could only use first and second gear. It would be nice if the Nissan was so dramatically superior that it could win even with that handicap, but since even a Ferrari would lose to a Mustang GT with just two forward gears at its disposal, it didn't happen.
The reason to do this is supposedly to help some people... But it does not help anywhere as much as it harms. Communication is the building block of society. To cripple it because some are too lazy to learn it is not the way to solve their problem.
There is some statistical evidence that being raised with different primary languages affects the chance that you become dyslexic and the severity of dyslexia. I don't have a problem with English in its current form, and neither do you. But it's possible that simplifying the language will help thousands or millions of people with potential learning disabilities. I don't know if it will help, or if it's worth the colossal work involved. But it is not simply a matter of people that are too lazy to do the necessary work.
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A lot of people - myself included - figure it's not worth getting an Xbox360 or PS3 unless I have a good high definition TV to go along with it.
So instead of contemplating a move from a game console that cost $200 new to one that costs $400 (360 premium) or $600 (PS3 premium) new, I'm effectively looking at spending that plus another $400 or more on a reasonably cheap 26" HDTV. I'm sure a lot of enthusiasts would be looking for a 36" plasma set or something similar.
I could budget $800 or $1000 plus the price of some new games. But even though I can afford it, I don't spend two weeks' worth of net pay at the drop of a hat. It will easily be another year or two before I decide between a PS3 or Xbox360.
Two of Robert Howard's other famous characters were Bran Mak Morn and Solomon Kane, and all of Howard's writings for each were recently rebundled into new books with the same names. He also wrote about Kull the Konqueror, a king in ancient Atlantis that preceded Conan by thousands of years. In addition to that, he wrote dozens of independent short stories, some suprisingly good poetry, and Westerns. He was also friends with HP Lovecraft, one of the most famous horror writers of the 20th century, and Clark Ashton Smith, another popular science fiction writer.
If Conan was Howard's only character that had a large number of stories, or Howard only wrote sword and sorcery fiction, or Howard was a complete recluse, or Howard never tried to publish his stories but only recorded them, I would give some credence to the idea he believed Conan himself actually told the stories. As it is, I think at best it's an urban legend, at worst it's a marketing campaign Howard or someone else invented to boost sales.
The Conan films with Schwarzennegger are an easy way to waste a few hours, but aside from roughly following the ethnic stereotypes of the original stories, they don't fit the literary character at all.
Conan is brutal, lightning fast, crafty, and bloodthirsty in addition to being muscular. He used the best equipment he could get, and fought for fun, wealth, and women. The literary character would have escaped slavery. He would have engaged in pit fighting for fun and profit. He would have worn armor and not stalked around with a loincloth.
Does this sound like a boring, stupid, lumbering brute to you? "The fighting madness of his race was upon him, and with a red mist of unreasoning fury wavering before his blazing eyes, he cleft skulls, smashed breasts, severed limbs, ripped out entrails, and littered the deck like a shambles with a ghastly harvest of brains and blood."
Capturing that kind of intensity in the game will mean the difference between making something that does well, and something that offers Diablo 1 with better graphics. I like the Arnold flick as much as anyone, but it doesn't represent the fun of Conan at all. It also gives Sword and Sorcery writers and fans a worse stereotype than they deserve.
I believe you. Just another indicator that too many corporate hierarchies rely upon abstract and often useless standards.
I would bet that your ability to do good work did not change substantially because you earned a PhD. But you have those three magic letters on your resume, so now they give you free reign. I'm sure all of us know some people with PhDs that are useless or brilliant but focused on topics outside the business domain. Just like we know college undergraduates or perhaps even just high school graduates that do excellent work but are held back from major responsibilities for lack of a diploma.
But they stopped updating it. In 2000 the 3800 had already been making 200 peak horsepower from its 3.8 liters for several model years. The 3.4 liter V6 in some sedans and minivans was rated at 180 peak horsepower. The current GM vehicles that use the 3800, the LaCrosse, Lucerne, and Grand Prix, all still have the 200 horsepower version. This summer, Saturn starts selling the new Aura sedan. In XE trim, it will have a 3.5 liter pushrod V6 engine that makes 224 horsepower.
If GM had put a proportionate amount of work updating the 3800 as they did the 3.4, it might be making 243 horsepower today. Not class leading, but still much more competitive than 200.
It doesn't really matter how they rate the numbers. Call it a .04 liter engine if you like. The other facts are: 1. The total vehicle weighs 3050 lbs (good). 2. The engine makes 238 peak horsepower (impressive). 3. Fuel economy on premium fuel is 18/24 (disappointing). As a sports car, it's a good design. As an engine for widespread use, it's not there yet.
Thanks very much for the info. I will definitely keep an eye out. I'm not in the market for the moment though. My 2001 Impala is boring but fuel efficient and (thus far, 113,000 miles) quite reliable. One bad wire connected to the coolant sensor at 42,000 miles has been the only unscheduled maintenance.
Thanks, but it's way too late now. Both cars were sold off.
I will definitely keep that in mind in the future.
Something else that may be related is that the current RX8 engine has anemic low end torque. They offset that with very short gearing (i.e. the engine is making weak power, but maybe it has to spin 12 times to turn the wheel once, so the force multiplier to the ground is high). For example, from Wikipedia the 2004 Corvette Z06 has a 2.97 first gear ratio and a 3.42 differential ratio, for a 10.16 multiplier at the wheels. The 2006 RX8 has a 3.76 first gear and a 4.44 differential ratio, for a combined 16.7 multiplier at the wheels. The Z06 is blazingly fast despite the taller gearing, because the big V8 makes gobs of torque. The RX8 is still quite quick due to the shorter gearing, but constantly running at high engine RPMS hinders fuel economy.
I wonder if proper use of forced induction through supercharging or turbocharging might actually improve fuel economy for the Wankel. Increased torque at low RPM might permit taller gearing. I've no idea whether the efficiency gains from taller gearing can offset the efficiency losses from *charging. I'd love to see this engine become more popular, so I'm hopeful.
I think the RX8 looks cool. It's on the verge of cartoonish, but I like it. And it's supposed to handle superbly. The Wankel has two big performance advantages. Its small size lets them put it closer to the center of the car, giving it better stability, a lower center of gravity, and lighter weight. It also revs right to 9000 RPM, higher than even the new BMW M5. For people big on high-revving engines, that's a nice bonus.
Not that it's a better performance car than the Corvette. It isn't. But it's not bad for $27,000 until you factor in the comparatively disappointing fuel economy.
ChronosWS largely agreed with this, writing that "cars like the Porsche Carerra and the Bugatti Veyron (mentioned in a related article) are consummate sports cars -- they exemplify not only speed but styling, handling and quality expected of a car with their price tag. Cars such as the Corvette, especially the most recent incarnation, do so relatively inexpensively. But regardless, 0-60 acceleration is not the most important statistic, and often isn't an important statistic at all except to people who don't know better (I refer the undereducated to the more useful 0-100-0 or 0-150-0 tests, as well as relevant agility tests such as emergency lane change, slalom and skid pad.)
Even skidpad, 0-100-0, slalom, and other tests don't paint the whole picture. The best way to judge is driving experience. The 2006 Corvette is a spectacular performance machine. But I've met people who just find the BMW 330 or the base trim Porsche Boxter (both substantially slower) much more fun to drive. People spending $100,000+ for a Porsche 911 or a Ferrari actually are getting more than just a badge. (Maybe not $150,000 worth in sport, but a lot.)
0-100-0 (Accelerate from a standing start to 100 mph, then slam on the brakes to a full stop) tests will rule out things like a performance truck. The RAM SRT-10 can accelerate like a beast, but it is too heavy to stop in a short distance like a sports car. That's a good start. But a Mustang GT 500 will ace that test without offering a driving experience like a Porsche or Lotus.
Slalom tests are weight towards smaller, narrower cars. If one car is 65 inches wide and the other is 82 inches wide, the former will have an easier time weaving around cones. It has 34 inches less of lateral movement to handle as it goes forward. That's a big deal around cones, but it may not reflect their comparative handling on a road course.
At the end of the day, drive what you like.
I'm a big fan of the Wankel engine. But the RX8 weighs 3050 pounds, has 232 horsepower (it used to be listed at 238, but the Society of Automotive Engineers released a stricter standard of measurement last year), and is EPA rated for mileage 18/24.
Compare that to the 2006 Toyota Camry V6. 268 horsepower (under the same SAE standard), a several hundred pound weight disadvantage, and EPA mileage 22/31 on 87 octane fuel. The Chevy Corvette weighs 200 pounds more than the RX8 and has a huge 400 horsepower V8, and its EPA mileage rating is 18/26.
Now, Toyota can chew up Mazda and spit them out with the amount of money Toyota spends on research and development each year. So it's at least possible that future research will product Wankel rotary engines that offer superior power and efficiency versus piston competition. But right now, there's no efficiency advantage to the Wankel.
A large minority of the kids at college drive a relatively new car that their parents bought them.
Take a trip through a big mall in California, and it looks like 50% of the women between the ages of 18 and 30 have surgically enhanced breasts.
And everybody has an iPod. That's $300+, plus accessories, plus downloads.
A big portion of the population would never spend $600 on a game console.. but another big portion certainly could. It's not a question of cost, it's a question of whether it has enough appeal versus the Wii and 360.
Thanks for the info. I did not realize the LT1 Caprice was that fuel efficient. My father had a used 87 Cadillac and my brother had a used 93 Mercury Grand Marquis, and even after tuneups their fuel economy was disappointing. About 18 and 13 mpg, respectively. My 2001 Impala gets in the high 20s even after 110,000 miles.
Well, if you only use its off-roading or tow capacity on rare occasions, then you probably don't need a high quality vehicle. Get a beater. (I'm using Chevy as an example, but this applies for any brand.) Instead of a $45,000 2006 Chevy Suburban, get a $20,000 2006 Chevy Impala and a $2,000 1985 Suburban. The old Suburban won't be as nice as a brand new model, but there are $23,000 reasons to prefer it. Just use it when you need it.
Let's say you drive 15,000 miles in a year. If your average speed is 55 mph, that's 272 hours in a car. If your average speed is 75 mph, that's 200 hours in a car.
Like it or not, most people would gladly pay an extra 30% in annual fuel costs in return for an extra 72 hours of free time.
Your vehicle has a higher rollover rating, and it also won't fare as well in an impact with a stationary object or barrier.
F-350 versus Camry in a crash, there's no question that you win. F-350 versus Camry in a high speed emergency maneuver, and there's a good chance you'll flip a few times. The Camry almost certainly will not flip. If you both run into a concrete wall at the same speed, the occupants of the Camry are likely to fare better. It has superior crumple zones to absorb the impact, while the average truck has a more rigid structure that passes more of the impact forces to the occupants.
Ideally, you want a very large vehicle that has excellent crumple zones but is also quite low to the ground with an equally low center of gravity. Then you have the advantage of mass but also a low rollover risk and better crumple zones. The Maybach 62 sedan is 20 feet long and 6300 pounds - just a few hundred pounds lighter than your truck. That's a spectacular choice. If only I had a spare $400,000.
The CRV actually has an impressive 140 cubic feet of total interior volume - better than most station wagons available today and just a bit behind smaller minivans like the Chevy Uplander, the short wheelbase Dodge Caravan, or the Mazda MPV. An old, gas guzzler Buick Roadmaster or Chevy Caprice has more interior room. A Mercury Sable Wagon has about the same. The Ford Focus wagon, Volkswagen Passat wagon, Subaru Legacy Wagon, Mazda6 wagon, Chevrolet HHR, and even the Dodge Magnum all have less. Look up the numbers for yourself at Yahoo Autos, if you like.
Plus, the CRV gets its 22 mpg with all wheel drive, which was not available on many station wagons a few years ago. It can't stand up to real off road use, but it's quite handy in slippery conditions. We have a sloped driveway, and I need to shovel the entire length to get my front wheel drive sedan in and out in the winter. That's true even though I use Michelin IceX snow tires. The CRV can handle the incline with eight inches of snow without problems on regular all season tires.
Last but not least, as of 2003 the CRV got the highest score in every US crash test in use at the time. It was one of the safest vehicles for its size available at any price, let alone its ~$17,000 base MSRP. The National Insurance Institute (hwysafety.org) added a side impact test with tall vehicles, which the CRV rated very poorly. Honda modified the model for 2005 to ace that test too. It really is a very practical family vehicle. Most of the available station wagons that have nearly as much interior room cost quite a bit more.
Not at all.
I'm not saying ReactOS is there yet. It may never be really good enough to be a valid XP substitute for most applications. But if it does reach that point, I really can see it taking off.
How does 'tight integration', which is a function of how easy the sysop maintains the system, affect the efficiency of a running 'stack'. Does the stack know it is better 'integrated' and therefore runs like a happy bunny?
.NET framework right into the kernel and controls all four. They might be able to set up common tasks in ASP .net (or whatever) so that the kernel allocates a buffer which SQL Server writes data to, and IIS and some .NET application read the data directly without any parsing, formatting, or buffer copies. Even if Microsoft doesn't do extensive tweaks/changes to make all four items interoperate seamlessly, it's likely that they've done things here and there to facilitate passing information between them and sharing processor cycles in an efficient way.
They probably meant that Microsoft takes advantage of the fact that they own the full source to the database, the operating system, the compiler, and the webserver and integrate them together. So in, say, LAMP, MySQL asks the kernel for a memory buffer, the kernel provides it, MySQL puts data in it, passes the data to Apache, who feeds it to PHP. There is probably some buffer copies along the way and maybe also some parsing and formatting of the data. 4 levels of communication. And really, it's exceedingly difficult for Apache developers to optimize communications with, say, PHP because they don't control the PHP development team.
Microsoft integrates pieces of IIS, SQL Server, and the
I think that's a very realistic explanation for good performance from the fully Microsoft stack. But I still think the article is suspicious because the OSS software stacks performed so much better on Windows than on Linux. I'm betting the performance tweaks they skipped on Linux were performed on Windows.
300 horsepower, 260 pound feet of torque, 6 speed manual, 3250 pounds.
The 350z is pretty quick. There are plenty of 'rice' imports (and stock Neons and Cavaliers, for that matter) that are all show and no go. This particular car is no slouch. Now if only someone nice would buy me one.
Probably. Similar horsepower but the Mustang has a colossal edge in torque. Still, the Nissan is 200 pounds lighter and has closer gear spacing with its six speed manual (versus a 5 speed in the Mustang).
Either way, it wouldn't be a blowout. If the Nissan was limited to two gears, it wouldn't even be close.
That's a poor analogy. Microsoft software is a Ferrari, and by comparison Open Source is a Mini? I don't think so.
A better analogy is this, because they refused to do any tuning on the OSS technologies: They bought a Mustang GT and a Nissan 350z and put them in a race. Then they told the driver of the Nissan that he could only use first and second gear. It would be nice if the Nissan was so dramatically superior that it could win even with that handicap, but since even a Ferrari would lose to a Mustang GT with just two forward gears at its disposal, it didn't happen.
The reason to do this is supposedly to help some people... But it does not help anywhere as much as it harms. Communication is the building block of society. To cripple it because some are too lazy to learn it is not the way to solve their problem.
1 6073551.htm/
The complexity of modern English is not simply a problem because some people are lazy.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/03/0103
There is some statistical evidence that being raised with different primary languages affects the chance that you become dyslexic and the severity of dyslexia. I don't have a problem with English in its current form, and neither do you. But it's possible that simplifying the language will help thousands or millions of people with potential learning disabilities. I don't know if it will help, or if it's worth the colossal work involved. But it is not simply a matter of people that are too lazy to do the necessary work.