I still don't trust them. I've seen too many with what almost did seem like "ghosts in the machine". One just started working before the problem could ever be found. Having to return a car with the statement "I can't find anything wrong, but it just started working" is not something that a mechanic likes to do. I own one, but it has had its engine, transmission, and ALL of the wiring replaced by parts that came from a 99 Mustang that got rolled. I don't know a single mechanic or former mechanic that would own a Jag with jag electronics either.
Re:BMW = Reliable. BMW + WinCE = Not. Whose fault?
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When Appliances Revolt
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· Score: 1
Having done a lot of work on newer BMW and Mercedes cars, BMW isn't even in the same class as Mercedes on quality. They will use a 3mm bolt for a radiator fan attachment, where a Benz would have a 6mm. Plus their bolts rust badly. And this isn't the first time they've had wacky engine control issues. The 850s had a v-12 that was really two siamesed straight 6 crankcases. Ok, that's fine. But the car had 3 engine control computers: one for each bank of cylinders, and another to make them play nice together. It never worked properly on the cars that I saw and worked on (first model year, I don't know if the later versions had the same problem). That car's engine control system was a bad hack; a kludge. Too much of an effort to use existing 6 cylinder parts. If I had been one of the suckers that paid 100K plus for a car that wouldn't idle, I would have been pissed. Don't even get me started on Bosch when it comes to quality control... those Audis really did accelerate on their own. The government deciding that the brake and gas pedals were too close were just covering Audi's ass. The real problem (and any mechanic who specialized in European cars can tell you this) was the vacuum tubes. Not hoses or lines, but stupid molded rubber tubes that sealed by SNAPPING TOGETHER! Guess what happens when those harden from heat and age, when a vaccuum leak at a particular hose joint literally snaps the throttle wide open. I almost ran over my boss the first time I tried to drive one of those cars that was experiencing the problem. Tire wear/failures on an Explorer? As a mechanic about odd tire wear patterns on Explorers with Ford's brain-dead I-beam front suspension. Ask what happens to those beams when you hit a pothole. Ask which beam has the least support, and is most likely to get bent, and which tire that causes to wear rapidly. OK, end of rant. My point is that lots of really stupid engineering decisions get put into production (and I'm a mechanical engineer at this point in my life, not a mechanic). Or back to BMW, head gasket leaks on M3s. The head gaskets are $300 because BMW fucked up the engine design in the first place. Really big mistakes get covered up to protect the companies involved, even if 60 minutes does a story about Audis in swimming pools. As an engineer, I would not sign off on a system like this even if were powered by Linux. Using Microsoft CE in this application and with this interface is bordering on irresponsibility. And yes, I drove one of these cars and wouldn't drive one again. I felt like a lab rat for a junior engineer who forgot that cars MOVE, and that shitty control systems distract from actually driving even when they work correctly.
I once had to replace the flywheel in a Lincoln Towncar because the idiot driver shifted it into reverse at about 70 mph. Her boyfriend screwed up the kickdown cable adjustment AND the indicator on the column trying to work on it. He told her to just use the column shifter to pull it out of overdrive when trying to pass, but when the pointer was at "D" the transmission was in reverse. The first time she tried it the flywheel exploded. As she put it, "it made a really awful loud noise and then it wouldn't go anymore". The transmission lived, but ford c6 trannies are pretty tough. I wouldn't reccomend trying this, the results can be spectacular in a BAD kind of way:)
Zionist? I'd mod you down on principle, but I've been commenting on this article. As long as you're throwing words around, what exactly is wrong with Zionist thinking? Please explain, if you can. Even though most modern Israelis are'nt Zionist, I'm curious. And no, I'm not Jewish. But I certainly respect their culture, and ability to survive. The oil thing I'll agree is a possible motive, but the whole Zionist reference flags you as a troll of the most obvious variety.
Nukes aren't quite as bad in small quantities as people would have you think. Hiroshima today is hardly a dead zone, and modern airbursts aren't as messy as they used to be. Shit, firebombing Tokyo caused a lot more death and damage than both nukes used on Japan put together. They ARE the ultimate terrorist weapon, though. Some religious fanatic, sooner or later, will get their hands on one and set it off trying to trigger Armageddon or whatever. The technology is there, and sooner or later it will get used. Mutually assured destruction is still around, and will be as long as there are enough bombs and delivery systems available, but I don't see that happening. I think it's a lot more likely that we'll see nukes used in a regional conflict, with a lot of casualties, but no global exchange.
Yeah, and those human shields worked out real well the last time. The bunker still got toasted, and the civvie shelter on top did too. The bunker-busting bombs didn't really seem to care. If I were an Iraqi citizen, I'd stay well away from any government-run bomb shelters.
War? That's what I'd call it. Typical, unfriendly, kill you before you kill me war. IIRC there are a few american citizens in Guantanamo as well. They are there because they seem to be terrorist shitheads, or were supporting said shitheads. They are enemy combatants, even if they are citizens. And, while I am not prejudiced against all muslims and know that there are terrorist of all religions, the muslim variety is causing the most trouble at this point. Terrorism is a violent occupation, and no one should be surprised or offended when a Predator launches a Hellfire up their ass. Shit happens. The terrorists and countries that support them seem to be breeding their own brand of crackers and kiddies as well (gforce pakistan for example). Whether or not they are supported by the pakistani government is debatable, but they are certainly tolerated. Jpost.com gets DOS attacks all the time as well. Are these script kiddies with an Islamic slant to justify their activities terrorists? Not exactly, in my opinion. Are they supportive of terrorists? They certainly would seem to be. And I can understand why Bush would classify such people as terrorists, even if I wouldn't. Of course, rumor has it that the US government DOSed alldas.de to prevent people from seeing those embarrasing.mil defacements. War and terrorism are about killing, death, dismemberment, and all kinds of horrible things. Is either justified? Sometimes neither, sometimes both. The world isn't black and white, there will always be wars, civilians will get killed, and that's that. All you can do is try to let your government know that you think that they should be certain that it's necessary before they start a war. War (especially with WMD out there) is a hell of a lot worse than a DOS attack, but harder to prevent.
Only used by yourself? This rarely happens. In the real world either you comment the hell out of it and hope that someone else can figure it out if you get hit by a bus, or you dumb it way down and make a REALLY BIG Excel spreadsheet with lots of macros (supervisors seem to think that Excel is Excel, and some will want you to use it thinking that if you get hit by a bus, any secretary that can add up a column and figure out what the macros are doing). Either way, it's NOT usually maintainable except by the guy that did the work in the first place. I know, it should be, but my job description is research and development, not programming, and I "wear a lot of hats". This is more common than you would think. You just document things as best you can, and redo what the last guy did if he didn't document well. Sucks, I know, but to do it any differently engineering would have to have a programmer on call and that's not going to happen.
If you're trying to say that the ability to program is part of or becoming a part of other jobs, I would tend to agree. I'm a mechanical engineer, but I wind up doing some programming and admin work because it makes my life easier (say I need a little program to try to reduce errors in repetitive calculations, to sort data, etc, or I need a server on the LAN and would rather use open source software because that's what I'm used to and the MIS department is all A++ or MCSE). I would rather do something myself if a) I know how to do it, and b) doing it myself gets the project finished faster and/or cheaper than letting someone else do it (and likely teaching them how to do it), or hiring someone to do it. I went to school for the engineering, I picked up the programming and linux knowledge on my own for my own use and found ways to apply them to my job to make my life easier. For me they are tools, and I don't claim to be an expert at either, but for what I do day to day I can usually get the job done. Programming should be a basic course in mechanical engineer's studies in this day and age. You'll be amazed at how many old pascal, fortran and VB programs you find out there that were developed by another engineer (who of course is usually no longer with the company) and that need tweaks or error checking. Small custom programs that do a specific task are common, and if you can't read the code you don't know WHY the numbers are right or wrong, and where it needs tweaking for your new product or process or whatever.
That's a great idea... All I have to do is get hooked on Everquest and I can SUE! You probably just gave some lawyer a great idea for a lawsuit, though.
Re:I was hoping they would wait.
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New Red Hat Beta
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I paid for 5.something (can't find the disk), paid for 6.2, and downloaded 7.2 and 7.3 because I couldn't find them locally. I have paid, I don't mind paying, and I'm sure I'll pay again. I'm used to redhat, and that's a lot of the reason I stick with it. I kind of doubt that I'm the only customer that likes what they have, sticks with what they're used to for production systems, and is willing to pay for the CDs and support.
Re:I was hoping they would wait.
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New Red Hat Beta
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Programming language aside, I really prefer KDE. However, what difference does it really make? Why should one desktop win, and the other lose? Just use what works best for you and/or works best with what you already have. I'm sure that's what redhat was thinking.
Re:I was hoping they would wait.
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New Red Hat Beta
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· Score: 2
I like KDE. KDE does what I need it to do, and I'm used to it. I'll keep using it. That said, I've left Redhat 8.0's GUI alone on the last few installs I've done for newbies. I agree that having a single "desktop" would be good to make it easier for people switching from windows, but I do like having options. BTW, I'm sticking with 7.3 for the time being.
I hadn't heard that... if this is true, I guess I won't be updating the firmware:) Do you have a link for this? This would seem like a stupid decision for a company like Plextor... you pay extra because you can depend on it to "just fricking work", whether you're backing up an audio CD or your work files. If they really have crippled them, it doesn't work for a lot of what I would need anymore (Ever had an NT server disk get scratched and try to get a replacement?) and I would buy another brand.
Plextor drives are very good. I've made one coaster, and that was a software problem (Roxio on Windows). It's burned hundreds of cd's with xcdroast, and never made a coaster. I can surf the web, play a game, whatever while it's burning and it doesn't seem to care.
Plextors rock! My 24X burner has never made a coaster, even when playing Tux Racer with the burner running in the background. Its "burn-proof" feature seems to actually work (unlike a couple of other brands I've tried).
I think if you check the page he links to it is a "faculty/staff" page. It's more likely that he's doing some consulting on the side. I'd mod you down for being rude, but I'm out of points. Go GSU!
Re:The last of the V8 Interceptors
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New Mad Max Film
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The problem with this is that it can lead to spectacular engine failures if you run lean with the boost up and nitrous on. That can happen with either system on its own, of course, but together... I built a drag car for a guy with a blower (the one that's on my Mustang now... he couldn't afford to repair all the damage from the incident I'm about to describe and I got it cheap:). Anyway, he wanted to run for money. I put in a smallblock Ford, heavily modified (read expensive), the blower system, a plate nitrous system, and a fogger system. The car didn't live long enough to be put on a dyno, but it had BALLS. Anyway, we talked NHRA into letting us run the car as test and tune when the work was done. I set it up to run rich, set the nitrous controller to kick in the nitrous from 0% at the starting line when the transbrake came off to 100% by the 60 foot mark (estimated). I told him it would smoke, but to keep the plugs clean and let be know how it ran (I had a final the night this happened and couldn't attend). His driver made a pass, and thought it wasn't fast enough (he must have has brass balls or been on crack). The driver then decided to play mechanic, and while the hood was up to spray down the radiator the swapped the nitrous jets in the plate system for the biggest ones he could find in the kit that I left in car (that plate alone, the way I had it, was good for 300 HP if I remember correctly, and no we didn't expect it to last long. Hey, it's his money). Of course, the driver has no knowledge of basic physics and left the fuel jets alone. He ran the car, the engine EXPLODED and took most of the front of the car off with it. The blower went quite a ways up in the air, don't know how far but it went out of the frame of the video real quick, and landed in the stands. No one got hurt, but the blower landed in an empty lawn chair in the pit area and amazing suffered very little damage thanks to the breakaway studs holding it to the lower manifold. The rest of the car was a write-off. If you have three high-volume pumps pumping race gas to the engine (one for the carb, one for each nitrous system) through half-inch aluminum fuel tubing and an engine grenades, you pump five gallons of gas onto the wreckage long before the fire crew gets to the car. Bottom line: high compression, a blower, and nitrous is a dangerous combination unless you know what you're doing and you change the mixture in VERY small steps and are planning to rebuild/replace the motor every couple of weeks. If you try this, be careful, and if you're a novice with a musclecar and lots of money, please do not engage the nitrous while passing me on the interstate. I've never been a big fan of shattered cast iron coming through my windshield.
Re:The last of the V8 Interceptors
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New Mad Max Film
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· Score: 2
I run 14:1 compression with a roots-style blower at 12 lbs of boost. It doesn't run on pump gas very well, and I don't expect it to last very long, but it's fast:) Actually, that car was inspired by Mad Max. Hint: don't use something that get 3-4 miles to the gallon for a daily driver. I did and about went broke putting gas in the thing. I have seen a car with a "switchable" blower; you can do it by attaching the electric clutch from an air conditioning compressor behind the blower pulley. This is NOT an easy project, and you wind up turning custom pulleys and spacers on a lathe, but it can be done if you know what you're doing. However, you're going to foul your plugs pretty quick since the fuel-air mix kind of drips off the blower rotors into the manifold. It looks cool, but really doesn't work too well. Also, be careful stuffing too much horsepower into a unibody car like mine (66 Mustang fastback) or this Falcon (if it is indeed a unibody). It sucks to finally solve you're traction problem and then realize that not only did you twist your driveshaft but that your door doesn't open too easily (because you twisted the whole damn chassis and need a frame machine to fix it). Cars like this are fun, but the fake blower might be a more practical approach. Of course, in my opinion if cops are going to pull you over just to see what the hell you're driving you might as well have a real blower:)
It depends on the pistol. With a S&W Model 41 (semi-auto target pistol), good ammo, and a good rest I can certainly group under 2" at 100 yards. Several freinds have lost money betting against that. It just depends on the gun and the skill of the user.
So, you give the music industry a cut when you download Redhat 8.0? That's five CDs... CDs you might have used for something evil, like piracy, or backing up some work on your hard drive. Ok, maybe it wasn't evil, but it might have been. Pay up, you cheap bastard, pay! Those government mirror sites with fat pipes are costing a poor starving artist and his overstuffed RIAA pimp MONEY!
ASCAP uses "spies" to find this kind of thing. They literally pay people to go into bars/stores/restaurants etc. and listen for music. If they hear music, and you're not paying, you get a nasty letter from a lawyer. This happened to my favorite bar a while back (it was a hole in the wall, the patrons held an auction once a month to keep the lights on and the door open, lets put it that way... but we liked it. Dartboard, pool table, Guinness) I think we found out who the infiltrator was, but the legal threat and resultant bills were just another of the straws that broke the camel's back. Here's the kicker: they weren't pissed about the jukebox, and there wasn't a radio. Just a TV that was on when it was slow and the bartender was bored (although they would probably try to charge you for the customers hearing the background music on the car commercials). No, they were upset because there was a small, unknown, local startup band that did a gig in there. They did (what they thought) was an old Irish folk tune. Nope. That song was on the list, busted, if you don't want to fight us in court pay up. Fucking bastards. We couldn't afford to pay everyone that wanted a cut, it was sort of a bar that was just there for people that liked it and no one really wanted to change it; it was just one of those places that had been there forever. Done. Gone. Dead. Could the patrons afford to keep the landlord happy? Yeah. Could we keep the city off our back? Yeah again, did both for a while. Could we afford a lawyer to fight the recording industry over inadvertant infractions that we had no control over? NO. If you have live music, it seems, you have to know every song on the playlist, know who if anyone has the rights on it, and pay accordingly. If you don't know and you can't afford legal help, you can't have live music once they sic onto you. Then your establishment dies if that's what brings people in. A big FUCK YOU to the recording industry is in order here. And of course, no suggestions on what should be done to ASCAP infiltrators if their cover is blown, although I'm sure you can imagine some:)
Actually, I'd just be happy if companies made pay decisions based on the amount of responsibility you have. Rather than on seniority or some BS. One fuck up on my part could easily cost them a year of what they pay me, and something done right makes them a lot more. I get things right, usually, so I have a job, but the point stands.
We're all trying to make a living. That's the point. To say that you have to hire employees if you want to be considered a business is to say that there should be a "greater point" to the whole thing. Having a business is just having a business liscence and a name; having a plan and funding really help too. Not to mention ambition... you need lots of that. I'd love to hear your definition of a legimate business... If it's 100+ employees and a yearly united way drive please don't bother:)
This IS funny. In my opinion. Huh. Maybe I'm not normal... you know, my boss doesn't read slashdot, and HE seems normal. Maybe it's a conspiracy. Dammit, you've got me WORRIED now. I'll just recompile my kernel, or upgrade to Redhat 8.0 or something even though I don't need to... that'll make me feel normal again... hey wait...
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I still don't trust them. I've seen too many with what almost did seem like "ghosts in the machine". One just started working before the problem could ever be found. Having to return a car with the statement "I can't find anything wrong, but it just started working" is not something that a mechanic likes to do. I own one, but it has had its engine, transmission, and ALL of the wiring replaced by parts that came from a 99 Mustang that got rolled. I don't know a single mechanic or former mechanic that would own a Jag with jag electronics either.
Having done a lot of work on newer BMW and Mercedes cars, BMW isn't even in the same class as Mercedes on quality. They will use a 3mm bolt for a radiator fan attachment, where a Benz would have a 6mm. Plus their bolts rust badly. And this isn't the first time they've had wacky engine control issues. The 850s had a v-12 that was really two siamesed straight 6 crankcases. Ok, that's fine. But the car had 3 engine control computers: one for each bank of cylinders, and another to make them play nice together. It never worked properly on the cars that I saw and worked on (first model year, I don't know if the later versions had the same problem). That car's engine control system was a bad hack; a kludge. Too much of an effort to use existing 6 cylinder parts. If I had been one of the suckers that paid 100K plus for a car that wouldn't idle, I would have been pissed. Don't even get me started on Bosch when it comes to quality control... those Audis really did accelerate on their own. The government deciding that the brake and gas pedals were too close were just covering Audi's ass. The real problem (and any mechanic who specialized in European cars can tell you this) was the vacuum tubes. Not hoses or lines, but stupid molded rubber tubes that sealed by SNAPPING TOGETHER! Guess what happens when those harden from heat and age, when a vaccuum leak at a particular hose joint literally snaps the throttle wide open. I almost ran over my boss the first time I tried to drive one of those cars that was experiencing the problem. Tire wear/failures on an Explorer? As a mechanic about odd tire wear patterns on Explorers with Ford's brain-dead I-beam front suspension. Ask what happens to those beams when you hit a pothole. Ask which beam has the least support, and is most likely to get bent, and which tire that causes to wear rapidly. OK, end of rant. My point is that lots of really stupid engineering decisions get put into production (and I'm a mechanical engineer at this point in my life, not a mechanic). Or back to BMW, head gasket leaks on M3s. The head gaskets are $300 because BMW fucked up the engine design in the first place. Really big mistakes get covered up to protect the companies involved, even if 60 minutes does a story about Audis in swimming pools. As an engineer, I would not sign off on a system like this even if were powered by Linux. Using Microsoft CE in this application and with this interface is bordering on irresponsibility. And yes, I drove one of these cars and wouldn't drive one again. I felt like a lab rat for a junior engineer who forgot that cars MOVE, and that shitty control systems distract from actually driving even when they work correctly.
I once had to replace the flywheel in a Lincoln Towncar because the idiot driver shifted it into reverse at about 70 mph. Her boyfriend screwed up the kickdown cable adjustment AND the indicator on the column trying to work on it. He told her to just use the column shifter to pull it out of overdrive when trying to pass, but when the pointer was at "D" the transmission was in reverse. The first time she tried it the flywheel exploded. As she put it, "it made a really awful loud noise and then it wouldn't go anymore". The transmission lived, but ford c6 trannies are pretty tough. I wouldn't reccomend trying this, the results can be spectacular in a BAD kind of way :)
Zionist? I'd mod you down on principle, but I've been commenting on this article. As long as you're throwing words around, what exactly is wrong with Zionist thinking? Please explain, if you can. Even though most modern Israelis are'nt Zionist, I'm curious. And no, I'm not Jewish. But I certainly respect their culture, and ability to survive. The oil thing I'll agree is a possible motive, but the whole Zionist reference flags you as a troll of the most obvious variety.
Nukes aren't quite as bad in small quantities as people would have you think. Hiroshima today is hardly a dead zone, and modern airbursts aren't as messy as they used to be. Shit, firebombing Tokyo caused a lot more death and damage than both nukes used on Japan put together. They ARE the ultimate terrorist weapon, though. Some religious fanatic, sooner or later, will get their hands on one and set it off trying to trigger Armageddon or whatever. The technology is there, and sooner or later it will get used. Mutually assured destruction is still around, and will be as long as there are enough bombs and delivery systems available, but I don't see that happening. I think it's a lot more likely that we'll see nukes used in a regional conflict, with a lot of casualties, but no global exchange.
Yeah, and those human shields worked out real well the last time. The bunker still got toasted, and the civvie shelter on top did too. The bunker-busting bombs didn't really seem to care. If I were an Iraqi citizen, I'd stay well away from any government-run bomb shelters.
War? That's what I'd call it. Typical, unfriendly, kill you before you kill me war. IIRC there are a few american citizens in Guantanamo as well. They are there because they seem to be terrorist shitheads, or were supporting said shitheads. They are enemy combatants, even if they are citizens. And, while I am not prejudiced against all muslims and know that there are terrorist of all religions, the muslim variety is causing the most trouble at this point. Terrorism is a violent occupation, and no one should be surprised or offended when a Predator launches a Hellfire up their ass. Shit happens. The terrorists and countries that support them seem to be breeding their own brand of crackers and kiddies as well (gforce pakistan for example). Whether or not they are supported by the pakistani government is debatable, but they are certainly tolerated. Jpost.com gets DOS attacks all the time as well. Are these script kiddies with an Islamic slant to justify their activities terrorists? Not exactly, in my opinion. Are they supportive of terrorists? They certainly would seem to be. And I can understand why Bush would classify such people as terrorists, even if I wouldn't. Of course, rumor has it that the US government DOSed alldas.de to prevent people from seeing those embarrasing .mil defacements. War and terrorism are about killing, death, dismemberment, and all kinds of horrible things. Is either justified? Sometimes neither, sometimes both. The world isn't black and white, there will always be wars, civilians will get killed, and that's that. All you can do is try to let your government know that you think that they should be certain that it's necessary before they start a war. War (especially with WMD out there) is a hell of a lot worse than a DOS attack, but harder to prevent.
Only used by yourself? This rarely happens. In the real world either you comment the hell out of it and hope that someone else can figure it out if you get hit by a bus, or you dumb it way down and make a REALLY BIG Excel spreadsheet with lots of macros (supervisors seem to think that Excel is Excel, and some will want you to use it thinking that if you get hit by a bus, any secretary that can add up a column and figure out what the macros are doing). Either way, it's NOT usually maintainable except by the guy that did the work in the first place. I know, it should be, but my job description is research and development, not programming, and I "wear a lot of hats". This is more common than you would think. You just document things as best you can, and redo what the last guy did if he didn't document well. Sucks, I know, but to do it any differently engineering would have to have a programmer on call and that's not going to happen.
If you're trying to say that the ability to program is part of or becoming a part of other jobs, I would tend to agree. I'm a mechanical engineer, but I wind up doing some programming and admin work because it makes my life easier (say I need a little program to try to reduce errors in repetitive calculations, to sort data, etc, or I need a server on the LAN and would rather use open source software because that's what I'm used to and the MIS department is all A++ or MCSE). I would rather do something myself if a) I know how to do it, and b) doing it myself gets the project finished faster and/or cheaper than letting someone else do it (and likely teaching them how to do it), or hiring someone to do it. I went to school for the engineering, I picked up the programming and linux knowledge on my own for my own use and found ways to apply them to my job to make my life easier. For me they are tools, and I don't claim to be an expert at either, but for what I do day to day I can usually get the job done. Programming should be a basic course in mechanical engineer's studies in this day and age. You'll be amazed at how many old pascal, fortran and VB programs you find out there that were developed by another engineer (who of course is usually no longer with the company) and that need tweaks or error checking. Small custom programs that do a specific task are common, and if you can't read the code you don't know WHY the numbers are right or wrong, and where it needs tweaking for your new product or process or whatever.
That's a great idea... All I have to do is get hooked on Everquest and I can SUE! You probably just gave some lawyer a great idea for a lawsuit, though.
I paid for 5.something (can't find the disk), paid for 6.2, and downloaded 7.2 and 7.3 because I couldn't find them locally. I have paid, I don't mind paying, and I'm sure I'll pay again. I'm used to redhat, and that's a lot of the reason I stick with it. I kind of doubt that I'm the only customer that likes what they have, sticks with what they're used to for production systems, and is willing to pay for the CDs and support.
Programming language aside, I really prefer KDE. However, what difference does it really make? Why should one desktop win, and the other lose? Just use what works best for you and/or works best with what you already have. I'm sure that's what redhat was thinking.
I like KDE. KDE does what I need it to do, and I'm used to it. I'll keep using it. That said, I've left Redhat 8.0's GUI alone on the last few installs I've done for newbies. I agree that having a single "desktop" would be good to make it easier for people switching from windows, but I do like having options. BTW, I'm sticking with 7.3 for the time being.
I hadn't heard that... if this is true, I guess I won't be updating the firmware :) Do you have a link for this? This would seem like a stupid decision for a company like Plextor... you pay extra because you can depend on it to "just fricking work", whether you're backing up an audio CD or your work files. If they really have crippled them, it doesn't work for a lot of what I would need anymore (Ever had an NT server disk get scratched and try to get a replacement?) and I would buy another brand.
Plextor drives are very good. I've made one coaster, and that was a software problem (Roxio on Windows). It's burned hundreds of cd's with xcdroast, and never made a coaster. I can surf the web, play a game, whatever while it's burning and it doesn't seem to care.
Plextors rock! My 24X burner has never made a coaster, even when playing Tux Racer with the burner running in the background. Its "burn-proof" feature seems to actually work (unlike a couple of other brands I've tried).
I think if you check the page he links to it is a "faculty/staff" page. It's more likely that he's doing some consulting on the side. I'd mod you down for being rude, but I'm out of points. Go GSU!
The problem with this is that it can lead to spectacular engine failures if you run lean with the boost up and nitrous on. That can happen with either system on its own, of course, but together... I built a drag car for a guy with a blower (the one that's on my Mustang now... he couldn't afford to repair all the damage from the incident I'm about to describe and I got it cheap :). Anyway, he wanted to run for money. I put in a smallblock Ford, heavily modified (read expensive), the blower system, a plate nitrous system, and a fogger system. The car didn't live long enough to be put on a dyno, but it had BALLS. Anyway, we talked NHRA into letting us run the car as test and tune when the work was done. I set it up to run rich, set the nitrous controller to kick in the nitrous from 0% at the starting line when the transbrake came off to 100% by the 60 foot mark (estimated). I told him it would smoke, but to keep the plugs clean and let be know how it ran (I had a final the night this happened and couldn't attend). His driver made a pass, and thought it wasn't fast enough (he must have has brass balls or been on crack). The driver then decided to play mechanic, and while the hood was up to spray down the radiator the swapped the nitrous jets in the plate system for the biggest ones he could find in the kit that I left in car (that plate alone, the way I had it, was good for 300 HP if I remember correctly, and no we didn't expect it to last long. Hey, it's his money). Of course, the driver has no knowledge of basic physics and left the fuel jets alone. He ran the car, the engine EXPLODED and took most of the front of the car off with it. The blower went quite a ways up in the air, don't know how far but it went out of the frame of the video real quick, and landed in the stands. No one got hurt, but the blower landed in an empty lawn chair in the pit area and amazing suffered very little damage thanks to the breakaway studs holding it to the lower manifold. The rest of the car was a write-off. If you have three high-volume pumps pumping race gas to the engine (one for the carb, one for each nitrous system) through half-inch aluminum fuel tubing and an engine grenades, you pump five gallons of gas onto the wreckage long before the fire crew gets to the car. Bottom line: high compression, a blower, and nitrous is a dangerous combination unless you know what you're doing and you change the mixture in VERY small steps and are planning to rebuild/replace the motor every couple of weeks. If you try this, be careful, and if you're a novice with a musclecar and lots of money, please do not engage the nitrous while passing me on the interstate. I've never been a big fan of shattered cast iron coming through my windshield.
I run 14:1 compression with a roots-style blower at 12 lbs of boost. It doesn't run on pump gas very well, and I don't expect it to last very long, but it's fast :) Actually, that car was inspired by Mad Max. Hint: don't use something that get 3-4 miles to the gallon for a daily driver. I did and about went broke putting gas in the thing. I have seen a car with a "switchable" blower; you can do it by attaching the electric clutch from an air conditioning compressor behind the blower pulley. This is NOT an easy project, and you wind up turning custom pulleys and spacers on a lathe, but it can be done if you know what you're doing. However, you're going to foul your plugs pretty quick since the fuel-air mix kind of drips off the blower rotors into the manifold. It looks cool, but really doesn't work too well. Also, be careful stuffing too much horsepower into a unibody car like mine (66 Mustang fastback) or this Falcon (if it is indeed a unibody). It sucks to finally solve you're traction problem and then realize that not only did you twist your driveshaft but that your door doesn't open too easily (because you twisted the whole damn chassis and need a frame machine to fix it). Cars like this are fun, but the fake blower might be a more practical approach. Of course, in my opinion if cops are going to pull you over just to see what the hell you're driving you might as well have a real blower :)
It depends on the pistol. With a S&W Model 41 (semi-auto target pistol), good ammo, and a good rest I can certainly group under 2" at 100 yards. Several freinds have lost money betting against that. It just depends on the gun and the skill of the user.
So, you give the music industry a cut when you download Redhat 8.0? That's five CDs... CDs you might have used for something evil, like piracy, or backing up some work on your hard drive. Ok, maybe it wasn't evil, but it might have been. Pay up, you cheap bastard, pay! Those government mirror sites with fat pipes are costing a poor starving artist and his overstuffed RIAA pimp MONEY!
ASCAP uses "spies" to find this kind of thing. They literally pay people to go into bars/stores/restaurants etc. and listen for music. If they hear music, and you're not paying, you get a nasty letter from a lawyer. This happened to my favorite bar a while back (it was a hole in the wall, the patrons held an auction once a month to keep the lights on and the door open, lets put it that way... but we liked it. Dartboard, pool table, Guinness) I think we found out who the infiltrator was, but the legal threat and resultant bills were just another of the straws that broke the camel's back. Here's the kicker: they weren't pissed about the jukebox, and there wasn't a radio. Just a TV that was on when it was slow and the bartender was bored (although they would probably try to charge you for the customers hearing the background music on the car commercials). No, they were upset because there was a small, unknown, local startup band that did a gig in there. They did (what they thought) was an old Irish folk tune. Nope. That song was on the list, busted, if you don't want to fight us in court pay up. Fucking bastards. We couldn't afford to pay everyone that wanted a cut, it was sort of a bar that was just there for people that liked it and no one really wanted to change it; it was just one of those places that had been there forever. Done. Gone. Dead. Could the patrons afford to keep the landlord happy? Yeah. Could we keep the city off our back? Yeah again, did both for a while. Could we afford a lawyer to fight the recording industry over inadvertant infractions that we had no control over? NO. If you have live music, it seems, you have to know every song on the playlist, know who if anyone has the rights on it, and pay accordingly. If you don't know and you can't afford legal help, you can't have live music once they sic onto you. Then your establishment dies if that's what brings people in. A big FUCK YOU to the recording industry is in order here. And of course, no suggestions on what should be done to ASCAP infiltrators if their cover is blown, although I'm sure you can imagine some :)
Actually, I'd just be happy if companies made pay decisions based on the amount of responsibility you have. Rather than on seniority or some BS. One fuck up on my part could easily cost them a year of what they pay me, and something done right makes them a lot more. I get things right, usually, so I have a job, but the point stands.
We're all trying to make a living. That's the point. To say that you have to hire employees if you want to be considered a business is to say that there should be a "greater point" to the whole thing. Having a business is just having a business liscence and a name; having a plan and funding really help too. Not to mention ambition... you need lots of that. I'd love to hear your definition of a legimate business... If it's 100+ employees and a yearly united way drive please don't bother :)
This IS funny. In my opinion. Huh. Maybe I'm not normal... you know, my boss doesn't read slashdot, and HE seems normal. Maybe it's a conspiracy. Dammit, you've got me WORRIED now. I'll just recompile my kernel, or upgrade to Redhat 8.0 or something even though I don't need to... that'll make me feel normal again... hey wait...