I got a Dyson upright and it died after a year - it constantly got blocked needing disassembling and cleaning once a week. It eventually died by blowing dust out of its exhaust and I gave up with it after 3 hours of trying to find the problem. It couldn't cope with anything more than light dust. That was a heavy maintenance vacuum cleaner. I also hated not having a bag as emptying the cylinder in my wheelie bin would generate a lot of dust. I eventually emptied the cylinder directly into a bag before binning it.
I then got an Henry as cleaners in nearly every commercial premises I've seen use one and I thought "Pretty much all companies use the Henry vac and their cleaning demands are much greater than domestic demands so they should be hardy" so I got one. Cost me £80 ($130) for a HEPA version including 30 free bags. I've abused it heavily, including accidentally knocking it down a flight of stairs, and regularly vacuuming up building rubble. It's now 7 years old and still works fantastic. The design has barely changed in 32 years for a good reason! It got blocked only once which took me 5 minutes to clear. It's missing a couple features I'd like to have, but I'm not complaining.
When I used to watch TV, I had a DVR that automatically detected and skipped adverts - it does it by scanning the video stream for channel ident logos and if it finds two short clips near to each other, say a minute apart, it flags it as an advert slot. It also gives an option of manual or automatic skipping. Worked great apart from Channel 4 (UK) where their logo are blended in everyday objects such as cranes strategically positioned together to make a "4".
My 6 month old A++ rated fridge has LED bulbs and they work fantastic, the interior of the fridge is much more brighter, and as the company put in 6 LED bulbs widely spaced out so the fridge is much better lit - if this makes sense - so one little box doesn't block out the light to the rest of the items inside. I suspect they *had* to use LED bulbs to get the A++ rating as a CFL wouldn't work and incandescents use too much electricity? This is my guess though, this could very well be a gimmick from the company.
In the UK postcodes cover a small range of houses - my postcode only covers 25 houses, so nearly every web form in the UK, you enter the postcode first, then the webpage shows a list of house numbers or names it identified from the PAF (Postcode Address File) for you to select. Taking my own postcode example, the house numbers covered by my postcode are 310-350 (even only) so it shows a list of 310-350 (even only) and I select my house number and then the page autofills everything else. The PAF isn't 100% accurate so web pages always offer the option of editing addresses.
What's annoying though is that postal counties has been abolished by Royal Mail over a decade ago, internally Royal Mail never ever use this aspect of the address - only the postcode and city (I know this because I work for them), yet a large number of website insists on you entering the postal county and pops an error if you ignore this. I don't even know my postal county as the PAF never contains this info for any address so I just make them up.
That has probably partly to do with ease of loading shopping into the boot (trunk)? I always reverse into a parking spot for fuel saving reasons but I didn't know about this safety point of view of children running around in car parks - a very good point. I have always forward parked when going to supermarkets for ease of access to the boot and my car engine stays warm for a very long time. Now that I know your point, I now will reverse park in supermarket car parks from now on, especially that my car has extremely poor rear-view visibility exactly as you described (Opel Astra 98-04 model year) so tick me off as educated.
Strange as my Samsung TV controls my Philips Blu-Ray player perfectly well - I only use the TV remote for everything - the TV remote can control the Blu-Ray player, and even when I turn off the TV, the blu-ray player turns itself off as well. I found this out by accident, and was pleased with this as I needed to stick everything into a cupboard leaving only the TV visible, and thus did not need an IR repeater, and one remote controls everything. Works well.
Mid 40s? Seriously??? I used to have a Vauxhall Astra ECO4 (Vauxhall's an GM subsidiary) that got me a real world average of 62mpg (US) with 70mpg on the motorway. The car cost me $3000 and was built in 2001. 800 miles to the tank, which is about 13 US gallons. I now have a standard Astra built in 2004 which gets me a real world average of 58mpg (US) and gets me about 700 miles to the tank, again, 13 gallons.
I got a second hand Color LaserJet 4500 5 years ago, it was built Feb 1999 - it's fantastic, the image quality is incredible. It had been abused - I received the duplexer bent in half - but still works great. The downside is that it's similar size to a tank - I wasn't aware of this when I brought it. It does take ages to warm up too. I moved house recently and my friend convinced me to dump it and get a smaller Samsung colour laser printer as I rarely print anything these days, and the output from computer nowadays are so large which mean the printer sometimes take 5 minutes to process print jobs before actually printing. However, a few days ago when I wanted to put it on eBay, I decided to print a test page to show on eBay, the quality convinced me to change my mind and keep it. Just as well, the toner cartridges are $15 each, as opposed to the Samsung printer where a replacement set would cost more than the printer itself.
My point is that not everything after the 4100 is junk, I did think the 4500 was the colour sibling of the 4050. Anyway, the 4500 is older than the 4100?
The UK Govt recently admitted that they were programming traffic lights to increase fuel consumption to make more money through fuel tax. I can't find the exact article but here's another one with "Previously the Department for Transport (DfT) had discouraged the systems which reduce fuel use, resulting in less tax being paid to the Treasury." Certainly, in the city where I live, on a major dual carriageway with a 30mph limit from/to the north to the centre, if you drive at 30mph, you will hit every red light. Conversely, if you drive at 15mph or 45mph, you will get a green light. I don't do speeding, so I do 15-20mph average on this dual carriageway. This same dual carriageway has 37 sets of traffic lights over a 2 mile stretch - really, why this much?
Why not remove traffic lights? An experiment at Portishead has shown that traffic has reduced when they switched off a set of traffic lights in the town centre. Recently a roundabout I use often has new traffic lights and I find I waste so much time sitting there waiting for the red to turn green while there is not a single car on the roundabout - I sometimes wait up to 2 minutes. They do have their place, but I'm starting to feel a lot of them are a waste of space & money
You Americans have had OBDII since 1996, and us EUians have had EOBD2 since 2001 (2004 for diesels) a standardised data port. You can buy a cheap code reader, plug it in the OBD socket and it'll pop up the code on the reader, and it works on any car that has OBDII or EOBD2.
I've got a ScangaugeE which goes further and shows me a wealth of information from my car's computer - and yes it works in any car with OBDII or EOBD2.
They don't have a bar for a diesel hybrid - they're coming soon - 184MPGuk/153MPGus.
I also find it hard to believe a gasoline hybrid is clearly more efficient than a diesel ICE - my 2001 diesel car gets 64MPGuk combined (81MPGuk on the highway) and a Toyota Prius gets 55MPGuk combined (61MPGuk on the highway). I'd give a link to the VCA fuel consumption stats but direct links no longer works.
Sounds like what we already have in the UK. For example, my old car was taxed in band C and I paid £30 ($50) a year due to it getting 80MPG. If I brought a Hummer, it'd be taxed in band M and I would have to pay £460 ($753) a year. I'd give you direct links to the vehicle information but they've changed the website recently and direct links no longer works.
Also there's a new law introduced recently, that the first year tax cost would depend on the band as well - i.e. band M pays £1,000 ($1,637) to tax the car for the first year only, and band C is free for the first year. Encourages people to get a lower band when buying cars.
It depends on what the skydiver does in freefall. If he is doing head-down freeflying, he can easily hit a speed of 320km/h - I think the record is somewhere like 580km/h - but that's for normal skydivers. The fastest fall was done, of course, by Joseph Kittinger at 988km/h.
But your point still stands regardless, as a normal person would just flail and do about 200km/h.
I'm a skydiver, and I jumped from 13,000 ft yesterday and opened my canopy at about 3,000ft and my altimeter recorded a freefall time of 1 minute and 2 seconds. From 30,000 ft, it'd take much longer than 43 or even 75 seconds. My friend jumped from 32,000ft once with all the proper oxygen stuff and I think it took over 2 minutes.
In 2003 or thereabouts, when I test drove an Opel Zafira GSi - a petrol car with electronic throttle - I noticed immediately the difference and guessed that it had an electronic throttle - before that point - I didn't even know cars had electronic throttles. I looked up online and sure enough, the GSi has the electronic throttle, while the other Zafiras don't have it. The computer actually smoothed out my responses and made the ride better, even if I didn't feel 100% right, such as flooring the pedal felt different, somehow.
Couple years ago, when I brought my 2001 diesel Opel Astra - same platform & engine options as the Zafira (the Zafira is basically a pregnant Astra) but the car I got was bottom of the range - it felt "right" including when I floored the pedal, so I suspected the accelerator had to be mechanical. 2 months later, I explored the option of having cruise control - found out that I could get OEM cruise control fitted cheaply (about $20) but only if I had electronic accelerator pedal. I went out to check, thinking it was mechanical, and to my surprise it was electronic. Of course, being a diesel, it doesn't have a throttle, but boy I was surprised, it felt as if I was using a mechanical throttle.
Brilliant! I like it!:-D Doesn't work 100% perfectly in Opera[1] though as pressing the right arrow makes the page scroll to the right, covering up the playing field.
[1](Opera/9.80 (X11; Linux i686; U; en-GB) Presto/2.7.62 Version/11.01
That person has a choice to update Facebook or not. That same person don't have a choice to sneeze, or not. It is illegal to use cell phones while driving. When I was learning to drive, I was told to adjust mirrors only when stationary - presumably that includes power mirrors. In fact, it is a bad idea to adjust car radios while driving, but everyone does it anyway. Radio buttons located on the steering wheel helps, however.
I've got a HTC Desire, and a £8 (USD$12) per month pay monthly plan with a 30 day rolling contract that gives me "unlimited" (1GB fair use) internet and "unlimited" (3,000 fair use) texts. I cannot bust through the 1GB limit no matter how hard I try, even if I tether my laptop to it, and I barely send 400 texts a month (I'm deaf, so don't make calls) let alone 3,000. So my data capable plan is even cheaper than your simple plan example at $40 per month. Are data tariffs so bad in the USA?
I've got a cochlear implant that makes me hear[1]. I had it implanted in 1994, still in perfect working order and it was old technology even then. My parents were even offered to get me implanted as a toddler. It is a massive help in improving my interaction with the real world. I wouldn't be able to do almost any job without having one. My point is that I'd say "I think the day of artificial technological implants of this type are just around the corner." is in fact already here. I do realise vision is much more complicated than hearing.
As someone else posted, an one-off art project wouldn't give insights on how to manage rejection of implants - clinical studies of existing medical implants would be more useful. I have a friend who had an implant as a kid years before mine, but she had problems with rejection and had to have it taken out.
[1] Yes, "makes", not "help". I have no hearing whatsoever if the external processor is taken off - I have problems convincing most deaf people that I have no hearing at all - I cannot even hear guns going off right next to my ears, or hear jet engines if I stand next to one. I'm a skydiver and I sometimes sit in a plane where the 2 turbines are 2 metres from my head either side, and while I can feel my eardrums vibrate, I cannot hear anything.
"Stop" signs are incredibly rare in Europe - it's nearly all "Give Way" signs. "Stop" signs are only used when visibility on junctions is extremely restricted. When I went to America, I was shocked with how many "Stop" signs there are - especially the 4-way stop - that doesn't exist here in Europe.
Slashdot Mirror
Dyson? Regular? Really?
I got a Dyson upright and it died after a year - it constantly got blocked needing disassembling and cleaning once a week. It eventually died by blowing dust out of its exhaust and I gave up with it after 3 hours of trying to find the problem. It couldn't cope with anything more than light dust. That was a heavy maintenance vacuum cleaner. I also hated not having a bag as emptying the cylinder in my wheelie bin would generate a lot of dust. I eventually emptied the cylinder directly into a bag before binning it.
I then got an Henry as cleaners in nearly every commercial premises I've seen use one and I thought "Pretty much all companies use the Henry vac and their cleaning demands are much greater than domestic demands so they should be hardy" so I got one. Cost me £80 ($130) for a HEPA version including 30 free bags. I've abused it heavily, including accidentally knocking it down a flight of stairs, and regularly vacuuming up building rubble. It's now 7 years old and still works fantastic. The design has barely changed in 32 years for a good reason! It got blocked only once which took me 5 minutes to clear. It's missing a couple features I'd like to have, but I'm not complaining.
When I used to watch TV, I had a DVR that automatically detected and skipped adverts - it does it by scanning the video stream for channel ident logos and if it finds two short clips near to each other, say a minute apart, it flags it as an advert slot. It also gives an option of manual or automatic skipping. Worked great apart from Channel 4 (UK) where their logo are blended in everyday objects such as cranes strategically positioned together to make a "4".
My 6 month old A++ rated fridge has LED bulbs and they work fantastic, the interior of the fridge is much more brighter, and as the company put in 6 LED bulbs widely spaced out so the fridge is much better lit - if this makes sense - so one little box doesn't block out the light to the rest of the items inside. I suspect they *had* to use LED bulbs to get the A++ rating as a CFL wouldn't work and incandescents use too much electricity? This is my guess though, this could very well be a gimmick from the company.
In the UK postcodes cover a small range of houses - my postcode only covers 25 houses, so nearly every web form in the UK, you enter the postcode first, then the webpage shows a list of house numbers or names it identified from the PAF (Postcode Address File) for you to select. Taking my own postcode example, the house numbers covered by my postcode are 310-350 (even only) so it shows a list of 310-350 (even only) and I select my house number and then the page autofills everything else. The PAF isn't 100% accurate so web pages always offer the option of editing addresses.
What's annoying though is that postal counties has been abolished by Royal Mail over a decade ago, internally Royal Mail never ever use this aspect of the address - only the postcode and city (I know this because I work for them), yet a large number of website insists on you entering the postal county and pops an error if you ignore this. I don't even know my postal county as the PAF never contains this info for any address so I just make them up.
That has probably partly to do with ease of loading shopping into the boot (trunk)? I always reverse into a parking spot for fuel saving reasons but I didn't know about this safety point of view of children running around in car parks - a very good point. I have always forward parked when going to supermarkets for ease of access to the boot and my car engine stays warm for a very long time. Now that I know your point, I now will reverse park in supermarket car parks from now on, especially that my car has extremely poor rear-view visibility exactly as you described (Opel Astra 98-04 model year) so tick me off as educated.
Strange as my Samsung TV controls my Philips Blu-Ray player perfectly well - I only use the TV remote for everything - the TV remote can control the Blu-Ray player, and even when I turn off the TV, the blu-ray player turns itself off as well. I found this out by accident, and was pleased with this as I needed to stick everything into a cupboard leaving only the TV visible, and thus did not need an IR repeater, and one remote controls everything. Works well.
This system apparently is called Anynet+.
Forgot to mention, the engine in both my Astras was designed in the 1980s! Source here - see "1988–present Isuzu Circle L"
Mid 40s? Seriously??? I used to have a Vauxhall Astra ECO4 (Vauxhall's an GM subsidiary) that got me a real world average of 62mpg (US) with 70mpg on the motorway. The car cost me $3000 and was built in 2001. 800 miles to the tank, which is about 13 US gallons. I now have a standard Astra built in 2004 which gets me a real world average of 58mpg (US) and gets me about 700 miles to the tank, again, 13 gallons.
I got a second hand Color LaserJet 4500 5 years ago, it was built Feb 1999 - it's fantastic, the image quality is incredible. It had been abused - I received the duplexer bent in half - but still works great. The downside is that it's similar size to a tank - I wasn't aware of this when I brought it. It does take ages to warm up too. I moved house recently and my friend convinced me to dump it and get a smaller Samsung colour laser printer as I rarely print anything these days, and the output from computer nowadays are so large which mean the printer sometimes take 5 minutes to process print jobs before actually printing. However, a few days ago when I wanted to put it on eBay, I decided to print a test page to show on eBay, the quality convinced me to change my mind and keep it. Just as well, the toner cartridges are $15 each, as opposed to the Samsung printer where a replacement set would cost more than the printer itself.
My point is that not everything after the 4100 is junk, I did think the 4500 was the colour sibling of the 4050. Anyway, the 4500 is older than the 4100?
The UK Govt recently admitted that they were programming traffic lights to increase fuel consumption to make more money through fuel tax. I can't find the exact article but here's another one with "Previously the Department for Transport (DfT) had discouraged the systems which reduce fuel use, resulting in less tax being paid to the Treasury." Certainly, in the city where I live, on a major dual carriageway with a 30mph limit from/to the north to the centre, if you drive at 30mph, you will hit every red light. Conversely, if you drive at 15mph or 45mph, you will get a green light. I don't do speeding, so I do 15-20mph average on this dual carriageway. This same dual carriageway has 37 sets of traffic lights over a 2 mile stretch - really, why this much?
Why not remove traffic lights? An experiment at Portishead has shown that traffic has reduced when they switched off a set of traffic lights in the town centre. Recently a roundabout I use often has new traffic lights and I find I waste so much time sitting there waiting for the red to turn green while there is not a single car on the roundabout - I sometimes wait up to 2 minutes. They do have their place, but I'm starting to feel a lot of them are a waste of space & money
You Americans have had OBDII since 1996, and us EUians have had EOBD2 since 2001 (2004 for diesels) a standardised data port. You can buy a cheap code reader, plug it in the OBD socket and it'll pop up the code on the reader, and it works on any car that has OBDII or EOBD2.
I've got a ScangaugeE which goes further and shows me a wealth of information from my car's computer - and yes it works in any car with OBDII or EOBD2.
Hey, look! You can buy an OBDII reader for $23 inc postage.
So this is expensive?
They don't have a bar for a diesel hybrid - they're coming soon - 184MPGuk/153MPGus.
I also find it hard to believe a gasoline hybrid is clearly more efficient than a diesel ICE - my 2001 diesel car gets 64MPGuk combined (81MPGuk on the highway) and a Toyota Prius gets 55MPGuk combined (61MPGuk on the highway). I'd give a link to the VCA fuel consumption stats but direct links no longer works.
Sorry made mistake with the second link - should have been here.
To add to what bky1701 said:
Videos here and here.
Sounds like what we already have in the UK. For example, my old car was taxed in band C and I paid £30 ($50) a year due to it getting 80MPG. If I brought a Hummer, it'd be taxed in band M and I would have to pay £460 ($753) a year. I'd give you direct links to the vehicle information but they've changed the website recently and direct links no longer works.
Also there's a new law introduced recently, that the first year tax cost would depend on the band as well - i.e. band M pays £1,000 ($1,637) to tax the car for the first year only, and band C is free for the first year. Encourages people to get a lower band when buying cars.
It depends on what the skydiver does in freefall. If he is doing head-down freeflying, he can easily hit a speed of 320km/h - I think the record is somewhere like 580km/h - but that's for normal skydivers. The fastest fall was done, of course, by Joseph Kittinger at 988km/h.
But your point still stands regardless, as a normal person would just flail and do about 200km/h.
I'm a skydiver, and I jumped from 13,000 ft yesterday and opened my canopy at about 3,000ft and my altimeter recorded a freefall time of 1 minute and 2 seconds. From 30,000 ft, it'd take much longer than 43 or even 75 seconds. My friend jumped from 32,000ft once with all the proper oxygen stuff and I think it took over 2 minutes.
In 2003 or thereabouts, when I test drove an Opel Zafira GSi - a petrol car with electronic throttle - I noticed immediately the difference and guessed that it had an electronic throttle - before that point - I didn't even know cars had electronic throttles. I looked up online and sure enough, the GSi has the electronic throttle, while the other Zafiras don't have it. The computer actually smoothed out my responses and made the ride better, even if I didn't feel 100% right, such as flooring the pedal felt different, somehow.
Couple years ago, when I brought my 2001 diesel Opel Astra - same platform & engine options as the Zafira (the Zafira is basically a pregnant Astra) but the car I got was bottom of the range - it felt "right" including when I floored the pedal, so I suspected the accelerator had to be mechanical. 2 months later, I explored the option of having cruise control - found out that I could get OEM cruise control fitted cheaply (about $20) but only if I had electronic accelerator pedal. I went out to check, thinking it was mechanical, and to my surprise it was electronic. Of course, being a diesel, it doesn't have a throttle, but boy I was surprised, it felt as if I was using a mechanical throttle.
Brilliant! I like it! :-D Doesn't work 100% perfectly in Opera[1] though as pressing the right arrow makes the page scroll to the right, covering up the playing field.
[1](Opera/9.80 (X11; Linux i686; U; en-GB) Presto/2.7.62 Version/11.01
That person has a choice to update Facebook or not. That same person don't have a choice to sneeze, or not. It is illegal to use cell phones while driving. When I was learning to drive, I was told to adjust mirrors only when stationary - presumably that includes power mirrors. In fact, it is a bad idea to adjust car radios while driving, but everyone does it anyway. Radio buttons located on the steering wheel helps, however.
I've got a HTC Desire, and a £8 (USD$12) per month pay monthly plan with a 30 day rolling contract that gives me "unlimited" (1GB fair use) internet and "unlimited" (3,000 fair use) texts. I cannot bust through the 1GB limit no matter how hard I try, even if I tether my laptop to it, and I barely send 400 texts a month (I'm deaf, so don't make calls) let alone 3,000. So my data capable plan is even cheaper than your simple plan example at $40 per month. Are data tariffs so bad in the USA?
I've got a cochlear implant that makes me hear[1]. I had it implanted in 1994, still in perfect working order and it was old technology even then. My parents were even offered to get me implanted as a toddler. It is a massive help in improving my interaction with the real world. I wouldn't be able to do almost any job without having one. My point is that I'd say "I think the day of artificial technological implants of this type are just around the corner." is in fact already here. I do realise vision is much more complicated than hearing.
As someone else posted, an one-off art project wouldn't give insights on how to manage rejection of implants - clinical studies of existing medical implants would be more useful. I have a friend who had an implant as a kid years before mine, but she had problems with rejection and had to have it taken out.
[1] Yes, "makes", not "help". I have no hearing whatsoever if the external processor is taken off - I have problems convincing most deaf people that I have no hearing at all - I cannot even hear guns going off right next to my ears, or hear jet engines if I stand next to one. I'm a skydiver and I sometimes sit in a plane where the 2 turbines are 2 metres from my head either side, and while I can feel my eardrums vibrate, I cannot hear anything.
Problem is that e-books don't use wi-fi - only when downloading books, which is a very small proportion of the use of e-books.
"Stop" signs are incredibly rare in Europe - it's nearly all "Give Way" signs. "Stop" signs are only used when visibility on junctions is extremely restricted. When I went to America, I was shocked with how many "Stop" signs there are - especially the 4-way stop - that doesn't exist here in Europe.
Something like that, yes.