Some automobile manufacturers are letting you pick chasis, engine, transmission, drive wheels, exterior paint and trim, and interior material and color. Audi does (did?) this. One could buy an Audi with an exterior paint and interior that they don't usually make together. It would take 12 to 24 weeks but the wait is made easier with the ability to track your car.
To a lesser extent Mazda Japan is doing this with the Roadster (Miata) letting you mix and match engine, transmission, differential, and color.
I think the biggest problem is non-enthusiasts are not willing to wait three months to take delivery. You won't be able to test drive your particular combination as well. As an enthusiast, I've waited nearly 7 months for the Mazda RX-8. The car actually arrived in the middle of July but I changed my mind on the color have to wait another month.
We use Stats Inc. for MLB (Baseball) data. I'm working for a medium size company and they were pretty responsive to me. They would create new tables and manipulate the data to whatever specifications I wanted. I'm guessing it's costing us $5k a season for the service... I dunno, I'm just a programmer over here.
The bill was pretty shocking to me too. I used to live in a area where my bill was only $60 or so.
I get to thank SoCal Edison. They charge you a different rates depending on how much you use and if you go over your allocation, it gets really expensive. According to my last bill, I was 30% over what I was supposed to use. I'm going to have to shutdown my computers over the summer months to have enough money for air conditioning.
I don't think this makes sense financially from the end users point of view. The CPU running at full power will use more electricity, raising your electric bill. Leaving my computer on at home raised my electric bill from $30 a month to nearly $150 a month. $120 could get me at 6 least CD's... There isn't enough good new music to fill 6 CDs in a month.
Re:Tinker away with aftermarket parts if you dare
on
Cars for Tinkerers?
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· Score: 1
It depends on the car manufacturer and dealer. The local Audi dealership here in Thousand Oaks, CA (USA) don't mind if you swap out the muffler, change the intake, chip the engine, change the suspension, etc. Parts not affected by the change will still be covered by the warrenty.
Shlybluz is right though. You don't want your car adjusted by somebody who doesn't know what they are doing. Most manufacturer seem to have a performance division.... Toyota - TRD. Mazda - Mazdaspeed. Honda - Mugen. Nissan - Nismo. Ford - SVT. Buy from the manufacturer. Usually the parts are well thought out and usable as a daily driver.
To answer what cars seem tinkerable. I was thinking of getting an Audi A4 1.8t and found Audi World to be good resource. (but I've ordered the Mazda RX-8 instead. Doesn't look very tinkerable but we'll see what Mazdaspeed comes up with)
I thought Time-Warner cable bought out ATT cable a while back? I was getting excited with the hope that Time-Warner will start rolling out HD cable boxes in my area (Valencia, CA). I'm still getting my bill ATT cable and no mention of the merger.
Does anyone know what's going to happen to ATT cable services?
I bought one the other day. It seems to have three speed forwards, three speed back, and different turning radiases. Also there is an advanced controller that let's you do all kinds of neat stuff like running the the left and right motor in two different directions.
Too bad I bought mine for $70. But I guess I'm exclusive for a while with the Lancer EVO VII sliding around on my desk.
But I don't think women appreciate it. Her thoughts are "Yeah it is flawless, sparkly, and pretty but it's not from the ground so it's not valuable and rare."
The only thing techy I could convince my wife was on my titanium wedding band. She of course went with a more traditional platinum ring, but in my mind it was better then gold or silver which corrodes.
Maybe I could get the synthetic flawless diamond for her anniversary or something. Something big and gaudy that glows in the dark... Maybe not.
I think I saw on show on 20/20 where they were talking about Russians synthesizing diamonds. Turns out that when synthetic diamonds are hit with UV, they retain a glow for several minutes. Natural diamonds glow for only a second or two.
Some of arcade games are becoming physically exhausting to play. Police 911 from Konami leaves my legs sore from all the squats you have to do to avoid getting shot.
I think this comic sums up the arcade experience pretty well.
I've been using Spamcop for a while. It picks up E-mail from other pops then runs it through a spam filter. I have my E-mail client pick up mail on from Spamcop. It's pretty effective. Maybe one a week leaks through.
I always hated people who link directly to the images on my site avoiding all the marketing crap and sucking up my bandwidth. I wonder if there will be a court case where a company gets sued for breaking links from the outside world.
I implemented a little file name rotator for the images on the website I manage. Every 8 hours or so, the app will rename all the images and update the URLs on the site to match. In the place of the old filenames, I placed message pointing users to the site where they can get the file (and all the marketing shit.) This effectively broke all the links.
Now I'm just waiting for some idiot to sue my company over this...
I've just moved to location where there is absolutely no telivision reception and I don't have enough free cash to pay the $40 for basic cable here. This is the first time since I was three that I have been deprived of TV. (Two whole months!) Without TV, the world seems brighter. The death of JFK jr. was an "oh well" for me. I dodged the over exposure that the media brings. My friends commenting that the only thing on TV was about JFKjr made me feel disconnected to reality, but then I realized that I wasn't really missing anything. My view on reality is becoming brighter. Almost the only input I get from the outside world is now from a peak of/. every now and then and perhaps KROQ's loveline at night.. So my reality is now that the majority of the population is technically oriented and sexually disfunctional!
Slashdot Mirror
Some automobile manufacturers are letting you pick chasis, engine, transmission, drive wheels, exterior paint and trim, and interior material and color. Audi does (did?) this. One could buy an Audi with an exterior paint and interior that they don't usually make together. It would take 12 to 24 weeks but the wait is made easier with the ability to track your car.
To a lesser extent Mazda Japan is doing this with the Roadster (Miata) letting you mix and match engine, transmission, differential, and color.
I think the biggest problem is non-enthusiasts are not willing to wait three months to take delivery. You won't be able to test drive your particular combination as well. As an enthusiast, I've waited nearly 7 months for the Mazda RX-8. The car actually arrived in the middle of July but I changed my mind on the color have to wait another month.
I smell a new marketing campaign. "Here at SBC, we value your right to privacy."
We use Stats Inc. for MLB (Baseball) data. I'm working for a medium size company and they were pretty responsive to me. They would create new tables and manipulate the data to whatever specifications I wanted. I'm guessing it's costing us $5k a season for the service... I dunno, I'm just a programmer over here.
Doesn't American Express have something like this? It's called Private Payments. It gives you a unique number that's lets you obscure your identity.
Now there's probably a market for teenagers and such. But I'm thinking pre-paid cards will take care of that...
McDonalds standard issue...
The article mentioned something about tying into the zip code on file for the credit card.
The bill was pretty shocking to me too. I used to live in a area where my bill was only $60 or so.
I get to thank SoCal Edison. They charge you a different rates depending on how much you use and if you go over your allocation, it gets really expensive. According to my last bill, I was 30% over what I was supposed to use. I'm going to have to shutdown my computers over the summer months to have enough money for air conditioning.
I don't think this makes sense financially from the end users point of view. The CPU running at full power will use more electricity, raising your electric bill. Leaving my computer on at home raised my electric bill from $30 a month to nearly $150 a month. $120 could get me at 6 least CD's... There isn't enough good new music to fill 6 CDs in a month.
It depends on the car manufacturer and dealer. The local Audi dealership here in Thousand Oaks, CA (USA) don't mind if you swap out the muffler, change the intake, chip the engine, change the suspension, etc. Parts not affected by the change will still be covered by the warrenty.
Shlybluz is right though. You don't want your car adjusted by somebody who doesn't know what they are doing. Most manufacturer seem to have a performance division.... Toyota - TRD. Mazda - Mazdaspeed. Honda - Mugen. Nissan - Nismo. Ford - SVT. Buy from the manufacturer. Usually the parts are well thought out and usable as a daily driver.
To answer what cars seem tinkerable. I was thinking of getting an Audi A4 1.8t and found Audi World to be good resource. (but I've ordered the Mazda RX-8 instead. Doesn't look very tinkerable but we'll see what Mazdaspeed comes up with)
I thought Time-Warner cable bought out ATT cable a while back? I was getting excited with the hope that Time-Warner will start rolling out HD cable boxes in my area (Valencia, CA). I'm still getting my bill ATT cable and no mention of the merger.
Does anyone know what's going to happen to ATT cable services?
I bought one the other day. It seems to have three speed forwards, three speed back, and different turning radiases. Also there is an advanced controller that let's you do all kinds of neat stuff like running the the left and right motor in two different directions.
Too bad I bought mine for $70. But I guess I'm exclusive for a while with the Lancer EVO VII sliding around on my desk.
I guesss synthetic diamonds have been around for a while:
One would think...
But I don't think women appreciate it. Her thoughts are "Yeah it is flawless, sparkly, and pretty but it's not from the ground so it's not valuable and rare."
The only thing techy I could convince my wife was on my titanium wedding band. She of course went with a more traditional platinum ring, but in my mind it was better then gold or silver which corrodes.
Maybe I could get the synthetic flawless diamond for her anniversary or something. Something big and gaudy that glows in the dark... Maybe not.
I think I saw on show on 20/20 where they were talking about Russians synthesizing diamonds. Turns out that when synthetic diamonds are hit with UV, they retain a glow for several minutes. Natural diamonds glow for only a second or two.
Some of arcade games are becoming physically exhausting to play. Police 911 from Konami leaves my legs sore from all the squats you have to do to avoid getting shot.
I think this comic sums up the arcade experience pretty well.
I've been using Spamcop for a while. It picks up E-mail from other pops then runs it through a spam filter. I have my E-mail client pick up mail on from Spamcop. It's pretty effective. Maybe one a week leaks through.
The movie Final Fantasy comes to mind. I'm surprised George Lucas hasn't tried one himself.
Then again I guess all the story weaknesses will shine through...
Mirror of the one page here
Here's a mirror for some of the images:
http://ocs.thq.com/jsuzuki/sep122001/_con.jpg
http://ocs.thq.com/jsuzuki/sep122001/layout2.gif
Mirror:l ane2.wmv
http://ocs.thq.com/jsuzuki/Sep112001/worldtrade_p
Isn't the dev station Linux based?
I always hated people who link directly to the images on my site avoiding all the marketing crap and sucking up my bandwidth. I wonder if there will be a court case where a company gets sued for breaking links from the outside world.
I implemented a little file name rotator for the images on the website I manage. Every 8 hours or so, the app will rename all the images and update the URLs on the site to match. In the place of the old filenames, I placed message pointing users to the site where they can get the file (and all the marketing shit.) This effectively broke all the links.
Now I'm just waiting for some idiot to sue my company over this...
-jack jsuzuki@ix.netcom.SPAMSUCKS.com
I've just moved to location where there is absolutely no telivision reception and I don't have enough free cash to pay the $40 for basic cable here. This is the first time since I was three that I have been deprived of TV. (Two whole months!) Without TV, the world seems brighter. The death of JFK jr. was an "oh well" for me. I dodged the over exposure that the media brings. My friends commenting that the only thing on TV was about JFKjr made me feel disconnected to reality, but then I realized that I wasn't really missing anything. My view on reality is becoming brighter. Almost the only input I get from the outside world is now from a peak of /. every now and then and perhaps KROQ's loveline at night.. So my reality is now that the majority of the population is technically oriented and sexually disfunctional!