And while I think it may see a bit shifty to only grant reconstruction contracts to the US corporations(are Britain and other coalition countries included), one could point out that this was a war fought primarily by the US - therefore it would be unfair to the US if French, Russian, German, etc corporations got the profitable contracts due to our work.
I definitely understand the logic behind this. What it's missing, however, is the fact that, at this point in time, improving the public perception of the US in the arab world is far more important than the "right" of US corporations to be involved in the reconstruction of Iraq.
(are Britain and other coalition countries included)
To be honest, I'm not really sure on that, I'd have to check. What I do know though, is that it's been stated that contracts will not be awarded through the usual bidding process and that the amounts of the contracts will in some cases be kept secret due to "security" issues. How building roads in Iraq pertains to US national security is beyond me. If nothing else, it gives the image that the contracts will go to corporations that are "buddies" of the current administration, thus further damaging the arab view of the US.
As things look now, there is a full spectrum in both the Arab world and the West of those who wish to patch up relations and others who could care less. And those lines in the West aren't necessarily drawn along Party lines.
Agreed. Repairing US relations with the middle east (fortunately) hasn't become a party issue here. However, the group currently in power has, I believe, made it clear as to what their methodology in regards to this is and is going to continue to be. It just seems to me that they've completely missed the point that the PR game is the most crucial element of this war, and if they do, they underestimate the arab people. Dropping pamphlets is one thing, but until you follow through with action but without dictating anything to the Iraqi people (ie: who contracts may or may not be awarded to) you haven't done anything but engage in propaganda. I would get into what I think would be a logical approach to the reconstruction of Iraq, but it'd just double the length of this already long post.:)
Thanks for the thoughtful reply.
The same goes for you. Where you take the "Bush==Hitler" and "this war is for oil," I get to hear the equivalents from the pro-war side, and if you try to disagree, they almost always resort to branding you "Unamerican." It's like when I checked my email today and opened the mail on my comment moderation here on/. 4 or 5 of my posts had been raped as far as moderation goes, yet the opposing view point on the same thread went basically unscathed. I couldn't care less about the karma, but it does annoy me that people could be so closed minded as to resort to something like that on what's supposed to be a forum for the exchange of ideas. So yeah, it's nice when I can have a civil discussion about the issues with someone like yourself, and I appreciate it.
It's not a matter of "identifying with only two parties" so much as accepting the reality of strength in numbers. Were the US set up with a parliamentary style government, the yes, we could afford to have 400 active political parties all with their own unique political agenda. But since Jefferson couldn't convince us of the dangers of having political parties early on, this is what we have. Personally, I don't think it's as bad as people like to make it out to be. The problem isn't the two party system so much as big business money and corruption in government. The stumbling block there is we're having a hell of a time cleaning it up because there IS corruption. For example, John McCain has been trying for years to push campaign finance reform bills through congress, and each time, he's met with stiff resistance.
An interesting side note is that I've found that among Republicans I know, John McCain is usually not thought very highly of at all. I really don't understand this. I've always personally found this strange, as McCain comes across as very straight forward and honest - an overall good guy. However, McCain is essentially the outcast of the Republican party, mainly because he's the most moderate congressional Republican I can think of. There seems to be a growing gap between the ideology of the Democrats and Republicans, which is the major weakness of the two party system. The Republicans seem to be drifting further and further to the right, and I'm not sure what's going to come in to fill the gap of the moderate-conservative Americans out there unless this reverses itself soon. I think it'd be a shame for the most extreme members of EITHER party to dictate things, when there are huge numbers of people sitting in the middle unheard.
As for your feelings on people's polarity regarding big issues, well, this is the reason why they're big issues. These are generally the issues that people feel most passionately about, and therefore why it may SEEM like everyone is hard set on side or another. Not to mention the fact that once something goes to law, the LAW is supposed to see it in a black and white manner. (DMCA and the like excluded). The only reason this is a problem is the same reason why the political system is so messed up as it is - people don't know or care enough to think for themselves. I think having political parties is a good thing as it allows those with similar views to work as a cohesive unit. It's just that people now don't seem to be able to think enough to break from the party line when they don't really agree with something.
That being said, its also plain to see that it seems despite anything the West does, the middle east will resent the West.
I happen to disagree. Most of the middle east has good reason to dislike the west. More often than not, we've supported brutal, totallitarian regimes that would willingly serve our interests over democratic ones. US intervention in the middle east has generally been a negative thing for the arabs. That said, I honestly believe those relations could be repaired, but it would take many years of listening to the arabs and actively trying to come to a reasonable compromise. Unfortunately, the current administration is not interested in compromising with anyone, as they have demonstrated.
Perhaps, if we step out of Iraq quickly and cleanly as soon as the people are liberated we can surprise most middle eastern people and they will start to change their minds.
Actually, this would be the hugest mistake we could make at this point. A quick pull out would lead to a power vaccuum... in the middle of the most volatile region of the world. A recipe for disaster. The US HAS to stay on for the long term. At the same time, however, the US presence will have to be completely transparent for the arabs to accept us as legitimate. I believe we've already failed in this respect. Declaring that reconstructiong contracts may only be awarded to US corporations and that "Iraqi oil
will be used to pay for it" immediately gives the arab world the perception of the US as attempting to set up a colony. Yes, it sounds ludicrous to us, but would sound completely reasonable to a member of the arab world at this point. Getting the arab world to trust us, and through that, stop hating us, is a task which requires delicacy and careful diplomacy on the part of the US. I simply see the Iraqi war as neither of these, and as only going to cause more harm than good in the long run.
The economics that allowed for a decline in welfare and a budget surplus were created under a conservative administration and eroded away by the previous liberal administration
How do you figure? Reagan left us with the largest budget deficits in this country's history. The elder Bush didn't exactly do much to reverse it. In fact, when Bush left office in 1992, the federal debt was over four times the amount it was when Reagan entered office in 1980. The federal budget didn't go into surplus until 1998, SIX YEARS into Clinton's presidency. I'm sorry, but the claim that the economic success of the mid 90's is due to Republican policy quite is more than a slight stretch when the twelve years of Republican administration beforehand weren't exactly booming economic success stories.
I also find blaiming the current downturn on Clinton laughable. Yes, the market was inflated, and it had already started to let go some when Bush came in, but you can't honestly believe that what he's done since coming into office has helped the economy drastically or will be good for the federal government in the long run, can you? When Bush came into office, the federal government was running a $127 billion surplus. The projected DEFICIT for this year was projected to be $307 billion back in February - before the additional costs of an Iraqi war got thrown into the mix. So, explain to me, when the government is going to be in danger of losing more money in one year under Bush than in 3 years of surplus combined, how do Republican policies drive a budget surplus? I'd really like to know.
Damn, it makes me wonder about the people in charge of this kind of stuff. I've pretty much come to the conclusion that in at least 95% of all cases, people who work for schools in "IT" don't know what they're doing. Personally, I'd think that it'd be a far more effective detterent to just enforce the AUP rather than block half the internet. Still block the obvious stuff ie: sites that serve porn, but if a kid obviously makes a point of circumventing the AUP, yank their network privleges for a while the first time, permanently the second. It's the fact that I know the admins don't know what they're doing that's led me to working on setting up a proxy of my own here at the house and leaving it running in case of the off chance I need to use the net while at school. I can get to the legit sites I need to, ignoring their crappy filter, and they'll never know the difference.
Linux starts to become accepted at home by people who have learned to use it at work
(and know what permissions are, stuff like that)
My emphasis. Reason being that that part has already been taken care of by windows. Win9x could be made to have permissions with 3rd party software like the Novell clients, and with 2000/XP it's a native part of the operating system. Sure, the home PCs HP, Dell, etc. sell are all set up to run in "System Administrator" (root) mode, but at work in a corporate environment, they're generally going to have a regular user account, along with the account permissions and restrictions that go with it. The key during your 3rd phase is going to be convincing users that linux isn't all THAT hard to use, which hopefully will be the case by that point. Personally, I think your timeline is a little on the ambitious side, but perhaps that's just optimism on your part?:)
Does your's block images.google.com for "Pornography" like mine does? It's a pain in the ass when a teacher expects you to go to the library and slap together a stupid powerpoint presentation and you can't get into ANY of the image search engines. They claim it's because of the child protection acts, but personally I think it's going a bit far to block ANYTHING that could possibly offend ANYONE. I honestly believe that simply blocking obvious porn sites and the like would cover the schools under the CPAs, especially since (at least in my district) you have to sign a rather draconian AUP before they even let you touch the machines. Oh well, I guess we have to save the kids from the evils of the internet.
As long as the newbie user is getting the features, the bugs will be accepted
And you just answered the $50,000 question. This is exactly WHY they'll get frustrated and give up on linux. Sure, it might be possible to play a video of codec XYZ on the machine, but the average user isn't going to jump through the hoops of compiling ANYTHING themselves to make this work. Hell, with Windows Media Player half the time they don't even have to go get the codec themselves, it finds it and installs it for them. Until the OSS community realizes that this is the type of functionallity that's NEEDED to gain share among the average users, Linux is going to continue to meander along a path followed only by geeks.
I don't see how increased console gaming == increased linux gaming. The reason you see so many straight PC ports on XBox is the fact that it's essentially running a stripped Windows 2000 kernel and DirectX, meaning that compared to some of the other consoles, porting to XBox is a much more trivial excercise.
And this ignoring the fact that Microsoft would really, really like the XBox to replace the PC completely in home entertainments areas. It's been pointed out that 'X' is Microsoft slang for "Anything." Hence ActiveX, DirectX, XBox, etc. Microsoft wants to eventually make the XBox an all-in-one device that essentially becomes the users' new home theater. This doesn't however, threaten their PC stronghold at all IMO. Outside of console-style RPG and anime fans, hardcore gamers generally stick to the PC for their gaming machine.
There's just no contesting the fact that the PC as a rapidly evolving platform is just plain capable of doing more - be it in general or as a gaming platform. At this point the hardcore console fans are ready to form a lynch mob and take me out.:) But even if you look at a straight PC to XBox port, there are almost always things missing in the XBox version, or comprimises made to the control system due to having to use a gamepad. (Gamepad vs KB + Mouse is another endless debate with console people). Anyway, I'm starting to ramble now, but the point remains - that among people really serious about their games, consoles will never be an adequate replacement. And neither will Linux until it can run them flawlessly out of the box, which is mainly a matter of developer support.
Question - are you sure you were using the same video drivers on the SuSE install as you were with Gentoo? Unless you specifically went in and added in the latest drivers for your card in SuSE, it wouldn't surprise me that Gentoo would be using newer, more optimized drivers simply due to the bleeding edge nature of the distro. Just a thought.
Depends on the person, just like with any age group. The kids who really want to learn and write good code, do. The ones who half-ass it and do it to be "1337" write crappy code. Personally, I'm 18. I've been programming for a couple of years now. I know I'm not a hacker god - there's a LOT I dont know, and I'm constantly learning. But by the same token, I know the code I write is a lot cleaner than code I've seen written by people that are a good deal older than me. No, I couldn't write a kernel driver to save my life at this point, but what I do know how to do, I make a point to do well.
You'll find people like me in ANY age group, and you'll find the ones that do the job poorly right there with them. I think the reason why you may be associating crap code with young kids my have to do with the fact that in older generations, you REALLY, REALLY had to want to do this as the equipment was expensive and hard to get. With younger generations, it's a much more ubiquitious thing, you're going to have more people that do it simply because it's more accessible. I've been around computers constantly literally since I was born, and what I had is insanely primitive compared to what kids just starting school now have. It doesn't hurt either that computers have lost their geek stigma. It catches me off guard every time someone my age thinks the fact that I know what I do is "cool."
My point is, there are a lot of bad young programmers out there, but there are a lot of good ones too. I graduate next month. I've already worked fairly heavily with DirectX, OpenGL, and SDL and dabbled some with MySQL some on the side, all before starting college. There are a lot of kids out there who started a lot sooner than I did too, and are a lot better at it. Hell, the kid who wrote DeCSS was my age. I think you're a bit too quick to discount the young generation of programmers, personally.
Agreed. If you want to see a site that does this right, check out Rice Boy Page. The guy that runs it actually knows what he's talking about, and has some truly amusing pictures on it. And none of those evil javascript popup pictures.:)
Rice Boy Page does a FAR beter job of this than the site you linked. Outside of the fact that they're imports, I can't figure out what he has against some of the cars (I've only looked at the imports page.) The first Civic actually looks fairly nice outside of that awful green (which is a factory color) and I can't figure out what he has against the first blue Prelude on the page. In fact, the thing he spends the most time complaining about are spoilers. The last car he rips on on the 3rd page again, is a civic. it's been modified, but it's well done and cleanly done, so I don't see the problem. Yeah, some of the cars look crappy, but he rips on a lot of decent cars too. Check out Rice Boy, the guy doing it actually knows about the cars and points out EXACTLY what's absurd about the car, be it rebadgings or mechanically why something's wrong. Not just "Ha Ha Ha! Look at that stupid wing! Ha Ha Ha!" Not to mention the site design is decent, no godawful javascript popups.
Yeah, except you can occassionally touch on anime and sci-fi without the anime and sci-fi people getting completely disgusted at how little most people know. For people that REALLY know what they're doing with cars, it's rather frustrating hearing people talk about the stupidity of people with fast cars because their perception of "people who work on cars" are the hack jobs that are actually slower than stock. It's like listening to a user complaining that their "windows is too slow" but never connecting it with the fact that they let 15 extraneous apps load on boot. It's just plain painful, and we could do without it.
*sigh* This whole article is so depressing. First it reminds me that I wish I could afford a $35,000 Subaru STi, then it reminds me than I wish I could afford a $10,000 Suzuki GSX. Life sucks. =)
Actually, what they did was to take common, pointless things people do to their cars that have no bearing on performance, and exagerate them to show the stupidity behind the logic. The jab "Finding airflow, of course, means removing the hood, but no hood at all is even lighter than a carbon-fiber hood" is particularly nice since "carbon is better because it's lighter!" is a common mantra among that crowd. Which is true, except for the fact that half the time they buy cheap, crappy CF hoods that end up weighing more than the original did.
Really, there isn't any good analogy for this to the computer world. The closest you could come would be among people who might think Video Card A is cooler than Card B because it has a bigger fan on it, even though Card B runs 45% faster for the same money. Still weak, but better than the original analogy.
I take it you're one of the fortunate WRX owners? Lucky bastard.:) Maybe after I'm out of college and have an actual job I'll be able to spend the money on it. Of course, Subaru just HAD to go and release the STi and now I'm going to have to figure out how the hell I'm gonna be able to pay for a $30,000 car instead of a $24,000 car.:)
If you actually know how to drive the car right, you're the exception among mustang owners (at least in my area). For some reason, around here, it's the "fast car for morons." Case in point: I dragged against a mustang here, was beating him until I had to back off since I was about to have to pull a right hand turn, so I hit my right turn signal and let off the gas to start slowing down. (I was in the right lane, he was in the left). Anyway, this turn is a crappy intersection that's a bitch to make without tearing up your car at 20mph, even if you know what you're doing. The idiot tried to cut in front of me and make the turn (from the left lane) while he was still doing at least 50-60mph. Needless to say, he hit the curb on the opposite corner and came to a prompt stop. Who needs front wheels anyway?:)
God, why'd you have to remind me of this? I remember getting my copy in the mail, seeing "AWD Battle," a Skyline, and a WRX and going "YES!" (I'm a huge WRX fan). And then there were the screams of agony when I opened it up to see in crunched in half.:)
I've always thought that it would be quite fun to do a conversion of a small, underpowered vehicle (like a VW Beetle) to something with a little more power
I've got a '92 Geo Metro around with a bad motor. I've seriously thought about stripping it down, finding a fairly powerful V6, and figuring out a way to convert the thing to a mid-engine setup. Only problem is, being unibody, I'm afraid the whole thing would crumple when I started cutting around the rear wheel wells. Maybe with proper reinforcement though... Oh well. Maybe one day I'll have enough free time and money to find out.:)
It's from Sport Compact Car, which is more than "just some import mag." Most of the cars they cover are imports, yes. But take a look on dealers' lots and you'll find the Americans aren't making much in the line of compacts right now. They loved the new Neon SRT-4 (named if their sport compact of the year, actually). It's a very technically oriented magazine, aimed at the "geeks" of the car world.
there's a difference between looking fast and actually being fast that the riceboys just don't get.
Yeah, no joke. One of the fastest cars I've ever ridden in was one you wouldn't expect to be - a Mazda Protoge 5 hatchback I guy I know had. On the outside, the only difference from stock was the fact it had Z rated tires and the suspension had been dropped an inch or two (nothing too terribly obvious). The interior was completely stock, he hadn't even swapped out the crappy factory CD player. However, out on the highway that car could do 145mph without straining itself. Needless to say, under the hood, it was NOT stock.:) The only thing that gave it away was the fact that it was LOUD, but that's the price you pay, I guess. Since then though, he's sold off that car and bought one of the new Mazdaspeed Protoges. God only knows how fast that thing's gonna be when he gets done with it. And him being best friends with the master mechanic of the local Mazda dealership certainly isn't hurting him there.;)
Slashdot Mirror
It's not a matter of "identifying with only two parties" so much as accepting the reality of strength in numbers. Were the US set up with a parliamentary style government, the yes, we could afford to have 400 active political parties all with their own unique political agenda. But since Jefferson couldn't convince us of the dangers of having political parties early on, this is what we have. Personally, I don't think it's as bad as people like to make it out to be. The problem isn't the two party system so much as big business money and corruption in government. The stumbling block there is we're having a hell of a time cleaning it up because there IS corruption. For example, John McCain has been trying for years to push campaign finance reform bills through congress, and each time, he's met with stiff resistance.
An interesting side note is that I've found that among Republicans I know, John McCain is usually not thought very highly of at all. I really don't understand this. I've always personally found this strange, as McCain comes across as very straight forward and honest - an overall good guy. However, McCain is essentially the outcast of the Republican party, mainly because he's the most moderate congressional Republican I can think of. There seems to be a growing gap between the ideology of the Democrats and Republicans, which is the major weakness of the two party system. The Republicans seem to be drifting further and further to the right, and I'm not sure what's going to come in to fill the gap of the moderate-conservative Americans out there unless this reverses itself soon. I think it'd be a shame for the most extreme members of EITHER party to dictate things, when there are huge numbers of people sitting in the middle unheard.
As for your feelings on people's polarity regarding big issues, well, this is the reason why they're big issues. These are generally the issues that people feel most passionately about, and therefore why it may SEEM like everyone is hard set on side or another. Not to mention the fact that once something goes to law, the LAW is supposed to see it in a black and white manner. (DMCA and the like excluded). The only reason this is a problem is the same reason why the political system is so messed up as it is - people don't know or care enough to think for themselves. I think having political parties is a good thing as it allows those with similar views to work as a cohesive unit. It's just that people now don't seem to be able to think enough to break from the party line when they don't really agree with something.
I also find blaiming the current downturn on Clinton laughable. Yes, the market was inflated, and it had already started to let go some when Bush came in, but you can't honestly believe that what he's done since coming into office has helped the economy drastically or will be good for the federal government in the long run, can you? When Bush came into office, the federal government was running a $127 billion surplus. The projected DEFICIT for this year was projected to be $307 billion back in February - before the additional costs of an Iraqi war got thrown into the mix. So, explain to me, when the government is going to be in danger of losing more money in one year under Bush than in 3 years of surplus combined, how do Republican policies drive a budget surplus? I'd really like to know.
Damn, it makes me wonder about the people in charge of this kind of stuff. I've pretty much come to the conclusion that in at least 95% of all cases, people who work for schools in "IT" don't know what they're doing. Personally, I'd think that it'd be a far more effective detterent to just enforce the AUP rather than block half the internet. Still block the obvious stuff ie: sites that serve porn, but if a kid obviously makes a point of circumventing the AUP, yank their network privleges for a while the first time, permanently the second. It's the fact that I know the admins don't know what they're doing that's led me to working on setting up a proxy of my own here at the house and leaving it running in case of the off chance I need to use the net while at school. I can get to the legit sites I need to, ignoring their crappy filter, and they'll never know the difference.
Does your's block images.google.com for "Pornography" like mine does? It's a pain in the ass when a teacher expects you to go to the library and slap together a stupid powerpoint presentation and you can't get into ANY of the image search engines. They claim it's because of the child protection acts, but personally I think it's going a bit far to block ANYTHING that could possibly offend ANYONE. I honestly believe that simply blocking obvious porn sites and the like would cover the schools under the CPAs, especially since (at least in my district) you have to sign a rather draconian AUP before they even let you touch the machines. Oh well, I guess we have to save the kids from the evils of the internet.
I don't see how increased console gaming == increased linux gaming. The reason you see so many straight PC ports on XBox is the fact that it's essentially running a stripped Windows 2000 kernel and DirectX, meaning that compared to some of the other consoles, porting to XBox is a much more trivial excercise.
:) But even if you look at a straight PC to XBox port, there are almost always things missing in the XBox version, or comprimises made to the control system due to having to use a gamepad. (Gamepad vs KB + Mouse is another endless debate with console people). Anyway, I'm starting to ramble now, but the point remains - that among people really serious about their games, consoles will never be an adequate replacement. And neither will Linux until it can run them flawlessly out of the box, which is mainly a matter of developer support.
And this ignoring the fact that Microsoft would really, really like the XBox to replace the PC completely in home entertainments areas. It's been pointed out that 'X' is Microsoft slang for "Anything." Hence ActiveX, DirectX, XBox, etc. Microsoft wants to eventually make the XBox an all-in-one device that essentially becomes the users' new home theater. This doesn't however, threaten their PC stronghold at all IMO. Outside of console-style RPG and anime fans, hardcore gamers generally stick to the PC for their gaming machine.
There's just no contesting the fact that the PC as a rapidly evolving platform is just plain capable of doing more - be it in general or as a gaming platform. At this point the hardcore console fans are ready to form a lynch mob and take me out.
Question - are you sure you were using the same video drivers on the SuSE install as you were with Gentoo? Unless you specifically went in and added in the latest drivers for your card in SuSE, it wouldn't surprise me that Gentoo would be using newer, more optimized drivers simply due to the bleeding edge nature of the distro. Just a thought.
Depends on the person, just like with any age group. The kids who really want to learn and write good code, do. The ones who half-ass it and do it to be "1337" write crappy code. Personally, I'm 18. I've been programming for a couple of years now. I know I'm not a hacker god - there's a LOT I dont know, and I'm constantly learning. But by the same token, I know the code I write is a lot cleaner than code I've seen written by people that are a good deal older than me. No, I couldn't write a kernel driver to save my life at this point, but what I do know how to do, I make a point to do well.
You'll find people like me in ANY age group, and you'll find the ones that do the job poorly right there with them. I think the reason why you may be associating crap code with young kids my have to do with the fact that in older generations, you REALLY, REALLY had to want to do this as the equipment was expensive and hard to get. With younger generations, it's a much more ubiquitious thing, you're going to have more people that do it simply because it's more accessible. I've been around computers constantly literally since I was born, and what I had is insanely primitive compared to what kids just starting school now have. It doesn't hurt either that computers have lost their geek stigma. It catches me off guard every time someone my age thinks the fact that I know what I do is "cool."
My point is, there are a lot of bad young programmers out there, but there are a lot of good ones too. I graduate next month. I've already worked fairly heavily with DirectX, OpenGL, and SDL and dabbled some with MySQL some on the side, all before starting college. There are a lot of kids out there who started a lot sooner than I did too, and are a lot better at it. Hell, the kid who wrote DeCSS was my age. I think you're a bit too quick to discount the young generation of programmers, personally.
Agreed. If you want to see a site that does this right, check out Rice Boy Page. The guy that runs it actually knows what he's talking about, and has some truly amusing pictures on it. And none of those evil javascript popup pictures. :)
Rice Boy Page does a FAR beter job of this than the site you linked. Outside of the fact that they're imports, I can't figure out what he has against some of the cars (I've only looked at the imports page.) The first Civic actually looks fairly nice outside of that awful green (which is a factory color) and I can't figure out what he has against the first blue Prelude on the page. In fact, the thing he spends the most time complaining about are spoilers. The last car he rips on on the 3rd page again, is a civic. it's been modified, but it's well done and cleanly done, so I don't see the problem. Yeah, some of the cars look crappy, but he rips on a lot of decent cars too. Check out Rice Boy, the guy doing it actually knows about the cars and points out EXACTLY what's absurd about the car, be it rebadgings or mechanically why something's wrong. Not just "Ha Ha Ha! Look at that stupid wing! Ha Ha Ha!" Not to mention the site design is decent, no godawful javascript popups.
I knew this looked familiar, but I couldn't quite place where. That's about the time I started subscribing, so it all makes sense now. Thanks.
Yeah, except you can occassionally touch on anime and sci-fi without the anime and sci-fi people getting completely disgusted at how little most people know. For people that REALLY know what they're doing with cars, it's rather frustrating hearing people talk about the stupidity of people with fast cars because their perception of "people who work on cars" are the hack jobs that are actually slower than stock. It's like listening to a user complaining that their "windows is too slow" but never connecting it with the fact that they let 15 extraneous apps load on boot. It's just plain painful, and we could do without it.
*sigh* This whole article is so depressing. First it reminds me that I wish I could afford a $35,000 Subaru STi, then it reminds me than I wish I could afford a $10,000 Suzuki GSX. Life sucks. =)
Actually, what they did was to take common, pointless things people do to their cars that have no bearing on performance, and exagerate them to show the stupidity behind the logic. The jab "Finding airflow, of course, means removing the hood, but no hood at all is even lighter than a carbon-fiber hood" is particularly nice since "carbon is better because it's lighter!" is a common mantra among that crowd. Which is true, except for the fact that half the time they buy cheap, crappy CF hoods that end up weighing more than the original did.
Really, there isn't any good analogy for this to the computer world. The closest you could come would be among people who might think Video Card A is cooler than Card B because it has a bigger fan on it, even though Card B runs 45% faster for the same money. Still weak, but better than the original analogy.
I take it you're one of the fortunate WRX owners? Lucky bastard. :) Maybe after I'm out of college and have an actual job I'll be able to spend the money on it. Of course, Subaru just HAD to go and release the STi and now I'm going to have to figure out how the hell I'm gonna be able to pay for a $30,000 car instead of a $24,000 car. :)
If you actually know how to drive the car right, you're the exception among mustang owners (at least in my area). For some reason, around here, it's the "fast car for morons." Case in point: I dragged against a mustang here, was beating him until I had to back off since I was about to have to pull a right hand turn, so I hit my right turn signal and let off the gas to start slowing down. (I was in the right lane, he was in the left). Anyway, this turn is a crappy intersection that's a bitch to make without tearing up your car at 20mph, even if you know what you're doing. The idiot tried to cut in front of me and make the turn (from the left lane) while he was still doing at least 50-60mph. Needless to say, he hit the curb on the opposite corner and came to a prompt stop. Who needs front wheels anyway? :)
God, why'd you have to remind me of this? I remember getting my copy in the mail, seeing "AWD Battle," a Skyline, and a WRX and going "YES!" (I'm a huge WRX fan). And then there were the screams of agony when I opened it up to see in crunched in half. :)
Heh, Ironic considering the Porsche started out as a modified VW. :)
It's from Sport Compact Car, which is more than "just some import mag." Most of the cars they cover are imports, yes. But take a look on dealers' lots and you'll find the Americans aren't making much in the line of compacts right now. They loved the new Neon SRT-4 (named if their sport compact of the year, actually). It's a very technically oriented magazine, aimed at the "geeks" of the car world.