So the power cord on your toaster is faulty. Easy fix, right? You steal a cord from your broken radio, get out your soldering gun and have at it. No radio? The hardware store can give you a cord at much lower cost than a new toaster.
New toaster $25. Cost to repair $4. Easy math, right? Let's forget that your radio cord can't handle the wattage of the toaster and it starts a fire that burns the house down.
Instead, focus on time. You took 3 hours to fix the toaster. Your job pays you $42/hr plus benefits worth $18. Your time is worth $60/hr, so the toaster repair cost you $180!
Of course you only work 8 hours/day, 5 days/wk, $2400/wk which is actually 188 hours. Your average for those hours is $12.77/hour, so the repair cost $38.30- about double the cost of a new toaster. Now you have an old crumby toaster that will work a while longer and you've messed up the kitchen table and pissed off your wife.
Is there nothing better that you could have done with that time? Mother's day is Sunday this week. Spend the $38 on flowers and buy a new toaster.
Last weekend, I took in a damaged Onkyo stereo receiver. The headphone jack was missing, and the switch for the "B" speaker set was stuck ON. I didn't even repair it -- I promptly hooked it up to the living room TV to replace a cheap-to-middling receiver from the late 1970s. I hooked the main speakers to the "B" posts since there's no need to turn them off, and if someone wants to watch TV with headphones (which we sometimes do), well, the TV has a headphone jack of its own and the amplifier need not even be used. For some reason, it did not want to pull in FM reception using a splitter on the TV's rabbit ears and I had to run a second antenna. We HAVE a 5.1 system, but the wires and satellites have been deemed too ugly and too prone to accidental tripping so it sits in the box unused.
I decided to put it to use as is because there was nothing wrong with it that wasn't trivial to work around, and this particular unit sells for $170 NEW, with free shipping. Still, that is $170 NOT spent, and money saved is better than money earned because it has no paper trail (and thus no taxes).
The prior weekend, we repaired a 30-year-old alarm clock whose buttons had long since stopped working (it was being used only as a radio but is fully functional now) and cleaned up an equally old toaster oven and put it back into service. It's not like a newer toaster oven is going to convert electricity to heat any more efficiently than an old one! I can see a point to replacing a refrigerator or a washing machine or a dryer or a dishwasher or even a stove (pilotless does save gas), but a toaster oven?
I'll ditch really old computers. Generally I will dump them when even the poorest of my friends and acquaintances have something better, and I have no practical use for them myself (even as backup). Those who have nothing will take what they can get.
Also... unlike a gas station, the use of these pretty much mandates the use of credit cards... I haven't found an unattended gas station with a cash reader... ever. I like cash -- it works when the power goes out, the computer fouls up, the bank decides to hate me, the government decides I'm a terrorist, or my partner decides to drain my account dry and leave me hanging.
Never seen a PayQuick terminal at ARCO? Granted I've never owned a car that was happy with ARCO gas and typically do what I can to avoid fueling up there, but they accept bills just fine.
Paging override can be done simply enough at the output end with amplifiers that have an input override. This is not limited to particularly expensive amplifiers -- the one I use every day has this ability and cost less than $100. Certainly they're going to want more than 50W/channel (except perhaps where the speakers are more or less right next to the people), but the point is that this provision exists in a lot of off-the-shelf equipment and its primary purpose is to provide a paging override in commercial installations.
The one glitch is that it requires a certain level to activate the relay to switch inputs, meaning that it can clip a fraction of a second. The easy fix is to have the paging system send a slight DC bias (or a short tone, which you know will be dropped at the output due to the relay lag) whenever the Talk button is pressed. That way the relays on the amplifiers will switch inputs BEFORE the person doing the paging starts talking. The same glitch means that the paging system does have to have low noise levels when NOT active, or the relays will stick on the Paging side, or (worse yet) bounce frequently between the two states.
Thanks for the tip - I always seem to get incorrect advice from "mechanic" mates.
The best advice about fueling up I ever received was from a tire store manager -- one who would have reason to withhold this if he wanted more business.
DON'T TOP OFF. When the pump stops the first time, hang it up. Thermal expansion can increase the volume of a full tank of morning-cool gasoline by a half gallon by afternoon. This then goes back up the fill pipe and out onto the tire below. He said it was no coincidence that I'd blown the right rear tire twice, but none of the others. I heeded his advice (and pass it along) and haven't had a catastrophic tire failure since.
Thief breaks in, I lose maybe $5 in change form the console and some 15-year old CDs. If my car were locked, I'd lose that, PLUS a $200 car window they smashed to get said items. It is not worth locking my car.
I disagree. I had my car broken into and the radio (along with several HUNDRED CDs in paper sleeves) stolen. They smashed a window to get in, which pissed me off far more than the stolen items. However, the passenger side door (which is the side they broke into) was unlocked at the time, because I had been disconnecting the battery when parking. Funny how power door locks don't work in that condition, and I hadn't gotten into the habit of checking it manually. By not locking the door, I opened myself up to casual thieves and STILL failed to stop someone from smashing the window. Chances are, they didn't even CHECK the door before smashing the window.
Yes, there is a 5-order-of-magnitude gap in our solar system, but there are other systems, and they may have celestial bodies that fall within that gap, so clearer terms might be useful.
Since we don't yet know the composition of these other systems (though I think most would grant they should exist), shouldn't the defining be similarly deferred? Make the definition as useful as it needs to be now, tighten it up later when it's clearly inadequate. It's an imperfect process, but it worked before and it will work again (Pluto controversy notwithstanding). "Planet" is a name for a class of objects, and perhaps overly broad, but right now it usefully defines what we know. When we know more, we'll muck with the definition to fit.
George Takei has offered up his name as an alternative to gay, so you can support Takei Marrage instead.
His Facebook page is also one of the few I've seen that is worth following, unless you are one of those fanboys who can't stand being made fun of by a fellow insider.
The shame of it all is that disco doesn't have to suck. Case in point: Jamiroquai.
Any genre that gets popular will have a flood of imitators. Most of them will suck. Some of them will be popular anyhow, just because it's the sound of the times.
My main pair of speakers are studio monitors. I like the fact that they do not "warm up" a recording, they just regenerate it to the best of their ability (aside from the bass response rolling off below 55 Hz). If a recording needs to be massaged, I have filters and (if necessary) external boxes to do that. It's not the job of the speakers. Said speakers will set you back a couple grand, but I'm driving them with an amplifier I bought for under $200 -- it's clean, clear, and actually somewhat overpowered for the job (I can, in theory, trip the circuit breakers on the speakers though I haven't when I've tried). 100W each into two high-efficiency monitors can clear a room pretty easily.
Even without the Tannoys, I can hear the difference between various bitrates of lossy encoding. Various formats only sound like they're a slightly higher or lower bitrate, the fundamental quality does not seem to be any different. 192kbps MP3 is about the minimum I consider tolerable (for stereo), but some of these squashed recordings sound no worse at 160. For my "online stash" and MP3 player, I will sometimes compress more since they rarely get used in any critical listening environments. It's almost pointless to re-compress from 192 though, when the MP3 player will happily take a 32 GB MicroSDHC. (Thank you Rockbox!)
It's fine if you want to run a dynamic-squashing filter on YOUR end when the environment is too noisy or the maximum volume is too low to allow for full dynamic range. That doesn't mean your stored media should be pre-compensated that way. It's easy to do it on the fly, and impossible to undo when permanently applied.
If they want rid of you simply because you're slightly higher risk than they'd like, the computer will take care of this by the simple expedient of making sure your insurance quote is way dearer than you're prepared to pay.
This is known in the business as a "TTFO quote". (In case you can't tell, it means "told to fuck off".)
Landlines may be uncommon (though I suspect they're not as uncommon as you think -- just in the under-30 set are they as rare as record players), but there are plenty of people with VoIP lines. Even if you attack their WiFi so that their netbooks don't make the call, the wired-LAN computers still will, as will the dedicated VoIP system of any business.
It's accepted practice in the companies where I have insured their fleets. Pay for your own fuel when you're doing your own thing, that's all they ask. I'm in Southern California, and one client had a 170-vehicle national fleet for their sales force, as well as another 15 or so for the Canadian branch (also scattered across Canada). For the most part, people with company vehicles DIDN'T OWN ONE, or had relegated the family car solely to the spouse because they had theirs. The company didn't care because the cars got sold after 4 years whether they had a few miles on them or (as was more typically the case) upwards of 100,000 miles. Frequently, the employees bought the retired cars since they were equipped with very nice racks and fittings for hauling the company's gear around and this was not stripped out when the car was sold.
Personally I wouldn't buy a 4 year old Dodge Journey with 120,000 miles on it, but if I'd been driving it the entire 4 years I might feel differently.
If you cut a tree in cross sections, a significant number of them should be close enough to round to be useful as wheels. Those that aren't totally round will tend to wear that way with use.
Also, if you didn't RTFA, there were images of wooden wheels made from multiple planks lashed together with iron bars across the outer surface. Not spokes, but merely reinforcement bands to hold multiple pieces of wood together. They were essentially solid wooden wheels, only made from multiple pieces of wood.
It seems that the big problem is still the fact that the axle has to have a friction bearing surface SOMEWHERE -- either where it's mounted to the chassis, or where it meets each wheel. Roller bearings would take some time longer to be invented, so for a long time wheeled vehicles had to do without them.
It still seems likely that "the roads just weren't there" is the real answer. Why hook a wheeled cart to a pack animal, when you can just ride the pack animal (or load it with cargo) and navigate much more difficult terrain?
Frankly you don't even need 100 HP to commute to work -- the Prius does it with much less. My mother's old 1984 Tercel did just fine with about 65 HP. I wouldn't call either one fast, but when your primary constraint is the presence of other vehicles, a little quickness off the line is all you really need -- and for that, gearing helps a lot more than raw horsepower. That's why the little XT6 still putters along acceptably despite no longer being able to get out of its own way north of 45 MPH. It used to be fast, 100,000 or so miles ago -- a fair trade considering those miles are all mine. It still gets moving from a dead stop faster than most people expect, but the engine has obviously seen better days and I don't think I'm doing it any favors by trying to keep it in the ever-narrowing power band (currently about 3800-5000 RPM). I know the trade-off... I crash it hard enough, and I die. That's the real reason cars keep getting heavier, requiring ever-increasing power. People want their cars to save them when they (and/or another driver) fuck up. It generally takes two to tango, barring cars into trees and cars off cliffs and the like. I see people making ridiculously stupid moves on the highway all the time, and the fact is that they get away with it the vast majority of the time. It's when multiple drivers make stupid moves at the same time that everything goes to hell.
You'll probably get your wish on the $5 gas this summer, at least in some parts of the country. I dread the impact to prices of everything delivered by truck more than I do the price of fuel itself.
The Subaru 2.0 and 2.2 ARE underpowered, relative to the AWD drive train losses and increased vehicle weight. They weren't underpowered when they first came out, but the cars have gotten fat (safety features, primarily) since then. The answer isn't a 2.5 though, it's a 3.0 H-6.
I have a 1989 XT6, and I've never seen another one in person, on the road or parked.I've seen a handful of the 4 cylinder model, but no other sixes. The H-6 has undergone a lot of improvement since then. It was increased in displacement from 2.7L to 3.0L, but the power output was DOUBLED. Of course, the weight of the car increased as well, though it hasn't doubled. Improvements to the relatively simple 4WD help efficiency more than performance (in terms of acceleration-- they undoubtedly help provide more power to the ground in adverse conditions).
Remember when 300 HP meant a monster, and nowadays it means the car can get out of its own way? That's what weight does. On the bright side, it DOES mean the car performs pretty much the same whether it's just you, or whether it's you, your friends, and a weekend's worth of luggage. I can't say that for the XT6 -- it most definitely slows down with a passenger or two and some junk in the (tiny) trunk. At a mere 145 HP (original, I'm sure it's much less now), every pound matters.
First, it's not necessary to heat the entire house, especially if you're worried about making your fuel last as long as possible. Heat a room and keep everyone there unless they NEED to be somewhere else. Second, burning 50 tons of banknotes saves a lot more than 50 tons of trees, considering most of a tree's weight is water. It also saves the energy of drying said wood (even if that energy would be solar, laying the wood out to dry on its own), and the cost of fuel to move it from the forest to the lumber yard to the homes (the fuel to ship the banknotes is going to be used no matter WHERE they are going, though there may be a difference in exactly how much).
Saying this is going to have minimal impact on freezing poor people is probably true, but it ISN'T GOING TO HURT, and it has small but positive effects elsewhere.
There's no hypocrisy. Apple bought the iPad trademark from a Proview subsidiary. I don't know Chinese law, but it's difficult to see how Proview can now sue for it's misuse.
Prediction: Apple will win at appeal.
Chinese law is: In a dispute between a Chinese company and a foreign company, the Chinese company is almost always right.
What? I've been digitally modeling LEGO for a couple years now... it's called Minecraft. Oddly enough, there is now an actual Minecraft LEGO set in the works. At least the mapping should be fairly straightforward, but I wonder if it comes with Endermen that tear your lawn apart when you're not watching.
Re:Record companies said radio was piracy too
on
BTJunkie No More?
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· Score: 1
And the trade-off for this was that the film could be seen in every city simultaneously, at far less cost than moving a vaudeville troupe. Also, it allowed for things to be done that simply can't be done in a live setting. The art itself improved. The number of people seeing that art increased. Overall, it was a net positive. Just because there is damage to one sector does not mean that progress should be held back, else we would have banned cars and light bulbs for buggy whip and candle makers.
Yep, the only thing lacking about a Sansa with Rockbox is the tiny screen. While it has been given decent photo and video capabilities by the firmware, the display is about the size of a large postage stamp. I put packing tape over the display to catch the scratches it would otherwise take, and it has held up nicely for years. I've only had to change the tape once.
And I too have all the music on my Sansa duplicated on my phone. The loads are identical (I just made two 16 GB SDHC cards and popped them in). My MP3 player has my ringtones, for simplicity's sake. The problem is that I have a phone with no jack -- it only plays over Bluetooth. This doesn't work so well with my car stereo -- although the stereo is much more recent than the car, it has just an audio jack and no Bluetooth or MP3 capabilities. They have started to diverge slightly, as I fill up the 1 GB I left empty on each. In the case of the phone, this is photos and videos. In the case of the MP3 player, it's voice recordings. It'll display photos and even video, but the screen is so tiny as to render this pointless.
When I put Rockbox on my Sansa, I noticed (or rather, completely failed to notice) no change in the battery life one way or the other. The only difference is that it actually gives me a percentage now, rather than just a simple bar graph.
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if you act the same as your enemies you are no better than they are.
Sometimes there is no "better", only dead or alive.
So the power cord on your toaster is faulty. Easy fix, right? You steal a cord from your broken radio, get out your soldering gun and have at it. No radio? The hardware store can give you a cord at much lower cost than a new toaster.
New toaster $25. Cost to repair $4. Easy math, right? Let's forget that your radio cord can't handle the wattage of the toaster and it starts a fire that burns the house down.
Instead, focus on time. You took 3 hours to fix the toaster. Your job pays you $42/hr plus benefits worth $18. Your time is worth $60/hr, so the toaster repair cost you $180!
Of course you only work 8 hours/day, 5 days/wk, $2400/wk which is actually 188 hours. Your average for those hours is $12.77/hour, so the repair cost $38.30- about double the cost of a new toaster. Now you have an old crumby toaster that will work a while longer and you've messed up the kitchen table and pissed off your wife.
Is there nothing better that you could have done with that time? Mother's day is Sunday this week. Spend the $38 on flowers and buy a new toaster.
Last weekend, I took in a damaged Onkyo stereo receiver. The headphone jack was missing, and the switch for the "B" speaker set was stuck ON. I didn't even repair it -- I promptly hooked it up to the living room TV to replace a cheap-to-middling receiver from the late 1970s. I hooked the main speakers to the "B" posts since there's no need to turn them off, and if someone wants to watch TV with headphones (which we sometimes do), well, the TV has a headphone jack of its own and the amplifier need not even be used. For some reason, it did not want to pull in FM reception using a splitter on the TV's rabbit ears and I had to run a second antenna. We HAVE a 5.1 system, but the wires and satellites have been deemed too ugly and too prone to accidental tripping so it sits in the box unused.
I decided to put it to use as is because there was nothing wrong with it that wasn't trivial to work around, and this particular unit sells for $170 NEW, with free shipping. Still, that is $170 NOT spent, and money saved is better than money earned because it has no paper trail (and thus no taxes).
The prior weekend, we repaired a 30-year-old alarm clock whose buttons had long since stopped working (it was being used only as a radio but is fully functional now) and cleaned up an equally old toaster oven and put it back into service. It's not like a newer toaster oven is going to convert electricity to heat any more efficiently than an old one! I can see a point to replacing a refrigerator or a washing machine or a dryer or a dishwasher or even a stove (pilotless does save gas), but a toaster oven?
I'll ditch really old computers. Generally I will dump them when even the poorest of my friends and acquaintances have something better, and I have no practical use for them myself (even as backup). Those who have nothing will take what they can get.
Also... unlike a gas station, the use of these pretty much mandates the use of credit cards... I haven't found an unattended gas station with a cash reader... ever. I like cash -- it works when the power goes out, the computer fouls up, the bank decides to hate me, the government decides I'm a terrorist, or my partner decides to drain my account dry and leave me hanging.
Never seen a PayQuick terminal at ARCO? Granted I've never owned a car that was happy with ARCO gas and typically do what I can to avoid fueling up there, but they accept bills just fine.
Paging override can be done simply enough at the output end with amplifiers that have an input override. This is not limited to particularly expensive amplifiers -- the one I use every day has this ability and cost less than $100. Certainly they're going to want more than 50W/channel (except perhaps where the speakers are more or less right next to the people), but the point is that this provision exists in a lot of off-the-shelf equipment and its primary purpose is to provide a paging override in commercial installations.
The one glitch is that it requires a certain level to activate the relay to switch inputs, meaning that it can clip a fraction of a second. The easy fix is to have the paging system send a slight DC bias (or a short tone, which you know will be dropped at the output due to the relay lag) whenever the Talk button is pressed. That way the relays on the amplifiers will switch inputs BEFORE the person doing the paging starts talking. The same glitch means that the paging system does have to have low noise levels when NOT active, or the relays will stick on the Paging side, or (worse yet) bounce frequently between the two states.
Thanks for the tip - I always seem to get incorrect advice from "mechanic" mates.
The best advice about fueling up I ever received was from a tire store manager -- one who would have reason to withhold this if he wanted more business.
DON'T TOP OFF. When the pump stops the first time, hang it up. Thermal expansion can increase the volume of a full tank of morning-cool gasoline by a half gallon by afternoon. This then goes back up the fill pipe and out onto the tire below. He said it was no coincidence that I'd blown the right rear tire twice, but none of the others. I heeded his advice (and pass it along) and haven't had a catastrophic tire failure since.
I often leave my car unlocked. Why?
Thief breaks in, I lose maybe $5 in change form the console and some 15-year old CDs. If my car were locked, I'd lose that, PLUS a $200 car window they smashed to get said items. It is not worth locking my car.
I disagree. I had my car broken into and the radio (along with several HUNDRED CDs in paper sleeves) stolen. They smashed a window to get in, which pissed me off far more than the stolen items. However, the passenger side door (which is the side they broke into) was unlocked at the time, because I had been disconnecting the battery when parking. Funny how power door locks don't work in that condition, and I hadn't gotten into the habit of checking it manually. By not locking the door, I opened myself up to casual thieves and STILL failed to stop someone from smashing the window. Chances are, they didn't even CHECK the door before smashing the window.
Yes, there is a 5-order-of-magnitude gap in our solar system, but there are other systems, and they may have celestial bodies that fall within that gap, so clearer terms might be useful.
Since we don't yet know the composition of these other systems (though I think most would grant they should exist), shouldn't the defining be similarly deferred? Make the definition as useful as it needs to be now, tighten it up later when it's clearly inadequate. It's an imperfect process, but it worked before and it will work again (Pluto controversy notwithstanding). "Planet" is a name for a class of objects, and perhaps overly broad, but right now it usefully defines what we know. When we know more, we'll muck with the definition to fit.
George Takei has offered up his name as an alternative to gay, so you can support Takei Marrage instead.
His Facebook page is also one of the few I've seen that is worth following, unless you are one of those fanboys who can't stand being made fun of by a fellow insider.
The shame of it all is that disco doesn't have to suck. Case in point: Jamiroquai.
Any genre that gets popular will have a flood of imitators. Most of them will suck. Some of them will be popular anyhow, just because it's the sound of the times.
My main pair of speakers are studio monitors. I like the fact that they do not "warm up" a recording, they just regenerate it to the best of their ability (aside from the bass response rolling off below 55 Hz). If a recording needs to be massaged, I have filters and (if necessary) external boxes to do that. It's not the job of the speakers. Said speakers will set you back a couple grand, but I'm driving them with an amplifier I bought for under $200 -- it's clean, clear, and actually somewhat overpowered for the job (I can, in theory, trip the circuit breakers on the speakers though I haven't when I've tried). 100W each into two high-efficiency monitors can clear a room pretty easily.
Even without the Tannoys, I can hear the difference between various bitrates of lossy encoding. Various formats only sound like they're a slightly higher or lower bitrate, the fundamental quality does not seem to be any different. 192kbps MP3 is about the minimum I consider tolerable (for stereo), but some of these squashed recordings sound no worse at 160. For my "online stash" and MP3 player, I will sometimes compress more since they rarely get used in any critical listening environments. It's almost pointless to re-compress from 192 though, when the MP3 player will happily take a 32 GB MicroSDHC. (Thank you Rockbox!)
It's fine if you want to run a dynamic-squashing filter on YOUR end when the environment is too noisy or the maximum volume is too low to allow for full dynamic range. That doesn't mean your stored media should be pre-compensated that way. It's easy to do it on the fly, and impossible to undo when permanently applied.
If they want rid of you simply because you're slightly higher risk than they'd like, the computer will take care of this by the simple expedient of making sure your insurance quote is way dearer than you're prepared to pay.
This is known in the business as a "TTFO quote". (In case you can't tell, it means "told to fuck off".)
Landlines may be uncommon (though I suspect they're not as uncommon as you think -- just in the under-30 set are they as rare as record players), but there are plenty of people with VoIP lines. Even if you attack their WiFi so that their netbooks don't make the call, the wired-LAN computers still will, as will the dedicated VoIP system of any business.
It's accepted practice in the companies where I have insured their fleets. Pay for your own fuel when you're doing your own thing, that's all they ask. I'm in Southern California, and one client had a 170-vehicle national fleet for their sales force, as well as another 15 or so for the Canadian branch (also scattered across Canada). For the most part, people with company vehicles DIDN'T OWN ONE, or had relegated the family car solely to the spouse because they had theirs. The company didn't care because the cars got sold after 4 years whether they had a few miles on them or (as was more typically the case) upwards of 100,000 miles. Frequently, the employees bought the retired cars since they were equipped with very nice racks and fittings for hauling the company's gear around and this was not stripped out when the car was sold.
Personally I wouldn't buy a 4 year old Dodge Journey with 120,000 miles on it, but if I'd been driving it the entire 4 years I might feel differently.
If you cut a tree in cross sections, a significant number of them should be close enough to round to be useful as wheels. Those that aren't totally round will tend to wear that way with use.
Also, if you didn't RTFA, there were images of wooden wheels made from multiple planks lashed together with iron bars across the outer surface. Not spokes, but merely reinforcement bands to hold multiple pieces of wood together. They were essentially solid wooden wheels, only made from multiple pieces of wood.
It seems that the big problem is still the fact that the axle has to have a friction bearing surface SOMEWHERE -- either where it's mounted to the chassis, or where it meets each wheel. Roller bearings would take some time longer to be invented, so for a long time wheeled vehicles had to do without them.
It still seems likely that "the roads just weren't there" is the real answer. Why hook a wheeled cart to a pack animal, when you can just ride the pack animal (or load it with cargo) and navigate much more difficult terrain?
Frankly you don't even need 100 HP to commute to work -- the Prius does it with much less. My mother's old 1984 Tercel did just fine with about 65 HP. I wouldn't call either one fast, but when your primary constraint is the presence of other vehicles, a little quickness off the line is all you really need -- and for that, gearing helps a lot more than raw horsepower. That's why the little XT6 still putters along acceptably despite no longer being able to get out of its own way north of 45 MPH. It used to be fast, 100,000 or so miles ago -- a fair trade considering those miles are all mine. It still gets moving from a dead stop faster than most people expect, but the engine has obviously seen better days and I don't think I'm doing it any favors by trying to keep it in the ever-narrowing power band (currently about 3800-5000 RPM). I know the trade-off... I crash it hard enough, and I die. That's the real reason cars keep getting heavier, requiring ever-increasing power. People want their cars to save them when they (and/or another driver) fuck up. It generally takes two to tango, barring cars into trees and cars off cliffs and the like. I see people making ridiculously stupid moves on the highway all the time, and the fact is that they get away with it the vast majority of the time. It's when multiple drivers make stupid moves at the same time that everything goes to hell.
You'll probably get your wish on the $5 gas this summer, at least in some parts of the country. I dread the impact to prices of everything delivered by truck more than I do the price of fuel itself.
The Subaru 2.0 and 2.2 ARE underpowered, relative to the AWD drive train losses and increased vehicle weight. They weren't underpowered when they first came out, but the cars have gotten fat (safety features, primarily) since then. The answer isn't a 2.5 though, it's a 3.0 H-6.
I have a 1989 XT6, and I've never seen another one in person, on the road or parked.I've seen a handful of the 4 cylinder model, but no other sixes. The H-6 has undergone a lot of improvement since then. It was increased in displacement from 2.7L to 3.0L, but the power output was DOUBLED. Of course, the weight of the car increased as well, though it hasn't doubled. Improvements to the relatively simple 4WD help efficiency more than performance (in terms of acceleration-- they undoubtedly help provide more power to the ground in adverse conditions).
Remember when 300 HP meant a monster, and nowadays it means the car can get out of its own way? That's what weight does. On the bright side, it DOES mean the car performs pretty much the same whether it's just you, or whether it's you, your friends, and a weekend's worth of luggage. I can't say that for the XT6 -- it most definitely slows down with a passenger or two and some junk in the (tiny) trunk. At a mere 145 HP (original, I'm sure it's much less now), every pound matters.
First, it's not necessary to heat the entire house, especially if you're worried about making your fuel last as long as possible. Heat a room and keep everyone there unless they NEED to be somewhere else. Second, burning 50 tons of banknotes saves a lot more than 50 tons of trees, considering most of a tree's weight is water. It also saves the energy of drying said wood (even if that energy would be solar, laying the wood out to dry on its own), and the cost of fuel to move it from the forest to the lumber yard to the homes (the fuel to ship the banknotes is going to be used no matter WHERE they are going, though there may be a difference in exactly how much).
Saying this is going to have minimal impact on freezing poor people is probably true, but it ISN'T GOING TO HURT, and it has small but positive effects elsewhere.
This is known by the Law of Committees: "None of us is as dumb as all of us."
There's no hypocrisy. Apple bought the iPad trademark from a Proview subsidiary. I don't know Chinese law, but it's difficult to see how Proview can now sue for it's misuse.
Prediction: Apple will win at appeal.
Chinese law is: In a dispute between a Chinese company and a foreign company, the Chinese company is almost always right.
What? I've been digitally modeling LEGO for a couple years now... it's called Minecraft. Oddly enough, there is now an actual Minecraft LEGO set in the works. At least the mapping should be fairly straightforward, but I wonder if it comes with Endermen that tear your lawn apart when you're not watching.
And the trade-off for this was that the film could be seen in every city simultaneously, at far less cost than moving a vaudeville troupe. Also, it allowed for things to be done that simply can't be done in a live setting. The art itself improved. The number of people seeing that art increased. Overall, it was a net positive. Just because there is damage to one sector does not mean that progress should be held back, else we would have banned cars and light bulbs for buggy whip and candle makers.
Yep, the only thing lacking about a Sansa with Rockbox is the tiny screen. While it has been given decent photo and video capabilities by the firmware, the display is about the size of a large postage stamp. I put packing tape over the display to catch the scratches it would otherwise take, and it has held up nicely for years. I've only had to change the tape once.
And I too have all the music on my Sansa duplicated on my phone. The loads are identical (I just made two 16 GB SDHC cards and popped them in). My MP3 player has my ringtones, for simplicity's sake. The problem is that I have a phone with no jack -- it only plays over Bluetooth. This doesn't work so well with my car stereo -- although the stereo is much more recent than the car, it has just an audio jack and no Bluetooth or MP3 capabilities. They have started to diverge slightly, as I fill up the 1 GB I left empty on each. In the case of the phone, this is photos and videos. In the case of the MP3 player, it's voice recordings. It'll display photos and even video, but the screen is so tiny as to render this pointless.
When I put Rockbox on my Sansa, I noticed (or rather, completely failed to notice) no change in the battery life one way or the other. The only difference is that it actually gives me a percentage now, rather than just a simple bar graph.