No, the reason the US doesn't buy the cars themselves is because Japan drives on the left side of the road, so all the cars are RHD. Cars in the US, however, are LHD.
That makes some amount of sense. One of the major advantages of a manual transmission has always been the ability to down-shift and get better acceleration without flooring the throttle and wasting loads of gas. With throttle-by-wire, the computer can now take the action of flooring it for a down-shift and simply down-shift the transmission without dumping all the wasted gas on it.
Of course there have been some pretty bad recent safety issues with throttle-by-wire that mean that I'm not anxious to "upgrade" to a car with it any time soon.
I should also point out that the simple fact that even modern automatic transmissions still generate enough waste heat to require independent cooling (and manuals do not) is evidence that they are not as efficient as manuals. The generated heat is waste energy that is not being sent to the vehicles drive system. Newer automatics may be more efficient than older ones with the addition of the lock-up clutch, but I still don't believe they are as efficient as a manual.
The lockup torque converter combined with 5+ gear automatics have negated-to-reversed the MPG / KPL statement.
That's certainly possible. My newest car is approximately 15 years old, so it doesn't apply to me (yet).
A manual takes 80w90 gear oil
Most manuals do. I used to have a 91 Mazda that took dextron III mercon.
(worst case of electronics failure is you can't access reverse, or you can when going at highway speeds)
I think that most manuals still use a mechanical cam in the shifter assembly for that.
Plus, modern materials have given much longer life to manual clutches. If you are gentle on the clutch, it can last the life of a car build after 2000-ish,
I think it really depends on driving conditions, the driver and what you consider to be the "life of the car". Will a clutch go 100,000 miles? In most cases, sure. But get to 150,000 miles in mainly stop-and-go city driving and you'll be replacing a clutch.
An electronics failure in an automatic means your car is being towed or it's stuck in first or second (limp home mode).
Yep, "limp mode" in an auto really sucks. I once drove my car on three cylinders for two weeks while waiting to get a replacement for a bad fuel injector, I would hate to think of how much worse it would have been with an auto in limp mode. And before you say it, no this does not damage the catalytic converter, the fuel injector had a burned out coil so it remained closed *not* putting fuel into the cylinder, and therefore not pushing extra fuel through to the exhaust to be burned off by the catalytic converter.
Seriously doubt all you like, you certainly can. I've done it on a car as recent as my 2000 Chrysler Neon, and have only ever seen one manual transmission that I couldn't roll start. It's possible that newer cars won't, but I doubt it. Roll starting requires that you have enough power left in the battery to power the ignition, fuel pump and computer, these require significantly less current and can run on much lower voltages than the starter and even other non-essential components such as the radio. Most "dead" batteries still put out around 4 volts which is enough to drive these essential components.
Even on the newest cars the starter simply turns the engine while the ignition is on, and roll starting is no different.
I'm just speaking from my own experience, here. The cars I drive, though, are about 5-10 years older than that (we still have a 91 Camry). Also most of the Toyotas you get in New Zealand were actually manufactured and sold in the Japan market first. For emissions purposes cars in Japan can't be driven past around 30,000 miles or so unless you give them a major overhaul, engine rebuild, etc. So what they do is they load all the used ones on a ship and send them over to New Zealand and other countries that use RHD vehicles and sell them here, but the cars are only really designed to take them that initial 30,000 miles. For that reason it's pretty amazing when they're still going 100,000 miles later.
I think we just deal in different ages of cars. I tend to like my cars around 15-20 years old, and at that age you usually see a clutch go out. Automatics, otoh, will just keep going and going long after you've had to pull apart the engine to replace your worn seals to fix that oil leak that won't go away.
I still prefer a manual, though, I just love the experience of driving it better. It's for that reason, and that there's enough people like me who do prefer driving a manual, that I think they will still be manufactured for some time to come.
I like a manual because they're fun to drive, have better gas-mileage and you can do things with them (such as roll-start the car) that you can't do in an auto.
I disagree that they last longer. Maybe the transmission as a whole does, but by the time an automatic transmission has any issues you'll have gone through at least one if not more clutches on a manual and those aren't cheap to replace.
I think the reason for this change was more subversive than that. this gear shift is just an electrical toggle switch wired into the car's computer, so it's very likely it was designed as a cheap replacement for the more expensive traditional gear-shift lever. This would have almost certainly been a decision based on manufacturing cost.
Technically in California there is no law that says you have to go the posted speed, except for the "maxiumum speed law" which states that you can not go faster than 65 unless the speed is posted as 75. The actual law that people are written up on for speeding at lower speeds is the "basic speed law" which states that you must not drive faster than is "safe and prudent". Therefore it is a valid defense to say that you were doing 35 in a 25 zone but that 35 is safe and prudent. That is why they have the road surveys, to establish the safe and prudent speed for a particular section of road and that is the speed that they are supposed to post.
I do recall once seeing one of those surveys done *after* they had dropped the speed, and while the survey was being done the cops were sitting there clocking the traffic very visibly and therefore causing everyone to slow down to avoid a ticket (during the survey).
Get some better editors. While it seems that poor editing and constant dups are a Slashdot tradition, I think that better editing will improve the/. experience greatly. If you don't have the budget to hire better editors then you could get volunteers from the Slashdot community (based on karma), or even integrate some rudimentary editing into the firehose so that the readers have a chance to clean up the stories before they hit the front page.
Yes, but unless explicitly checked like that PHP will happily convert NULL to 0 for you without blinking an eye. It's just one of the many many landmines that PHP has for you to step in if you're not extremely careful programming in that crap language.
Mandatory downtime would not be punishing the DC, it would be punishing the customers of the DC would would loose far more money from loss of business than the DC itself would.
Yes, and a competent electrician always assumes a circuit is live, even if he knows otherwise. You never know when some idiot is going to flip the switch back on that you turned off to kill the circuit, or if you simply flipped the wrong switch or clear forgot. If you're working on an electrical circuit you *always* assume it is live, no exceptions!
The second rule is "treat every circuit as live, even if you know it is not" So yes the electrician was not taking the proper precautions if he was not treating the circuit as live.
Definitely nostalgia. I've flown in 747s and other than the fact that they are impressively large, they are no more pleasant to fly in that any other large plane I've been in, particularly if you are in the middle seat in the 5 seat row.
I agree, but the newer ones, even the 747-400 (I think) don't have the five seat row anymore, they've made it a four seat row and it's considerably more comfortable for the difference.
They aren't going away for a while yet. I would be very surprised if some weren't still in service for passenger flights 10-15 years from now. Eventually we'll go to something else but it won't be tomorrow.
Sure, but they won't be nearly as common as they used to be. I mainly fly Air New Zealand now between Auckland and Los Angeles (being the only airline that still offers a direct route) and they've replaced all their 747s on that route with 777s, so I highly doubt I'll get to fly in one again myself.
Growing up I would go on an occasional flight with my parents, but because they were always short-haul local flights they were on a 737 or DC10 or similar. The 747 was always that huge plane I saw at the airport with that iconic top deck and I always wanted to fly in one.
Later I did finally get the opportunity to fly in a 747, and you might say that cattle-class is cattle class no matter what airplane you're flying in, but I always enjoyed flying in a 747 more than other aircraft, probably just for the nostalgia factor.
I do understand why the plane is going into retirement. Airlines don't want them anymore, they are too heavy and use more fuel than more modern planes and the large passenger capacity means that the airline has to fill more seats to make a profit on a flight, hence the reason that the slightly smaller 777 is more popular with airlines for long haul nowadays, and the big plane sales are going to the more modern airbus A380 and 787s now.
That said, I will always have a bit of a place in my heart for the 747 and will miss having the opportunity to fly in them.
The real fact is that it kind of works the opposite way. As inflation goes up you need to increase wages (via minimum wage) proportionately to avoid pushing the lower class deeper into poverty.
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No, the reason the US doesn't buy the cars themselves is because Japan drives on the left side of the road, so all the cars are RHD. Cars in the US, however, are LHD.
That makes some amount of sense. One of the major advantages of a manual transmission has always been the ability to down-shift and get better acceleration without flooring the throttle and wasting loads of gas. With throttle-by-wire, the computer can now take the action of flooring it for a down-shift and simply down-shift the transmission without dumping all the wasted gas on it.
Of course there have been some pretty bad recent safety issues with throttle-by-wire that mean that I'm not anxious to "upgrade" to a car with it any time soon.
Now that's just cheating.
I should also point out that the simple fact that even modern automatic transmissions still generate enough waste heat to require independent cooling (and manuals do not) is evidence that they are not as efficient as manuals. The generated heat is waste energy that is not being sent to the vehicles drive system. Newer automatics may be more efficient than older ones with the addition of the lock-up clutch, but I still don't believe they are as efficient as a manual.
The lockup torque converter combined with 5+ gear automatics have negated-to-reversed the MPG / KPL statement.
That's certainly possible. My newest car is approximately 15 years old, so it doesn't apply to me (yet).
A manual takes 80w90 gear oil
Most manuals do. I used to have a 91 Mazda that took dextron III mercon.
(worst case of electronics failure is you can't access reverse, or you can when going at highway speeds)
I think that most manuals still use a mechanical cam in the shifter assembly for that.
Plus, modern materials have given much longer life to manual clutches. If you are gentle on the clutch, it can last the life of a car build after 2000-ish,
I think it really depends on driving conditions, the driver and what you consider to be the "life of the car". Will a clutch go 100,000 miles? In most cases, sure. But get to 150,000 miles in mainly stop-and-go city driving and you'll be replacing a clutch.
An electronics failure in an automatic means your car is being towed or it's stuck in first or second (limp home mode).
Yep, "limp mode" in an auto really sucks. I once drove my car on three cylinders for two weeks while waiting to get a replacement for a bad fuel injector, I would hate to think of how much worse it would have been with an auto in limp mode. And before you say it, no this does not damage the catalytic converter, the fuel injector had a burned out coil so it remained closed *not* putting fuel into the cylinder, and therefore not pushing extra fuel through to the exhaust to be burned off by the catalytic converter.
Seriously doubt all you like, you certainly can. I've done it on a car as recent as my 2000 Chrysler Neon, and have only ever seen one manual transmission that I couldn't roll start. It's possible that newer cars won't, but I doubt it. Roll starting requires that you have enough power left in the battery to power the ignition, fuel pump and computer, these require significantly less current and can run on much lower voltages than the starter and even other non-essential components such as the radio. Most "dead" batteries still put out around 4 volts which is enough to drive these essential components.
Even on the newest cars the starter simply turns the engine while the ignition is on, and roll starting is no different.
With a little bit of practice you can start up the steepest hills without rolling back in a manual, and I *have* had an automatic roll back before.
I'm just speaking from my own experience, here. The cars I drive, though, are about 5-10 years older than that (we still have a 91 Camry). Also most of the Toyotas you get in New Zealand were actually manufactured and sold in the Japan market first. For emissions purposes cars in Japan can't be driven past around 30,000 miles or so unless you give them a major overhaul, engine rebuild, etc. So what they do is they load all the used ones on a ship and send them over to New Zealand and other countries that use RHD vehicles and sell them here, but the cars are only really designed to take them that initial 30,000 miles. For that reason it's pretty amazing when they're still going 100,000 miles later.
I think we just deal in different ages of cars. I tend to like my cars around 15-20 years old, and at that age you usually see a clutch go out. Automatics, otoh, will just keep going and going long after you've had to pull apart the engine to replace your worn seals to fix that oil leak that won't go away.
I still prefer a manual, though, I just love the experience of driving it better. It's for that reason, and that there's enough people like me who do prefer driving a manual, that I think they will still be manufactured for some time to come.
I like a manual because they're fun to drive, have better gas-mileage and you can do things with them (such as roll-start the car) that you can't do in an auto.
I disagree that they last longer. Maybe the transmission as a whole does, but by the time an automatic transmission has any issues you'll have gone through at least one if not more clutches on a manual and those aren't cheap to replace.
I think the reason for this change was more subversive than that. this gear shift is just an electrical toggle switch wired into the car's computer, so it's very likely it was designed as a cheap replacement for the more expensive traditional gear-shift lever. This would have almost certainly been a decision based on manufacturing cost.
What do you want next ?
Master keys to all physical locks ?
Already got those, they're called lock picks, and the police can't even use them, they have to ram people's door in instead.
The crooks, on the other hand, are very good at using lock picks.
Technically in California there is no law that says you have to go the posted speed, except for the "maxiumum speed law" which states that you can not go faster than 65 unless the speed is posted as 75. The actual law that people are written up on for speeding at lower speeds is the "basic speed law" which states that you must not drive faster than is "safe and prudent". Therefore it is a valid defense to say that you were doing 35 in a 25 zone but that 35 is safe and prudent. That is why they have the road surveys, to establish the safe and prudent speed for a particular section of road and that is the speed that they are supposed to post.
I do recall once seeing one of those surveys done *after* they had dropped the speed, and while the survey was being done the cops were sitting there clocking the traffic very visibly and therefore causing everyone to slow down to avoid a ticket (during the survey).
Get some better editors. While it seems that poor editing and constant dups are a Slashdot tradition, I think that better editing will improve the /. experience greatly. If you don't have the budget to hire better editors then you could get volunteers from the Slashdot community (based on karma), or even integrate some rudimentary editing into the firehose so that the readers have a chance to clean up the stories before they hit the front page.
Yes, but unless explicitly checked like that PHP will happily convert NULL to 0 for you without blinking an eye. It's just one of the many many landmines that PHP has for you to step in if you're not extremely careful programming in that crap language.
A protest needs to be organized to protest the crackdown against protests.
...Which entirely misses the point that you always always always assume a circuit is live when working on or near it.
Mandatory downtime would not be punishing the DC, it would be punishing the customers of the DC would would loose far more money from loss of business than the DC itself would.
Yes, and a competent electrician always assumes a circuit is live, even if he knows otherwise. You never know when some idiot is going to flip the switch back on that you turned off to kill the circuit, or if you simply flipped the wrong switch or clear forgot. If you're working on an electrical circuit you *always* assume it is live, no exceptions!
The second rule is "treat every circuit as live, even if you know it is not" So yes the electrician was not taking the proper precautions if he was not treating the circuit as live.
Definitely nostalgia. I've flown in 747s and other than the fact that they are impressively large, they are no more pleasant to fly in that any other large plane I've been in, particularly if you are in the middle seat in the 5 seat row.
I agree, but the newer ones, even the 747-400 (I think) don't have the five seat row anymore, they've made it a four seat row and it's considerably more comfortable for the difference.
They aren't going away for a while yet. I would be very surprised if some weren't still in service for passenger flights 10-15 years from now. Eventually we'll go to something else but it won't be tomorrow.
Sure, but they won't be nearly as common as they used to be. I mainly fly Air New Zealand now between Auckland and Los Angeles (being the only airline that still offers a direct route) and they've replaced all their 747s on that route with 777s, so I highly doubt I'll get to fly in one again myself.
Growing up I would go on an occasional flight with my parents, but because they were always short-haul local flights they were on a 737 or DC10 or similar. The 747 was always that huge plane I saw at the airport with that iconic top deck and I always wanted to fly in one.
Later I did finally get the opportunity to fly in a 747, and you might say that cattle-class is cattle class no matter what airplane you're flying in, but I always enjoyed flying in a 747 more than other aircraft, probably just for the nostalgia factor.
I do understand why the plane is going into retirement. Airlines don't want them anymore, they are too heavy and use more fuel than more modern planes and the large passenger capacity means that the airline has to fill more seats to make a profit on a flight, hence the reason that the slightly smaller 777 is more popular with airlines for long haul nowadays, and the big plane sales are going to the more modern airbus A380 and 787s now.
That said, I will always have a bit of a place in my heart for the 747 and will miss having the opportunity to fly in them.
Yep, FedEX vans ... or armoured van fleets?
A practical application of this for criminals would be to use it to stop and rob an armoured van.
https://xkcd.com/538/
The real fact is that it kind of works the opposite way. As inflation goes up you need to increase wages (via minimum wage) proportionately to avoid pushing the lower class deeper into poverty.