Overall, a good read...
on
Forbes on Linux
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I even learned a few things from the article... After reading their browser review, I'm going to be giving Moz and Galeon another try. (Previously, they were slower than NS 4.76 on my 64M P133 laptop - And FAR slower than Opera.) If Forbes is to be believed, they've really chopped down on the bloat. (The fact that NS7PR1 is far faster than NS6 could be a sign of these improvements...) Of course, what may be faster on a fast machine with lots of memory could be slower on a low-power machine. Some apps respond better to extra resources than others.
Seemed their most flawed review was Pine. (The most cross-platform as opposed to the least as they claim, and it IS capable of launching external viewers for attachments.) But I was impressed by their claim that text-only wasn't as bad as one would think and is in fact faster than GUI mailers. What next, Forbes extolling the virtues of bash?:)
In general, I haven't been too happy with low-to-the floor seating, except in rare cases. (I have an LCD projector, so one of my favorite movie positions is to have a low backrest - Not sure what to call it, but it's very mild - and project on the angled ceiling of my exercise room.)
Not good for console gaming due to supporting a controller.
I had no problem playing FFX for nearly 2 weeks straight at the end of winter break on a couch. (One that was so comfortable some of my apartmentmates preferred it to their beds.)
But in the end, the most comfortable seating in my room was a recliner. Good back support, almost any recliner has a built-in foot rest, and by definition have a reclining back. They all have armrests too. Too expensive, you say? Two words: garage sale - That's where I got mine. (I think. Might have been family surplus or something. Either way neither myself nor my parents paid much, if anything, for the recliner in my college apartment.)
Some towns have furniture recycling/disposal days once every few months, although I think this is becoming less likely. I know when my dad was in college, he and his apartmentmates furnished their apartment by driving around Little Falls, NJ on one such day, and came back with far more than they needed. Minivan/SUV/pickup recommended, but with ingenuity you can pull it off with a much smaller car. (Well, probably need a full-size sedan these days - Back then, "small cars" were still huge.)
That's because Linux is the bare *kernel only*, not the distro of applications that run on top of the kernel.
I'd say 50% or more of the things MS says are not "integrated" are default installs on most distributions. Almost all of the rest are easy. I'd call that integrated... Samba, for example, if not default, is an option that can be installed with a single "click" in the installer. Same with Apache. Same with Sendmail.
Want a mail server solution under Windows? oops, gotta buy Exchange. Doesn't seem that integrated to me there... A fully functional MTA (usually sendmail, sometimes qmail or another mail daemon in security-conscious distros) is in nearly every single distribution as a default install.
No single logon??? Hmm... pam_smb? Or going the other way, SAMBA as the domain controller.
Better? Yes. Still full of FUD and twisting of the truth? Come on, it's Microsoft.
Now, of course, when making the distinction between kernel and distribution, the line IS blurry for MS - SMB and IIS ARE heavily integrated into the Windows kernel. But is that necessarily a good thing? Many who care about security and stability don't consider it to be so.
All someone has to do is set up a distro the right way (Not necessarily the end user - A distro creator could do this) that addresses nearly every single one of MS's points.
Oh, ASP not native? Maybe because there's a better solution? PHP, mod_perl, how many other options that blow away ASP? (Maybe not ASP.NET from what I've heard...)
Boingo (http://www.boingo.com/), if they have not already started service, will be starting service soon.
And unlike IBM and Intel, who are "thinking of a business model/plan", Boingo already has a plan in effect - They're either buying or partnering with smaller wireless ISPs, and also setting up franchise systems. "You set up the hardware, we'll get you the users and handle billing, we share the profits." It's basically the same technique used to build Earthlink into the national ISP it is now. Not surprising, considering that Boingo's founder Sky Dayton is the man who built Earthlink.
Toshiba is also entering the market soon with a turnkey $200 POP system - Same basic deal. A customer installs the system, Toshiba handles the billing. I'm not sure if it's designed to be nationalized easily, though. I got the impression it's more of the type of thing that your local coffee shop would install, and you'd only purchase access for that shop.
In addition, Boingo is allowing those who operate open APs (such as those in NYCWireless, etc.) to submit their APs into Boingo's AP database.
They're even taking it one step further: Supposedly their software can sniff APs. Wardriving goes corporate...
Might it be possible that the h/w is performing some sort of basic deinterlacing to get around this?
That said, MPEG-2 would be the best approach.
Or even better, if someone released Bt8x8 drivers for OS X - Then you'd be able to use one of the many PCI tuner cards which give FAR better performance at a lower price.
Shouldn't be that hard... Just a matter of someone porting the BTTV drivers...
If you follow links from Microsoft's 802.11 announcement to other related articles (Toshiba's entry into Wi-Fi, and an article on Boingo), you'll eventually reach the site for Boingo, the latest Wi-Fi ISP.
Go to http://www.boingo.com/ and one of the featurs of their software that they advertise is the capability to sniff out nearby APs. It looks like Sky Dayton (Founder of Earthlink) is encouraging corporate users to wardrive.:)
It's a radio show that is on WXRK in New York from 12AM-4AM Saturday, and a few other stations (K-Rock is the flagship, though). Yes, that's the same station Howard Stern comes from.
Todd plays a very big variety from many genres. Some of it is more "mainstrem electronic" (Like that recent Elvis cover), some of it is definately more "out there"
It's too bad there aren't many good places to learn about the genre - The most accessible ones may introduce you to the genre's equivalent of Britney Spears w/o you knowing it. (This is to satisfy the trolls that say, "you know nothing" - I do know little about the genre. So I'll say this:)
The stuff on Solid State (And DI too) is FAR better than anything played on mainstream US radio, even if it may be mass-market sellout material by the genre's standards. That said, I want to find the lesser-known artists that are regarded by those "in the know" as good.
90% of the cost of disposables is the film and the developing.
Photo labs often have huge boxes full of used cameras, just ask for a few.:)
Officially they're supposed to send them back for recycling into new cameras, but it seems that their rewards for doing so aren't very great - So they usually are willing to give away a bunch for free.
Did anyone notice the desktop sharing "feature" in KDE?
Is this VNC compatible? Or did the KDE developers go do their own thing?
If the latter, they should be shot. Of course, such an action would be typical of them given their history of such things. (Such as blatantly ignoring the Qt licensing issues - It would have taken a simple exception in the GPL on their part, which is allowed, but they refused to do it. c'mon - ONE SENTENCE to eliminate a whole lot of controversy. Oh well, at least GNOME was born out of that fiasco...)
In my cases, there are two situations with hardware under Linux:
It doesn't work at all due to lack of a driver or It works great if a driver is available
Rarely is there a middle ground.
But with Windows, you can reasonably expect to spend at least 2+ hours with any new hardware getting it to work, and then it may not always work. I often wind up using Linux to perform hardware detection (Finding out where quirky devices are putting their IRQs, etc) - It used to be you had to use Windows to identify hardware for a Linux box, now it's the other way around.
I recently spent 4 hours trying to get an ISA Zoom 56k modem working under Win2k - Not a winmodem, a genuin honest-to-god-looks-like-a-UART modem. My Linuxcare BBC found it after every jumper switch, and it worked in 75% of the configurations. (Other times, I knew from bootup that it was conflicting.)
Did it ever work under Win2k on my cousin's machine? Nope.
On the same machine: My dad swapped the mobo, and later reformatted Win2k. Apparently, 2k's reformat utility isn't the hottest (NT's is the same) - I have very often found a "reformat" leaving vestiges of the former OS, which were in this case causing symptoms that made me think the IBM HD had gone Deathstar on me. 2k consistently reported bad blocks, and the HD made funny noises.
Run badblocks in destructive R-W mode from the BBC - Not a single sign of problems.
Reinstalled 2k on the wiped HD - The mysterious "hardware" problem was gone.
XP is wonderful - If you have it configged for multiple users, the mouse cursor sometimes disappears in the login screen, leaving you unable to do anything with the machine except pull the plug and deal with Scandisk on the next bootup.
TW is probably so friendly to college students (prices seem quite a bit cheaper...) in Ithaca because college students are 1/4-1/2 of the market...
You can get Fox with rabbit ears if you don't have cable - That's it.
TBH, if I were a cable company, I'd care more about my users sharing access with a bunch of strangers in a high-density area (esp. near restaraunts/shops) than with their neighbors. In rural areas it's a diff. story... Strangers and publicized APs almost surely generate more load and more complaints of cracking attempts.
They can be sure you're sharing their service ONLY IF YOU ADVERTISE IT PUBLICALLY.
Only people who advertised their wide-open APs on nycwireless got "the letter" - And TW said they're not actively hunting down 802.11 users - These particular users, in TWs own words, "Waved a banner in front of us" saying they were breaking their TOS.
TW found out because they effectively TOLD TW they were breaking the rules.
Cable companies don't have the resources to go hunt down casual sharers ("casual" being defined as up to at least 17 college students in a house - I set up an IP Masq server for a bunch of friends, and that's the # of users there - TW never cared, and never went after ANY of the 329820442234 apartments using it.
In fact, despite the contract saying it was verboten, TW employees would hang out on the Linux support forums and sometimes even give unofficial IP Masq advice. (This was the Ithaca, NY area)
The difference in this situation is - The users that got "the letter" advertised on the nycwireless site that they were running an open AP, saying, "Hey everyone, feel free to use my cable modem."
If it's for yourself and your friends, they don't care. If you're providing unmonitored open access to strangers, that's a different story.
They're not even going after unsecured APs in general.
They (and they have made this clear in the article) are only going after those who publically advertised their open APs on the NYC Wireless site.
As long as you don't publish your name on a site advertising that you're giving away free wireless, you're fine.
And as to NYC Wireless, etc. - They simply need to anonymize their operations so that AP providers can't be linked easily to cable modem accounts. Right now, the site is providing a name and address, which makes it easy for RR to bust them.
I don't know. I said I didn't hear anything bad about them - I also did not say that I heard anything good about them. I'd say about average, just like most other manufacturers. They don't have any major problems, but they don't have anything great that stands out. For example, Chrysler's 4-speed automatics are horrendous, but Chrysler has a stellar reputation for engine design (426 Hemi, Slant Six, common block 2.2/2.5 - First one is a performance legend, the latter two are some of the most reliable engines ever made. 300k miles? No problem.) Too bad Daimler is sending that down the tubes. Soon they'll be using *Hyundai* engines! Gotta love Korean reliability!
Anyway, I'm not talking stock prices here. (My GM stock isn't doing anything - I don't own any. I don't own any car company stocks. I drive a '93 Dodge Spirit that's rock-solid at 150k and has at least 50k more miles to go.)
Hondas poorly engineered and unreliable - Maybe, maybe not. Overengineered more like it - Too many fancy features that are additional failure points in the engine (VTEC, etc.)
Vastly overrated - Definately.
Too many of their anticipated problems are hid under the cloak of "routine maintenance". I don't have access to it right now, but I've seen statistics that "routine" scheduled maintenance for Hondas tends to be far more expensive and extensive than for other cars. Let's not forget that many Honda parts are dealer-only items (read $$$). Have you seen transmission fluid for a Honda at K-mart? Nope. Don't think you'll even find it at an auto parts store. K-mart carries Dexron/Mercon (Many Ford/GM cars, and I believe some imports), and ATF+3 (Specific to only one model of Chrysler transmission, but available in K-mart nonetheless.)
I was simply refuting the original posters claim that Hondas are indestructible and infallible. They're not. Not even close. Every manufacturer has their weak points, and none is perfect.
Ford - Body rust GM - Generally haven't heard much bad about them Chrysler - 4-speed automatics (Note: Designed by the same company that designed the transmissions Honda uses!) die easily. 3-speeds and manuals are far more durable. Honda - Emissions systems so bad from '95-97 that Honda was forced by the EPA to repair emissions problems for free for the life of the car. Also I've heard their automatic trannies can be problematic. (Not surprised considering the connection to the Chrysler sick-oh-four mentioned above)
New piston rings every 1-2 years Slipping clutch that was ultimately its downfall (rearended trying unsuccessfully to pull out of a tollbooth)
We rented an Accord in California once. It was literally falling apart (less than a year old and the rear bumper was coming off) - I've seen quite a lot of other Hondas with improperly attached rear bumpers.
Ignition timing and fuel injector timing have to be changed for alternative fuels. Not too difficult, but it's not as simple as filling up. Improper fuel mixture can kill your engine very quickly.
And that's not even taking into account that alcohol-based fuels are very corrosive and will destroy engine parts not made specifically to tolerate them. (Like the FFV Chrysler vehicles of the late '80s and early '90s)
It looks like you're looking more at an alternative-drivetrain (Hybrid or electric) rather than alternative-fuel (CNG/Hydrogen/M85) car.
As to alternative fuel - Biodiesel has been mentioned.
Regular engines can be converted to CNG with relative ease - I once saw a Dodge Spirit (same car I drive) with a CNG fillup. Try to find a design where the fillup connector (big ball-shaped thing in the case of this car) doesn't stick out - it's ugly.
Engines can also be converted to use M85 (85% methanol, 15% gasoline), but it's not really worth it. M85 is 15-25% cheaper per gallon, but has only 50% of the energy density. Also, methanol is VERY corrosive, so significant portions of the engine have to be replaced with corrosion-resistant parts. Chrysler made a few M85-capable cars (the FFV version of the Dodge Spirit/Plymouth Acclaim and minivans), and replacement parts for the FFV versions are nearly impossible, if not completely impossible, to find.
Or wait for the likes of the Escape HEV - 40 MPG in an SUV body, pretty amazing. I'd like to see the middle ground - All of the current hybrids and electrics are tiny little ugly pieces of junk. I want a full-size hybrid sedan that looks just like its gas-powered brethren, or a hybrid minivan.
Of course, the question is, WHY do you want to go alternative fuel? These days there are far worse things for the environment than modern cars - IC engines have come a LONG way in the areas of emissions control. You're not going to save any money - Electricity costs are skyrocketing, and it's been shown that in the end, pure electrics pollute more. (While coal-fired power plants produce less emissions per kilowatt, by the time you factor in all the transmission/charging losses, you're polluting more). Hybrids get insane gas mileage, but at the moment the technology isn't mature enough. You're going to be paying far more in maintenance costs for your unconventional design.
I'm not saying that IC engines are here to stay forever, just that hybrids are just plain not viable yet and won't be for a few years.
If you think Honda cares about the environment, you're wrong. http://www.lemonaidcars.com/secret_warranties.htm - Their emissions control systems were so bad from '95 to '97 that they were FORCED by the EPA to repair any emissions problem with those model years for free - And Honda will fight you all the way on those repairs until you threaten to call the EPA on them. The Insight/Civic HEV is just damage control. If they really wanted to benefit the environment, they'd focus on large vehicles first, where hybrid technology can make the biggest difference. (GM had statistics that if one medium-sized city had their buses replaced with hybrids, it would be better for the environment than if all Civics sold in a given year were hybrids. Which is why they're focusing on buses first - You don't see it much, but GM is pushing hybrid technology research VERY heavily. Same with Ford - Their first hybrid release will be the Escape HEV.)
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I even learned a few things from the article... After reading their browser review, I'm going to be giving Moz and Galeon another try. (Previously, they were slower than NS 4.76 on my 64M P133 laptop - And FAR slower than Opera.) If Forbes is to be believed, they've really chopped down on the bloat. (The fact that NS7PR1 is far faster than NS6 could be a sign of these improvements...) Of course, what may be faster on a fast machine with lots of memory could be slower on a low-power machine. Some apps respond better to extra resources than others.
:)
Seemed their most flawed review was Pine. (The most cross-platform as opposed to the least as they claim, and it IS capable of launching external viewers for attachments.) But I was impressed by their claim that text-only wasn't as bad as one would think and is in fact faster than GUI mailers. What next, Forbes extolling the virtues of bash?
In general, I haven't been too happy with low-to-the floor seating, except in rare cases. (I have an LCD projector, so one of my favorite movie positions is to have a low backrest - Not sure what to call it, but it's very mild - and project on the angled ceiling of my exercise room.)
Not good for console gaming due to supporting a controller.
I had no problem playing FFX for nearly 2 weeks straight at the end of winter break on a couch. (One that was so comfortable some of my apartmentmates preferred it to their beds.)
But in the end, the most comfortable seating in my room was a recliner. Good back support, almost any recliner has a built-in foot rest, and by definition have a reclining back. They all have armrests too. Too expensive, you say? Two words: garage sale - That's where I got mine. (I think. Might have been family surplus or something. Either way neither myself nor my parents paid much, if anything, for the recliner in my college apartment.)
Some towns have furniture recycling/disposal days once every few months, although I think this is becoming less likely. I know when my dad was in college, he and his apartmentmates furnished their apartment by driving around Little Falls, NJ on one such day, and came back with far more than they needed. Minivan/SUV/pickup recommended, but with ingenuity you can pull it off with a much smaller car. (Well, probably need a full-size sedan these days - Back then, "small cars" were still huge.)
That's because Linux is the bare *kernel only*, not the distro of applications that run on top of the kernel.
I'd say 50% or more of the things MS says are not "integrated" are default installs on most distributions. Almost all of the rest are easy. I'd call that integrated... Samba, for example, if not default, is an option that can be installed with a single "click" in the installer. Same with Apache. Same with Sendmail.
Want a mail server solution under Windows? oops, gotta buy Exchange. Doesn't seem that integrated to me there... A fully functional MTA (usually sendmail, sometimes qmail or another mail daemon in security-conscious distros) is in nearly every single distribution as a default install.
No single logon??? Hmm... pam_smb? Or going the other way, SAMBA as the domain controller.
Better? Yes. Still full of FUD and twisting of the truth? Come on, it's Microsoft.
Now, of course, when making the distinction between kernel and distribution, the line IS blurry for MS - SMB and IIS ARE heavily integrated into the Windows kernel. But is that necessarily a good thing? Many who care about security and stability don't consider it to be so.
All someone has to do is set up a distro the right way (Not necessarily the end user - A distro creator could do this) that addresses nearly every single one of MS's points.
Oh, ASP not native? Maybe because there's a better solution? PHP, mod_perl, how many other options that blow away ASP? (Maybe not ASP.NET from what I've heard...)
Last I checked, ALSA had a driver for some of MOTU's MIDI timepieces.
I believe there's some support for high-end audio cards such as those from (Hammerfall???) too.
For all we know, the page could be saying, "look at all those Slashdot fools who thing that this page actually contains information, HA HA HA!!!"
It would be very impressive if this is for real... Question is how much will it cost, will it be recordable, etc?
i.e. does it have any showstoppers that will prevent it from making Philips' blue laser disc technology stillborn?
'nuff said...
Boingo is the ONLY company I've seen with 802.11b coverage in Central Jersey.
Like the IBM/Intel effort, the target is hotels and airports...
But even a few hotels (not just one) have APs in Bridgewater, NJ. Impressive. Very impressive.
Boingo (http://www.boingo.com/), if they have not already started service, will be starting service soon.
And unlike IBM and Intel, who are "thinking of a business model/plan", Boingo already has a plan in effect - They're either buying or partnering with smaller wireless ISPs, and also setting up franchise systems. "You set up the hardware, we'll get you the users and handle billing, we share the profits." It's basically the same technique used to build Earthlink into the national ISP it is now. Not surprising, considering that Boingo's founder Sky Dayton is the man who built Earthlink.
Toshiba is also entering the market soon with a turnkey $200 POP system - Same basic deal. A customer installs the system, Toshiba handles the billing. I'm not sure if it's designed to be nationalized easily, though. I got the impression it's more of the type of thing that your local coffee shop would install, and you'd only purchase access for that shop.
In addition, Boingo is allowing those who operate open APs (such as those in NYCWireless, etc.) to submit their APs into Boingo's AP database.
They're even taking it one step further: Supposedly their software can sniff APs. Wardriving goes corporate...
Might it be possible that the h/w is performing some sort of basic deinterlacing to get around this?
That said, MPEG-2 would be the best approach.
Or even better, if someone released Bt8x8 drivers for OS X - Then you'd be able to use one of the many PCI tuner cards which give FAR better performance at a lower price.
Shouldn't be that hard... Just a matter of someone porting the BTTV drivers...
Does anyone know if the BIOSes for the nForce (and probably the nForce2 if the nForce has it) have PXE support for network booting?
ANY provision for network booting?
netbooting would make these into killer thin-client motherboards...
If you follow links from Microsoft's 802.11 announcement to other related articles (Toshiba's entry into Wi-Fi, and an article on Boingo), you'll eventually reach the site for Boingo, the latest Wi-Fi ISP.
:)
Go to http://www.boingo.com/ and one of the featurs of their software that they advertise is the capability to sniff out nearby APs. It looks like Sky Dayton (Founder of Earthlink) is encouraging corporate users to wardrive.
http://www.liquidtodd.com/
It's a radio show that is on WXRK in New York from 12AM-4AM Saturday, and a few other stations (K-Rock is the flagship, though). Yes, that's the same station Howard Stern comes from.
Todd plays a very big variety from many genres. Some of it is more "mainstrem electronic" (Like that recent Elvis cover), some of it is definately more "out there"
It's too bad there aren't many good places to learn about the genre - The most accessible ones may introduce you to the genre's equivalent of Britney Spears w/o you knowing it. (This is to satisfy the trolls that say, "you know nothing" - I do know little about the genre. So I'll say this:)
The stuff on Solid State (And DI too) is FAR better than anything played on mainstream US radio, even if it may be mass-market sellout material by the genre's standards. That said, I want to find the lesser-known artists that are regarded by those "in the know" as good.
90% of the cost of disposables is the film and the developing.
:)
Photo labs often have huge boxes full of used cameras, just ask for a few.
Officially they're supposed to send them back for recycling into new cameras, but it seems that their rewards for doing so aren't very great - So they usually are willing to give away a bunch for free.
Did anyone notice the desktop sharing "feature" in KDE?
Is this VNC compatible? Or did the KDE developers go do their own thing?
If the latter, they should be shot. Of course, such an action would be typical of them given their history of such things. (Such as blatantly ignoring the Qt licensing issues - It would have taken a simple exception in the GPL on their part, which is allowed, but they refused to do it. c'mon - ONE SENTENCE to eliminate a whole lot of controversy. Oh well, at least GNOME was born out of that fiasco...)
I have to agree with you on this...
In my cases, there are two situations with hardware under Linux:
It doesn't work at all due to lack of a driver or
It works great if a driver is available
Rarely is there a middle ground.
But with Windows, you can reasonably expect to spend at least 2+ hours with any new hardware getting it to work, and then it may not always work. I often wind up using Linux to perform hardware detection (Finding out where quirky devices are putting their IRQs, etc) - It used to be you had to use Windows to identify hardware for a Linux box, now it's the other way around.
I recently spent 4 hours trying to get an ISA Zoom 56k modem working under Win2k - Not a winmodem, a genuin honest-to-god-looks-like-a-UART modem. My Linuxcare BBC found it after every jumper switch, and it worked in 75% of the configurations. (Other times, I knew from bootup that it was conflicting.)
Did it ever work under Win2k on my cousin's machine? Nope.
On the same machine: My dad swapped the mobo, and later reformatted Win2k. Apparently, 2k's reformat utility isn't the hottest (NT's is the same) - I have very often found a "reformat" leaving vestiges of the former OS, which were in this case causing symptoms that made me think the IBM HD had gone Deathstar on me. 2k consistently reported bad blocks, and the HD made funny noises.
Run badblocks in destructive R-W mode from the BBC - Not a single sign of problems.
Reinstalled 2k on the wiped HD - The mysterious "hardware" problem was gone.
XP is wonderful - If you have it configged for multiple users, the mouse cursor sometimes disappears in the login screen, leaving you unable to do anything with the machine except pull the plug and deal with Scandisk on the next bootup.
TW is probably so friendly to college students (prices seem quite a bit cheaper...) in Ithaca because college students are 1/4-1/2 of the market...
You can get Fox with rabbit ears if you don't have cable - That's it.
TBH, if I were a cable company, I'd care more about my users sharing access with a bunch of strangers in a high-density area (esp. near restaraunts/shops) than with their neighbors. In rural areas it's a diff. story... Strangers and publicized APs almost surely generate more load and more complaints of cracking attempts.
They can be sure you're sharing their service ONLY IF YOU ADVERTISE IT PUBLICALLY.
Only people who advertised their wide-open APs on nycwireless got "the letter" - And TW said they're not actively hunting down 802.11 users - These particular users, in TWs own words, "Waved a banner in front of us" saying they were breaking their TOS.
TW found out because they effectively TOLD TW they were breaking the rules.
Cable companies don't have the resources to go hunt down casual sharers ("casual" being defined as up to at least 17 college students in a house - I set up an IP Masq server for a bunch of friends, and that's the # of users there - TW never cared, and never went after ANY of the 329820442234 apartments using it.
In fact, despite the contract saying it was verboten, TW employees would hang out on the Linux support forums and sometimes even give unofficial IP Masq advice. (This was the Ithaca, NY area)
The difference in this situation is - The users that got "the letter" advertised on the nycwireless site that they were running an open AP, saying, "Hey everyone, feel free to use my cable modem."
If it's for yourself and your friends, they don't care. If you're providing unmonitored open access to strangers, that's a different story.
They're not even going after unsecured APs in general.
They (and they have made this clear in the article) are only going after those who publically advertised their open APs on the NYC Wireless site.
As long as you don't publish your name on a site advertising that you're giving away free wireless, you're fine.
And as to NYC Wireless, etc. - They simply need to anonymize their operations so that AP providers can't be linked easily to cable modem accounts. Right now, the site is providing a name and address, which makes it easy for RR to bust them.
Amen to that.
:)
At one point in school I was wrestling in my spare time with a particular annoying problem for a month or two.
I finally solved the problem after about 2 pints of good local stout.
I don't know. I said I didn't hear anything bad about them - I also did not say that I heard anything good about them. I'd say about average, just like most other manufacturers. They don't have any major problems, but they don't have anything great that stands out. For example, Chrysler's 4-speed automatics are horrendous, but Chrysler has a stellar reputation for engine design (426 Hemi, Slant Six, common block 2.2/2.5 - First one is a performance legend, the latter two are some of the most reliable engines ever made. 300k miles? No problem.) Too bad Daimler is sending that down the tubes. Soon they'll be using *Hyundai* engines! Gotta love Korean reliability!
Anyway, I'm not talking stock prices here. (My GM stock isn't doing anything - I don't own any. I don't own any car company stocks. I drive a '93 Dodge Spirit that's rock-solid at 150k and has at least 50k more miles to go.)
Hondas poorly engineered and unreliable - Maybe, maybe not. Overengineered more like it - Too many fancy features that are additional failure points in the engine (VTEC, etc.)
Vastly overrated - Definately.
Too many of their anticipated problems are hid under the cloak of "routine maintenance". I don't have access to it right now, but I've seen statistics that "routine" scheduled maintenance for Hondas tends to be far more expensive and extensive than for other cars. Let's not forget that many Honda parts are dealer-only items (read $$$). Have you seen transmission fluid for a Honda at K-mart? Nope. Don't think you'll even find it at an auto parts store. K-mart carries Dexron/Mercon (Many Ford/GM cars, and I believe some imports), and ATF+3 (Specific to only one model of Chrysler transmission, but available in K-mart nonetheless.)
I was simply refuting the original posters claim that Hondas are indestructible and infallible. They're not. Not even close. Every manufacturer has their weak points, and none is perfect.
Ford - Body rust
GM - Generally haven't heard much bad about them
Chrysler - 4-speed automatics (Note: Designed by the same company that designed the transmissions Honda uses!) die easily. 3-speeds and manuals are far more durable.
Honda - Emissions systems so bad from '95-97 that Honda was forced by the EPA to repair emissions problems for free for the life of the car. Also I've heard their automatic trannies can be problematic. (Not surprised considering the connection to the Chrysler sick-oh-four mentioned above)
My family had an old Civic.
New piston rings every 1-2 years
Slipping clutch that was ultimately its downfall (rearended trying unsuccessfully to pull out of a tollbooth)
We rented an Accord in California once. It was literally falling apart (less than a year old and the rear bumper was coming off) - I've seen quite a lot of other Hondas with improperly attached rear bumpers.
Ignition timing and fuel injector timing have to be changed for alternative fuels. Not too difficult, but it's not as simple as filling up. Improper fuel mixture can kill your engine very quickly.
And that's not even taking into account that alcohol-based fuels are very corrosive and will destroy engine parts not made specifically to tolerate them. (Like the FFV Chrysler vehicles of the late '80s and early '90s)
It looks like you're looking more at an alternative-drivetrain (Hybrid or electric) rather than alternative-fuel (CNG/Hydrogen/M85) car.
As to alternative fuel - Biodiesel has been mentioned.
Regular engines can be converted to CNG with relative ease - I once saw a Dodge Spirit (same car I drive) with a CNG fillup. Try to find a design where the fillup connector (big ball-shaped thing in the case of this car) doesn't stick out - it's ugly.
Engines can also be converted to use M85 (85% methanol, 15% gasoline), but it's not really worth it. M85 is 15-25% cheaper per gallon, but has only 50% of the energy density. Also, methanol is VERY corrosive, so significant portions of the engine have to be replaced with corrosion-resistant parts. Chrysler made a few M85-capable cars (the FFV version of the Dodge Spirit/Plymouth Acclaim and minivans), and replacement parts for the FFV versions are nearly impossible, if not completely impossible, to find.
Or wait for the likes of the Escape HEV - 40 MPG in an SUV body, pretty amazing. I'd like to see the middle ground - All of the current hybrids and electrics are tiny little ugly pieces of junk. I want a full-size hybrid sedan that looks just like its gas-powered brethren, or a hybrid minivan.
Of course, the question is, WHY do you want to go alternative fuel? These days there are far worse things for the environment than modern cars - IC engines have come a LONG way in the areas of emissions control. You're not going to save any money - Electricity costs are skyrocketing, and it's been shown that in the end, pure electrics pollute more. (While coal-fired power plants produce less emissions per kilowatt, by the time you factor in all the transmission/charging losses, you're polluting more). Hybrids get insane gas mileage, but at the moment the technology isn't mature enough. You're going to be paying far more in maintenance costs for your unconventional design.
I'm not saying that IC engines are here to stay forever, just that hybrids are just plain not viable yet and won't be for a few years.
If you think Honda cares about the environment, you're wrong. http://www.lemonaidcars.com/secret_warranties.htm - Their emissions control systems were so bad from '95 to '97 that they were FORCED by the EPA to repair any emissions problem with those model years for free - And Honda will fight you all the way on those repairs until you threaten to call the EPA on them. The Insight/Civic HEV is just damage control. If they really wanted to benefit the environment, they'd focus on large vehicles first, where hybrid technology can make the biggest difference. (GM had statistics that if one medium-sized city had their buses replaced with hybrids, it would be better for the environment than if all Civics sold in a given year were hybrids. Which is why they're focusing on buses first - You don't see it much, but GM is pushing hybrid technology research VERY heavily. Same with Ford - Their first hybrid release will be the Escape HEV.)