Give these companies some credit. That "haywire" issue you ran into was a safety feature. If anything in the transmission goes wrong, even if its just a sensor failing, instead of letting you drive on possibly unsafely or ruining the transmission, it will force you into a "limp home mode" in say third gear. This allows you to safely get home/to a mechanic to have the transmission fixed. This was perfectly intentional in design.
Plus, I believe by law, every car you don't even need to press in the "switch gears button" or pull the leaver forward or whatever to switch to neutral. Simply push the gearshift leaver
Whether or not a manual driver understands the car, in this specific instance, a manual driver will be much better equipped. First instinct in a manual when something isn't right is to step on the clutch. Well maybe slightly behind hitting the brakes. Hitting the clutch on a car with a stuck throttle will effectively put the car in neutral, making any stuck throttle issues irrelevant.
One day as I was riding with my friend in his ford explorer, he all of the sudden starts stabbing his foot on the accelerator in a panic as we come to a stop sign. I of course react WTF? He tells me that the throttle gets stuck periodically and he has to push the gas pedal to unstick it. +1 for drive by wire in my book, where there is no physical throttle cable to get stuck.
Which is why speedometers normally read high. Carmakers would rather try for say 3mph above the real speed so -5% is still above the real speed. Having a car lie to you and say your going 65 when your going 60 is better (and less likely to cause liability and outrage for speeding tickets) than a speedometer saying your going 60 when your going 65.
I'm sure in places where its illegal to compensate based on tickets given its similar to the electronics store I worked at... there was no commission. But each employee's sales were tracked and if you weren't selling much you would get a talking to. Aka start making more sales or your fired.
Yea, the difference between driving 20mph over the speed limit when no one is around and driving 20 mph over the speed limit when it requires weaving between 3 lanes on the highway. The funny part is, the first option, while clearly safer, is what people get pulled over for. (Cops love to sit on open stretches of freeway in perfect driving conditions because they know it is safe to speed, thus drivers will speed.)
Rarely will a cop set up a speed trap in the rain. Why? Because most drivers know it is adverse conditions and slow down to compensate. Your best bet for catching drivers speeding is when it is clearly safe to go 20 or even 30mph over the post limit.
Very true. Ever notice there are some drivers who get in accidents all the time? And some who never do? Irrelevant of whose fault it is. A friend of mine has been in maybe 10 accidents in the last 3 years. He always brags "people are retarded none of them were my fault". Well maybe not technically, but having experienced driving with this friend, I can tell you that i guarantee every single one of those accidents could have easily been avoided.
See my previous post. One of the early 2.x updates for the 3G ridiculously inflated 3G signal strength. Because apple's customers got mad that the phone had higher indicated signal strength on EDGE network (even though they did due to AT&T's 3G network having poor coverage and in many places running on the inferior-penetrating frequency of 1900mhz (or 1800 whichever it is) instead of 850mhz that they had their EDGE network.
It doesn't help that Apple's "answer" to poor 3G signal in one of the early 2.x was to inflate 3G signal strength to the point of irrelevance. Its basically either full bars 3G or none. I rarely see anything in between. And even if I do chances are less than full bars means I won't be able to make/receive calls or use data. Hell even with full bars chances of being able to successfully use AT&T's network is probably only about 50%.
My own personal anecdote: AT&T is HORRIBLE. I switched to AT&T for the iPhone and am getting the hell away from it as soon as my 2 year contract expires. I will switch to (in my opinion) an inferior phone (the Droid/Sholes/whatever they are calling it now) looks promising, to get away from AT&T. I absolutely love my iPhone, but it does me no good when I can't access the internet or make/receive calls when I want to.
The difference from Verizon is astounding. I can count on two hands the number of times I didn't have service on Verizon. And most of those times were things like camping trips in the woods. I NEVER had a dropped call or iffy voice quality in a place I normally have service. The only time I ever experienced a dropped call on verizon was when I drove/walked out of a service area. AT&T on the other hand is COMPLETELY different. If I tell someone to call I don't count on receiving that call. Even in downtown Columbus Ohio, which AT&T has supposedly full 3G coverage (and I have 5 bars all the time). I went through a period of time where I only received about 50% of calls. Quality is TERRIBLE (sometimes I have weird echoing issues, voice dropouts, etc.) I have gone through multiple SIM cards and iPhones. Others with AT&T report the same issues.
I have noticed that people who have never had verizon (or probably sprint, can't attest to their network, but I hear its pretty good and roams to verizon in most places) seem to have a different outlook on cell phones. They assume the poor quality and dropped calls are normal. Its funny, the AT&T fewest dropped calls commercials really only resonated with AT&T customers. As a verizon customer at the time I would always think who ever has dropped calls? I don't live in a rural area.. my mom (a verizon customer also) once asked me so what is a dropped call? Yet if I had AT&T since the dawn of ubiquitous cell coverage, I would be thinking to myself, wow dropped calls I hate those, I'm glad I'm on AT&T.
Don't forget that older cars had wayyyy worse braking and handling. And try driving a BMW or for cheaper, a Mazda. Sure a toyota feels like driving a couch. But then again thats how its supposed to feel, and when driving within normal limits a toyota feels amazingly safe and comfortable. Although I agree taking a grandpamobile to its limit is scary, even if that limit is the same limit as a better handling car.
Everyone is getting all up in arms here yelling OMG GOOGLE IS GOING TO RESTRICT MY INTERNETZ! Correct me if I'm wrong, but all this is saying is when I do a google search in Europe, instead of it using a tier1 backbone to access google's servers in america, there is a data center somewhere in europe, owned by google, which processes the request and communicates over google's own undersea cables (or rented bandwidth on it as it almost certainly is). How exactly does this restrict anyone's freedom?
Except that NeoOffice sucks. It takes hours to load, and the interface feels like I'm running it on a PII 300mhz, not a core duo. Office 2004 through rosetta runs better than NeoOffice.
A friend of mine used to work at Fry's. He told me that they have no training at all, they are just put into an area of the store to sell stuff, more senior sales staff get to work more lucrative departments. From his description, sales people basically spouted off random technical sounding words in an attempt to get customers to buy stuff, most of them really had no idea about the products they were selling. He quite after a few months because he couldn't stand lying to customers anymore.
Exact same experience I had when I worked at circuit city.
It shows how far we have advanced in the past 50 years (which seeing some of the comments on here, it apparently isn't clear to everyone that a modern car is more safe than an older one).
What this does is keep advancements in safety technology at the forefront of the publics minds so that government programs and private car companies will continue to invest in advancements in crash safety.
There service sucks in places with only 1900mhz service (like northeast ohio). When I travel 200 miles south my iPhone works great no dropped calls 3G and all inside or outside of buildings. Just so happens thats right about the cutoff where they have 850mhz service. In northeast ohio where I live, its only 1900mhz. No service in any basement ever, and service inside houses and buildings is hit or miss. Driving down a tree-lined road? Expect to drop a call. 1900mhz just doesn't have the penetration that 850 does. And you wonder why everyone here has verizon? (Who happens to own all the 850mhz spectrum here....)
Open standard? H.264 is a frickin ISO MPEG standard. Its far far far far far better than something like flash video or silverlight. I think were getting too greedy here trying to veto an MPEG standard for some crappy unheard-of open source "standard".
ABS *is* meant to stop you faster as well as allowing to steer the vehicle as you stop. Static friction coefficient is much higher than dynamic which means that rolling wheels get much more braking power than sliding ones. Why do you exactly think you can't steer a car while wheels are locked?
While theoretically an expert driver can brake on slightly shorter distances than a modern ABS by pushing brakes just above the locking point I still have to see that happenning in anywhere near real out-circuit conditions.
False.
In what circumstances might conventional brakes have an advantage over ABS? There are some conditions where stopping distance may be shorter without ABS. For example, in cases where the road is covered with loose gravel or freshly fallen snow, the locked wheels of a non-ABS car build up a wedge of gravel or snow, which can contribute to a shortening of the braking distance. http://www.abs-education.org/faqs/faqindex.htm
Agreed. Stop looking at the 10% overall market share of Macs and start looking at the percent of your targeted user base who are mac users. College kids are willing to forgo video games when they make the Mac-PC decision, but I know a lot of my friends spend time playing games (keep in mind in college anytime a college kid is "home" in their dorm, there sitting at their desk. Its pretty much your either at your desk or in the bed, there isn't much room for anything else. This leads to a large amount of time sitting in front of a computer.
And any game for Mac has an advantage because of the lack of competitors. Most of my friends have macs, and I've heard multiple times something along the lines of "hey, that game is for macs? let me try it out".
I actually have noticed that a disproportionate amount of mac users bring their laptops places (library, class, coffee shop, etc) than PC users on campus, but I attributed it to a different reason. I've found Macs to be better suited to portability.
Apple laptops are very portable compared to many WIndows laptops (the $500 massive PC laptop doesn't exist for Apple customers). Most Windows laptops I see around campus are massive and heavy. OS X also handles sleeping very gracefully. Maybe this has been improved with newer motherboards and/or Win XP service packs, but Windows always seemed to give me problems with not sleeping and crashing when waking up from sleep.
Obviously this isn't always the case, there are plenty of portable PCs, but it seems the ones that college students buy aren't those.
Are you comfortable giving your SSN and credit card number out over a celphone? I'm not.
When you need to call 911 do you want to take the time to give the address? I don't.
Really? Because cell phones are using digital encryption and with a landline all you have to do is splice a speaker into the line. I'd say your a lot safer with a cell phone.
Plus there are plenty of easier ways for "bad guys" to get credit card and SSN numbers than going to the ridiculous effort of breaking cell phone encryption and eavesdrop on your call.
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So of course the question that would keep anyone from joining this... who pays for damages to your car if the professional driver crashes YOUR car??
Give these companies some credit. That "haywire" issue you ran into was a safety feature. If anything in the transmission goes wrong, even if its just a sensor failing, instead of letting you drive on possibly unsafely or ruining the transmission, it will force you into a "limp home mode" in say third gear. This allows you to safely get home/to a mechanic to have the transmission fixed. This was perfectly intentional in design.
Plus, I believe by law, every car you don't even need to press in the "switch gears button" or pull the leaver forward or whatever to switch to neutral. Simply push the gearshift leaver
Whether or not a manual driver understands the car, in this specific instance, a manual driver will be much better equipped. First instinct in a manual when something isn't right is to step on the clutch. Well maybe slightly behind hitting the brakes. Hitting the clutch on a car with a stuck throttle will effectively put the car in neutral, making any stuck throttle issues irrelevant.
One day as I was riding with my friend in his ford explorer, he all of the sudden starts stabbing his foot on the accelerator in a panic as we come to a stop sign. I of course react WTF? He tells me that the throttle gets stuck periodically and he has to push the gas pedal to unstick it. +1 for drive by wire in my book, where there is no physical throttle cable to get stuck.
So two electronics problems within 15k miles? Thats more a statement to unreliability
Except if your clock has an error of +/- 5 minutes.
Which is why speedometers normally read high. Carmakers would rather try for say 3mph above the real speed so -5% is still above the real speed. Having a car lie to you and say your going 65 when your going 60 is better (and less likely to cause liability and outrage for speeding tickets) than a speedometer saying your going 60 when your going 65.
I'm sure in places where its illegal to compensate based on tickets given its similar to the electronics store I worked at... there was no commission. But each employee's sales were tracked and if you weren't selling much you would get a talking to. Aka start making more sales or your fired.
Yea, the difference between driving 20mph over the speed limit when no one is around and driving 20 mph over the speed limit when it requires weaving between 3 lanes on the highway. The funny part is, the first option, while clearly safer, is what people get pulled over for. (Cops love to sit on open stretches of freeway in perfect driving conditions because they know it is safe to speed, thus drivers will speed.)
Rarely will a cop set up a speed trap in the rain. Why? Because most drivers know it is adverse conditions and slow down to compensate. Your best bet for catching drivers speeding is when it is clearly safe to go 20 or even 30mph over the post limit.
Very true. Ever notice there are some drivers who get in accidents all the time? And some who never do? Irrelevant of whose fault it is. A friend of mine has been in maybe 10 accidents in the last 3 years. He always brags "people are retarded none of them were my fault". Well maybe not technically, but having experienced driving with this friend, I can tell you that i guarantee every single one of those accidents could have easily been avoided.
See my previous post. One of the early 2.x updates for the 3G ridiculously inflated 3G signal strength. Because apple's customers got mad that the phone had higher indicated signal strength on EDGE network (even though they did due to AT&T's 3G network having poor coverage and in many places running on the inferior-penetrating frequency of 1900mhz (or 1800 whichever it is) instead of 850mhz that they had their EDGE network.
It doesn't help that Apple's "answer" to poor 3G signal in one of the early 2.x was to inflate 3G signal strength to the point of irrelevance. Its basically either full bars 3G or none. I rarely see anything in between. And even if I do chances are less than full bars means I won't be able to make/receive calls or use data. Hell even with full bars chances of being able to successfully use AT&T's network is probably only about 50%.
My own personal anecdote: AT&T is HORRIBLE. I switched to AT&T for the iPhone and am getting the hell away from it as soon as my 2 year contract expires. I will switch to (in my opinion) an inferior phone (the Droid/Sholes/whatever they are calling it now) looks promising, to get away from AT&T. I absolutely love my iPhone, but it does me no good when I can't access the internet or make/receive calls when I want to.
The difference from Verizon is astounding. I can count on two hands the number of times I didn't have service on Verizon. And most of those times were things like camping trips in the woods. I NEVER had a dropped call or iffy voice quality in a place I normally have service. The only time I ever experienced a dropped call on verizon was when I drove/walked out of a service area. AT&T on the other hand is COMPLETELY different. If I tell someone to call I don't count on receiving that call. Even in downtown Columbus Ohio, which AT&T has supposedly full 3G coverage (and I have 5 bars all the time). I went through a period of time where I only received about 50% of calls. Quality is TERRIBLE (sometimes I have weird echoing issues, voice dropouts, etc.) I have gone through multiple SIM cards and iPhones. Others with AT&T report the same issues.
I have noticed that people who have never had verizon (or probably sprint, can't attest to their network, but I hear its pretty good and roams to verizon in most places) seem to have a different outlook on cell phones. They assume the poor quality and dropped calls are normal. Its funny, the AT&T fewest dropped calls commercials really only resonated with AT&T customers. As a verizon customer at the time I would always think who ever has dropped calls? I don't live in a rural area.. my mom (a verizon customer also) once asked me so what is a dropped call? Yet if I had AT&T since the dawn of ubiquitous cell coverage, I would be thinking to myself, wow dropped calls I hate those, I'm glad I'm on AT&T.
Don't forget that older cars had wayyyy worse braking and handling. And try driving a BMW or for cheaper, a Mazda. Sure a toyota feels like driving a couch. But then again thats how its supposed to feel, and when driving within normal limits a toyota feels amazingly safe and comfortable. Although I agree taking a grandpamobile to its limit is scary, even if that limit is the same limit as a better handling car.
Everyone is getting all up in arms here yelling OMG GOOGLE IS GOING TO RESTRICT MY INTERNETZ! Correct me if I'm wrong, but all this is saying is when I do a google search in Europe, instead of it using a tier1 backbone to access google's servers in america, there is a data center somewhere in europe, owned by google, which processes the request and communicates over google's own undersea cables (or rented bandwidth on it as it almost certainly is). How exactly does this restrict anyone's freedom?
Except that NeoOffice sucks. It takes hours to load, and the interface feels like I'm running it on a PII 300mhz, not a core duo. Office 2004 through rosetta runs better than NeoOffice.
A friend of mine used to work at Fry's. He told me that they have no training at all, they are just put into an area of the store to sell stuff, more senior sales staff get to work more lucrative departments. From his description, sales people basically spouted off random technical sounding words in an attempt to get customers to buy stuff, most of them really had no idea about the products they were selling. He quite after a few months because he couldn't stand lying to customers anymore.
Exact same experience I had when I worked at circuit city.
It shows how far we have advanced in the past 50 years (which seeing some of the comments on here, it apparently isn't clear to everyone that a modern car is more safe than an older one).
What this does is keep advancements in safety technology at the forefront of the publics minds so that government programs and private car companies will continue to invest in advancements in crash safety.
There service sucks in places with only 1900mhz service (like northeast ohio). When I travel 200 miles south my iPhone works great no dropped calls 3G and all inside or outside of buildings. Just so happens thats right about the cutoff where they have 850mhz service. In northeast ohio where I live, its only 1900mhz. No service in any basement ever, and service inside houses and buildings is hit or miss. Driving down a tree-lined road? Expect to drop a call. 1900mhz just doesn't have the penetration that 850 does. And you wonder why everyone here has verizon? (Who happens to own all the 850mhz spectrum here....)
Open standard? H.264 is a frickin ISO MPEG standard. Its far far far far far better than something like flash video or silverlight. I think were getting too greedy here trying to veto an MPEG standard for some crappy unheard-of open source "standard".
"ABS is not meant to stop you faster."
ABS *is* meant to stop you faster as well as allowing to steer the vehicle as you stop. Static friction coefficient is much higher than dynamic which means that rolling wheels get much more braking power than sliding ones. Why do you exactly think you can't steer a car while wheels are locked?
While theoretically an expert driver can brake on slightly shorter distances than a modern ABS by pushing brakes just above the locking point I still have to see that happenning in anywhere near real out-circuit conditions.
False.
In what circumstances might conventional brakes have an advantage over ABS? There are some conditions where stopping distance may be shorter without ABS. For example, in cases where the road is covered with loose gravel or freshly fallen snow, the locked wheels of a non-ABS car build up a wedge of gravel or snow, which can contribute to a shortening of the braking distance.
http://www.abs-education.org/faqs/faqindex.htm
Agreed. Stop looking at the 10% overall market share of Macs and start looking at the percent of your targeted user base who are mac users. College kids are willing to forgo video games when they make the Mac-PC decision, but I know a lot of my friends spend time playing games (keep in mind in college anytime a college kid is "home" in their dorm, there sitting at their desk. Its pretty much your either at your desk or in the bed, there isn't much room for anything else. This leads to a large amount of time sitting in front of a computer. And any game for Mac has an advantage because of the lack of competitors. Most of my friends have macs, and I've heard multiple times something along the lines of "hey, that game is for macs? let me try it out".
I actually have noticed that a disproportionate amount of mac users bring their laptops places (library, class, coffee shop, etc) than PC users on campus, but I attributed it to a different reason. I've found Macs to be better suited to portability. Apple laptops are very portable compared to many WIndows laptops (the $500 massive PC laptop doesn't exist for Apple customers). Most Windows laptops I see around campus are massive and heavy. OS X also handles sleeping very gracefully. Maybe this has been improved with newer motherboards and/or Win XP service packs, but Windows always seemed to give me problems with not sleeping and crashing when waking up from sleep. Obviously this isn't always the case, there are plenty of portable PCs, but it seems the ones that college students buy aren't those.
Are you comfortable giving your SSN and credit card number out over a celphone? I'm not. When you need to call 911 do you want to take the time to give the address? I don't.
Really? Because cell phones are using digital encryption and with a landline all you have to do is splice a speaker into the line. I'd say your a lot safer with a cell phone. Plus there are plenty of easier ways for "bad guys" to get credit card and SSN numbers than going to the ridiculous effort of breaking cell phone encryption and eavesdrop on your call.