While I think that there's a small but significant number of exceptions to this, I have to strongly agree with the broad generalization (obligatory pun: "no, it's a generalization about broads!"). It's something I've come to realize over the years, as I've grown up and more experienced.
I just hope JustShootMe heeds this warning to approach with caution.
You really need that 4-8 cubic feet more than a wagon offers? I recall reading specs for my friend's Saturn Vue, and finding out that he got 19MPG and I got 31MPG. He also had 7 more cubic feet of cargo capacity.
It's your money for the gas, dude. But when you cry when gas is $6.50 a gallon and I'm still putting along, I'm going to laugh at you.
It really was. Great and cheap. Okay, so you couldn't drive it 400,000 miles unless you took anal-retentively good care of it (though I've seen one that did make it to 416k) but it only cost about $10k new. What does that get you now?
You've really hit the nail on the head. This is exactly why GM is dying. Gas hit $4/gal, and all the people like me that want a small utility vehicle already had them from 10 years ago.
This is the most insightful thing I've heard anyone say about American cars in bloody ages.
The American auto industry is an embarrassment, and has been now for about 12 years. They have lost all thew class, charm, and charisma that they had in the golden age, and all of the sensibility that the import boom shocked them into in the 1970s and 1980s.
People can mock my car all they like. I can get fuel economy almost on par with a Smart Car, and my Escort is 2.5 times it's size. But American car companies can't even make efficient, cheap cars that are easy to fix anymore. It's all about the bells and whistles now. iPod dock and a cooler in the glovebox? Hell yeah! Who cares if it only gets 22MPG when it could have been designed to get twice that much?
I don't know about others, but I for one avoid services tied to hardware that has a high likelihood of failure.
Anyone else remember Time Warner Cable's early digital / DVR boxes? The horribly twitchy ones made by Scientific Atlanta? Or Verizon's FiOS routers from hell / shitty set top boxes?
Software RAMdisks have been around for ages. What Forge is proposing is moving the interface function that's done by the device in TFA onto a a chip adjacent or integrated with the memory controller on a PC motherboard. That would be a pretty revolutionary idea.
I imagine a cluster of machines doing this, all interconnected with fiberchannel, and it gives me a major nerd-on.
As someone who's tried this... not a prayer in hell.
If you have a bunch of certs (MSCE, A+, etc) you might have a shot, but even if you land something with those, you won't like the pay. They assume that since you're "underqualified", they can get away with paying you a pittance if they do hire you.
The job market for anyone without a degree (even a community college two year) is fucking miserable these days.
I have driven manuals. The half-second it would have taken to touch the clutch and shifter would have been enough for me to get slammed into. No matter how good you are (and I freely admit that I'm not) with a stick, it still takes time to change gears by hand. Also, it requires you to take a hand off the wheel, which wasn't an option at the time.
Define "severely underpowered", please. I drive a Ford Escort. It's 88hp is enough for me, but I don't know what you'd consider adequate.
I think you've missed the main point of my original comment. I was trying to demonstrate that uchain's statement about "speeding up is never a good idea" is completely wrong.
Some companies won't use "automotive grade" batteries, and I know that's exactly the sort of thing they'll use to cut corners and save money, like all large companies are wont to do.
Example: my mother drives a Honda hybrid. The batteries in that are actually (I believe) NiMH, for some reason. They are exempted from the general warranty, and only are covered for five years. Replacement cost is estimated to be something in the neighborhood of $3,000 when they finally do die. I had the battery in my car (an older, possibly factory lead-acid) last me for seven years, and it probably would have lasted longer still if I hadn't killed it by leaving an auxiliary device on one night and draining it dry.
It's not in the best interest of the automotive companies to promote batteries that last a long time, then they won't have the constant stream of revenues that would otherwise come from replacing them every three to five years. And if people keep an electric car longer than it's ICE-based counterpart, where's their tithe going to come from?
Excuse me? Are you actually suggesting that the same battery chemistry that can't be relied on to power an iPod with greater than 80% capacity after a year and a half is suddenly going to magically become reliable and long-lasting in an automotive setting?
In my experience with batteries, the more complex and newer-fanged the chemistry, the faster it dies.
Lead-acid cells, while they may have a low energy density, last about twice as long (five years) and don't degrade anywhere near as much during that time as my experience with Lithium chemistry (both LiIon and LiPol). LiPol lasts about two years, then it's dead as a doorknob. The last six to nine months it's running at about 80% of it's old capacity. Not something you'd want in a vehicle.
I'd love nothing more than an electric vehicle, but the poster of the great-grandparent is right... supercapacitors are the only feasible option. Batteries die, and replacing them several times in the life of a vehicle that has such an otherwise elegant and simple design is a giant glaring flaw.
The US system encourages early death due to stress because of the lack of allowed time off from work, the obscene insurance costs, and the general poor treatment of employees.
I only wish I could pay 2% of my YEARLY income for all my insurance needs... health insurance would be a good quarter of my weekly income, and car insurance is 10% of my monthly income.
We reward hard work, all right... with ulcers and heart attacks. I've had the former already, and I'm not even 25 yet.
Not to troll, but who'll really miss this? I used to read newsgroups a long time back, but the signal-to-noise ratio has grown so overwhelmingly bad that I haven't found myself wading through the muck there at all within the last few years.
Hell, I really wouldn't miss it if they were to drop all Usenet support entirely. I understand there's people that use it all the time, but 95% of "normal" users don't even know what it is, and the 5% or so that do... a lot of us make sparing use of it at best because of the above-stated insanely high amounts of crap.
There are still independent Usenet providers, and so long as they're not being blocked by Verizon, this doesn't seem all that great a loss to me.
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While I think that there's a small but significant number of exceptions to this, I have to strongly agree with the broad generalization (obligatory pun: "no, it's a generalization about broads!"). It's something I've come to realize over the years, as I've grown up and more experienced.
I just hope JustShootMe heeds this warning to approach with caution.
You really need that 4-8 cubic feet more than a wagon offers? I recall reading specs for my friend's Saturn Vue, and finding out that he got 19MPG and I got 31MPG. He also had 7 more cubic feet of cargo capacity.
It's your money for the gas, dude. But when you cry when gas is $6.50 a gallon and I'm still putting along, I'm going to laugh at you.
It really was. Great and cheap. Okay, so you couldn't drive it 400,000 miles unless you took anal-retentively good care of it (though I've seen one that did make it to 416k) but it only cost about $10k new. What does that get you now?
You've really hit the nail on the head. This is exactly why GM is dying. Gas hit $4/gal, and all the people like me that want a small utility vehicle already had them from 10 years ago.
I wouldn't be caught dead on a Hyundai (hoon-dye, as I've been known to call them in parody).
Imports are difficult to service yourself (in my experience, anyway). And parts cost at least twice as much.
No one makes a car like mine anymore. At least not for the US market. And especially not domestic car companies.
This is the most insightful thing I've heard anyone say about American cars in bloody ages.
The American auto industry is an embarrassment, and has been now for about 12 years. They have lost all thew class, charm, and charisma that they had in the golden age, and all of the sensibility that the import boom shocked them into in the 1970s and 1980s.
People can mock my car all they like. I can get fuel economy almost on par with a Smart Car, and my Escort is 2.5 times it's size. But American car companies can't even make efficient, cheap cars that are easy to fix anymore. It's all about the bells and whistles now. iPod dock and a cooler in the glovebox? Hell yeah! Who cares if it only gets 22MPG when it could have been designed to get twice that much?
Does this mean no more 400K apps that eat 120MB of memory while running?
This seems to me to be a very dumb idea.
I don't know about others, but I for one avoid services tied to hardware that has a high likelihood of failure.
Anyone else remember Time Warner Cable's early digital / DVR boxes? The horribly twitchy ones made by Scientific Atlanta? Or Verizon's FiOS routers from hell / shitty set top boxes?
I think you're missing the point here.
Software RAMdisks have been around for ages. What Forge is proposing is moving the interface function that's done by the device in TFA onto a a chip adjacent or integrated with the memory controller on a PC motherboard. That would be a pretty revolutionary idea.
I imagine a cluster of machines doing this, all interconnected with fiberchannel, and it gives me a major nerd-on.
We had this back in 1994. It was called "IR modems".
Constantly. Often because we work more than one job.
It's not really a problem if you don't use much mental capacity on the job. No point in being entirely awake to ask "do you want fries with that?".
As someone who's tried this... not a prayer in hell.
If you have a bunch of certs (MSCE, A+, etc) you might have a shot, but even if you land something with those, you won't like the pay. They assume that since you're "underqualified", they can get away with paying you a pittance if they do hire you.
The job market for anyone without a degree (even a community college two year) is fucking miserable these days.
I have driven manuals. The half-second it would have taken to touch the clutch and shifter would have been enough for me to get slammed into. No matter how good you are (and I freely admit that I'm not) with a stick, it still takes time to change gears by hand. Also, it requires you to take a hand off the wheel, which wasn't an option at the time.
Define "severely underpowered", please. I drive a Ford Escort. It's 88hp is enough for me, but I don't know what you'd consider adequate.
I think you've missed the main point of my original comment. I was trying to demonstrate that uchain's statement about "speeding up is never a good idea" is completely wrong.
I'm calling bullshit on this.
I have avoided two major accidents by stomping on the gas pedal in situations where there was insufficient stopping distance.
This is also the reason I refuse to drive a manual. There would not have been time to upshift in either of those cases, and I'd have totaled my car.
The problem with this is that your references have to be willing to corroborate this statement. That can be hard to arrange.
I was wondering how long it would take for someone to make the obvious Johnny Mnemonic reference.
I knew I couldn't be the only one here where that's the first thing that comes to mind when someone says "Newark" and "cameras".
Some companies won't use "automotive grade" batteries, and I know that's exactly the sort of thing they'll use to cut corners and save money, like all large companies are wont to do.
Example: my mother drives a Honda hybrid. The batteries in that are actually (I believe) NiMH, for some reason. They are exempted from the general warranty, and only are covered for five years. Replacement cost is estimated to be something in the neighborhood of $3,000 when they finally do die. I had the battery in my car (an older, possibly factory lead-acid) last me for seven years, and it probably would have lasted longer still if I hadn't killed it by leaving an auxiliary device on one night and draining it dry.
It's not in the best interest of the automotive companies to promote batteries that last a long time, then they won't have the constant stream of revenues that would otherwise come from replacing them every three to five years. And if people keep an electric car longer than it's ICE-based counterpart, where's their tithe going to come from?
It's pretty obvious he has an iPhone, especially since he mentions AAC ringtones.
Excuse me? Are you actually suggesting that the same battery chemistry that can't be relied on to power an iPod with greater than 80% capacity after a year and a half is suddenly going to magically become reliable and long-lasting in an automotive setting?
In my experience with batteries, the more complex and newer-fanged the chemistry, the faster it dies.
Lead-acid cells, while they may have a low energy density, last about twice as long (five years) and don't degrade anywhere near as much during that time as my experience with Lithium chemistry (both LiIon and LiPol). LiPol lasts about two years, then it's dead as a doorknob. The last six to nine months it's running at about 80% of it's old capacity. Not something you'd want in a vehicle.
I'd love nothing more than an electric vehicle, but the poster of the great-grandparent is right... supercapacitors are the only feasible option. Batteries die, and replacing them several times in the life of a vehicle that has such an otherwise elegant and simple design is a giant glaring flaw.
As a non college graduate under 25, I get whomped on car insurance costs. I make $1050/mo, and insurance is $125 of that.
You're probably not working in retail, with compensation like that.
The US system encourages early death due to stress because of the lack of allowed time off from work, the obscene insurance costs, and the general poor treatment of employees.
I only wish I could pay 2% of my YEARLY income for all my insurance needs... health insurance would be a good quarter of my weekly income, and car insurance is 10% of my monthly income.
We reward hard work, all right... with ulcers and heart attacks. I've had the former already, and I'm not even 25 yet.
Two words:
Stamina.
Multiples.
Both of which I could manage when I was 18 (six years ago) that are now a distant memory.
It was called BeOS.
Not to troll, but who'll really miss this? I used to read newsgroups a long time back, but the signal-to-noise ratio has grown so overwhelmingly bad that I haven't found myself wading through the muck there at all within the last few years.
Hell, I really wouldn't miss it if they were to drop all Usenet support entirely. I understand there's people that use it all the time, but 95% of "normal" users don't even know what it is, and the 5% or so that do... a lot of us make sparing use of it at best because of the above-stated insanely high amounts of crap.
There are still independent Usenet providers, and so long as they're not being blocked by Verizon, this doesn't seem all that great a loss to me.
Give it five years. I used to be the same way, now it's starting to catch up with me in my "old age".
So, LCDs are still playing catch-up to CRTs in this area. I see now.