One of their favourite cars was sort of American... the Vauxhall equivalent to the Pontiac G8 (born in Australia by GM as the Holden Commodore). So it's sort of an American-Australian car of sorts.
They also quite liked the Ford Mustang recently. The certainly were clear that it didn't handle like the similarly-engined European cars, but they were clear that it was massively less expensive and an interesting compromise... which it is.
Anyone who has watched more than half an episode of Top Gear knows exactly what Top Gear is. It's something, and it's interesting, and it's highly entertaining, but you certainly wouldn't use it as a major contribution to your vehicle purchase decision unless you're into supercars (in which case you probably could).
The review of the Ford Fiesta was a perfect case in point. The car was tested in a shopping mall on marble floors, and in an amphibious landing with the Royal Navy.
In the case of the article inspiring this thread, I'd have gladly sacrificed the engine to stop that mad goose chase two hours earlier. This could easily have ended in that driver's death.
Overall I agree - brakes etc. are obviously the most obvious choices. In this case Peugeot was on the phone with the client and the police and they could not find a way to stop the car. I assume brakes, on/off switches and buttons, and all other obvious possibilities were examined and ruled out or used without effect.
I think even you would agree that remembering that pushing the clutch to the floor disengages the engine is easier to remember than having to press the "start" button for three seconds.
Granted, I've never driven a car with a "start" button for more than a few days (as a rental), but I certainly didn't know that that was an option. On the other hand, every rental I've had with a manual (granted, only one - in Scotland), I knew that depressing the clutch to the floor would disengage all power. That's its job.
I drive sticks because they're fun and give better performance in most cases, and they are usually significantly cheaper, but there's no question in my mind that all this electronic complexity adds some potential for problems. I trust technology (I'm online, after all) but I see a big upside to a really simple drivetrain, even above and beyond the obvious advantages of lower cost, longer life and lower repair bills.
This sort of event is convincing me even more that I want three pedals in my car. Press the clutch and your problem is solved. No electronics can fail because the clutch in a manual transmission car is controlled by you, with your foot, mechanically.
And further, people upgrade machines. People replace motherboards... or entire computers. They shouldn't have to repurchase software.
To avoid license breaches, I even run older versions of MS Office on my less important machines. I run a two-version-old version on my netbook as it is more than adequate for the airplane-based Word document editing and the PowerPoint presentations I use in my seminars.
Still, I'm starting to think that migrating to using LibreOffice might be the safest approach since I can guarantee being able to legally use it on all of my machines without having to reduce my entertainment budget to compensate.
Agreed. To me the real point of progress indication isn't to tell me how long it will take - it's to assure me that it's actually working and hasn't crashed or gotten stuck.
Consider a simple file copy. You have 10,000 files to copy. They vary in size from a few bytes to a few gigabytes.
Do you scale the progress bar on file count? If the files are randomly distributed that might be reasonably accurate, but if too many big files are toward the end of the copy, your scale will be far too optimistic at the start.
Do you scale the progress bar to total bytes? If the files are randomly distributed that might be reasonably accurate, but if too many small files are toward the end of the copy, your scale will be far too optimistic at the start.
Coming up with progress is really easy when you know precisely what you are measuring and can make reasonable inferences as to the performance to expect. But this simple file copy can be complex. Where are the files? Are they in a big compressed file, or sitting individually? Are they on a hard disk, an SSD, on a USB device (and is it 3.0, 2.0 or 1.1?), or a network connection (and how fast is the server, and how good is the network connection)? If you need to decompress, how fast is the CPU at this and how much idle time is there? How many cores does it have? This is a pretty simple installation and measuring progress is very difficult.
This. Stuff happens - but if companies aren't communicating with me and giving me some sort of consideration for my lost value (if warranted, and it seems warranted here), I have every right - morally and legally - to wander elsewhere.
If you bought your "brand new tablet" as a user device instead of an investment, you shouldn't really care if new versions come out.
I'm still happily using my first-gen iPad and aside from the sneers of derision from the 12-year-olds at airports:), I manage just fine.
The reality is that we're now a laptop world. A few want desktops, and that's why the Pro exists, and I'm sure it will be updated, but it's hardly a leading seller for Apple.
Plasmas take work to create burn-in now, but they will if you make them. Updating content once every 15 minutes will definitely make them get persistent images.
CRTs had the same problem. They were fine for regular viewing, but persistent content burned in badly, even on good ones. Plasmas are at least as bad, even modern ones. Use them for normal content and they're fine (mine's two years old and doing great) but persistent content is not good use of a plasma.
So just because you didn't become a criminal, means there can't be a correlation?
You're a sample of one. Your experiences, while important to you, mean nothing in isolation when it comes to statistics.
If one person in a hundred were to die a year in car crashes, and we changed cars to have different tires and suddenly ten people died a year, but you lived, that doesn't mean that the death rate didn't go up 1000%. You were just lucky and lived.
The article quite succinctly discusses how lead might take borderline violent people and trigger their latent violence. It's an interesting article. It seems you weren't a borderline violent person. Yay for you!
Slashdot Mirror
One of their favourite cars was sort of American... the Vauxhall equivalent to the Pontiac G8 (born in Australia by GM as the Holden Commodore). So it's sort of an American-Australian car of sorts.
They also quite liked the Ford Mustang recently. The certainly were clear that it didn't handle like the similarly-engined European cars, but they were clear that it was massively less expensive and an interesting compromise... which it is.
It's like arbitrage... but longer.
Anyone who has watched more than half an episode of Top Gear knows exactly what Top Gear is. It's something, and it's interesting, and it's highly entertaining, but you certainly wouldn't use it as a major contribution to your vehicle purchase decision unless you're into supercars (in which case you probably could).
The review of the Ford Fiesta was a perfect case in point. The car was tested in a shopping mall on marble floors, and in an amphibious landing with the Royal Navy.
Gambon tried to roll, but failed.... but he did get a corner of the Top Gear test track named after him.
In the case of the article inspiring this thread, I'd have gladly sacrificed the engine to stop that mad goose chase two hours earlier. This could easily have ended in that driver's death.
Overall I agree - brakes etc. are obviously the most obvious choices. In this case Peugeot was on the phone with the client and the police and they could not find a way to stop the car. I assume brakes, on/off switches and buttons, and all other obvious possibilities were examined and ruled out or used without effect.
I think even you would agree that remembering that pushing the clutch to the floor disengages the engine is easier to remember than having to press the "start" button for three seconds.
Granted, I've never driven a car with a "start" button for more than a few days (as a rental), but I certainly didn't know that that was an option. On the other hand, every rental I've had with a manual (granted, only one - in Scotland), I knew that depressing the clutch to the floor would disengage all power. That's its job.
I drive sticks because they're fun and give better performance in most cases, and they are usually significantly cheaper, but there's no question in my mind that all this electronic complexity adds some potential for problems. I trust technology (I'm online, after all) but I see a big upside to a really simple drivetrain, even above and beyond the obvious advantages of lower cost, longer life and lower repair bills.
The Smart doesn't have a manual transmission. It's an automatic, with a semiautomatic override.
This sort of event is convincing me even more that I want three pedals in my car. Press the clutch and your problem is solved. No electronics can fail because the clutch in a manual transmission car is controlled by you, with your foot, mechanically.
And further, people upgrade machines. People replace motherboards... or entire computers. They shouldn't have to repurchase software.
To avoid license breaches, I even run older versions of MS Office on my less important machines. I run a two-version-old version on my netbook as it is more than adequate for the airplane-based Word document editing and the PowerPoint presentations I use in my seminars.
Still, I'm starting to think that migrating to using LibreOffice might be the safest approach since I can guarantee being able to legally use it on all of my machines without having to reduce my entertainment budget to compensate.
This is so not the point.
Agreed. To me the real point of progress indication isn't to tell me how long it will take - it's to assure me that it's actually working and hasn't crashed or gotten stuck.
And how do you define progress?
Consider a simple file copy. You have 10,000 files to copy. They vary in size from a few bytes to a few gigabytes.
Do you scale the progress bar on file count? If the files are randomly distributed that might be reasonably accurate, but if too many big files are toward the end of the copy, your scale will be far too optimistic at the start.
Do you scale the progress bar to total bytes? If the files are randomly distributed that might be reasonably accurate, but if too many small files are toward the end of the copy, your scale will be far too optimistic at the start.
Coming up with progress is really easy when you know precisely what you are measuring and can make reasonable inferences as to the performance to expect. But this simple file copy can be complex. Where are the files? Are they in a big compressed file, or sitting individually? Are they on a hard disk, an SSD, on a USB device (and is it 3.0, 2.0 or 1.1?), or a network connection (and how fast is the server, and how good is the network connection)? If you need to decompress, how fast is the CPU at this and how much idle time is there? How many cores does it have? This is a pretty simple installation and measuring progress is very difficult.
"tenet" not "tenant"... but I don't think religion and science are mutually exclusive. God could have been the force behind the Big Bang, after all.
(I personally believe the universe had a scientific origin, but I can't rule out a deific one.)
This. Stuff happens - but if companies aren't communicating with me and giving me some sort of consideration for my lost value (if warranted, and it seems warranted here), I have every right - morally and legally - to wander elsewhere.
If you bought your "brand new tablet" as a user device instead of an investment, you shouldn't really care if new versions come out.
I'm still happily using my first-gen iPad and aside from the sneers of derision from the 12-year-olds at airports :), I manage just fine.
The reality is that we're now a laptop world. A few want desktops, and that's why the Pro exists, and I'm sure it will be updated, but it's hardly a leading seller for Apple.
This device is extremely unlikely to support Wind's AWS (1700/2100 MHz) service. Most devices don't.
T-Mobile uses the same spectrum for most of its 3G/"4G" service but it has 2G/EDGE at 1900 MHz, which most devices do support.
Plasmas take work to create burn-in now, but they will if you make them. Updating content once every 15 minutes will definitely make them get persistent images.
CRTs had the same problem. They were fine for regular viewing, but persistent content burned in badly, even on good ones. Plasmas are at least as bad, even modern ones. Use them for normal content and they're fine (mine's two years old and doing great) but persistent content is not good use of a plasma.
True, but with 15-minute updates, the plasma will burn in in a few weeks to months and the LED will stay in decent shape for a few years.
You could have bought used copies. For many D&D books and supplements, they are readily available.
I have a 46" and while there is a definitely noticeable difference in quality between DVD and Blu-Ray, DVD is still awfully, awfully good.
They use this awful word "satisficing" in business school... something is good enough, but not optimal. DVD on my TV is often good enough.
The display may be not technically be interlaced, but the content certainly can be.
Correct, and thanks. It went up ten times (that's what I was thinking).
Doesn't change my point of course. :)
So just because you didn't become a criminal, means there can't be a correlation?
You're a sample of one. Your experiences, while important to you, mean nothing in isolation when it comes to statistics.
If one person in a hundred were to die a year in car crashes, and we changed cars to have different tires and suddenly ten people died a year, but you lived, that doesn't mean that the death rate didn't go up 1000%. You were just lucky and lived.
The article quite succinctly discusses how lead might take borderline violent people and trigger their latent violence. It's an interesting article. It seems you weren't a borderline violent person. Yay for you!
That's a lot of time to kill. You'd need every escape you could get.
This was winter. It was an ice storm.
People managed, but it was a pretty disruptive event. 1997, I think, is when it happened.
Such an event will inevitably happen again.