We don't even need to replace it, I think curbing demand would be a big step in the right direction.
Sure this is America where you're free to buy a big guzzler if you can and want to, but the reality is most people don't have to. $3 a gallon gas isn't stopping anyone from buying large gas guzzlers (Not just trucks and SUVs anymore - a lot of cars are thirsty, and not just from Detroit but from Japan too)
What's wrong with motorcycles? When I was in the Philippines recently (not Manila but a small city way out on a smaller island) I was shocked to see so many motorcycles and pedicabs (bicycles with sidecars). Now I know the weather in the US isn't so friendly toward motorcycles during winter, but we can still get away with it in the spring/summer/fall. In New York where a motorcycle is extremely practical, I only see a handful of people actually riding them.
I would mod you up for this! You got a nice response pointing out the benefits of a lease, but all those points are only good assuming you have a lot of money. I like convenience for most things and I'll gladly pay for it, but when you add up the math of a lease it simply isn't worth it.
Sure there's minor maintenance, but if you get a good enough car then there's really nothing aside from oil changes. I had a 1989 Honda Civic with almost 250,000 miles on it and the only thing I ever had to do besides changing the oil were relatively minor things like replacing the axles and boots, replacing the alternator, and replacing the HVAC fan.
Leases are good if you have a lot of money to throw around and you want a new car every few years, but even in that case I still think you're better off buying. The only 'convenience' comes on that day when your lease is up and you just hand in the keys, however selling a car to a private party isn't all that difficult.
Honda offered some special lease of a hydrogen powered vehicle to a lucky family in Southern California.http://world.honda.com/news/2005/405062 9.html. It still appears that it's going to really rich consumers who want a fun little interesting car.
If rich families really want to make an impact on the environment and show everyone they care, a better solution would be to trade in their mammoth SUVs and drive a compact car. There's no need for the fancy hybrid or hydrogen vehicle. Current cars using common technology (NOT hybrids but just regular gasoline engines) already get around 40MPG.
I guess the auto companies are smart how they market their vehicles. The only way to get flashy rich people back into normally sized cars is to offer some hot technology that they can show off.
I was at Rite-Aid drug store last night and noticed they're selling Single Use Digital Cameras for around $15. They have two different models: one with a LCD viewfinder and one without. They don't state the resolution, rather they say it takes "24 high resolution photographs" and it can only be processed at Rite-Aid, where they'll make you a CD of 4"x6" pictures.
When I saw this I immediately though about getting one to actually hack (as opposed to the camera tricks that this book appears to point out). The package clearly states that "This camera cannot be connected to your comptuer to transfer images." When I saw that, my geek instinct kicked in and I immediately began to think how to prove that wrong.
Has anyone ever seen these camera, or better yet has anyone 'hacked' them?
I am surprised that the satilite radio services are surviving as well as they do
Neither XM nor Sirius are making any money yet so 'surviving as well as they do' doesn't mean much.
I subscribe to Sirius and I'm happy with it. I always hear the argument "why pay to have some stranger play a bunch of songs that he/she selected when you can load playlists on your ipod and play what you like to hear"
The reality is that I hear lots of new music on Sirius that I wouldn't be exposed to if I didn't subscribe. Streaming audio (internet radio) is blocked at work so that option can be ruled out. I can play the thousands of songs I own over and over, but I like to hear new music. Listening to regular FM radio for new music is a horrible experience (littered with annoying ads and stations pushing particular songs because of payola).
Even when Sirius is playing not so new music, I enjoy most of the shows. It's worth the price for now. If I didn't have the money I could easily live without it, but it's a nice convenience that I can afford right now. The only thing I don't like about Sirius is the horrible sound quality of most channels. The classical channels are good and Howard Stern is good, most other music channels are mediocre, and all talk stations (except for Howard Stern) sound worse than AM. I wish they would get rid of twenty or thirty stations that I never listen to and use that bandwidth to improve the quality of their other channels.
I found out about the Comcast billing deal. Comcast is charging $57.95 a month for 4Mbps/384Kbps cable which is $2 cheaper than what I was supposed to pay. When they rolled out 6Mbps/768Kbps, I was upgraded and still got it at the promo price I signed up for. After the six months at the special price were up, they began charging me full price
Currently they charge $57.95 for 4M/384K and $67.95 for 6M/768K. I'm assuming I have the 6/768, though I haven't been able to get uploads greater than 50KBps and have never seen downloads greater than 400KBps, which still seems like I'm only getting the 4M/384K speeds.
I live in suburban NJ. I'm not out in the boonies (yes there are rural parts of NJ) but I'm only 20 miles outside NYC, and I can't get DSL! Verizon keeps promising their high speed fiber is being deployed, but it's two years and there's still no status. I've been told that they're not focusing on expanding DSL because of this new fiber connection they're building.
For now, my only option is Comcast which is relatively decent for now despite the high price tag ($67.95 unbundled - I don't need cable TV especially theirs.) When I signed up it was $29.95 for the first six months and $59.95 thereafter, however they're charging me $67.95 for some reason. It started as a 4Mbps connection, but a few months after I subscribed they started advertising 6Mbps. I'm not sure what I have, and I don't really know how to find out. All the speed tests I run haven't gone over 3Mbps.
A 45Mbps fibre connection to my house would be nice. (I don't live in PA, but wasn't 45Mbps promised to everyone nationwide, funded by the pile of extra taxes and fees on telecom services?)
What you said is the reason for their mentality. VoIP is eathing their lunch, and they're struggling to find any way they can to bring in more revenue and make their shareholders happy.
Wow, I wish I had my mod points today - great post! I often wonder why people get so upset when accidents occur.
I was rear ended once as well (and for some unknown reason that day I left significantly more space in front of me than I usually do when I stop, so I didn't hit anyone in front). There were no problems - they guy apologized for not paying attention and was relieved to know that we were all OK. I was a little bummed that my car was only a few months old and already got hit, but then I quickly learned that cars don't stay clean and perfect looking unless you store them in a climate controlled garage and never drive.
I moved from CA to NJ a few months ago, and New Jersey has a limited tort option on insurance policies which limits your right to sue someone else for 'pain and suffering' beyond actual costs. I know far too many people who think they can get rich quickly by getting into an accident and suing for $1M or more. When buying or renewing a policy you can retain your right to sue for excess pain and suffering, but you'll usually pay 2-3 times as much (or more) for that policy.
What a ripoff, too! I was recently in a Target store and saw a handheld game of the original Labyrinth that does the exact same thing as this game. You tilt the entire handheld game to move a digital marble around the maze on a low quality B&W LCD.
I wonder if the contest rules prohibited copying existing games.
MS could "open up" NTFS and sell the driver, but Linux would not be able to use it. No software under the GPL may contain licensed technology that requires royalty fees.
You mean I can't run non-GPL software on linux? Suppose MS releases a NTFS driver - does it have to be GPLed?
I've been toying around with Ubuntu and I'm still can't figure out how to handle a drive that I want to read and write within both Windows and Linux. Someone told me NTFS support for reading and writing with Linux has been around for a while, but as far as I can tell it's still considered experimental.
I could go with FAT32, but how reliable is it for a 40GB partition? Why doesn't MS just open up NTFS and sell a driver for Linux?
I went to the Embedded Systems Conference in San Francisco in 2003 or 2004 and was the best free item being given out was beer. I've never seen so much free beer in my life! Every evening at the conference, some booth was giving away beer. TI even had a few kegs of Guinness complete with the nitrogen system!
The best part was after downing a bunch of beer on the conference floor, most companies had parties at local bars. I can't remember which party I went to (after having about six or seven beers within an hour on the conference floor) but they were giving away more free drinks and a bunch of prizes like XBOXes, PS2s, and other high end goodies.
I'm very happy with Sirius. It's not 100% ad-free; most talk and news stations run ads, but the music stations are commercial free. I also know exactly what song is playing as the artist/title is always displayed. Between songs, the display will show the DJ name or the name of the show. There's also a nice feature where I can hit a memory button to store a particular song name while it's playing. I can set it so whenever one of the flagged songs is played on any channel, my receiver alerts me and I can jump to that particular channel. Or, I could just review the list when I'm not driving.
In addition, the "digital quality sound" is extremely inferior on my Bose system compared to the over-the-air FM stations. It sounds like most of the music is being played through a tin can.
That's one issue with satellite radio that really bugs me (and I don't have a 'premium' sound system - just the basic Honda audio system).
They rave about being '100% digital' but the reality is that they're constantly broadcasting a hundred streams of audio and that's a lot of data. Some stations are better than others (for example talk radio sounds WORSE than AM, but their classical stations sound just as good as FM). My concern was that Howard Stern would sound like AM radio, but fortunately they gave him a channel with a higher bitrate.
In patriotic and freedom-lovin' rural America, would truck drivers be more likely to pay a little more for fuel made from 100% American-grown corn or soybeans, or does lowest cost always win? I would have expected that Biodiesel marketers would have taken advantage of that by now, but it doesn't seem to be the case.
Also, isn't Diesel idential to home heating oil (minus the red dye)? Couldn't biodiesel be used to heat homes during the winter?
An even simpler first step if you can't get rid of your car is to buy a smarter car - one that's smaller and more efficient. I bought a new car three years ago and had two engines choices - I chose the less powerful 4 cylinder that gets 34MPG on the highway (26 city).
This is America though, where driving an SUV is the ultimate display of 'success' for many people. I still have trouble understanding where a SUV is practical for *most* people. I live an active outdoor lifestyle and have no problem getting me and my gear around in my Accord. I don't have kids, but I have 13 nieces and nephews ranging from 1-12 years old and never have any problems transporting them( not all at once of course).
Hauling cargo via truck or rail is another story. You can't just throw a smaller engine in a truck or locomotive. What's the big holdup with Biodiesel?
Where do you get them? I'm doing a project where I need about 500 white or blue LEDs. All the suppliers I found sell them like you said - for around $0.99 or more.
It's not just electronics. There's a big problem with Motorcycles now (and probably has been for a while). Chinese companies are copying Japanese designs exactly.
They're coming to the US too. There are a lot of cheaply made Chinese dirt bikes that have engines nearly identical to the ones Honda was using in the late 1980s. One of the motorcycle boards I regularly read has a few threads of users who bought these bikes to play around with and see how they compare. In almost all cases, they are made with poor quality materials which result in cracked plastic and frames that fracture easily (not a good thing, especially on a motorcycle).
I believe the soviets did the same thing back in the 60s and 70s.
A they say on MySpace subscription page: "It's FREE!". Sure, free as in beer...
I don't consider anything with ads, especially large flashy animated banner ads, to be free. FM radio is running a similar campaign now that satellite is becoming popular - many FM stations are now saying "Free FM! Why should you have to pay for radio?" Since I purchased a Sirius subscription in April of last year I haven't listened to regular radio. I'll gladly pay $0.43 a day to NOT have to listen to radio commercials.
Sony - don't sneeze near them, something will break. Big price premium for the brand name. Early ilfe (out of the box or soon after) failures 'notable'.
You aren't kidding! I was using a friend's ultra-compact Vaio and one time the system froze when I coughed and jerked the table it was sitting on. This particular Vaio worked fine when it was stitting on a hard surface, which defeats the purpose of having a laptop! Luckily for him it was still under warranty when the problem started occurring. It turned out to be some issue with either a short or open circuit on the motherboard (the warranty service center wasn't very specific).
Other than that issue and the fact that Sony uses a ton of proprietary drivers, it's a nice little computer. It's ultra compact yet designed so that you can still type easily. It feels a little flimsy compared to some other laptops.
Does anyone have any opinons regarding Panasonic Toughbooks? At my last job I worked with about 20 of them and they seemed like nice laptops. They weren't as rugged as they're marketed, but they seem like they can take more of a beating than anything else out there.
That's what has me concerned about the economy. What's going to happen in the hot markets where people can only afford interest on their homes?
For example, a 30 year mortgage on a $350,000 loan (still not enough to buy a nice house in the Los Angeles area right now) comes out to be around $2150 a month. If you were paying interest-only at 5%, that's only $1450 for your interest-only period, then after that you'll be paying more than $2150 a month if you want to pay your home off. $700 extra per month is a lot of money, especially to the family with $50,000 in credit card debt and a shiny new BMW X5 sitting in the driveway right next to the Infiniti G35. I can't imagine the numbers on a $750,000+ home.
The 3 year ARMs from 2003 begin principle repayment in 2006. I'm thinking that some strange things will happen between now and 2010.
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Sure this is America where you're free to buy a big guzzler if you can and want to, but the reality is most people don't have to. $3 a gallon gas isn't stopping anyone from buying large gas guzzlers (Not just trucks and SUVs anymore - a lot of cars are thirsty, and not just from Detroit but from Japan too)
What's wrong with motorcycles? When I was in the Philippines recently (not Manila but a small city way out on a smaller island) I was shocked to see so many motorcycles and pedicabs (bicycles with sidecars). Now I know the weather in the US isn't so friendly toward motorcycles during winter, but we can still get away with it in the spring/summer/fall. In New York where a motorcycle is extremely practical, I only see a handful of people actually riding them.
Sure there's minor maintenance, but if you get a good enough car then there's really nothing aside from oil changes. I had a 1989 Honda Civic with almost 250,000 miles on it and the only thing I ever had to do besides changing the oil were relatively minor things like replacing the axles and boots, replacing the alternator, and replacing the HVAC fan.
Leases are good if you have a lot of money to throw around and you want a new car every few years, but even in that case I still think you're better off buying. The only 'convenience' comes on that day when your lease is up and you just hand in the keys, however selling a car to a private party isn't all that difficult.
If rich families really want to make an impact on the environment and show everyone they care, a better solution would be to trade in their mammoth SUVs and drive a compact car. There's no need for the fancy hybrid or hydrogen vehicle. Current cars using common technology (NOT hybrids but just regular gasoline engines) already get around 40MPG.
I guess the auto companies are smart how they market their vehicles. The only way to get flashy rich people back into normally sized cars is to offer some hot technology that they can show off.
When I saw this I immediately though about getting one to actually hack (as opposed to the camera tricks that this book appears to point out). The package clearly states that "This camera cannot be connected to your comptuer to transfer images." When I saw that, my geek instinct kicked in and I immediately began to think how to prove that wrong.
Has anyone ever seen these camera, or better yet has anyone 'hacked' them?
Lower Heating Bills now, but that also means higher cooling bills when it's 100 degrees outside.
Neither XM nor Sirius are making any money yet so 'surviving as well as they do' doesn't mean much.
I subscribe to Sirius and I'm happy with it. I always hear the argument "why pay to have some stranger play a bunch of songs that he/she selected when you can load playlists on your ipod and play what you like to hear"
The reality is that I hear lots of new music on Sirius that I wouldn't be exposed to if I didn't subscribe. Streaming audio (internet radio) is blocked at work so that option can be ruled out. I can play the thousands of songs I own over and over, but I like to hear new music. Listening to regular FM radio for new music is a horrible experience (littered with annoying ads and stations pushing particular songs because of payola).
Even when Sirius is playing not so new music, I enjoy most of the shows. It's worth the price for now. If I didn't have the money I could easily live without it, but it's a nice convenience that I can afford right now. The only thing I don't like about Sirius is the horrible sound quality of most channels. The classical channels are good and Howard Stern is good, most other music channels are mediocre, and all talk stations (except for Howard Stern) sound worse than AM. I wish they would get rid of twenty or thirty stations that I never listen to and use that bandwidth to improve the quality of their other channels.
Currently they charge $57.95 for 4M/384K and $67.95 for 6M/768K. I'm assuming I have the 6/768, though I haven't been able to get uploads greater than 50KBps and have never seen downloads greater than 400KBps, which still seems like I'm only getting the 4M/384K speeds.
For now, my only option is Comcast which is relatively decent for now despite the high price tag ($67.95 unbundled - I don't need cable TV especially theirs.) When I signed up it was $29.95 for the first six months and $59.95 thereafter, however they're charging me $67.95 for some reason. It started as a 4Mbps connection, but a few months after I subscribed they started advertising 6Mbps. I'm not sure what I have, and I don't really know how to find out. All the speed tests I run haven't gone over 3Mbps.
A 45Mbps fibre connection to my house would be nice. (I don't live in PA, but wasn't 45Mbps promised to everyone nationwide, funded by the pile of extra taxes and fees on telecom services?)
Do I smell a business opportunity that utilizes a Google Maps plugin?
What you said is the reason for their mentality. VoIP is eathing their lunch, and they're struggling to find any way they can to bring in more revenue and make their shareholders happy.
I was rear ended once as well (and for some unknown reason that day I left significantly more space in front of me than I usually do when I stop, so I didn't hit anyone in front). There were no problems - they guy apologized for not paying attention and was relieved to know that we were all OK. I was a little bummed that my car was only a few months old and already got hit, but then I quickly learned that cars don't stay clean and perfect looking unless you store them in a climate controlled garage and never drive.
I moved from CA to NJ a few months ago, and New Jersey has a limited tort option on insurance policies which limits your right to sue someone else for 'pain and suffering' beyond actual costs. I know far too many people who think they can get rich quickly by getting into an accident and suing for $1M or more. When buying or renewing a policy you can retain your right to sue for excess pain and suffering, but you'll usually pay 2-3 times as much (or more) for that policy.
I wonder if the contest rules prohibited copying existing games.
You mean I can't run non-GPL software on linux? Suppose MS releases a NTFS driver - does it have to be GPLed?
I've been toying around with Ubuntu and I'm still can't figure out how to handle a drive that I want to read and write within both Windows and Linux. Someone told me NTFS support for reading and writing with Linux has been around for a while, but as far as I can tell it's still considered experimental.
I could go with FAT32, but how reliable is it for a 40GB partition? Why doesn't MS just open up NTFS and sell a driver for Linux?
The best part was after downing a bunch of beer on the conference floor, most companies had parties at local bars. I can't remember which party I went to (after having about six or seven beers within an hour on the conference floor) but they were giving away more free drinks and a bunch of prizes like XBOXes, PS2s, and other high end goodies.
In addition, the "digital quality sound" is extremely inferior on my Bose system compared to the over-the-air FM stations. It sounds like most of the music is being played through a tin can.
That's one issue with satellite radio that really bugs me (and I don't have a 'premium' sound system - just the basic Honda audio system). They rave about being '100% digital' but the reality is that they're constantly broadcasting a hundred streams of audio and that's a lot of data. Some stations are better than others (for example talk radio sounds WORSE than AM, but their classical stations sound just as good as FM). My concern was that Howard Stern would sound like AM radio, but fortunately they gave him a channel with a higher bitrate.
Also, isn't Diesel idential to home heating oil (minus the red dye)? Couldn't biodiesel be used to heat homes during the winter?
This is America though, where driving an SUV is the ultimate display of 'success' for many people. I still have trouble understanding where a SUV is practical for *most* people. I live an active outdoor lifestyle and have no problem getting me and my gear around in my Accord. I don't have kids, but I have 13 nieces and nephews ranging from 1-12 years old and never have any problems transporting them( not all at once of course).
Hauling cargo via truck or rail is another story. You can't just throw a smaller engine in a truck or locomotive. What's the big holdup with Biodiesel?
Where do you get them? I'm doing a project where I need about 500 white or blue LEDs. All the suppliers I found sell them like you said - for around $0.99 or more.
http://www.american.edu/TED/honda.htm
They're coming to the US too. There are a lot of cheaply made Chinese dirt bikes that have engines nearly identical to the ones Honda was using in the late 1980s. One of the motorcycle boards I regularly read has a few threads of users who bought these bikes to play around with and see how they compare. In almost all cases, they are made with poor quality materials which result in cracked plastic and frames that fracture easily (not a good thing, especially on a motorcycle).
I believe the soviets did the same thing back in the 60s and 70s.
I don't consider anything with ads, especially large flashy animated banner ads, to be free. FM radio is running a similar campaign now that satellite is becoming popular - many FM stations are now saying "Free FM! Why should you have to pay for radio?" Since I purchased a Sirius subscription in April of last year I haven't listened to regular radio. I'll gladly pay $0.43 a day to NOT have to listen to radio commercials.
You aren't kidding! I was using a friend's ultra-compact Vaio and one time the system froze when I coughed and jerked the table it was sitting on. This particular Vaio worked fine when it was stitting on a hard surface, which defeats the purpose of having a laptop! Luckily for him it was still under warranty when the problem started occurring. It turned out to be some issue with either a short or open circuit on the motherboard (the warranty service center wasn't very specific).
Other than that issue and the fact that Sony uses a ton of proprietary drivers, it's a nice little computer. It's ultra compact yet designed so that you can still type easily. It feels a little flimsy compared to some other laptops.
Does anyone have any opinons regarding Panasonic Toughbooks? At my last job I worked with about 20 of them and they seemed like nice laptops. They weren't as rugged as they're marketed, but they seem like they can take more of a beating than anything else out there.
That's better than nothing, but I wonder if it's enough to cover the cost of the reapirs?
For example, a 30 year mortgage on a $350,000 loan (still not enough to buy a nice house in the Los Angeles area right now) comes out to be around $2150 a month. If you were paying interest-only at 5%, that's only $1450 for your interest-only period, then after that you'll be paying more than $2150 a month if you want to pay your home off. $700 extra per month is a lot of money, especially to the family with $50,000 in credit card debt and a shiny new BMW X5 sitting in the driveway right next to the Infiniti G35. I can't imagine the numbers on a $750,000+ home.
The 3 year ARMs from 2003 begin principle repayment in 2006. I'm thinking that some strange things will happen between now and 2010.