Oh, they do. I've just been sitting here reading a review of the new Seat Ibiza Cupra diesel, which produces 160bhp from its 1.9-litre engine, and enough torque to pull an oil tanker. It'll do 0-62mph in 7.6 seconds and its average MPG (I think this is comprised of something like 50% town driving, 25% at a constant 56mph, and 25% at a constant 75mph) of 56.0 (that's a UK gallon which, unlike just about everything else, is bigger than its US equivalent;-)). The current Prius scores 65.7 on the same measure, but 56 is nothing to be ashamed of, and it'd be one hell of a lot nicer to drive. It's time car buyers in the US started demanding the sort of diesel engines widely available in Europe nowadays.
And yet the Toyota Prius sells by the thousand in the US, and here's a car which is admittedly clever technologically, but isn't as economical as a decent modern diesel engine, and certainly doesn't drive as well, yet costs thousands more than a conventional-engined equivalent. In the UK they sell maybe a couple of dozen a year, no exaggeration, presumably because they're basically pointless. So why are Americans willing to shell out far more than they'll ever recoup in fuel savings on a Prius, but won't spend a few hundred more on a diesel which would not only drive a lot better than any hybrid, but in many ways will perform better than a petrol-engined equivalent?
BT is a very dumb company. Remember the whole hyperlink patent lawsuit? Everybody in the company with half a brain was screaming "what are you DOING?", but one team of fuckwit lawyers pushed it through with seemingly no consideration for the wider effect it would have on the world's perception of the company.
It's not an Easter Egg, BMW made quite a big deal about it when they launched the car, because they knew it'd appeal to the grown-up boy-racers that buy M3s. It's really not recommended unless your dad owns Goodyear, though.
I might be barking up completely the wrong tree here, but could it be that cars in the US output more power simply because the petrol's of a lower octane? If I remember rightly, the different grades available there are 87, 89 and 93. Here in the UK the lowest grade is 95, and I run my car on 98. The difference between 95 and 98 is quite noticeable, so is it any wonder that when you're running your car on 87-octane fuel, it's a bit wheezy?
(As an aside, it's funny that nobody mentions that our go-juice is of a higher quality when comparing prices on either side of the pond...)
For one simple reason. Hardware's tangible, software isn't. No matter what these guys do, people will always struggle to get their heads round the idea of paying for software, because it doesn't take up space in their room and can be reproduced ad infinitum. Same goes for music, films, etc., and I'd say it always will. If the Suns and Microsofts of the world don't start accepting this and going with the flow, they're sunk.
I mean, here I am working on my PC (which I bought and put together myself) running Gentoo (which I downloaded and didn't pay a brass farthing for). Microsoft sell as many copies of Windows as they do because they bundle them with new hardware. Who do you know who's ever bought a copy of Windows off the shelf? If the PC came out of the factory with no OS and I wanted to put Windows on it, I'd ask around till I found a friend with a pirate copy - there's just no way I'd haul myself to a shop to buy one. Yeah, yeah, I know it's not right, but that's the way it is, and these guys should embrace it instead of fighting it.
No, because having an audio spectrum which is actually close to the original is much less important than having one which sounds the same to a human being. We don't understand exactly how all that masking of sounds etc. works yet, and so just because codec A replicates the frequency spread of an original piece more accurately than codec B doesn't necessarily mean that it'll sound better to you or me. This is still, to some degree, a black art. The only device which can properly measure the relative performance of the various codecs is the good old human ear. It can't be automated effectively.
It was an utter pile of shit, by all accounts. Basically, they built a show car with no regard for how to make it suitable for production, and got Lotus in to make a proper car out of it. Colin Chapman took one look at it and said "right, we'll basically have to start all over again", and it was a total rush job with nowhere near enough money spent on it. It was never meant to be made out of stainless steel, so it's slower and therefore heavier than it was meant to be. The perfect illustration of what a balls-up it was is the windows on the gullwing doors - it didn't occur to anybody until very late on that the windows couldn't actually be opened because of the door design, so they had to cut out those little windows-within-windows you can see if you look at the photos on the auction page.
I worked on something similar once. Used a fairly obscure mathematical technique known as formal concept analysis to group objects (which were documents in this system) according to their relationships to each other. Each document would be defined in terms of keywords (which were generated using an automatic text summarisation tool) and the system would output a graphical representation of the relationships between them, with the most general documents at one end, and the most common topics at the other. If you want to find out more, look up formal concept analysis and it should be fairly apparent how it would've worked.
I extended the basic technique, which usually produces "concept lattices", to have different strengths of links, and made it all work in an oh-so-1998 3D environment. There was a load of potential in it, but it was just something I knocked up in a summer placement and I don't think anything major was done with it.
For "estimate" read "pure finger-in-the-air guesswork", taking advantage of the fact that some people will accept just about anything. I mean, that stat's right up there with that nonsense about swallowing spiders in your sleep in terms of corroborating evidence, yet you parrot it because it ties in with your feelings on the matter. Who came up with this estimate, I wonder? It's a bit like far-right politicians claiming n illegal immigrants enter the country every year - how could anybody know? Yet people will believe them, because they want to.
That's not a fair comparison. Toyota didn't invent the robot, but this is nonetheless an example of them investing money in technology which might not bear fruit for a long time. Ditto Microsoft and, say, the Xbox.
Yes, but that approach has its advantages. You really learn about how your system works. I always used to use SuSE until I had to try Gentoo out on a Mini-ITX system because I couldn't even get SuSE to start its installation process. It was an absolute nightmate at first, but now I'm so much more knowledgeable about where all sorts of system files are located, what they do and how to change them to do different things. And the instructions provided are brilliant - if you just follow them, you'll get your system up and working. Sure, it's not as easy as pointing and clicking, but it's just following a process, you don't actually have to do a huge amount of thinking.
I'm a total convert now, because the advantages far outweigh the initial inconvenience. When you've done it once, you're away, and every time I've done it since (I've done four installs now) I seem to have managed it in half the time. I've got a system into a usable state in just a couple of hours recently, and it feels like my system because I made it myself from the ground up - you can't put a price on that sense of pride you get from seeing it finally up and running.
Actually, I'm surprised at him, really. He goes on about "religious wars, the Inquisition, the Crusades" as justification for his point. I'd expect a man of his intelligence and insight to realise that if man hadn't used religion as an excuse for this despicable behaviour, we'd have used something else instead. It's not religion, Arthur, it's one set of people perceiving themselves as different from (and by implication superior to) another, and it's a story as old as time. I'm a bit disappointed that he's taken such a simplistic viewpoint on the matter.
Yes, they do, and this is a major drawback with electronic voting systems - how do you spoil your ballot paper? If they included a "none of the above" option, that would be fine, but the fact is, as they stand, they are not equivalent to a standard ballot paper because you are denied this option.
Can't agree. If none of the candidates deserve your vote on merit, don't vote. Otherwise you're giving these people a mandate to carry out policies you never approved of. And what's more, since you gave them their vote without them having to earn it, why should they take any notice of what you have to say either before or after the election? If you want politicians to take notice of what you have to say, the thing to do is to deprive them of your vote. Tactical voting is the cause of much of the complacency and arrogance exhibited by politicians - if they're confident of getting enough votes to get in, either because of entrenched voting habits or because the opposition are all idiots, why bother trying to appeal to people?
Vote for the people who represent you. If nobody represents you, don't vote.
Trial-and-error will suffice for them. But can anybody tell me what the hell that metal ring that comes in the same bag as the screws is for? You know the thing, it's big enough to put your middle finger through the middle of, about half a centimetre thick, and has curved edges.
I'm sure I'm going to look stupid here when somebody tells me, but I've never worked out what it's for. It seems completely superflous to me. And maybe that site tells me, but it's smoked...
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, they do. I've just been sitting here reading a review of the new Seat Ibiza Cupra diesel, which produces 160bhp from its 1.9-litre engine, and enough torque to pull an oil tanker. It'll do 0-62mph in 7.6 seconds and its average MPG (I think this is comprised of something like 50% town driving, 25% at a constant 56mph, and 25% at a constant 75mph) of 56.0 (that's a UK gallon which, unlike just about everything else, is bigger than its US equivalent ;-)). The current Prius scores 65.7 on the same measure, but 56 is nothing to be ashamed of, and it'd be one hell of a lot nicer to drive. It's time car buyers in the US started demanding the sort of diesel engines widely available in Europe nowadays.
And yet the Toyota Prius sells by the thousand in the US, and here's a car which is admittedly clever technologically, but isn't as economical as a decent modern diesel engine, and certainly doesn't drive as well, yet costs thousands more than a conventional-engined equivalent. In the UK they sell maybe a couple of dozen a year, no exaggeration, presumably because they're basically pointless. So why are Americans willing to shell out far more than they'll ever recoup in fuel savings on a Prius, but won't spend a few hundred more on a diesel which would not only drive a lot better than any hybrid, but in many ways will perform better than a petrol-engined equivalent?
Wile E. Coyote's put in his order, then, has he?
Or Dover Sole. It's an outrage.
BT is a very dumb company. Remember the whole hyperlink patent lawsuit? Everybody in the company with half a brain was screaming "what are you DOING?", but one team of fuckwit lawyers pushed it through with seemingly no consideration for the wider effect it would have on the world's perception of the company.
It's not an Easter Egg, BMW made quite a big deal about it when they launched the car, because they knew it'd appeal to the grown-up boy-racers that buy M3s. It's really not recommended unless your dad owns Goodyear, though.
I might be barking up completely the wrong tree here, but could it be that cars in the US output more power simply because the petrol's of a lower octane? If I remember rightly, the different grades available there are 87, 89 and 93. Here in the UK the lowest grade is 95, and I run my car on 98. The difference between 95 and 98 is quite noticeable, so is it any wonder that when you're running your car on 87-octane fuel, it's a bit wheezy?
(As an aside, it's funny that nobody mentions that our go-juice is of a higher quality when comparing prices on either side of the pond...)
For one simple reason. Hardware's tangible, software isn't. No matter what these guys do, people will always struggle to get their heads round the idea of paying for software, because it doesn't take up space in their room and can be reproduced ad infinitum. Same goes for music, films, etc., and I'd say it always will. If the Suns and Microsofts of the world don't start accepting this and going with the flow, they're sunk.
I mean, here I am working on my PC (which I bought and put together myself) running Gentoo (which I downloaded and didn't pay a brass farthing for). Microsoft sell as many copies of Windows as they do because they bundle them with new hardware. Who do you know who's ever bought a copy of Windows off the shelf? If the PC came out of the factory with no OS and I wanted to put Windows on it, I'd ask around till I found a friend with a pirate copy - there's just no way I'd haul myself to a shop to buy one. Yeah, yeah, I know it's not right, but that's the way it is, and these guys should embrace it instead of fighting it.
No, because having an audio spectrum which is actually close to the original is much less important than having one which sounds the same to a human being. We don't understand exactly how all that masking of sounds etc. works yet, and so just because codec A replicates the frequency spread of an original piece more accurately than codec B doesn't necessarily mean that it'll sound better to you or me. This is still, to some degree, a black art. The only device which can properly measure the relative performance of the various codecs is the good old human ear. It can't be automated effectively.
It was an utter pile of shit, by all accounts. Basically, they built a show car with no regard for how to make it suitable for production, and got Lotus in to make a proper car out of it. Colin Chapman took one look at it and said "right, we'll basically have to start all over again", and it was a total rush job with nowhere near enough money spent on it. It was never meant to be made out of stainless steel, so it's slower and therefore heavier than it was meant to be. The perfect illustration of what a balls-up it was is the windows on the gullwing doors - it didn't occur to anybody until very late on that the windows couldn't actually be opened because of the door design, so they had to cut out those little windows-within-windows you can see if you look at the photos on the auction page.
I worked on something similar once. Used a fairly obscure mathematical technique known as formal concept analysis to group objects (which were documents in this system) according to their relationships to each other. Each document would be defined in terms of keywords (which were generated using an automatic text summarisation tool) and the system would output a graphical representation of the relationships between them, with the most general documents at one end, and the most common topics at the other. If you want to find out more, look up formal concept analysis and it should be fairly apparent how it would've worked.
I extended the basic technique, which usually produces "concept lattices", to have different strengths of links, and made it all work in an oh-so-1998 3D environment. There was a load of potential in it, but it was just something I knocked up in a summer placement and I don't think anything major was done with it.
Sennheiser MX500.
End of.
For "estimate" read "pure finger-in-the-air guesswork", taking advantage of the fact that some people will accept just about anything. I mean, that stat's right up there with that nonsense about swallowing spiders in your sleep in terms of corroborating evidence, yet you parrot it because it ties in with your feelings on the matter. Who came up with this estimate, I wonder? It's a bit like far-right politicians claiming n illegal immigrants enter the country every year - how could anybody know? Yet people will believe them, because they want to.
Gun crime's low in Switzerland because people are all well enough off that they've no need to go and mug or rob others. Simple as that.
On the other hand, the number of people who commit suicide using the gun which the state requires them to have is out of all proportion.
That's not a fair comparison. Toyota didn't invent the robot, but this is nonetheless an example of them investing money in technology which might not bear fruit for a long time. Ditto Microsoft and, say, the Xbox.
Yes, but that approach has its advantages. You really learn about how your system works. I always used to use SuSE until I had to try Gentoo out on a Mini-ITX system because I couldn't even get SuSE to start its installation process. It was an absolute nightmate at first, but now I'm so much more knowledgeable about where all sorts of system files are located, what they do and how to change them to do different things. And the instructions provided are brilliant - if you just follow them, you'll get your system up and working. Sure, it's not as easy as pointing and clicking, but it's just following a process, you don't actually have to do a huge amount of thinking.
I'm a total convert now, because the advantages far outweigh the initial inconvenience. When you've done it once, you're away, and every time I've done it since (I've done four installs now) I seem to have managed it in half the time. I've got a system into a usable state in just a couple of hours recently, and it feels like my system because I made it myself from the ground up - you can't put a price on that sense of pride you get from seeing it finally up and running.
The great thing about the Internet is that it means everybody can publish.
The worst thing about the Internet is that it means everybody can publish.
I don't think they're ready for this jelly...
Actually, I'm surprised at him, really. He goes on about "religious wars, the Inquisition, the Crusades" as justification for his point. I'd expect a man of his intelligence and insight to realise that if man hadn't used religion as an excuse for this despicable behaviour, we'd have used something else instead. It's not religion, Arthur, it's one set of people perceiving themselves as different from (and by implication superior to) another, and it's a story as old as time. I'm a bit disappointed that he's taken such a simplistic viewpoint on the matter.
Well, you could stream a hundred-odd DVDs down a gigabit connection all at once, so I'd imagine it would cover most things you could dream up.
Yes, they do, and this is a major drawback with electronic voting systems - how do you spoil your ballot paper? If they included a "none of the above" option, that would be fine, but the fact is, as they stand, they are not equivalent to a standard ballot paper because you are denied this option.
Can't agree. If none of the candidates deserve your vote on merit, don't vote. Otherwise you're giving these people a mandate to carry out policies you never approved of. And what's more, since you gave them their vote without them having to earn it, why should they take any notice of what you have to say either before or after the election? If you want politicians to take notice of what you have to say, the thing to do is to deprive them of your vote. Tactical voting is the cause of much of the complacency and arrogance exhibited by politicians - if they're confident of getting enough votes to get in, either because of entrenched voting habits or because the opposition are all idiots, why bother trying to appeal to people?
Vote for the people who represent you. If nobody represents you, don't vote.
It's because it's pronounces "Fick", which of course is a rather word German verb pertaining to the act of copulation.
Trial-and-error will suffice for them. But can anybody tell me what the hell that metal ring that comes in the same bag as the screws is for? You know the thing, it's big enough to put your middle finger through the middle of, about half a centimetre thick, and has curved edges.
I'm sure I'm going to look stupid here when somebody tells me, but I've never worked out what it's for. It seems completely superflous to me. And maybe that site tells me, but it's smoked...
I just built two whole systems using the screws from just one case...