But still, are they that much more difficult to work on than computers?
Computers are easy; my car otoh, well, I took it to a certified machanic to find out why my engine light was on, and even he couldn't figure it out. He reset it, two weeks later it came back on. Now I'm just ignoring it until I have to have it towed back.
I never skinned my knuckles working on a computer (knock on wood). From Good Riddance to Bad Tech (yeah, it's mine)
The automobile distributor and points Unless you are a classic car collector, or a geezer, you have no idea how much of a pain in the butt these things were. About every oil change or two, your car's performance and gas mileage would go down, and you would need a tuneup.
To tune your car, you could simply hire someone. That is, if you were a sissy.
A real man changed his own oil and tuned his own car up. You could tell a real man by the scars and scabs on his knuckles from working on his car.
First you had to change all eight of your spark plugs. What? You only have six? Pussy! Make sure you don't get the wires on wrong, or if your car will start at all, it will lurch and backfire and run like crap.
Then you had to take off the distributor cap, usually held on by two clips that would cut your fingers and were harder than a rubic cube solution to get clipped back on.
Under the distributor cap was the contact points. These had to be replaced. Then you had to adjust the gap on the points. Oh shit, I forgot to adjust the gaps on the spark plugs... do that all over again...
Now that the plugs are gapped and the points are replaced and gapped, you put the new distributor cap on... Come on... SHIT... GOD DAMNED PIECE OF SHI... ok, there it goes. Good. Gimme a bandaid, would ya?
Now you have to set the points' dwell. What's "dwell?" Beats the hell out of me, maybe it's the amount of time the points are closed. But you have to set it with a dwell meter or your car will run like it's powered by gerbils and will suck gas like Bush sucks at being President.
Then you have to get out your strobe and set the timing. You loosen the distributor, point your strobe at the mark on the... wait a minute... I can't see the damned mark. Stop the engine, would you?
Damn, it's all rusty and... to hell with it, start it back up and I'll time the God damned thing by ear, piece of shit...
Thank God and modern electronics for electronic ignition!
Actualy I believe he was talking to you southerners, since up here in the northern hemisphere it's too dmaned hot for us to be urgent, excited, or interested in anything except staying cool.
Nuclear is the only form of power that isn't solar power. The sun powers the wind; wind power is solar power. It powers evaporation that causes the rivers to run, so hydroelectric is solar. Plants are made of sunshine, so biodiesel is solar. Oil and coal are from prehistoric plants so they, too, are solar.
Oops, I forgot tides. If you get your electricity from tidal generators, then I guess you're using Moonal power.
I'm two years younger than your parents, and cars have changed drastically since then. I bought a '69 Mustang in '71, and I spent more time under the hood than in the driver's seat - Found On Road Dead, Fix Or Repair Daily (but First On Race Day). The engine was good, it was all the crap hanging from it that kept going titsup; water pumps, fuel pumps, starters, etc. I changed all those parts, and more, on a regular basis. I owned a tach, dwell meter, ratchet wrenches, and used them. Tuning up a car was easy. Changing the oil took less than ten minutes. The only hassle about a malfunctioning starter or water pump or other engine accessory was the replacement part's cost, which was far less than the labor, should you hire a real mechinaic.
Those cars had room to work, and they were simple; they were designed to be easy to service. The new cars aren't.
Older cars' fuel pumps were under the hood. Newer cars have to have the fuel tank removed to change the fuel pump. My '02 Concorde's battery is buried, I wouldn't even know how to get to it to change it. Water pump? Don't even know where it is.
Distributors have been replaced by electronic ignition. Carburators have been replaced by fuel injection. You need expensive, proprietary diagnostic computers just to figure out what's wrong with the damned things, and have the training to use them; the car has its own computers to interface with them. Today's cars are indeed too complicated for anyone but trained professionals to repair or service, and that fact is by design. An easy to maintain modern car could be engineered, but there is no incentive to produce such a car.
Mind you, this isn't a geezer rant about how much better cars used to be; I like my car a hell of a lot better than that damned mustang. It's six years old (bought used) and aside from oil changes, etc it has needed no maintenance. In 1970 a six year old car was a lump of broken rusty junk.
Gas engines are at best about 30% efficient... as in only 30% of the energy consumed actually goes to making momentum for moving the car.
And every time you touch the brake pedal, your efficiencey goes down even farther, as you just converted the momentum that you converted that 30% of your gasoline to, to waste heat.
Nothing drags your mileage down like stop signs, tailgating, and not taking your foot off the accelerator when the light ahead is red.
That's one plus for a hybrid - rather than its brakes converting momentum to heat, it recycles it by converting it back to electricity, which can be reconverted to momentum.
Given that I have time to go to bars and drink, is my money really all that hard earned? Uh, yeah, it is. I go to the bar after work. Not everybody limits their slashdot postings to while they're on the job.
You say "Facts are not copyrightable" which is true. However, more than a few don't realise that the way those facts are presented IS copyrightable.
If you plagarize someone directly, even factual material, you violate copyright. Isaac Asimov's Asimov On Numbers has nothing but fact; but distributing the book without the dead doctor's permission violates his copyright. If you rewrite the book IN YOUR OWN WORDS then you are not violating copyright.
I say this because about ten years ago I collected Quake and Quake 2 console commands and cheats, tested them all out, and listed them in tabular form with explanations in my own words of all of them. It was one of the things that made my Quake site stand out, and resutled in quite a bit of its popularity.
I believe that at the time it was the most plagairized piece of work on the internet. Some folks thought it was OK to lift that page, word for word and type for typo, and present it as their own without even attribution.
Archive.org has my permission to post it. Nobody else does - if they want to post it they can ask my permission.
I only have a "slow it down" attitude toward those who blast past me doing 75 or more. Note that I don't actively try to slow them down, I just shake my head, then laugh if I see a cop car behind them.
I keep my "road hazard" with the legal limit, both upper and lower, and I keep to the right except when I'm passing. Note that it is my LEGAL RIGHT to drive 50. It is NOT your legal right to drive 75.
Since we don't live in the same country, I fail to see how my health and risks affect you, and vice versa. And here I thought we were the only first world country without universal health care.
I agree with you about the cars - government should be there to protect me against manufacturers as well as burglars.
Someone posted a link in my journal http://www.mcwilliams.com/books/aint/toc.htm I found it interesting, and it answers the helmet question very well (although the journal topic was illegal drug use)
Please mod the parent (me) down; before the bolded word "adjective" there should have been the word "democratic" that linked to the definition. And I previewed twice, too!
Damn, I got a case of the Arthur Dents today. Hope the Vogons aren't close...
Odd how a completely wrong comment can be modded informative. From the dictionary:
democrat -noun 1. an advocate of democracy. 2. a person who believes in the political or social equality of all people. 3. (initial capital letter) Politics. a. a member of the Democratic party.
b. a member of the Democratic-Republican party. 4. Also called democrat wagon. a high, lightweight, horse-drawn wagon, usually having two seats. [Origin: 1780-90; democratic -adjective 1. pertaining to or of the nature of democracy or a democracy. 2. pertaining to or characterized by the principle of political or social equality for all: democratic treatment. 3. advocating or upholding democracy. 4. (initial capital letter) Politics.
a. of, pertaining to, or characteristic of the Democratic party.
b. of, pertaining to, or belonging to the Democratic-Republican party. Also, democratical. [Origin: 1595-1605;
If he crashed and broke his neck and became a quadraplegic he would be even more expensive to care for, so by your logic we should outlaw motorcycles. And since people become brain damaged in auto accidents too, we should make automobile drivers and passengers wear helmets, too. But again, there are going to still be people crippled in auto accidents, so we should outlaw cars.
Following your logic leads to extreme absurdity. In the US we have no universal health care, so my health should be of no concern to my government.
1. Why is it against the rules for a baseball pinch-hitter to take steroids or HGH to improve his muscle strength, but it's perfectly legal for him to get LASIK surgery to improve his eyesight to BETTER THAN 20/20?
2. They say "Babe Ruth did it on beer and hot dogs", how do you know? Cocaine was available, and one of its effects is temporarily increased strength, speed, concentration, and eye-hand coordination. They had no drug tests in Ruth's time, for all anyone knows he was a cokehead.
You can have that attitude and that big fucking metal sign. I'd rather not be a nanny stater and try to run other people's lives.
I don't want a nanny state. If you want to shoot heroin or smoke crack that's your business as far as I'm concerned. I don't need government to protect me from myself.
But I don't want anarchy, either - I need government to protect me from assholes like you, who will steal, speed, drive drunk, etc. When you endanger my safety or property, that's when I need government. That big metal sign isn't from the nanny state, it protects me from irresponsible fucktard anarchists like you. SLOW IT DOWN, DUMBASS.
The majority of car accidents sent to us seem to be caused by bad driving: driver inattention, failure to merge or yield, speeding, racing, aggressive driving and failure to exercise care in passing. Accidents sent to this site that can be attributed to specific causes aside from poor driving itself include: falling asleep; weather usually (Snow, Ice or Rain- a few related to fog); alcohol, drugs and drunk driving; driver distractions including cell phones, insects in the car, playing music; collisions with animals in the road, usually deer, but also birds, horses, cows and dogs.
Car Accident Causes Many factors can result in a car accident, and sometimes multiple causes contribute to a single car accident. Car accident factors include the following:
Driver distraction, including fiddling with technical devices, talking with passengers, eating or grooming in the car, dealing with children or pets in the back seat, or attempting to retrieve dropped items.
Driver impairment by tiredness, illness, alcohol or other drugs, both legal and illegal. MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) is an organization made up of the families of the dead who were killed in car accidents caused by drunk drivers.
Mechanical failure, including flat tires or tires blowing out, brake failure, axle failure, steering mechanism failure. Road conditions, including foreign obstacles or substances on the road surface; rain, ice, or snow making the roads slick; road damage including pot holes.
Speed exceeding safe conditions, such as the speed for which the road was designed, the road condition, the weather, the speed of surrounding motorists, and so on.
Road design and layout. Some roads are notorious for being accident "black spots" for a whole variety of reasons, many subtle and not necessarily immediately obvious. These include alignment, visibility, camber and surface conditions, road markings, etc. Finding out the causes for a repeated series of accidents on the same stretch of road is becoming a science in itself.
Not a single one of the top articles in a google search for "auto accident causes" listed "speed variance". Slow down, damn it. On the interstate in Illinois, you are legally allowed to drive between 45 and 65. The police in Illinois will pull you over if you are doing over 69, and will ticket you if you have a history of speeding or are doing over 74 (an Illinois State Trooper told me that).
When gas gets rediculously expensive I drive 50 when I travel to St Louis, and my gas mileage raises from the 27-30 mpg I get at 68 mph to 33-35 mpg. Your whizzing past at eighty is dangerous, and if I'm in an accident with you, know that I'm hiring my own lawyer rather than using my insurance company's lawyer, and going I'm for punitive damages. Your insurance won't cover the punitive damages.
Now that my memory was jogged it was indeed Diamox. The only instrument they used to guage the pressure was a Tono-Pen (and I only know that from your description of it).
My other UID (I lost the password years ago and changed email addresses several times) is five digits. By "us" I mean he is a nerd, even if he IS a lawyer.
The fact that I used a slide rule and hacked hardware in high school makes me a nerd, not the fact that I come to slashdot. I agree that a lot of the people here aren't; by "us" I don't mean slashdot posters, I mean nerds.
Ray is my third favorite lawyer, right behind my divorce lawyer and my bankruptcy lawyer, both of whom saved me tins of money.
I found a large list that is broken into the two major parties - the Democrats and Republicans; the three major "third parties" - the Libertarians, the Greens, and the Constitution Party. There are a long list of other paties running.
The corporate media tells you that a vote for anyone but a Republican or Democrat is wasted because the others have no chance of winning. Well, since I think Obama has no chance of winning I should go ahead and vote for McCain? That's just retarded!
The Democrats and Republicans are all solidly for the Bono Act (AKA the "steamboat willie preservation act"), DMCA, PATRIOT act, FISA; are for outlawing drugs, prostitution, and gambling, while I am against all of these things.
Why should I waste my vote on a candidate whose views are diametrically opposed to my own?
I know the Libertarians are on the ballot in 49 states, and IINM the other two "third parties" are on the ballot in enough states to win should they carry them.
Right now the only major party candidate in any race I can in good conscience vote for is Dick Durbin.
Slashdot Mirror
But still, are they that much more difficult to work on than computers?
Computers are easy; my car otoh, well, I took it to a certified machanic to find out why my engine light was on, and even he couldn't figure it out. He reset it, two weeks later it came back on. Now I'm just ignoring it until I have to have it towed back.
I never skinned my knuckles working on a computer (knock on wood). From Good Riddance to Bad Tech (yeah, it's mine)
Actualy I believe he was talking to you southerners, since up here in the northern hemisphere it's too dmaned hot for us to be urgent, excited, or interested in anything except staying cool.
we spend most of our wanking hours on-line
Fixed it for you! Huh? Eye yam knew hear? Eye yews a spill chucker!
Wikipedia? Bah, I do my research using Uncyclopedia!
Nuclear is the only form of power that isn't solar power. The sun powers the wind; wind power is solar power. It powers evaporation that causes the rivers to run, so hydroelectric is solar. Plants are made of sunshine, so biodiesel is solar. Oil and coal are from prehistoric plants so they, too, are solar.
Oops, I forgot tides. If you get your electricity from tidal generators, then I guess you're using Moonal power.
I'm two years younger than your parents, and cars have changed drastically since then. I bought a '69 Mustang in '71, and I spent more time under the hood than in the driver's seat - Found On Road Dead, Fix Or Repair Daily (but First On Race Day). The engine was good, it was all the crap hanging from it that kept going titsup; water pumps, fuel pumps, starters, etc. I changed all those parts, and more, on a regular basis. I owned a tach, dwell meter, ratchet wrenches, and used them. Tuning up a car was easy. Changing the oil took less than ten minutes. The only hassle about a malfunctioning starter or water pump or other engine accessory was the replacement part's cost, which was far less than the labor, should you hire a real mechinaic.
Those cars had room to work, and they were simple; they were designed to be easy to service. The new cars aren't.
Older cars' fuel pumps were under the hood. Newer cars have to have the fuel tank removed to change the fuel pump. My '02 Concorde's battery is buried, I wouldn't even know how to get to it to change it. Water pump? Don't even know where it is.
Distributors have been replaced by electronic ignition. Carburators have been replaced by fuel injection. You need expensive, proprietary diagnostic computers just to figure out what's wrong with the damned things, and have the training to use them; the car has its own computers to interface with them. Today's cars are indeed too complicated for anyone but trained professionals to repair or service, and that fact is by design. An easy to maintain modern car could be engineered, but there is no incentive to produce such a car.
Mind you, this isn't a geezer rant about how much better cars used to be; I like my car a hell of a lot better than that damned mustang. It's six years old (bought used) and aside from oil changes, etc it has needed no maintenance. In 1970 a six year old car was a lump of broken rusty junk.
Gas engines are at best about 30% efficient... as in only 30% of the energy consumed actually goes to making momentum for moving the car.
And every time you touch the brake pedal, your efficiencey goes down even farther, as you just converted the momentum that you converted that 30% of your gasoline to, to waste heat.
Nothing drags your mileage down like stop signs, tailgating, and not taking your foot off the accelerator when the light ahead is red.
That's one plus for a hybrid - rather than its brakes converting momentum to heat, it recycles it by converting it back to electricity, which can be reconverted to momentum.
Given that I have time to go to bars and drink, is my money really all that hard earned? Uh, yeah, it is. I go to the bar after work. Not everybody limits their slashdot postings to while they're on the job.
You say "Facts are not copyrightable" which is true. However, more than a few don't realise that the way those facts are presented IS copyrightable.
If you plagarize someone directly, even factual material, you violate copyright. Isaac Asimov's Asimov On Numbers has nothing but fact; but distributing the book without the dead doctor's permission violates his copyright. If you rewrite the book IN YOUR OWN WORDS then you are not violating copyright.
I say this because about ten years ago I collected Quake and Quake 2 console commands and cheats, tested them all out, and listed them in tabular form with explanations in my own words of all of them. It was one of the things that made my Quake site stand out, and resutled in quite a bit of its popularity.
I believe that at the time it was the most plagairized piece of work on the internet. Some folks thought it was OK to lift that page, word for word and type for typo, and present it as their own without even attribution.
Archive.org has my permission to post it. Nobody else does - if they want to post it they can ask my permission.
I only have a "slow it down" attitude toward those who blast past me doing 75 or more. Note that I don't actively try to slow them down, I just shake my head, then laugh if I see a cop car behind them.
I keep my "road hazard" with the legal limit, both upper and lower, and I keep to the right except when I'm passing. Note that it is my LEGAL RIGHT to drive 50. It is NOT your legal right to drive 75.
Since we don't live in the same country, I fail to see how my health and risks affect you, and vice versa. And here I thought we were the only first world country without universal health care.
I agree with you about the cars - government should be there to protect me against manufacturers as well as burglars.
Someone posted a link in my journal http://www.mcwilliams.com/books/aint/toc.htm
I found it interesting, and it answers the helmet question very well (although the journal topic was illegal drug use)
Hey, DUMBASS, have you been paying attention?
Since I haven't gotten a ticket or been in an accident in well over a decade, yes I have been paying attention. How's YOUR driving record?
Please mod the parent (me) down; before the bolded word "adjective" there should have been the word "democratic" that linked to the definition. And I previewed twice, too!
Damn, I got a case of the Arthur Dents today. Hope the Vogons aren't close...
Odd how a completely wrong comment can be modded informative. From the dictionary:
If he crashed and broke his neck and became a quadraplegic he would be even more expensive to care for, so by your logic we should outlaw motorcycles. And since people become brain damaged in auto accidents too, we should make automobile drivers and passengers wear helmets, too. But again, there are going to still be people crippled in auto accidents, so we should outlaw cars.
Following your logic leads to extreme absurdity. In the US we have no universal health care, so my health should be of no concern to my government.
1. Why is it against the rules for a baseball pinch-hitter to take steroids or HGH to improve his muscle strength, but it's perfectly legal for him to get LASIK surgery to improve his eyesight to BETTER THAN 20/20?
2. They say "Babe Ruth did it on beer and hot dogs", how do you know? Cocaine was available, and one of its effects is temporarily increased strength, speed, concentration, and eye-hand coordination. They had no drug tests in Ruth's time, for all anyone knows he was a cokehead.
I call bullshit, at least if you're in the US.
1. If the cop doesn't show up you win by default.
2. Fines for running a stop sign are 1/10th or less than your rediculous $1200-$1180.
You can have that attitude and that big fucking metal sign. I'd rather not be a nanny stater and try to run other people's lives.
I don't want a nanny state. If you want to shoot heroin or smoke crack that's your business as far as I'm concerned. I don't need government to protect me from myself.
But I don't want anarchy, either - I need government to protect me from assholes like you, who will steal, speed, drive drunk, etc. When you endanger my safety or property, that's when I need government. That big metal sign isn't from the nanny state, it protects me from irresponsible fucktard anarchists like you. SLOW IT DOWN, DUMBASS.
Speed variance is a bigger killer than raw speed
Do you have data to back up your absurd claim? Because a quick google search says you're talking out of your ass. http://www.car-accidents.com/car-accident-causes.html
http://www.weitzlux.com/freecaraccidentattorneyevaluation_766.html
Not a single one of the top articles in a google search for "auto accident causes" listed "speed variance". Slow down, damn it. On the interstate in Illinois, you are legally allowed to drive between 45 and 65. The police in Illinois will pull you over if you are doing over 69, and will ticket you if you have a history of speeding or are doing over 74 (an Illinois State Trooper told me that).
When gas gets rediculously expensive I drive 50 when I travel to St Louis, and my gas mileage raises from the 27-30 mpg I get at 68 mph to 33-35 mpg. Your whizzing past at eighty is dangerous, and if I'm in an accident with you, know that I'm hiring my own lawyer rather than using my insurance company's lawyer, and going I'm for punitive damages. Your insurance won't cover the punitive damages.
I guess you don't have any Russian ancestors who immigrated to the United States.
My anscestors were Irish, but you haven't heard me calling for war against England for their opression of the Irish.
Now that my memory was jogged it was indeed Diamox. The only instrument they used to guage the pressure was a Tono-Pen (and I only know that from your description of it).
Very informative, thank you.
My other UID (I lost the password years ago and changed email addresses several times) is five digits. By "us" I mean he is a nerd, even if he IS a lawyer.
The fact that I used a slide rule and hacked hardware in high school makes me a nerd, not the fact that I come to slashdot. I agree that a lot of the people here aren't; by "us" I don't mean slashdot posters, I mean nerds.
Ray is my third favorite lawyer, right behind my divorce lawyer and my bankruptcy lawyer, both of whom saved me tins of money.
Isn't that spelled "USA Toady"?
Actually, "Mighty Yar" is right when (s)he says "There are at least 13 people running - at least according to Wikipedia".
I found a large list that is broken into the two major parties - the Democrats and Republicans; the three major "third parties" - the Libertarians, the Greens, and the Constitution Party. There are a long list of other paties running.
The corporate media tells you that a vote for anyone but a Republican or Democrat is wasted because the others have no chance of winning. Well, since I think Obama has no chance of winning I should go ahead and vote for McCain? That's just retarded!
The Democrats and Republicans are all solidly for the Bono Act (AKA the "steamboat willie preservation act"), DMCA, PATRIOT act, FISA; are for outlawing drugs, prostitution, and gambling, while I am against all of these things.
Why should I waste my vote on a candidate whose views are diametrically opposed to my own?
I know the Libertarians are on the ballot in 49 states, and IINM the other two "third parties" are on the ballot in enough states to win should they carry them.
Right now the only major party candidate in any race I can in good conscience vote for is Dick Durbin.
Considering how close the S is to the E, I'm just glad I didn't accidentally type that!