I think you mean MCI. KCI is the airport in Kon, Indonesia.
Nope. I meant to say KCI. Here in Kansas City, we call "Kansas City International" KCI airport. Nobody in Kansas City calls it MCI. Yes, I'm well aware that the official formal designation is MCI as I have flown out of KCI many times.
This is about "Well, I can layover in Atlanta, or I can layover in Detroit. Atlanta is a pain in the ass to check my email, so let's go through Detroit".
This is why I prefer to go via Singapore than any Australian airport. Not only do you get free WiFi but also a much nicer terminal that has more facilities and is easy to find your way around.
What if you're in a city like Sydney, where there are mazes of roads underground? You phone GPS won't work there.
If you're phone cant get a GPS signal, neither can your car. It will be equally as stuffed.
Also phones can handle the loss of a GPS signal. My Galaxy Nexus seemed to handle it just fine through the tunnels of Sydney using Google Maps for navigation.
How about countries like Japan, where they have the VICS network that gives road users helpful information like road works and traffic congestion via microwave, infra-red and FM radio data?
Phones are capable of picking that up as well. In fact, my phone can use applications that go beyond the functionality of these systems.
You cellphone can't do that, nor can it do automated toll road payments.
Actually it can and does. But most toll roads use your number plate these days.
It doesn't offer handy features like trip/fuel economy displays either.
I've used Torque in cars that do not have fancy on board computers. It provides a hell of a lot more info than just fuel economy/trip displays.
Besides this, any car from 2008 onwards has a fuel efficiency display and as for a trip display... every car from the late 80's onwards.
And unlike your "infotainment" system, my phone is upgradeable and transferable to my new vehicle. Your infotainment system has been forgotten about by the manufacturer before your car leaves the dealer. So you're stuck with a unit that is not user upgradeable and completely useless 3 years later. Not only that, they have the most useless interfaces known to man. Who at BMW thought the knob to control iDrive was a good idea?
As far as I can see, that solves my infotainment "needs." What exactly am I missing out on?
This.
My car was made in 2002, the "in car entertainment" was also constructed in 2002, it was made by a company called Garrett and the model number is GT2540R. It's a turbocharger, attached to an SR20DE engine and six speed manual transmission. That's entertainment, the joy of the drive.
If you dont enjoy driving, it's time for you to start saving for the Google autonomous car which you can outfit with your garish curved, oversized 4K TV to watch Days Of Our Lives on.
Tell me how this differs from public statements made by Microsoft, Samsung, Google, Oracle or any other company?
Microsoft: Windows 8 is the best operating system released to date.
Google: The Nexus 5 is the most advanced smartphone on the market today.
Samsung: The Galaxy S continues to grow by leaps and bounds with the latest release, the S5.
Apple: Andoid users bought the phones by mistake.
Sorry, but you're wrong. Most companies talk up their own products as opposed to trying to drag down the competition. However Apple needs to do this in order to deflect from the fact that Android eclipsed IOS in features, functionality and ease of use years ago.
The only exception would be Oracle, ironically enough run by Steve Job's best mate. However I've still never seen a press release telling me that people buy MS SQL by mistake. Sure there's plenty of white papers explaining why Oracle is better than MS SQL, but none trying to insult my intelligence.
Believe it or not, there are people out there who don't know and don't care about some obscure British sitcom that was cancelled twenty years ago. Lots of people just can't stand sitcoms, period.
Red Dwarf? Obscure?
Its as obscure as Monty Python, smeg head.
When I was in rural Ethiopia a few years ago with about 20 other Americans, everyone was passing around the 3 phones that actually worked. They were all iPhones and all AT&T. My Verizon phone worked great as an MP3 player but that's about it. My wifes sprint phone would crash constantly and couldn't even be used for that (it was a dumbphone) I was told that the only international carrier that would work there was AT&T.
Most T-Mo phones will work too.
This is because Verizon and Sprint use CDMA which practically no-one else in the world uses. Most of the world uses the GSM standard.
It's not restricted to Iphones, most Android phones and non-smartphones from AT&T or T-Mobile will work also.
For a phone to work everywhere you want a quad band 2G transmitter and a tri band 3G using 850/900/2100 MHz... Realistically I got by all over the world using a GSM Nokia 6500c that had quad band 2G and the only 3G frequency it worked on was 2100. The phone worked in every country I tried it in for 6 years. The only reason it stopped is because it got pinched (so its probably still going like a train).
She would never pass the credit check would be the main reason.
Our american IT director had a hell of a job getting a UK phone as no one would give him a contract, he went prepaid in the end.
Pre-paid/PAYG (Pay As You Go) isn't bad value outside the US. One of the things that struck me as pants on head retarded in the US is that the cheapest pre-paid plan AT&T offered was US$45 and only gave me 200 MB of data. I'm on pre-paid here in Australia and that's with Australia's most expensive telco, Telstra. For A$30 I get 400 mb data and the option to get up to 1GB more for $0 extra (you can use the original $30 credit to buy option packs of data, minutes or SMS). This is far better value for me than going on a post paid plan because I dont make that many calls (3-4 a month) but use a lot of data.
With O2 in the UK, for 15 pounds you get 200 minutes, 2000 SMS and 1 GB of data on a pre-paid plan.
I think there's a case to be made that genetically being human is far less important to being "human" than the shared culture we've developed. Organically laying out a clone of yourself is far less like yourself than raising an adopted child. This kind of program, while inspired, and theoretically plausible, doesn't actually achieve what we want to achieve.
Sci-Fi authors have explored the idea of establishing an interstellar colony using cloned humans, you can store the information very densely without the need for large and power hungry life support or suspended animation systems. This also gets around the problem of interstellar distances, if we could build a ship that goes 0.5 the speed of light the next nearest star is over 10 years away (taking into account acceleration time). Whilst relativistic effects will reduce the time that passes for the crew, it will still be a long journey. At our current technology, we'd be talking about a journey that would be 100's of years (we currently cant even build a ship that can get to mars and back with a human crew.
The biggest problem with seeding a colony of clones is social, rather than technical. How do you program a machine to raise humans?
I read the article, it's less colonising as it is teraforming. The authors idea is to send bacteria with human DNA, the bacteria will adapt to the environment (or die out, but lets assume it adapts), The idea is that the bacteria will at some point reform a creature from the human DNA. Given the fact that the bacteria and DNA will evolve to cope with their new environment, will the humans really be humans? I'd say no because their biology would have changed to adapt to their new planet, you wouldn't simply be able to transplant them from one world to another. They'd essentially be an offshoot of the human race, or descendants and their descendants will share a common ancestry.
I think it's safe to assume Apple wanted the Beats brand and styling, since the technology is nothing special. Beats headphones sound shit compared to much cheaper competitors, so apparently the logo is worth billions.
You see Beats sells headphones with cheap hardware worth about $50 for around $300.
Apple sells phones with cheap hardware worth about $100 for $600.
Both utilise brand over performance, style over substance and both like to give their customers a good rodgering at every opportunity. It's a marriage made in corporate heaven.
I've had to take over maintenance of a few "excel" based applications. Never. Again.
That's Excel for you.
I use a lot of scripts that are based on CSV files for input, output and storage of values. You want to know what I edit them in... Notepad. Because Excel fucks around with it too much and I'm sick of the "but this is not in our proprietary format" dialogue when closing it (it also refuses to save on exit unless I change it to.xlsx). However the biggest sin Excel does (to me) is removing leading zeros, that number has to fix a N digit mask or it will fail.
Excel has grown into a terrible tool for spreadsheets, this does not make spreadsheets bad however.
Wikipedia is great for facts. If I wanted to know what town Stalin was born in, the generals who lead the Crimean campaign in WWII or the years the Ming dynasty ruled in China, Wikipedia is the ideal place to get them. However possibly contentious topics like climate change that are subject to propaganda from all sides are a bit less trustworthy.
Wikipedia is at least well referenced in a lot of articles.
I'm a fan of the BBC too, but the GP has a point that you need to think critically of all your sources, including the ones you like.
The BBC makes screw ups too, however the main reason we know what they are is because they publish errata. Newscorp doesn't (if they did, half of their print/air time would be dedicated to correcting the other half).
Today's stealth fighters, early warning radar systems, satellite tracking, and advanced anti-air missile systems on land or water makes this plane nothing more than a slow moving target.
Which is why a few stealth fighters and bombers go in first, take out ALL the air defenses, THEN the B-52s go in there and carpet-bomb the hell out of the rest of the place. The B-52 is fairly slow, but that fills a role than the military badly NEEDS at times.
The heavy bomber's day has come and gone like the battleship. It's main role is demonstration, not waging war.
First off, lets ignore the fact carpet bombing has minimal effectiveness.
Most people have forgotten the last total war and only remember the wars where the enemy could not effectively fight back in the air.
The B52 has never been tested in the crucible of war, they've always been out of reach. In Vietnam, the North Vietnamese had limited to no abilities to counter or intercept B52. To imagine how a B52 would perform against an enemy that can field a full array of anti-air defences you have to go back to the B52's great, great, great granddaddy, the B17. The B17 was a very hardy, venerable aircraft but it was still shot down by the bucket loads by the Germans.
At the start of the war (WWII), 18 months before the entry of the US, the British war ministry made a calculation that their existing fleet of Blenheims and Wellingtons would be destroyed within 3 months (and that the existing designs were insufficient for the task) they immediately began producing more, this resulted in aircraft like the Mosquito and Avro Lancaster being produced. However the point is that losses were expected and replacements would be needed.
The same story was true with the B17. The B17 and Lancaster fit the bill for being capable aircraft but above that, cheap and easy to produce.
That is the problem with the B52. It's all good and well to say the current fleet is fine but the current fleet wont last six months against Russia or China if it is used. You'll need replacements and it's much faster and cheaper to build a multitude of drones than it is to build a manned heavy bomber.
A B52H has a flyaway cost of $81 million and requires 6 crew.
A MQ9 Reaper has a flyaway cost of $17 million.
A MQ1 Predator has a flyaway cost of $4.5 million.
Going by the last war, it takes a minimum of 3 months to train an aircrew.
Apple will just want you to buy all your home accessories and software via their App Store so they get a 30% cut.
Just wait till you need to replace your light bulbs...
Sadly, the light bulbs are not user-replaceable. You'll need to buy a new home.
Given how much cash Apple has and how much legal clout they have, why didn't they just buy the company out or if they wouldn't sell, sue them into oblivion until they did. Given the lopsided Apple v Samsung, dealing with a tiny upstart company is more than within their power.
So if Apple is so committed to being open, why haven't they acquired the patents and opened them?
people no longer drive sensibly: they are more aggressive with other drivers (not keeping a safe distance)
Is that why traffic deaths have consistently gone down since 20 or 30 years ago? - Killed_on_British_Roads.png
You'll find that's mainly due to crackdowns on the big killers on our roads, speed and drink driving.
The deaths on UK roads are almost 1/4 of that on US roads (2.75 vs 10.4 deaths per 100,000 pop). This is due to a combination of more stringent licensing, better training and more enforcement on speed and drink driving. Australia has similar enforcement on speed and drink driving but not the training and licensing so our deaths are only 1/2 that of the US (5.2 per 100,000 pop).
It's one thing that drives me crazy when Americans point out to cars overseas and say, "Look, how come they get cars that are so much better mileage than ours?" The truth is,
The truth is, that Europeans generally choose more fuel efficient cars to drive. Huge, un-aerodynamic, heavy, view-blocking SUV mum-tanks with massive engines to overcompensate aren't popular. Europeans will tend to drive sub-2L cars. The average European will spend less on petrol per KM than the average American despite petrol costing almost twice as much in some countries.
However in comparisons between cars made for the American market and cars made for the European market, the European engines will produce more power for less fuel with less displacement. I dont know how Americans get a whopping 270 KW out of a 6.2L V8 when Europe gets a meagre 350Kw out of a 4.5L V8 and that's considered weak. I can get 270 KW out of a 12 yr old Nissan i4 turbo (of course that would be silly, the car its in is very light so all 270KW would do is shred the back tyres).
Under-inflated tires, lousy fuel, ignored maintenance, rapid acceleration, more than one occupant / actual cargo, stop-and-go traffic, air pollution, air pressure variation, air temperature variation, elevation variation...
And these are just a few of the things that would cause your "official" MPG figures to deviate from observations.
In other words, outside laboratory conditions.
I thought it was common knowledge to ignore official fuel efficiency figures. Manufacturers will lie out of their backsides to meet emissions targets and get their cars into a lower tax bracket. Common knowledge seems to be as common as common sense.
I haven't read the What Car article, but I'm willing to bet small engined turbo's are amongst the worst offenders. Manufacturers will try to get as much of the test done before turbo engagement because once the turbo engages, fuel usage goes through the roof. A 1.4L turbo doesn't use much fuel until it hits the turbo where it will easily out drink a 2L Naturally Aspirated engine. They might even play with the boost pressure on the test car.
POS = Any point of sale (eg. cash register) system.
Windows POSReady = A version of Windows meant for a POS system (usually XP or 7).
PCI = Security guidelines that are supposed to protect debit/credit card information.
Having dealt with a lot of POS systems including Windows POSReady, the other definition, Piece Of Shit is also applicable.
In my experience, you dont need to bother trying to crack a 6 digit code on a credit card in order to get the number, most stores dont bother following any security guidelines, let alone strict ones like PCI (Payment Card Industry, not Peripheral Component Interconnect).
The worst I've seen is PCEFTPOS on an unpatched Windows XP machine (this was in 2012, they're probably still running them) that was also used by the staff to browse the internet and check their email. It wouldn't surprise me to find a lot of small chain stores to have similar setups completely swimming with malware.
Having worked with EFTPOS systems in small business, there are very good reasons why I prefer to make purchases in cash. The risk of me being robbed for the $100 I have on me is now less than the risk of me losing money due to card fraud.
No idea, but the summary mentions PCI a number of times, so at least you know you can still use your old PCI cards with it. No idea if it supports AGP though.
PCI means PCI-Compliance, in the most regard, it is VERY strict but 95% of dealers refuse to follow it's laws and conduct.
Whooosh.
That was the sound of you failing joke compliance.
The article never explains what PCI is, so to the average reader it could be Peripheral Component Interconnect, the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, the Pharmacy Council of India or maybe, just maybe Payment Card Industry.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you mean MCI. KCI is the airport in Kon, Indonesia.
Nope. I meant to say KCI. Here in Kansas City, we call "Kansas City International" KCI airport. Nobody in Kansas City calls it MCI. Yes, I'm well aware that the official formal designation is MCI as I have flown out of KCI many times.
And this is why no-one visits Kansas.
This is about "Well, I can layover in Atlanta, or I can layover in Detroit. Atlanta is a pain in the ass to check my email, so let's go through Detroit".
This is why I prefer to go via Singapore than any Australian airport. Not only do you get free WiFi but also a much nicer terminal that has more facilities and is easy to find your way around.
What if you're in a city like Sydney, where there are mazes of roads underground? You phone GPS won't work there.
If you're phone cant get a GPS signal, neither can your car. It will be equally as stuffed. Also phones can handle the loss of a GPS signal. My Galaxy Nexus seemed to handle it just fine through the tunnels of Sydney using Google Maps for navigation.
How about countries like Japan, where they have the VICS network that gives road users helpful information like road works and traffic congestion via microwave, infra-red and FM radio data?
Phones are capable of picking that up as well. In fact, my phone can use applications that go beyond the functionality of these systems.
You cellphone can't do that, nor can it do automated toll road payments.
Actually it can and does. But most toll roads use your number plate these days.
It doesn't offer handy features like trip/fuel economy displays either.
I've used Torque in cars that do not have fancy on board computers. It provides a hell of a lot more info than just fuel economy/trip displays.
Besides this, any car from 2008 onwards has a fuel efficiency display and as for a trip display... every car from the late 80's onwards.
And unlike your "infotainment" system, my phone is upgradeable and transferable to my new vehicle. Your infotainment system has been forgotten about by the manufacturer before your car leaves the dealer. So you're stuck with a unit that is not user upgradeable and completely useless 3 years later. Not only that, they have the most useless interfaces known to man. Who at BMW thought the knob to control iDrive was a good idea?
As far as I can see, that solves my infotainment "needs." What exactly am I missing out on?
This.
My car was made in 2002, the "in car entertainment" was also constructed in 2002, it was made by a company called Garrett and the model number is GT2540R. It's a turbocharger, attached to an SR20DE engine and six speed manual transmission. That's entertainment, the joy of the drive.
If you dont enjoy driving, it's time for you to start saving for the Google autonomous car which you can outfit with your garish curved, oversized 4K TV to watch Days Of Our Lives on.
And you think the Microsoft fanbois haven't? I've got news for you.
If given the choice, I'd spend eternity with Microsoft fanboys than 1 hour with Apple fanboys.
Microsoft fanboys are the least zealous of the lot.
I say this as someone who uses Linux, has a Nexus 5 and a Nexus 7.
Tell me how this differs from public statements made by Microsoft, Samsung, Google, Oracle or any other company?
Microsoft: Windows 8 is the best operating system released to date.
Google: The Nexus 5 is the most advanced smartphone on the market today.
Samsung: The Galaxy S continues to grow by leaps and bounds with the latest release, the S5.
Apple: Andoid users bought the phones by mistake.
Sorry, but you're wrong. Most companies talk up their own products as opposed to trying to drag down the competition. However Apple needs to do this in order to deflect from the fact that Android eclipsed IOS in features, functionality and ease of use years ago.
The only exception would be Oracle, ironically enough run by Steve Job's best mate. However I've still never seen a press release telling me that people buy MS SQL by mistake. Sure there's plenty of white papers explaining why Oracle is better than MS SQL, but none trying to insult my intelligence.
Believe it or not, there are people out there who don't know and don't care about some obscure British sitcom that was cancelled twenty years ago. Lots of people just can't stand sitcoms, period.
Red Dwarf? Obscure? Its as obscure as Monty Python, smeg head.
Most T-Mo phones will work too. This is because Verizon and Sprint use CDMA which practically no-one else in the world uses. Most of the world uses the GSM standard. It's not restricted to Iphones, most Android phones and non-smartphones from AT&T or T-Mobile will work also. For a phone to work everywhere you want a quad band 2G transmitter and a tri band 3G using 850/900/2100 MHz... Realistically I got by all over the world using a GSM Nokia 6500c that had quad band 2G and the only 3G frequency it worked on was 2100. The phone worked in every country I tried it in for 6 years. The only reason it stopped is because it got pinched (so its probably still going like a train).
She would never pass the credit check would be the main reason.
Our american IT director had a hell of a job getting a UK phone as no one would give him a contract, he went prepaid in the end.
Pre-paid/PAYG (Pay As You Go) isn't bad value outside the US. One of the things that struck me as pants on head retarded in the US is that the cheapest pre-paid plan AT&T offered was US$45 and only gave me 200 MB of data. I'm on pre-paid here in Australia and that's with Australia's most expensive telco, Telstra. For A$30 I get 400 mb data and the option to get up to 1GB more for $0 extra (you can use the original $30 credit to buy option packs of data, minutes or SMS). This is far better value for me than going on a post paid plan because I dont make that many calls (3-4 a month) but use a lot of data.
With O2 in the UK, for 15 pounds you get 200 minutes, 2000 SMS and 1 GB of data on a pre-paid plan.
So getting a plan is completely unnecessary.
Our powered suits could be used to assist and support remote-controlled robots in emergencies
Hey, aren't the robots supposed to be assisting and supporting us?
You assume too much meatbag.
Yup. 10min and I go from white to red.
White... I'm a Scot by birth. I tan white. Naturally I'm a shade of pale blue.
Just as incompetent as the old boss.
I think I've seen this movie, didn't Whoopi Goldberg become coach?
I think there's a case to be made that genetically being human is far less important to being "human" than the shared culture we've developed. Organically laying out a clone of yourself is far less like yourself than raising an adopted child. This kind of program, while inspired, and theoretically plausible, doesn't actually achieve what we want to achieve.
Sci-Fi authors have explored the idea of establishing an interstellar colony using cloned humans, you can store the information very densely without the need for large and power hungry life support or suspended animation systems. This also gets around the problem of interstellar distances, if we could build a ship that goes 0.5 the speed of light the next nearest star is over 10 years away (taking into account acceleration time). Whilst relativistic effects will reduce the time that passes for the crew, it will still be a long journey. At our current technology, we'd be talking about a journey that would be 100's of years (we currently cant even build a ship that can get to mars and back with a human crew.
The biggest problem with seeding a colony of clones is social, rather than technical. How do you program a machine to raise humans?
I read the article, it's less colonising as it is teraforming. The authors idea is to send bacteria with human DNA, the bacteria will adapt to the environment (or die out, but lets assume it adapts), The idea is that the bacteria will at some point reform a creature from the human DNA. Given the fact that the bacteria and DNA will evolve to cope with their new environment, will the humans really be humans? I'd say no because their biology would have changed to adapt to their new planet, you wouldn't simply be able to transplant them from one world to another. They'd essentially be an offshoot of the human race, or descendants and their descendants will share a common ancestry.
I think it's safe to assume Apple wanted the Beats brand and styling, since the technology is nothing special. Beats headphones sound shit compared to much cheaper competitors, so apparently the logo is worth billions.
You see Beats sells headphones with cheap hardware worth about $50 for around $300.
Apple sells phones with cheap hardware worth about $100 for $600.
Both utilise brand over performance, style over substance and both like to give their customers a good rodgering at every opportunity. It's a marriage made in corporate heaven.
Dunno if that's a good or bad thing, though.
I've had to take over maintenance of a few "excel" based applications. Never. Again.
That's Excel for you.
.xlsx). However the biggest sin Excel does (to me) is removing leading zeros, that number has to fix a N digit mask or it will fail.
I use a lot of scripts that are based on CSV files for input, output and storage of values. You want to know what I edit them in... Notepad. Because Excel fucks around with it too much and I'm sick of the "but this is not in our proprietary format" dialogue when closing it (it also refuses to save on exit unless I change it to
Excel has grown into a terrible tool for spreadsheets, this does not make spreadsheets bad however.
And this seems to me the proper use of wikipedia.
This.
Wikipedia is great for facts. If I wanted to know what town Stalin was born in, the generals who lead the Crimean campaign in WWII or the years the Ming dynasty ruled in China, Wikipedia is the ideal place to get them. However possibly contentious topics like climate change that are subject to propaganda from all sides are a bit less trustworthy.
Wikipedia is at least well referenced in a lot of articles.
So does the BBC.
I'm a fan of the BBC too, but the GP has a point that you need to think critically of all your sources, including the ones you like.
The BBC makes screw ups too, however the main reason we know what they are is because they publish errata. Newscorp doesn't (if they did, half of their print/air time would be dedicated to correcting the other half).
Which is why a few stealth fighters and bombers go in first, take out ALL the air defenses, THEN the B-52s go in there and carpet-bomb the hell out of the rest of the place. The B-52 is fairly slow, but that fills a role than the military badly NEEDS at times.
The heavy bomber's day has come and gone like the battleship. It's main role is demonstration, not waging war.
First off, lets ignore the fact carpet bombing has minimal effectiveness.
Most people have forgotten the last total war and only remember the wars where the enemy could not effectively fight back in the air.
The B52 has never been tested in the crucible of war, they've always been out of reach. In Vietnam, the North Vietnamese had limited to no abilities to counter or intercept B52. To imagine how a B52 would perform against an enemy that can field a full array of anti-air defences you have to go back to the B52's great, great, great granddaddy, the B17. The B17 was a very hardy, venerable aircraft but it was still shot down by the bucket loads by the Germans.
At the start of the war (WWII), 18 months before the entry of the US, the British war ministry made a calculation that their existing fleet of Blenheims and Wellingtons would be destroyed within 3 months (and that the existing designs were insufficient for the task) they immediately began producing more, this resulted in aircraft like the Mosquito and Avro Lancaster being produced. However the point is that losses were expected and replacements would be needed.
The same story was true with the B17. The B17 and Lancaster fit the bill for being capable aircraft but above that, cheap and easy to produce.
That is the problem with the B52. It's all good and well to say the current fleet is fine but the current fleet wont last six months against Russia or China if it is used. You'll need replacements and it's much faster and cheaper to build a multitude of drones than it is to build a manned heavy bomber.
A B52H has a flyaway cost of $81 million and requires 6 crew.
A MQ9 Reaper has a flyaway cost of $17 million.
A MQ1 Predator has a flyaway cost of $4.5 million.
Going by the last war, it takes a minimum of 3 months to train an aircrew.
Apple will just want you to buy all your home accessories and software via their App Store so they get a 30% cut.
Just wait till you need to replace your light bulbs...
Sadly, the light bulbs are not user-replaceable. You'll need to buy a new home.
Remember how Apple was going to open up FaceTime? Lots of people are still waiting for that one.
Opening FaceTime didn't happened because if a lawsuit. They were sued by VirnetX and Apple lost.
http://www.imore.com/ask-imore-wheres-facetime-android
Seems convenient. Almost too convenient.
Given how much cash Apple has and how much legal clout they have, why didn't they just buy the company out or if they wouldn't sell, sue them into oblivion until they did. Given the lopsided Apple v Samsung, dealing with a tiny upstart company is more than within their power.
So if Apple is so committed to being open, why haven't they acquired the patents and opened them?
Occams razor says they dont want to.
people no longer drive sensibly: they are more aggressive with other drivers (not keeping a safe distance)
Is that why traffic deaths have consistently gone down since 20 or 30 years ago? - Killed_on_British_Roads.png
You'll find that's mainly due to crackdowns on the big killers on our roads, speed and drink driving.
The deaths on UK roads are almost 1/4 of that on US roads (2.75 vs 10.4 deaths per 100,000 pop). This is due to a combination of more stringent licensing, better training and more enforcement on speed and drink driving. Australia has similar enforcement on speed and drink driving but not the training and licensing so our deaths are only 1/2 that of the US (5.2 per 100,000 pop).
The truth is, that Europeans generally choose more fuel efficient cars to drive. Huge, un-aerodynamic, heavy, view-blocking SUV mum-tanks with massive engines to overcompensate aren't popular. Europeans will tend to drive sub-2L cars. The average European will spend less on petrol per KM than the average American despite petrol costing almost twice as much in some countries.
However in comparisons between cars made for the American market and cars made for the European market, the European engines will produce more power for less fuel with less displacement. I dont know how Americans get a whopping 270 KW out of a 6.2L V8 when Europe gets a meagre 350Kw out of a 4.5L V8 and that's considered weak. I can get 270 KW out of a 12 yr old Nissan i4 turbo (of course that would be silly, the car its in is very light so all 270KW would do is shred the back tyres).
Under-inflated tires, lousy fuel, ignored maintenance, rapid acceleration, more than one occupant / actual cargo, stop-and-go traffic, air pollution, air pressure variation, air temperature variation, elevation variation...
And these are just a few of the things that would cause your "official" MPG figures to deviate from observations.
In other words, outside laboratory conditions.
I thought it was common knowledge to ignore official fuel efficiency figures. Manufacturers will lie out of their backsides to meet emissions targets and get their cars into a lower tax bracket. Common knowledge seems to be as common as common sense.
I haven't read the What Car article, but I'm willing to bet small engined turbo's are amongst the worst offenders. Manufacturers will try to get as much of the test done before turbo engagement because once the turbo engages, fuel usage goes through the roof. A 1.4L turbo doesn't use much fuel until it hits the turbo where it will easily out drink a 2L Naturally Aspirated engine. They might even play with the boost pressure on the test car.
POS = Any point of sale (eg. cash register) system.
Windows POSReady = A version of Windows meant for a POS system (usually XP or 7).
PCI = Security guidelines that are supposed to protect debit/credit card information.
Having dealt with a lot of POS systems including Windows POSReady, the other definition, Piece Of Shit is also applicable.
In my experience, you dont need to bother trying to crack a 6 digit code on a credit card in order to get the number, most stores dont bother following any security guidelines, let alone strict ones like PCI (Payment Card Industry, not Peripheral Component Interconnect).
The worst I've seen is PCEFTPOS on an unpatched Windows XP machine (this was in 2012, they're probably still running them) that was also used by the staff to browse the internet and check their email. It wouldn't surprise me to find a lot of small chain stores to have similar setups completely swimming with malware.
Having worked with EFTPOS systems in small business, there are very good reasons why I prefer to make purchases in cash. The risk of me being robbed for the $100 I have on me is now less than the risk of me losing money due to card fraud.
No idea, but the summary mentions PCI a number of times, so at least you know you can still use your old PCI cards with it. No idea if it supports AGP though.
PCI means PCI-Compliance, in the most regard, it is VERY strict but 95% of dealers refuse to follow it's laws and conduct.
Whooosh.
That was the sound of you failing joke compliance.
The article never explains what PCI is, so to the average reader it could be Peripheral Component Interconnect, the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, the Pharmacy Council of India or maybe, just maybe Payment Card Industry.