Although I can imagine that driving in NYC is not a bad as India, the traffic gets pretty busy here. My driving algorithm is as follows:
1. Aways yeld to idiots and jackasses.
2. Maneuver to avoid accidents, honking does not help much.
Very seldom, if someone fell asleep at the traffick light, I give it a very short blip.
If all horns were uninstalled tomorrow we would not loose much. Now let's discuss sirens and light pollution.
And you're a worse driver than the idiots and jackasses.
As long as you tolerate their behaviour, you support it's expansion.
Now not everyone who makes a mistake is a jackass. Sometimes people reverse and don't see you so a quick toot to the horn lets them know you are there. Most people will be apologetic at this point as they've made a genuine mistake. Thats fine, we all make the odd mistake so live and let live.
Secondly, you rarely can manoeuvre in an accident without having a worse one. The best thing you can do in most circumstances is brake as you want less kinetic energy in an impact.
Misuse of the horn is an indication of bad driver training, however what you have suggested is an indication of shocking driver training and a complete lack of common sense.
Singapore for example with so little space has pioneered high rise cheap parking for all out in the suburbs and electronic pay to enter town centers that really increased the quality of life in the inner city, or so I hear.
Here you've just shown you dont have a clue what you're on about.
Singapore is about the worst example you could pick. Owning a car in Singapore is incredibly expensive. You have to pay up to 150% of the cars value when you by it, import duties are 41% and that's before registration and road taxes. For a small car (engine displacement less than 1.6L) you're going to be paying about S$15,000 just to have a car you can drive on the road. Singapore has very few traffic problems because they make owning a car cost prohibitive (there's also a limit on the number of cars the government will register). I pay A$490 to register my 2L car for a year and that's it (but rego is based on weight where I live and my car is light).
But on the plus side, Singapore has one of the best public transport systems in the world, clean, fast, cheap and connects you almost anywhere on the island. You can live in Singapore and not own a car with no trouble, unlike most Australian cities.
Consider it payback for mutilating the word Jaguar.
And the Camaro is a terrible handling car. Oversteer galore and due to all the weight being at the front and all the power being at the back, you lose the back end far too easily. Granted, it's not as bad as the Mustang, but still not good.
I believe that his ancient car would out corner a Camaro because it's likely to weigh under half as much, but not a car with a decent cornering ability like a WRX or EVO.
BTW, if you want lateral G forces, try a proper drift pig like a Nissan S13.
Underpowered for what? 1/4 mile times? Yup, they are.
But my '65 356 w/ 75 hp engine can out corner a brand new production Camero or just about any other muscle car.
Erm, that isn't an accomplishment.
Muscle cars corner like absolute crap due to their heavy weight poor weight distribution. Saying you can out-corner a muscle car is like saying you have more personality than a chemistry teacher's cardigan.
Hatchbacks like Toyota Corolla's out corner American muscle cars. Try to out corner a modern Subaru Impreza with it's AWD system. Even the non turbo Impreza that only has 100 odd KW corner faster and smoother than 2-400 KW muscle cars, let alone the twin turbo WRX STI...
Cornering ability is not a function of engines, its' a function weight and weight distribution.
People get TV's and what not on these 24 month intrest free deals but dont read the fine print that states it also signs them up for a credit card with that same company. I'm fairly certain that wont be the worst abuse hidden in the fine print either.
Its not sneaky, you are opening a revolving credit account and charging the purchase to it with special repayment terms. Its commonplace in the US to the point that it is now impossible to get a traditional installment loan on any financed purchase outside of a car loan.
Actually it is sneaky because you're not opening a credit account at all, you're opening a secured loan.
What they are doing is paperclipping a second revolving credit account onto that which is not attached to the asset/object being purchased on the loan. If they attached it to the loan (which they aren't permitted to in Oz) they'd be forced to close the account when final payment is received.
Its commonplace in the US to the point that it is now impossible to get a traditional installment loan on any financed purchase outside of a car loan.
You've just pointed out the way the US deals with credit is fundamentally broken.
You should also include the ~$1B loss that Google incurred as operating expenses while owning the company. It's still worth taking a loss on the sale in my opinion and that patents that they acquired may well be worth even more than the loss. Motorola was going to continue bleeding money and placed Google in an uncomfortable position with the other hardware manufacturers.
If that's true, then it's a shrewd move by Google.
People forget that the primary goal of the Motorola acquisition was to keep very valuable patents out of the hands of patent trolls like Apple and Microsoft. So by heading off very expensive law suits, they'll stop even more significant losses.
Right, so regulating banks requires abject surrender of all financial privacy.
I know you're being sarcastic, but it doesn't.
In fact, privacy is one of the things that gets regulated in Australia. Banks are not permitted to hand over information without a warrant and they certainly aren't permitted to share my personal information with anyone else (like advertisers). If the ATO (tax) or AQIS (customs) wants any information from my bank they need to ask me or get a warrant. If another department like DHS (Human Services AKA welfare) wants them they pretty much have no other option but to ask me (but they can refuse services if I refuse to provide the details). Your own bank is not even permitted to look at your purchases without your permission.
Once another organisation is in possession of these details, they are subject to similar privacy laws preventing them from being shared and there are massive punishments for this law being broken (as in executives going to jail big).
There is very little information available to potential creditors, mainly what is on your credit file (number of application, number of defaults) which leads to extremely long credit application forms. Personally I think this is a good thing as it discourages too much personal debt and gives you an idea and control over the amount of information a bank or creditor can collect on you.
Pretty much this. Everytime I walk into a Sear or Target or anything else they want me to pay with their store credit card and offer from 15 to 25% off my purchase to apply for one.
They do this because every time you use a credit card in their store, it costs them (merchant service fees).
If they get you using their credit card, they will have to pay fewer fees.
For a business that does as many transactions as target, the costs for accepting CC's will outstrip their staffing costs.
I think a lot of people have credit cards they no longer use, forgot about, and haven't completly canceled. It wasn't until I got my first house, and so got a long form credit report, that I realized I had a credit card still open that I got in college....for a free t-shirt and CD.
This.
Even in Australia, which has very strict laws governing credit cards, there are still sneaky ways to give people credit cards (that usually have very bad terms). One of the biggest tricks is to tack a CC onto another credit application. People get TV's and what not on these 24 month intrest free deals but dont read the fine print that states it also signs them up for a credit card with that same company. I'm fairly certain that wont be the worst abuse hidden in the fine print either.
Install that drive in a server in an online backup company and see how long it lasts.
My experience with SAN's and SAN operators is that they are are far too over-sensitive when it comes to detecting drive failures, if the SAN even thinks the drive might possibly entertain the idea of doing anything slightly like failing in the next 30 years it'll say the drive has failed.
This is not necessarily a bad thing in an enterprise environment dependent on your SAN, especially if you've got a support contract where EMC/NetApp et al. send you replacement disks for free.
Yes. They are getting cheaper and faster. They are already much faster than magnetic rotating discs in read/write/iops.
Don't be facetious, you can't get a 1TB SSD for 100$ yet and you know this. The OP clearly wrote "getting cheaper", he didn't say they have parity on price.
The reliability rate for current generation SSDs is now higher than traditional HDDs. So in regards to " run 24hours/24hours for 5 years without any problems ?", take your pick, they can all do it better than a traditional HDD.
I think traditional HDDs have precious few years left.
Not until I can get a 3TB SSD for under A$120.
You've only just gotten 60 ish GB SSD's under $100, even still a 500 GB SSD is still around $300.
Prices have been dropping like a brick the weight of your average American but they will level out as production meets demand. I think it will be around twice the per GB price of mechanical HDD's but capacities will still be limited. Even with the price drops, SSD's are still not mainstream becuse most people want capacity and mechanical HDD's are fast enough.
Only low capacity HDD's will drop off the market, but that already seems to have happened. The smallest mechanical HDD I can find easily is 500 GB (320 GB for a 2.5"). Wont be long until 1TB drives are only $50 and the 500 GB drives go.
I've used a number of different brands (mostly WD and Seagate for ye olde mechanical disk, although I've got some old Hitachi's and an ancient Quantum somewhere) and I found it doesn't really matter what brand you use.
Pick the one that's got the performance or capacity you want and the price you like.
If your data is that critical, you shouldn't be relying on one storage system for it anyway (RAID, then HDD backed up to a different system such as tape, or at least a different HDD based system). Nor should you have drives with the same batch number in the same array.
In that regard I consider all drives to be moments away from failure and plan accordingly. Of course in real life, most drives last years (aforementioned Quantum still runs). The worst thing that can happen is you get drives from a bad batch, which is why you should never have drives from the same batch in the same array.
..there isn't much holding me back from dumping Windows all together so seeing that Linux as a viable gaming platform is on the rise it shouldn't be too much longer before I can dump it all together and go full Linux. Sure Linux has Wine support but I would prefer to have native support instead.
Games are pretty much the only thing keeping me on Windows.
Linux, OSX/IOS, Android. Games are pretty much the only thing I do that cant be effectively done though a browser or are generic enough to have programs to perform the same thing on all platforms.
Between the state of CPUs you can buy and the presence of a massive supply of used and new-old-stock last gen consoles, $300 seems like about the weirdest place to postulate an unconventional console launch.
$300 at launch,
$200 in 12 months,
$150 not long after that.
Besides this, Amazon seem to be going to after the console crowd rather than the phone crowd. This means they'll need some kind of controller, UI/Frontend designed for a console and a bunch of other things. It's not like you can just slap Android onto screenless HW and expect it to work as intended.
A console for Android games?? What a clever and original idea!
I said, before the Ouya was released that it would not be a smashing success, but it will be a success and well it was. A minor success.
I also said it would pave the way for future consoles based on the same idea making the Ouya a version 1.0 type of product and for a version 1.0 the Ouya did pretty well.
The majority of console buyers don't want a PC wannabe console because they're not PC gamers. They want a simple box they can turn on and play simple games on, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. The Xbox 1 or PS4 dont fill this market and the Wii U has been pretty underwhelming. So if Amazon can pull of a decent console (like they did with their ereader) then they could own the market in the same way the Wii did.
In fact, I'd be quite surprised if Amazon is the only company going to try this.
Between this and Steamboxen, the Playstation and Xbox will need to change radically to avoid fading into oblivion, both the casual and hardcore gamer will soon have better options and there are not enough hardened fanboys in either camp to sustain them.
It's also important to factor in the number of miles driven by each model of car. For example, if the data said car A broke down twice as much as car B, you would think car B is better. If car A was actually driven a combined mileage that was 10x car B's mileage, car A would have less break downs per mile driven.
One of the biggest myths in buying a car is that mileage matters.
Mileage is by no means an indication of reliablity. A car with more KM's on the clock may be more unreliable as a car with half the KM's because it's been looked after. The biggest indication when buying a used car for reliability is the service history. A car that is regularly serviced, gets parts replaced when needed, has had all the oil/brakes/belts changed on time is going to be more reliable than a car that hasn't but has half the K's on the odometer.
With models that have a good reputation for reliability (I.E. Honda Civic's, Toyota Corolla's) if you keep them serviced regularly, they'll happily run for over 600,000 KM on mostly original parts. The only things you'll end up having to replace will be things made of rubber (engine mounts, timing belt (which should get done every X thousand KM's as per manufacturer service schedules), aux belt, arm bushes and so forth) which are usually pretty cheap but after 12-15 years rubber does degrade.
I take my car to the dealer. I trust that they'll use OEM parts, and I can trust that I'll have someone to hold accountable if something doesn't work to spec. For example, I had a front-wheel drive car that needed new CV joints at 60K miles. I took it to a local mechanic, asked for OEM parts, was charged less than the dealer. At ~80K, they started to fail. Replaced locally again. At 100K, they failed again. Took it to a dealer this time to get them replaced. Sure it cost more up front, but I'm pushing 170K now, and they're still going strong.
If CV joints are failing at 30,000 KM you are getting crappy parts. CV joints should be lasting upwards of 200,000 KM, in fact they should be lasting almost the entire life time of the car. You didn't get a good deal, you bought a crappy car and the parts were probably not fitted correctly.
So much for your theory about OEM being better. The original parts were flawed and the parts you replaced them with were flawed.
You did answer my question, this is the kind of idiot who goes to a dealer.
I'd rather pay less and end up with the same quality. Especially when it comes to "genuine" radiator hoses being 4-5 times the price of after market (so they'd have to fail four times before I'd break even) and genuine spark plugs being exactly the same as NGK spark plugs but rebranded and overpriced (I buy the model up NGK's and pay less than genuine Honda NGK spark plugs). For most parts you'll need to replace (I.E. those of us who don't buy crappy cars) they are made by someone else. I.E. my mum took her Cruze to a Holden dealership (Holden is Australian for Chevrolet, and yes, I tried to talk her out of buying a damned Cruze) the dealer used an oil filter that said "Ryco" on the box and billed it as "Genuine Holden Oil Filter $45.00" on the invoice. The same oil filter costs about $20 in any auto supply store.
People who are willing to pay more to have someone they trust and someone they can take action against.
LoL.
You have no more rights with a dealer than you have with a smaller operation. Conversely, you have the same legal protections no matter where you go.
False. Only the warranty the part you modded, as per the law.
And any parts that may be affected by it. You need to read up on the law
My dealership charge a little more then local shops, but I don't mind paying a little more to a shop the pays decently and if something should go wrong.
First, it's clear you haven't shopped around, secondly, if something goes wrong the dealer will charge through the nose for it.
" Japanese performance cars "
I thought you said you had a Honda.
You see, a long time ago Honda figured out they could get Americans to pay more for Honda's performance range by calling them Acura's. Americans have never caught onto this (same with Nissan\Infiniti and Toyota\Lexus)
Also, NSX, Integra, S2000. You need to do a lot more research.
Today you can go online and order after market parts from a company specializing in making replacement parts. But if you need to go to the dealership to get your car serviced it won't help because they'll still use genuine parts. Servicing yourself is still an issue unless you are a gear head
What kind of idiot takes a car to a dealership. Once you're past warranty, you've got to be certifiably insane to go to a dealer.
Dealers services are a rip off and as soon as the dealer is no longer legally obligated to fix anything that goes wrong (statutory warranty) you're a complete fool if you go there and as soon as you mod a car, statutory warranties go out the window. I have a 7 yr old Honda Integra, Honda want $600 odd for a minor service, my mechanic who specialises in Japanese performance cars charges me 175 for a minor including workshop materials.
Slashdot Mirror
British politics differs hugely from American politics. However, yes, in the moving lips = lies point, politicians are the same worldwide.
British politicians lie using bigger words.
Unfortunately Australian politicians went the other way, our current prime minister cant stop saying boats for some strange reason.
Although I can imagine that driving in NYC is not a bad as India, the traffic gets pretty busy here. My driving algorithm is as follows:
1. Aways yeld to idiots and jackasses.
2. Maneuver to avoid accidents, honking does not help much.
Very seldom, if someone fell asleep at the traffick light, I give it a very short blip.
If all horns were uninstalled tomorrow we would not loose much. Now let's discuss sirens and light pollution.
And you're a worse driver than the idiots and jackasses.
As long as you tolerate their behaviour, you support it's expansion.
Now not everyone who makes a mistake is a jackass. Sometimes people reverse and don't see you so a quick toot to the horn lets them know you are there. Most people will be apologetic at this point as they've made a genuine mistake. Thats fine, we all make the odd mistake so live and let live.
Secondly, you rarely can manoeuvre in an accident without having a worse one. The best thing you can do in most circumstances is brake as you want less kinetic energy in an impact.
Misuse of the horn is an indication of bad driver training, however what you have suggested is an indication of shocking driver training and a complete lack of common sense.
you're going to be paying about S$15,000 just to have a car you can drive on the road.
That's per month as well.
Singapore for example with so little space has pioneered high rise cheap parking for all out in the suburbs and electronic pay to enter town centers that really increased the quality of life in the inner city, or so I hear.
Here you've just shown you dont have a clue what you're on about.
Singapore is about the worst example you could pick. Owning a car in Singapore is incredibly expensive. You have to pay up to 150% of the cars value when you by it, import duties are 41% and that's before registration and road taxes. For a small car (engine displacement less than 1.6L) you're going to be paying about S$15,000 just to have a car you can drive on the road. Singapore has very few traffic problems because they make owning a car cost prohibitive (there's also a limit on the number of cars the government will register). I pay A$490 to register my 2L car for a year and that's it (but rego is based on weight where I live and my car is light).
But on the plus side, Singapore has one of the best public transport systems in the world, clean, fast, cheap and connects you almost anywhere on the island. You can live in Singapore and not own a car with no trouble, unlike most Australian cities.
Consider it payback for mutilating the word Jaguar.
And the Camaro is a terrible handling car. Oversteer galore and due to all the weight being at the front and all the power being at the back, you lose the back end far too easily. Granted, it's not as bad as the Mustang, but still not good. I believe that his ancient car would out corner a Camaro because it's likely to weigh under half as much, but not a car with a decent cornering ability like a WRX or EVO.
BTW, if you want lateral G forces, try a proper drift pig like a Nissan S13.
Underpowered for what? 1/4 mile times? Yup, they are.
But my '65 356 w/ 75 hp engine can out corner a brand new production Camero or just about any other muscle car.
Erm, that isn't an accomplishment.
Muscle cars corner like absolute crap due to their heavy weight poor weight distribution. Saying you can out-corner a muscle car is like saying you have more personality than a chemistry teacher's cardigan.
Hatchbacks like Toyota Corolla's out corner American muscle cars. Try to out corner a modern Subaru Impreza with it's AWD system. Even the non turbo Impreza that only has 100 odd KW corner faster and smoother than 2-400 KW muscle cars, let alone the twin turbo WRX STI...
Cornering ability is not a function of engines, its' a function weight and weight distribution.
People get TV's and what not on these 24 month intrest free deals but dont read the fine print that states it also signs them up for a credit card with that same company. I'm fairly certain that wont be the worst abuse hidden in the fine print either.
Its not sneaky, you are opening a revolving credit account and charging the purchase to it with special repayment terms. Its commonplace in the US to the point that it is now impossible to get a traditional installment loan on any financed purchase outside of a car loan.
Actually it is sneaky because you're not opening a credit account at all, you're opening a secured loan.
What they are doing is paperclipping a second revolving credit account onto that which is not attached to the asset/object being purchased on the loan. If they attached it to the loan (which they aren't permitted to in Oz) they'd be forced to close the account when final payment is received.
Its commonplace in the US to the point that it is now impossible to get a traditional installment loan on any financed purchase outside of a car loan.
You've just pointed out the way the US deals with credit is fundamentally broken.
You should also include the ~$1B loss that Google incurred as operating expenses while owning the company. It's still worth taking a loss on the sale in my opinion and that patents that they acquired may well be worth even more than the loss. Motorola was going to continue bleeding money and placed Google in an uncomfortable position with the other hardware manufacturers.
If that's true, then it's a shrewd move by Google.
People forget that the primary goal of the Motorola acquisition was to keep very valuable patents out of the hands of patent trolls like Apple and Microsoft. So by heading off very expensive law suits, they'll stop even more significant losses.
Stock holders do.
Most stock holders in Google don't have voting rights.
Besides, I don't think the stockholders in GOOG are that unhappy at this $1100 moment.
Right, so regulating banks requires abject surrender of all financial privacy.
I know you're being sarcastic, but it doesn't.
In fact, privacy is one of the things that gets regulated in Australia. Banks are not permitted to hand over information without a warrant and they certainly aren't permitted to share my personal information with anyone else (like advertisers). If the ATO (tax) or AQIS (customs) wants any information from my bank they need to ask me or get a warrant. If another department like DHS (Human Services AKA welfare) wants them they pretty much have no other option but to ask me (but they can refuse services if I refuse to provide the details). Your own bank is not even permitted to look at your purchases without your permission.
Once another organisation is in possession of these details, they are subject to similar privacy laws preventing them from being shared and there are massive punishments for this law being broken (as in executives going to jail big).
There is very little information available to potential creditors, mainly what is on your credit file (number of application, number of defaults) which leads to extremely long credit application forms. Personally I think this is a good thing as it discourages too much personal debt and gives you an idea and control over the amount of information a bank or creditor can collect on you.
Pretty much this. Everytime I walk into a Sear or Target or anything else they want me to pay with their store credit card and offer from 15 to 25% off my purchase to apply for one.
They do this because every time you use a credit card in their store, it costs them (merchant service fees).
If they get you using their credit card, they will have to pay fewer fees.
For a business that does as many transactions as target, the costs for accepting CC's will outstrip their staffing costs.
I think a lot of people have credit cards they no longer use, forgot about, and haven't completly canceled. It wasn't until I got my first house, and so got a long form credit report, that I realized I had a credit card still open that I got in college....for a free t-shirt and CD.
This.
Even in Australia, which has very strict laws governing credit cards, there are still sneaky ways to give people credit cards (that usually have very bad terms). One of the biggest tricks is to tack a CC onto another credit application. People get TV's and what not on these 24 month intrest free deals but dont read the fine print that states it also signs them up for a credit card with that same company. I'm fairly certain that wont be the worst abuse hidden in the fine print either.
Install that drive in a server in an online backup company and see how long it lasts.
My experience with SAN's and SAN operators is that they are are far too over-sensitive when it comes to detecting drive failures, if the SAN even thinks the drive might possibly entertain the idea of doing anything slightly like failing in the next 30 years it'll say the drive has failed.
This is not necessarily a bad thing in an enterprise environment dependent on your SAN, especially if you've got a support contract where EMC/NetApp et al. send you replacement disks for free.
Yes. They are getting cheaper and faster. They are already much faster than magnetic rotating discs in read/write/iops.
Don't be facetious, you can't get a 1TB SSD for 100$ yet and you know this. The OP clearly wrote "getting cheaper", he didn't say they have parity on price.
The reliability rate for current generation SSDs is now higher than traditional HDDs. So in regards to " run 24hours/24hours for 5 years without any problems ?", take your pick, they can all do it better than a traditional HDD.
I think traditional HDDs have precious few years left.
Not until I can get a 3TB SSD for under A$120.
You've only just gotten 60 ish GB SSD's under $100, even still a 500 GB SSD is still around $300.
Prices have been dropping like a brick the weight of your average American but they will level out as production meets demand. I think it will be around twice the per GB price of mechanical HDD's but capacities will still be limited. Even with the price drops, SSD's are still not mainstream becuse most people want capacity and mechanical HDD's are fast enough.
Only low capacity HDD's will drop off the market, but that already seems to have happened. The smallest mechanical HDD I can find easily is 500 GB (320 GB for a 2.5"). Wont be long until 1TB drives are only $50 and the 500 GB drives go.
I've used a number of different brands (mostly WD and Seagate for ye olde mechanical disk, although I've got some old Hitachi's and an ancient Quantum somewhere) and I found it doesn't really matter what brand you use.
Pick the one that's got the performance or capacity you want and the price you like.
If your data is that critical, you shouldn't be relying on one storage system for it anyway (RAID, then HDD backed up to a different system such as tape, or at least a different HDD based system). Nor should you have drives with the same batch number in the same array.
In that regard I consider all drives to be moments away from failure and plan accordingly. Of course in real life, most drives last years (aforementioned Quantum still runs). The worst thing that can happen is you get drives from a bad batch, which is why you should never have drives from the same batch in the same array.
Maia isn't a game that's "soon to be released". Maia is in a very early alpha stage with very little of the final functionality
So if it were an EA game, we'd be in the post release stage.
..there isn't much holding me back from dumping Windows all together so seeing that Linux as a viable gaming platform is on the rise it shouldn't be too much longer before I can dump it all together and go full Linux. Sure Linux has Wine support but I would prefer to have native support instead.
Games are pretty much the only thing keeping me on Windows.
Linux, OSX/IOS, Android. Games are pretty much the only thing I do that cant be effectively done though a browser or are generic enough to have programs to perform the same thing on all platforms.
Between the state of CPUs you can buy and the presence of a massive supply of used and new-old-stock last gen consoles, $300 seems like about the weirdest place to postulate an unconventional console launch.
$300 at launch,
$200 in 12 months,
$150 not long after that.
Besides this, Amazon seem to be going to after the console crowd rather than the phone crowd. This means they'll need some kind of controller, UI/Frontend designed for a console and a bunch of other things. It's not like you can just slap Android onto screenless HW and expect it to work as intended.
A console for Android games?? What a clever and original idea!
I said, before the Ouya was released that it would not be a smashing success, but it will be a success and well it was. A minor success.
I also said it would pave the way for future consoles based on the same idea making the Ouya a version 1.0 type of product and for a version 1.0 the Ouya did pretty well.
The majority of console buyers don't want a PC wannabe console because they're not PC gamers. They want a simple box they can turn on and play simple games on, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. The Xbox 1 or PS4 dont fill this market and the Wii U has been pretty underwhelming. So if Amazon can pull of a decent console (like they did with their ereader) then they could own the market in the same way the Wii did.
In fact, I'd be quite surprised if Amazon is the only company going to try this.
Between this and Steamboxen, the Playstation and Xbox will need to change radically to avoid fading into oblivion, both the casual and hardcore gamer will soon have better options and there are not enough hardened fanboys in either camp to sustain them.
It's also important to factor in the number of miles driven by each model of car. For example, if the data said car A broke down twice as much as car B, you would think car B is better. If car A was actually driven a combined mileage that was 10x car B's mileage, car A would have less break downs per mile driven.
One of the biggest myths in buying a car is that mileage matters.
Mileage is by no means an indication of reliablity. A car with more KM's on the clock may be more unreliable as a car with half the KM's because it's been looked after. The biggest indication when buying a used car for reliability is the service history. A car that is regularly serviced, gets parts replaced when needed, has had all the oil/brakes/belts changed on time is going to be more reliable than a car that hasn't but has half the K's on the odometer.
With models that have a good reputation for reliability (I.E. Honda Civic's, Toyota Corolla's) if you keep them serviced regularly, they'll happily run for over 600,000 KM on mostly original parts. The only things you'll end up having to replace will be things made of rubber (engine mounts, timing belt (which should get done every X thousand KM's as per manufacturer service schedules), aux belt, arm bushes and so forth) which are usually pretty cheap but after 12-15 years rubber does degrade.
I chatted with the tow truck driver. "Which cars do you tow the most?" "Oh, PT cruisers, I get a couple every day, they break down a lot."
I'd never touch a PT cruiser because they're ugly as sin. Lets ignore the pissweak engine.
But they're unreliable too.
I once saw a PT Cruiser Cabriolet, the one thing you can do to make the worlds ugliest car even uglier, is chop the roof off.
I take my car to the dealer. I trust that they'll use OEM parts, and I can trust that I'll have someone to hold accountable if something doesn't work to spec. For example, I had a front-wheel drive car that needed new CV joints at 60K miles. I took it to a local mechanic, asked for OEM parts, was charged less than the dealer. At ~80K, they started to fail. Replaced locally again. At 100K, they failed again. Took it to a dealer this time to get them replaced. Sure it cost more up front, but I'm pushing 170K now, and they're still going strong.
If CV joints are failing at 30,000 KM you are getting crappy parts. CV joints should be lasting upwards of 200,000 KM, in fact they should be lasting almost the entire life time of the car. You didn't get a good deal, you bought a crappy car and the parts were probably not fitted correctly.
So much for your theory about OEM being better. The original parts were flawed and the parts you replaced them with were flawed.
You did answer my question, this is the kind of idiot who goes to a dealer.
I'd rather pay less and end up with the same quality. Especially when it comes to "genuine" radiator hoses being 4-5 times the price of after market (so they'd have to fail four times before I'd break even) and genuine spark plugs being exactly the same as NGK spark plugs but rebranded and overpriced (I buy the model up NGK's and pay less than genuine Honda NGK spark plugs). For most parts you'll need to replace (I.E. those of us who don't buy crappy cars) they are made by someone else. I.E. my mum took her Cruze to a Holden dealership (Holden is Australian for Chevrolet, and yes, I tried to talk her out of buying a damned Cruze) the dealer used an oil filter that said "Ryco" on the box and billed it as "Genuine Holden Oil Filter $45.00" on the invoice. The same oil filter costs about $20 in any auto supply store.
LoL. You have no more rights with a dealer than you have with a smaller operation. Conversely, you have the same legal protections no matter where you go.
And any parts that may be affected by it. You need to read up on the law
First, it's clear you haven't shopped around, secondly, if something goes wrong the dealer will charge through the nose for it.
You see, a long time ago Honda figured out they could get Americans to pay more for Honda's performance range by calling them Acura's. Americans have never caught onto this (same with Nissan\Infiniti and Toyota\Lexus)
Also, NSX, Integra, S2000. You need to do a lot more research.
Yes but who will install the parts?
Today you can go online and order after market parts from a company specializing in making replacement parts. But if you need to go to the dealership to get your car serviced it won't help because they'll still use genuine parts. Servicing yourself is still an issue unless you are a gear head
What kind of idiot takes a car to a dealership. Once you're past warranty, you've got to be certifiably insane to go to a dealer.
Dealers services are a rip off and as soon as the dealer is no longer legally obligated to fix anything that goes wrong (statutory warranty) you're a complete fool if you go there and as soon as you mod a car, statutory warranties go out the window. I have a 7 yr old Honda Integra, Honda want $600 odd for a minor service, my mechanic who specialises in Japanese performance cars charges me 175 for a minor including workshop materials.
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Yotz