1. Bike Friday folding bikes are widely regarded as just as ridable as a standard bike. They're not cheap, though. I don't have a URL but I think the company name is Green Gear. Use Google.
2. Recumbents can be more dangerous in traffic because of the low profile, but they have some advantages as well. You'll get where you're going without pain, if you fall off you don't have far to fall, and if you hit something you won't go over the bars, land on your head, and break your neck (I know this from experience!). If you ride in traffic, some recumbents are tall enough to be seen - Linear LWB and some of the new dual-26" bikes like the Bacchetta come to mind.
Personally, I ride my recumbent most of the time, when I can plan my trips for bike paths and low-traffic streets, or when riding with other cyclists (2 or more bikes are more visible than 1). For commuting in traffic, I use an old 10-speed upright and feel thankful that I don't have a long commute.
The first season of Futurama was terrific. I watched every episode and laughed my butt off. But since then it has been going downhill fast. It's seldom funny, and the level of cynicism has risen to the point that even I, a confirmed cynic, find my stomach knotting.
On the other hand, I still sometimes watch the Simpsons and almost always find it funny and provocative. I wonder what happened to Groening to make his later work so dark?
We've caught two petty thieves this way in the past couple of years, using cheapo QuickCams. The most recent bust was pretty funny. My boss set up the camera to cover his change drawer. In the motion captures, you could see the cleaning guy come in with his vacuum cleaner, look at the change drawer, look at the camera, then move out of scope. Then the camera is tilted in the opposite direction, then moved back. Obviously he emptied the change drawer while the camera was pointed away from the drawer. All the motion captures were time-stamped, so we could see that it was just a matter of a few seconds from the time the guy looked at the camera until it was tilted. Needless to say, he doesn't work in our building anymore.
There can actually be good reasons to go for dialup rather than broadband. In my case, I would like to switch to broadband and drop the second phone line, but my wife telecommutes, and she has to dial directly into a modem on a Unix system to do her work. This gets her into a network that is isolated from the Internet. Broadband internet access won't get her there.
Her employer is working on providing access through the internet, but the project is way behind schedule.
I've searched Toyota's website for the announcement of a 125 mpg Prius "within a few years" and found nothing. Can you please provide a reference? My wife is considering buying a Prius and if she can get that kind of mileage in a few years she'll put off her purchase until then.
In addition to a small Erector set, I had two other types of building sets when I was a kid. In the mid-50's a set called American Bricks allowed you to build houses and other buildings from a set of red and white plastic bricks that looked a lot like Lego. These bricks were linked together in the same manner as Lego but were made of hard plastic and did not stick together tightly - they relied on gravity to hold them together.
The other was the Kenner Girder and Panel sets. These were a set of plastic snap-together girders and thin plastic panels that snapped over them to form walls. You could build all kinds of 60's-looking buildings from them. They also sold two variants: the Bridge and Turnpike set included plastic road segments that could be attached to the top of a girder bridge, and the Hydro-Dynamics set was basically the Girder and Panel set with a bunch of clear plastic tanks, hoses and pumps so you could build chemical plants and oil refineries.
All this Kenner stuff was approximately HO scale so you could integrate it with your train set or even your Auroro Model Motoring slot car set. I spent untold hours building all kinds of elaborate buildings and road systems.
Alas, I think both American Bricks and the Kenner sets are no more. 'Tis a pity.
Please don't post if you don't know what you're talking about.
The LongEZ has been around forever and is a very safe design. As I understand it, Denver's plane had the fuel selector switch mounted in a nonstandard position and he lost control while trying to access it (another argument for standardized UIs). Ultimately it was pilot error.
The 2100 was too big for a PDA. What I want is a StrongArm-based Newton with color, lots of expandability, and a full-featured built-in web browser, in the same form factor as a Palm. It should cost no more than $500 with those features.
The Newt had the best PDA OS by far - years after it was cancelled nobody else has even come close.
We have an XP enthusiast at my company - he's pushing it hard. My reaction so far:
1. Stupid, stupid name. Guaranteed to turn off management and mature programmers. Extreme sports = risky and dangerous. Extreme Programming has the same connotation.
2. Some aspects are just good development practices - frequent unit testing, constant customer feedback, code review - that we should all be doing anyway.
3. Some aspects are worrysome, especially the idea that one shouldn't design up front. As far as I'm concerned, we should always start with a thorough requirements spec and design, but we should always be ready to make changes to the spec and design in response to customer feedback. XP wants us to develop requirements and design as we go - to skip design and jump to the change process. That might work on small projects, but on anything non-trivial it's a recipe for disaster.
4. Another worrysome aspect - XP holds that code should be self-documenting and that other documentation isn't necessary. I've been programming for more years than I care to admit here and I've never seen code that was truly self-documenting. I saw some code recently that was written by someone using XP methodologies and it was as obtuse as any code I've ever seen. I pity anyone who has to go in and maintain XP code a year after it was written.
5. Finally, pair programming might work for some people, but for others it will be a productivity and morale killer. It depends on the personalities of those involved. Personally, I can't think with someone looking over my shoulder.
XP looks to me like the next management/development/whatever fad. It will make a big noise for awhile, lots of projects will be started using it, lots of projects will fail, and in the long run, some of the good parts of it (unit testing, feedback, etc.) will be added to our utility belts and the rest discarded as it should be (esp. the stupid name!).
Pardon my language, but I'm sick and tired of jerks like this assuming that anyone over 30 is incapable of understanding tech. I'm 51 and have been programming for 20 years. I think I could handle installing censorware - but I'm not ignorant enough to want to install it in the first place.
Stereotyping older people as tech-ignorant is just as bad as stereotyping young geeks as sociopathic hacker terrorists. (But I will be glad to stereotype all politicians as money-grubbing power-hungry ignoramuses!)
Wrong. Before WWII the most popular airliner was the extemely reliable and safe Douglas DC3. The military adapted this civilian aircraft for military cargo use during the war.
It's true that a few early post-war airliners were based on the B29 design, but nearly all civilian airliners since have had little in common with military designs. In those cases where military airplanes shared designs with civilian planes, it was the civilian planes that came first (certain military cargo and airborne tankers come to mind).
The arms race did contribute to civilian aerospace progress, but the key factor was the market, not the military.
Liability insurance isn't to protect you, it's to protect the guy you run into. Virginia and other states require you to have car insurance for this reason.
Scenario 3: you run into someone and injure him so badly that he runs up half a million in medical expenses. How the hell are you going to pay that? If you can't, you leave him holding the bag, either not getting treatment or going bankrupt from the medical bills. THAT is why liability insurance is required.
Re:Aspen was a *compact*, and RWD is a good thing.
on
Linux Powered Dodge
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· Score: 1
The best car I ever had for the snow was a '71 Volvo (rear wheel drive) with 4 bald tires. I had to work at it to get stuck in that car. I've never had a front drive car that handled as well in the snow as that old hunk 'o junk.
I know Netzero and Bluelight are still offering free dialup. Anybody else? How do they compare? According to their websites, Bluelight supports Windoze and Mac, while Netzero supports only Windoze. Any other diffs? How obnoxious are the ads, etc.?
My wife and I have been using Altavista as backup for our cheap but not very reliable local ISP, so this is important to us.
For the past year I've been trying to talk my wife into letting me cover her '82 Toyota Corolla with old MSDN CDs. Alas, she is opposed to the idea. I can't imagine why.
M$ killed OS2 not with Win 95 but with Windows 3.0. 32 bit-edness had nothing to do with it. OS2 did a halfway decent job of emulating Win3 but its UI was different and emulation was imperfect enough to make Win3 a better choice for running Win3 apps (duh). And of course M$ provided its most popular apps only on Win3, not in native OS2 versions. Word and Excel helped drive the Win3 jugernaut.
Anybody who is surprised that this is being pushed by Republicans needs to start paying attention. The GOP talks the talk on privacy and government non-interference with the citizens, but it has always been in the vanguard on restricting individual rights and on invasion of privacy. The GOP believes in only one of the amendments in the Bill of Rights - the 2nd - and that only because of the support they get from the NRA. They do NOT believe in a right to privacy, or in separation of church and state, or in freedom of speech. LOOK AT THE RECORD, and then go vote for whoever has the best chance of beating any given GOP candidate (unfortunately that means voting Democratic, but it's better than the GOP).
Remember the old HP hand-held PCs? They ran DOS and had a CLI. Atari made a similar product that was cheaper (in both senses of the word). These definitely qualify as PDAs. I had one of the Atari machines for awhile and it was quite usable. I sold it when I bought my Newton, but I wish I'd kept it because it's more useful than the WinCE machines by a long shot.
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Good advice, mostly. Two points:
1. Bike Friday folding bikes are widely regarded as just as ridable as a standard bike. They're not cheap, though. I don't have a URL but I think the company name is Green Gear. Use Google.
2. Recumbents can be more dangerous in traffic because of the low profile, but they have some advantages as well. You'll get where you're going without pain, if you fall off you don't have far to fall, and if you hit something you won't go over the bars, land on your head, and break your neck (I know this from experience!). If you ride in traffic, some recumbents are tall enough to be seen - Linear LWB and some of the new dual-26" bikes like the Bacchetta come to mind.
Personally, I ride my recumbent most of the time, when I can plan my trips for bike paths and low-traffic streets, or when riding with other cyclists (2 or more bikes are more visible than 1). For commuting in traffic, I use an old 10-speed upright and feel thankful that I don't have a long commute.
The first season of Futurama was terrific. I watched every episode and laughed my butt off. But since then it has been going downhill fast. It's seldom funny, and the level of cynicism has risen to the point that even I, a confirmed cynic, find my stomach knotting.
On the other hand, I still sometimes watch the Simpsons and almost always find it funny and provocative. I wonder what happened to Groening to make his later work so dark?
We've caught two petty thieves this way in the past couple of years, using cheapo QuickCams. The most recent bust was pretty funny. My boss set up the camera to cover his change drawer. In the motion captures, you could see the cleaning guy come in with his vacuum cleaner, look at the change drawer, look at the camera, then move out of scope. Then the camera is tilted in the opposite direction, then moved back. Obviously he emptied the change drawer while the camera was pointed away from the drawer. All the motion captures were time-stamped, so we could see that it was just a matter of a few seconds from the time the guy looked at the camera until it was tilted. Needless to say, he doesn't work in our building anymore.
There can actually be good reasons to go for dialup rather than broadband. In my case, I would like to switch to broadband and drop the second phone line, but my wife telecommutes, and she has to dial directly into a modem on a Unix system to do her work. This gets her into a network that is isolated from the Internet. Broadband internet access won't get her there.
Her employer is working on providing access through the internet, but the project is way behind schedule.
They've been promising that one for a long time. Judging from the continuing news of security holes and virii, I'd sure put it on the vapor list.
I've searched Toyota's website for the announcement of a 125 mpg Prius "within a few years" and found nothing. Can you please provide a reference? My wife is considering buying a Prius and if she can get that kind of mileage in a few years she'll put off her purchase until then.
In addition to a small Erector set, I had two other types of building sets when I was a kid. In the mid-50's a set called American Bricks allowed you to build houses and other buildings from a set of red and white plastic bricks that looked a lot like Lego. These bricks were linked together in the same manner as Lego but were made of hard plastic and did not stick together tightly - they relied on gravity to hold them together.
The other was the Kenner Girder and Panel sets. These were a set of plastic snap-together girders and thin plastic panels that snapped over them to form walls. You could build all kinds of 60's-looking buildings from them. They also sold two variants: the Bridge and Turnpike set included plastic road segments that could be attached to the top of a girder bridge, and the Hydro-Dynamics set was basically the Girder and Panel set with a bunch of clear plastic tanks, hoses and pumps so you could build chemical plants and oil refineries.
All this Kenner stuff was approximately HO scale so you could integrate it with your train set or even your Auroro Model Motoring slot car set. I spent untold hours building all kinds of elaborate buildings and road systems.
Alas, I think both American Bricks and the Kenner sets are no more. 'Tis a pity.
Please don't post if you don't know what you're talking about.
The LongEZ has been around forever and is a very safe design. As I understand it, Denver's plane had the fuel selector switch mounted in a nonstandard position and he lost control while trying to access it (another argument for standardized UIs). Ultimately it was pilot error.
So does this mean I should stop using const in my C and C++ programs?
The 2100 was too big for a PDA. What I want is a StrongArm-based Newton with color, lots of expandability, and a full-featured built-in web browser, in the same form factor as a Palm. It should cost no more than $500 with those features.
The Newt had the best PDA OS by far - years after it was cancelled nobody else has even come close.
"It's a cookbook!!!"
...he'd sell you a Harley.
Lexuses (Lexi?) are too wussy for the Fonz!
We have an XP enthusiast at my company - he's pushing it hard. My reaction so far:
1. Stupid, stupid name. Guaranteed to turn off management and mature programmers. Extreme sports = risky and dangerous. Extreme Programming has the same connotation.
2. Some aspects are just good development practices - frequent unit testing, constant customer feedback, code review - that we should all be doing anyway.
3. Some aspects are worrysome, especially the idea that one shouldn't design up front. As far as I'm concerned, we should always start with a thorough requirements spec and design, but we should always be ready to make changes to the spec and design in response to customer feedback. XP wants us to develop requirements and design as we go - to skip design and jump to the change process. That might work on small projects, but on anything non-trivial it's a recipe for disaster.
4. Another worrysome aspect - XP holds that code should be self-documenting and that other documentation isn't necessary. I've been programming for more years than I care to admit here and I've never seen code that was truly self-documenting. I saw some code recently that was written by someone using XP methodologies and it was as obtuse as any code I've ever seen. I pity anyone who has to go in and maintain XP code a year after it was written.
5. Finally, pair programming might work for some people, but for others it will be a productivity and morale killer. It depends on the personalities of those involved. Personally, I can't think with someone looking over my shoulder.
XP looks to me like the next management/development/whatever fad. It will make a big noise for awhile, lots of projects will be started using it, lots of projects will fail, and in the long run, some of the good parts of it (unit testing, feedback, etc.) will be added to our utility belts and the rest discarded as it should be (esp. the stupid name!).
Holding breath.
Who is the humorless dweeb who moderated the parent post down as off topic? The quality of moderation here is bad and getting worse.
And yes, this post is definitely off topic, so have your way with it.
Pardon my language, but I'm sick and tired of jerks like this assuming that anyone over 30 is incapable of understanding tech. I'm 51 and have been programming for 20 years. I think I could handle installing censorware - but I'm not ignorant enough to want to install it in the first place.
Stereotyping older people as tech-ignorant is just as bad as stereotyping young geeks as sociopathic hacker terrorists. (But I will be glad to stereotype all politicians as money-grubbing power-hungry ignoramuses!)
I liked the response to the question, "Any other condition on board which may lead to the spread of disease:"
Answer: "TO BE DETERMINED"
Wrong. Before WWII the most popular airliner was the extemely reliable and safe Douglas DC3. The military adapted this civilian aircraft for military cargo use during the war.
It's true that a few early post-war airliners were based on the B29 design, but nearly all civilian airliners since have had little in common with military designs. In those cases where military airplanes shared designs with civilian planes, it was the civilian planes that came first (certain military cargo and airborne tankers come to mind).
The arms race did contribute to civilian aerospace progress, but the key factor was the market, not the military.
Liability insurance isn't to protect you, it's to protect the guy you run into. Virginia and other states require you to have car insurance for this reason.
Scenario 3: you run into someone and injure him so badly that he runs up half a million in medical expenses. How the hell are you going to pay that? If you can't, you leave him holding the bag, either not getting treatment or going bankrupt from the medical bills. THAT is why liability insurance is required.
The best car I ever had for the snow was a '71 Volvo (rear wheel drive) with 4 bald tires. I had to work at it to get stuck in that car. I've never had a front drive car that handled as well in the snow as that old hunk 'o junk.
Anyone with any knowledge of American history would not have moderated this down. It should be modded "Funny".
>HIS EXCELLENCY NORTON THE FIRST, EMPEROR OF THE
>UNITED STATES AND PROTECTOR OF MEXICO, CLAIMS THE
>MOON FOR HIS GLORIOUS EMPIRE! ALL HAIL NORTON I!
I know Netzero and Bluelight are still offering free dialup. Anybody else? How do they compare? According to their websites, Bluelight supports Windoze and Mac, while Netzero supports only Windoze. Any other diffs? How obnoxious are the ads, etc.?
My wife and I have been using Altavista as backup for our cheap but not very reliable local ISP, so this is important to us.
For the past year I've been trying to talk my wife into letting me cover her '82 Toyota Corolla with old MSDN CDs. Alas, she is opposed to the idea. I can't imagine why.
M$ killed OS2 not with Win 95 but with Windows 3.0. 32 bit-edness had nothing to do with it. OS2 did a halfway decent job of emulating Win3 but its UI was different and emulation was imperfect enough to make Win3 a better choice for running Win3 apps (duh). And of course M$ provided its most popular apps only on Win3, not in native OS2 versions. Word and Excel helped drive the Win3 jugernaut.
Anybody who is surprised that this is being pushed by Republicans needs to start paying attention. The GOP talks the talk on privacy and government non-interference with the citizens, but it has always been in the vanguard on restricting individual rights and on invasion of privacy. The GOP believes in only one of the amendments in the Bill of Rights - the 2nd - and that only because of the support they get from the NRA. They do NOT believe in a right to privacy, or in separation of church and state, or in freedom of speech. LOOK AT THE RECORD, and then go vote for whoever has the best chance of beating any given GOP candidate (unfortunately that means voting Democratic, but it's better than the GOP).
Remember the old HP hand-held PCs? They ran DOS and had a CLI. Atari made a similar product that was cheaper (in both senses of the word). These definitely qualify as PDAs. I had one of the Atari machines for awhile and it was quite usable. I sold it when I bought my Newton, but I wish I'd kept it because it's more useful than the WinCE machines by a long shot.