> If Firewire hadn't been an expensive pain in the ass, we'd be using USB for our keyboards and printers and Firewire for our portable drives as originally intended.

Um, you mean some of you _aren't_ doing that? :-\

Again I'll ask you guys for confirmation (no one has said "no, you're wrong" the previous times I've asked): what I've understood all along about AGW is that man-made greenhouse gas contributions are increasing the _rate_ of warming.

To be clear, that seems to be pretty well agreed on. But "the increasing rate of global warming is man-made" is not the same thing as "global warming is man-made". We could be reducing the rate of warming, and we'd still frequently be having record high global average temperatures, because the trend in this interglacial period that predates our industrialized influence has been _warming_.

Can we still ask for accurate science reporting without being tarred and feathered as "denialists"? Or is that not allowed?

Linux distros. After I'm done, I try to keep seeding for the next night or two to try to "give back" at least a little bit.

Anyone else who's read Niven's "Fallen Angels" recognizing way too much of it coming true? It was supposed to be _fiction_, Larry! (Wasn't it?)

> I closed it right away and the Mac installer started and asked me to install Mac Protector, so I quit the installer and all is well

No, not _all_ is well. You need to turn off the Safari pref 'Open "safe" files after downloading', which should not even _exist_. :-(

Unable to RTFA (server not responding), but seriously? They _can't_ be talking about actually using 2.4GHz ISM band, _unlicensed_ spectrum, full of all kinds of crap that you have to accept, to build even a supplimental safety system. That's just the submitter putting a generic name to "wireless communication", right? *boggle*

So somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but what I _think_ I've heard from the AGW proponents once you get past the ad-hominems (on both sides!), is that yes, we are between ice ages, and yes, the planet does naturally warm as you come out of an ice age (duh!), and yes, the planet has been warmer in the distant past, but AGW is about the global average temp increasing _faster_ than it should be naturally. Is that close?

So am I wrong in seeing "this was the warmest decade recorded"-type headlines lately and thinking "yeah, so?"? What happened to the rate-of-change bit? How is that trending compared to what they think is supposed to be natural?

IANACS...

Actually, Michelin did sort of what you're asking for a few years back -- the TWEEL.
http://www.gizmag.com/go/3603/

Apparently it hasn't been all that disruptive. At least not yet... :)

The extra negative camber in the rears is just to make the car understeer at the limit, which keeps the "general population" from losing the rear and suing the mfgr. It gives the minority something to undo to really make it enjoyable to drive. :)

Don't misunderstand me -- I hate that as much as anyone. I'm talking about ICEs in an appropriate setting (mostly closed-course competition); and even on the street, a nice V-8 doesn't have to be _loud_ to sound sweet. I've got cats and reasonable mufflers on mine; it's far from obnoxiously loud, but still has a nice song to it.

And honestly, here in my neck of the woods, subwoofers are a much bigger nuisance than loud exhausts. Self-centered idiots will be self-centered idiots, regardless what tools are available.

Not quite _every_ way. What it's missing is "soul" (all you folks driving stock Hondas won't notice any change, har har): the howl of a GT-1-spec V8 that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, the growl of a boxer-6, the scream of a racebike at 16k RPMs, even the burble of a tuned street-V8 idling. I guess you can play pretty motor sounds from a speaker, but still, it's not the same. :)

And there really is a lot of cool engineering in modern ICEs. Some of us will miss that.

Don't get me wrong, I think something like an AWD rally car with independent electric wheel motors is going to be _fantastic_, performance-wise. But it won't have quite the same emotional pull as the old stuff.

I don't think it's applicable in the Prius case, but worth noting in general:

At WOT, the vacuum-assist for many power-assist brake systems just isn't there. You'll get one, maybe two applications from the vacuum reserve system. At that point, you have to be a little bit strong (and your seat has to be positioned properly) to generate that kind of braking force.

I'm not excusing it (your seat _should_ be positioned correctly, and you _should_ be strong enough to work the brakes without the assist), just pointing out that it's not quite that trivial.

You're not _supposed_ to use installer packages for simple self-contained apps (which Firefox is) on OS X. Drag-n-drop from a compressed DMG is the preferred way except for exceptional case that need to install frameworks or kernel extensions outside of the .app bundle.

A self-contained app can be distributed by a network admin quite simply with rsync or ARD or an Automator script or umpteen other ways that are fully automatable. People need to stop expecting Microsoft-looking "solutions" for non-Microsoft platforms.