Comment Re:Cable Lacing (Score 1) 635
I can see how that would be relaxing, and I have an application at work where I may try this: cleaning up a mess of a telecom closet when I have some spare cycles to burn.
I know the difference of opinion is entirely due to drug abuse, and a view of reality tainted by an inability to understand higher abstract philosophy.
My prius was $6500 used. It is a 2006. They only gave me one key, the previous owner had lost one.
With the Prius, the vin number can be used to *create* a new key, but you need the old key as part of the programming sequence to pair the new key with the computer. Can't even boot the computer up without a paired key (really just an RFID tag in the fob, the actual physical key is only good for unlocking the door and cannot boot up the computer). So if all keys are lost, the master computer is effectively bricked. Also, due to the fact that the neutral is engaged only through software and when the computer is off, a steel bar locks the planetary "Synergy Drive" transmission, you need a flatbed tow truck with a very strong winch to drag the car up onto the flatbed if you can't boot the computer up.
There are other interesting design choices. For instance, the rear truck release is only electric. If the 12 volt battery that boots up the computer dies, you have to fold down the rear seats, unload the trunk, open the trunk, remove the tool box, climb in on your belly, reach in a hole blind to pull a lever to push up on the hatchback with your shoulders to open the hatchback so that you can then get to the battery compartment.
Though this has been fixed since, the gear shift lever (really just an analog joystick with 4 positions in a lower case reverse h and a spring to bring it back to center) is non-instinctive, you push it forward to go reverse and back to go forward.
Finally, I think the fuel cap release lever was designed for 5' tall asians, not 6' tall Americans. Even at a measly 5'6", I need to get out of the car to be able to reach it.
Buried wires and Pipes are easy- especially with a bent clothes hanger. It's a property of magnetism.
*still* water not running through a metal pipe, or a wire with electricity flowing through it, is hard in comparison. Especially with a forked wooden stick.
Not quite true. The article likens this to GM bricking a Corvette for losing the keys, but that's exactly what happens to a modern Toyota computer if you lose the last key (cost of replacing a key for my Prius $175. Cost of replacing key + computer $1,275, I checked and that convinced me to spend the $175 for a second key for my used Prius).
For contracting, it helps immensely. But something must have changed in the past week. I went from 5 recruiter contacts a week to 35 in the past week. I no longer look for jobs- jobs look for me. (I estimate, from the request numbers, that those 35 contacts represent 18 jobs at 5 companies, including the one I'm currently working at).
Has been measurably worse than the one before.
That includes Nixon, Ford, Carter and St. Ronnie, but I'd gladly take those crooks over the sleezebags of Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obama.
" Don't try to convince me your religion is any different."
How could I? Drugs destroy the ability to reason. And you need the ability to reason to understand anthropocentric cosmology.
How do you fuck something like that up?
All too easily it seems; my first MacBook Pro power lead caught fire a few years ago as well. This was the low-voltage (hence high current) end, though: in their quest to make everything thin and light, the cable was thin and flimsy, so one of the braided conductors frayed after a while. More current going down a thinner wire meant more heat - which softened the remaining copper and made the problem worse, until arcing started and I got a micro-firework display on my desk. (One of is successors managed to melt the plastic in the plug, that didn't make me happy either!)
On the mains end, even a hefty (for laptops) 300-odd watt PSU is only 3A from a US outlet, half that on the higher voltages elsewhere - usually easy enough to deal with, but one sloppy connection and you can get a tiny point getting very hot indeed. It's worse on the low voltage end: a single cable possibly carrying 20 or more amps, while getting rolled up, folded and stood on in transit, designed to be very light weight - yet also done on a budget. As soon as you start trying to shave weight and cost, I suspect it's all too easy for a wire to be just slightly too thin for the current, or a connection to be a little bit too weak for long term mobile use.
If you were building a high school or college electronics project and said you planned to run laptop currents and voltages through such thin wires and tiny connectors, you'd probably be told off or marked down - but commercially, thin, light and cheap trump safety margins and robustness.
Real Programmers don't eat quiche. They eat Twinkies and Szechwan food.
