PurdueGuy

Yes, they agreed to the home loan, and the homeowner ought to be able to pay off his freaking loan. For the homeowner to be left with NOTHING to show for paying $175k on his house is just immoral. Something being legal (bank foreclosure under conditions like this) does not make it moral. The guy bulldozing his house sends a message to the bank that if they're going to start making consistently immoral business decisions, people will eventually do something about it.

I agree it's certainly wrong to do when it's an apartment attached to other peoples' homes. I'm not sure I agree with doing it with the house, but it's much more reasonable.

I guess if he takes all his real estate value to zero, then goes bankrupt, he's going to be in about the same end position as if the bank took them and he still had to go bankrupt. This just makes a point, though it's terribly wasteful. It's just terrible that the bank wouldn't let him pay it off, that's evil.

This is 2010, GM ought to know how to do lean manufacturing, which is going to result in NOT having every single color and option configuration on every lot. To do so would result in absolutely ridiculous overproduction that would just lead GM into another bankruptcy. It would be excellent if time from order to lot was shorter, and if the dealer would know the timeframe more accurately and communicate better with the customer, setting expectations better.

I'd be asking the dealer how badly they'd like to keep their sale. Maybe they have a good used car on the lot they'd loan to her for a few weeks to keep her from walking away.

As long as you don't have any bulbs out, no dash "check engine" or other "service" lights = no codes.

On many cars it's a piece of cake to remove the throttlebody completely and clean it thoroughly, giving you much longer intervals between cleanings. It can also help things like idle air control valves not get gummed up (again, depending on the throttlebody design.)

FWD is pretty intrinsically more controllable for inexperienced/unskilled drivers. Weight over the front wheels is only part of it. However, stability control systems and such should help tremendously with keeping control, so that advantage for FWD should diminish somewhat. As far as configuration options, it seems several are likely to be tried in an electric-drive setup: - 1 motor driving both rear wheels (perhaps only one wheel at a time via a differential) - 1 motor driving both front wheels (perhaps only one wheel at a time via a differential) - 1 motor driving all wheels (similar to current awd or 4wd systems) - 2 motors driving rear wheels - 2 motors driving front wheels - 4 motors driving all wheels The 1 motor setups all have costs in materials and space due to differentials, axles, etc. It's likely that for lower priced cars, those costs will be more than worthwhile to avoid the cost of an extra motor, but higher priced vehicles may find it worthwhile to use a multi-motor setup to help with space and driving dynamics. We may see electric motor pricing come down enough that someday it'll be worth it to use multi-motor setups in all vehicles. I think in the shorter term, hybrid and electric vehicles will largely appeal to people looking for either mpgs or for "green" reasons. While those concerns aren't necessarily exclusive from performance interests, IMO people who are concerned enough with mpgs and "green" concerns tend to be much less interested in performance, and would be content with or even prefer FWD. I fully expect that because of this, hybrid and electric vehicles will be hugely dominated by FWD designs.

I would guess the interest depends on the availability. I'd do some searching online for the info in your slides. If you can find it, your slides are probably nearly worthless, except maybe to someone who's nostalgic about microfiche. If you can't find the info, they might be worth a little bit to the right person.

Maybe this would help the tire budget by reducing tire spin? http://www.mattracks.com/

It could be excellent for delivery in urban areas. Think about it - electric means it doesn't have much of an efficiency penalty for low speeds, and no penalty when sitting in traffic. Delivery vehicles spend a lot of time sitting still while being loaded/unloaded, so if it's an 8hr day, if it averages below 10mph (including all that load time at 0mph in the average), then you can get through a full day before plugging back in. Rural areas will still need gas power, but a lot of small businesses could definitely use something like this.

I think it's going to be most reasonable to do do a hybrid HD setup for a while - SSD for the OS & program files, standard style HD for most of the files. I haven't gotten to that point yet, but am so badly wanting to. I did do a RAID10 setup with 4 750gb Caviar Black drives though, and got a nice boost in my score over my old RAID1 setup. Every little bit helps, as I do HD video editing on a regular basis, which depending on what aspect of that I'm working on will max out the processor (core2quad), ram (4gb, hoping to double that sometime soonish), or hard drives. Interestingly, some of the cheaper SSDs don't outperform a high rpm platter style hard drive in every aspect. There's a nice article on Tom's Hardware about it. The Intel SSD and one other (kingston? I forget) blow platter HDs out of the water, though.

The ratings in your first screenshot pretty much tell the story: your processor and hard drive are pretty decent, but your graphics & ram aren't so great. My advice: + max out your ram (2gb) with the fastest interface speed your mobo will support + new graphics card (~$150 card should do wonders over what you have) + consider Win7 64bit No need for a whole new computer IMO - you've got some core components that are quite decent, and with a minor investment the computer should be excellent for all but the latest games or heavy video editing for a few more years. *edit* Just noticed your graph with photoshop. I'd do the above (at least the ram & graphics card), see how it does, then consider a better CPU that'll fit your mobo (plenty of options).

Awe, c'mon, sounds like you have a reputation to uphold!

For your enjoyment: http://www.theonion.com/content/video/obama_drastically_scales_back

Why are you guys assuming it's a manual? Either way, I would also not be too quick to say this is unintended acceleration (in the recall related sense), vs a case of an older person who shouldn't be driving anymore and overlooked some important steps in parking.

Uncontrollably! By wire!

Maybe that'll get people to dismiss the concept that it could be a software problem a little less.

Did anyone else chuckle at the phrase "Google-China standoff"? lol

Yeah, I like how they try to scare people with that statement, but in the same article are saying Oh no, they might have to distribute the cost of some transformers and other hardware... across millions of customers across many years.

And here's the downfall of most of this article. No way they will sell that many starting out, even combining several models from several manufacturers. While it is important for the utility companies to keep an eye on the situation, it's not nearly as dire as some are making it out to be.

And Apple is very happy they've convinced you it's a Hyundai vs Cadillac difference. IMO it's at most a Buick vs Cadillac difference. And if the OS is worth that much more to you, add $50 to the cost of the PC and buy the Mac OS & install it. Not that hard. You prefer US goods, eh? You do know that Apple products are almost universally made by Foxconn, which is based in Taiwan, right? Of course some of the actual hardware is made in China. If Foxconn hardware is what gets you excited, I can build you a computer using primarily Foxconn products. It'll cost a fraction of what it would if it had a little fruit with a bite out of it on it. Oh, and it'll have more features & higher specs. And since you like the Mac OS, I'll throw that on there for ya too. And since I have my own business that (among other things) builds computers, you'll be supporting American business just as much, by paying an American company to build your computer out of Asian parts. I'll be glad to double or triple the price if that's your thing as well. Sorry, I forgot to address packaging, branding, and sales care. Also known as "ways to make people who can't make a decision based on substance like your product better than the competition." Guess you got me there, Apple does spend a crapload on advertising and expensive packaging. Makes it all worthwhile.

Yummy!

My wife & I are looking at either switching to a cheaper tv service, or ditching it altogether. Unfortunately there's a bit of a question if we can even get all the major networks over the air where we live, and there are some fav tv shows that aren't on the network websites or hulu. Still, to save ~$50/mo it might be worth just not following a few shows anymore. We already have no car payments and inexpensive insurance. We're looking at ways to reduce food costs, but overall we're not really having to tighten our belts, we're just doing it to get out of debt faster.

I was simply pointing out how retarded your comparison of the iPad to a netbook was. A netbook is 2/5 of the price of the entry iPad. For an equal price you get a device that blows the iPad out of the water in every measure of usability except portability. Not sure what your problem is with Windows products (I assume you mean windows-based products, no matter what manufacturer they come from), but I know plenty of people with 5+yr old windows laptops that are still quite functional. I will be replacing the DVD drive on one next week, as everything else on it is working fine and the DVD player only recently decided to quit. Batteries wear out in ~3yrs, but Macs aren't exempt from that. A friend of mine has a macbook whose battery exploded after ~6 months. Apple makes some good stuff, but quit being such a fanboi. The Mac tax only applies to upper models? Let's look at what you get in a $500 Mac laptop. Oh wait, they don't have one. The Macbook starts at $999, let's look at what you get: 13.3" screen 250gb 5400rpm HD DVD-RW 2.26ghz Intel Core2Duo 1066mhz FSB 2gb DDR3 ram NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM (sounds like a dedicated graphics card, which is good) What's a windows-based machine offer for the same money? Here's a quick example from Toshiba, which consistently gets rated very highly for building a quality product. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834114743 16" screen 500gb 5400rpm HD DVD-RW 2.8ghz Intel Core2Duo 1066mhz FSB 6gb DDR3 ram NVIDIA GeForce GT 230M 1GB GDDR3 discrete graphics memory (sounds like a much better dedicated graphics card) So how is the Mac not ridiculously more expensive?