siegen

I am surprised that the designers weren't more concerned with aerodynamics when they were first designing the concept, and that they only discovered it had horrible aerodynamics after showing the completed concept to the public (or perhaps they knew it had horrible aerodynamics and needed to change, but still showed it). When Honda unveiled the Clarity concept for the first time it was nearly finished, and the production version only had minor tweaks and a different grill compared to it. Same with the Insight.

You're comparing the Fit to more expensive vehicles that get worse mileage. I'm going to guess they will only offer cloth, but I wouldn't be too surprised if they did offer leather. I do doubt they will often all of or most of the premium features found on the European model (and found on Edmunds tester). I'm not suggesting that Ford will follow the same path Honda did, but European small cars tend to be much better equipped than ours. The European Fit (Jazz) is equipped considerably better than the US one, for example. You have the option of heated auto-retractable side mirrors, refrigerated glove compartment, panoramic roof, climate control, rain-sensing wipers, leather seats. Ford may (and I hope they do) break this trend and offer premium features on their smallest car. I don't think many of these features are on the Focus though, so it may create a problem with their marketing if the Fiesta is equipped better than the Focus.

When the Fiesta hits US shores and they get a production US-spec'd one, we'll have a good comparison. I've praised the Fiesta in old posts because it does look like a solid entry into the sub-compact market, and I'm not dogging on it. But this comparison is extremely skewed. I doubt the Fiesta will have the option of leather seats or some other features such as rain-sensing wipers and automatic climate control. The tires of course being the biggest issue, since that will affect handling, steering, braking, and overall the entire feel of the car while moving. It's an LS actually. ;-] I wanted a Type R really bad a long time ago but am glad I didn't go with it; I'm sure it would have gotten stolen eventually. I do have oem jdm type R suspension on my car; it handles on rails.

I was on the fence about this review after seeing all the liberties that were taken with the Fiesta, especially the fact that it had summer tires while the Fit had all-seasons. The constant "Dear Ford" messages and areas where Edmunds speculates about how Ford could make the Fiesta better for our market also make the review feel contrived. Is Edmunds really comparing what they think the Fiesta could be to what the Fit currently is? I sort of get that impression. After jumping back in my Integra after several months of driving my Audi, my Integra felt literally like a gokart. The shifter and clutch were so short it was almost made me laugh when I first took it out. It was AWESOME. It really made me appreciate a good manual transmission and linkage, compared to my Audi and the other MT cars I've driven. I drove the new Fit with manual transmission, and it feels very good, just like my Integra. Not sure if the Edmunds reviewer here is a "car guy" or not, but apparently not. Reminds me of my parent's Escort 5-speed. The shifter feels vague and engagement isn't solid or precise.

Indeed. It is done for the shock value for sure. The situation may not be quite that bad in real life (the extra car hitting them would have probably stopped before hitting them, unless they were also on their phone). I think it gives a nice message and I bet it would make numerous air-headed people stop texting while driving. I wonder how well it would go over if they aired that in the U.S. I only text at stoplights and I put the phone down if I'm not done and the light changes. No texting while driving for me.

Oh... is that the illegible gibberish they make you learn in grade school? As an art form cursive is nice, but making every child learn it is daft. Cursive isn't going to "go the way of the dinosaurs" anymore than painting, drawing, etc have gone away. They are art forms and people will still practice them, even if they aren't as important to everyday life as they used to be. Edit: As far as signatures go, I think that is something that should be taught specifically. And perhaps a little bit of cursive should be explained in the process of writing a unique and elegant signature. But that's about as far as I would take it. I think we should all use MD5 hash strings for our signatures. Mine is 828aaccdd064879b8802b6ee1e26780d. And then to solve the duplicates there would be assigned bold or italic characters for each person. Edit 2: An even better idea. Use the MD5 hash of the exact time of birth for each person down to the millisecond. And the time would be compared to a worldwide database to make sure there were no duplicates.

Curwhat?

A friend posted this on FB and I thought I would share. Hope it hasn't been posted before. It's a very real British public service announcement/advertisement about texting while driving. Not for the faint of heart.

I'm surprised they had the time and state of mind to call 911 and talk to the operator, yet not be able to put it in neutral. I've never tried it, but shouldn't the brakes be able to slow the car down even with the throttle pressed? I doubt it was running at full throttle unless the driver had it at full throttle when the floor mat got stuck on it. Given the the fact that he had time to call 911 I bet it was only at part throttle, and the car was slowly building up speed over a decent amount of time. A good reason why everybody should be driving manual transmission. Enough with this automatic BS. Very bad press for Toyota. Something that may have been the dealer's fault for putting the wrong floor mats in.

Is this it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq4nrmnqY9o

Anybody have a link to a video of the new Prius ad? Nice attempt by GM to belittle Honda, but I think they are forgetting about Honda's core business: motorcycles. The ad is funny, but I hate how GM is being so misleading with its advertising. It just doesn't feel very professional that they have to specifically call out individual vehicles (individual trims really) to claim a win. The Cobalt XFE with manual gearbox is the only trim that beats the Civic (by 3 mpg highway, but 1 mpg worse city). The Civic automatic beats the Cobalt automatic by 3 on the hwy and 1 in the city, without any special/extra FE tricks. I think I've beaten this horse to death though. No mention that the base Malibu (with 4-speed) gets worse mileage than the Accord. It is the 1LT and up (with 6-speed auto) Malibu that get better mileage. The base Accord is also less expensive than the base Malibu. The Malibu 4cyl is rated to 169 hp, while the Accord is rated to either 177 hp or 190 hp (with the same MPG). Why don't I see Honda advertisements talking about how the V6 Accord gets substantially better mileage than the V6 Malibu (19/29 vs 17/26), while being rated to nearly 20 hp more? Lastly the Traverse is a bright spot as it does edge out the Pilot in mileage (and power) without the need to quote selective information or be misleading. P.S. I hate the new Chevy website. They don't seem to list all the information, or make it easy to find.

I don't think it has so much to do with the vehicle as it does the driver.

I also have a mountain bike and on occasion ride on the road (usually at night). I stick to the side walks and always stop for cars and pedestrians. I imagine the situation is different for people who use their bikes as transportation and not just fun. Or they just get too confident.

The bicyclist held on to the door of his car?? That doesn't sound right; I wonder if the report is wrong. There doesn't seem to be enough information to really decide who was being the bigger idiot here. I for one am consistently irritated by bicyclists. Most roads make passing them very precarious, only to have them fly past you at the next stop sign/stop light.

It's easier to just pick up another hard drive and start fresh on it, rather than burning everything to DVDs, hoping you don't forget anything, and reformatting your main drive. Here is a nice cheap drive for $40 (assuming you have SATA ports on your MB). That way you won't lose any data (things like bookmarks and settings are easy to forget). If you do it that way, I would advise keeping the old drive unplugged while you install Windows on the new drive, and using the BIOS HDD boot priority to select the new drive to boot from when you plug the old one back in. That way Windows won't try to build a boot entry for the old drive (with the infected OS), which you will eventually reformat and use as a backup/data/page file drive. It seems easy for me, since I can install Windows on a new drive and be up and running in 10-15 minutes. I have an nLite version of my main OS with some of the major components slipstreamed in though. I also download all the drivers and programs on my other comp while Windows is installing, put it on my flash drive, and then load those once it's done. It's funny, Adobe suite takes longer to install than Windows does. lol. You're at a crucial point right now. Kind of like a fork in the road. You can keep at it and eventually reach a level of mastery many on this board have reached (take the red pill), or you can stop trying, switch to Mac, and not worry about it (take the blue pill).

Lol. Don't forget wireless keyboards and mice, so you can watch porn on your bed.

I also use XP SP3 and have been for quite some time on my main PC. I used 7 for a few months but recently switched back do to some incompatibilities with older programs. 7 is an excellent OS and I may switch to it in the future, btw. I had a little run-in with some nasty virus/spyware that I couldn't eliminate a while back. It was caused by a malicious script being run behind an ad on an otherwise non-malicious website (it happened to be Mininova). That's what sparked me to start using NoScript on all my PCs (and recommending it to friends). Prior to that I was under the assumption that javascript (or another scripting language; perhaps even flash) wouldn't be able to do harm to me simply from browsing a website. NoScript blocks all scripts, including Java, Javascript, Flash, etc, by default. Unfortunately there isn't a whitelist that you can just sign up with; you have to build your own. When you visit a website that uses a scripting language such as Javascript, a bar will open up at the bottom of the screen and you can select individual domains to whitelist. For example, I can whitelist cheersandgears.com, but blacklist any tracking domains that are used on this site, such as Google Analytics. After a while using it you will have all of your commonly visited sites whitelisted. You can also choose to globally enable all scripts, but that sort of defeats the purpose.

Firefox alone will help but won't stop all attacks. There are still some javascript loopholes that will allow spyware onto your system. Using NoScript takes care of this. Also, as it stands your best option is to reinstall Windows. When your OS has become as infected as you described, it is nearly impossible to clean it entirely. If you can, get a new hard drive and load a fresh version of Windows onto that, then manually pull your files over from the old hard drive (no executable files, just your documents, media, etc).

What OS are you using? XP, Vista? Viruses and spyware seem to be one of the number one touted reasons to using Mac OS X over Windows. This reason has some legitimacy to it, although it is overblown. Having used both Macs (about every version since System 6) and Windows 95 through 7 for the last 10 years (mostly XP), I can hands down say Mac is entirely irrelevant for a computer-savvy person. I've never really used anti-virus either, as it is also pointless for a smart computer user. It only takes a few simple and easy steps to protect yourself from viruses and spyware, even on an older OS such as XP. And you don't even have to give up your porn addiction! Firstly, most viruses and spyware on a PC are a result of user downloads. Chances are some of your afflictions fall under this category. You have to know what to run and what not to run. There is also a good portion of viruses and spyware that can come from malicious websites without any user interaction, including the search engine hack that you are experiencing. To protect yourself from this, use Firefox 3.5 with the NoScript plug-in. This blocks all javascripts by default, and you can create a whitelist. Using the AdBlock Plus plug-in is also great as it blocks 95% or so of ads you see, further reducing the possibility of your browser loading an ad with a malicious javascript hidden in it (be sure to subscribe to the "EasyList"). These combined will make you an Internet superhero, so long as you don't make any dumb decisions such as downloading a file or just accepting all dialog boxes by default.

This is a bad spell for Acura and I hope they put it behind them soon. Rumors have it they're going to be putting the focus on fuel efficiency, and may be bringing back a Civic-based RSX. Just rumors of course, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were true.

09/01/2009 - TORRANCE, Calif. - American Honda Motor Co., Inc., today announced record August sales of 161,439, up 14.2 percent on a daily-selling-rate(1) basis and setting a new record for the month. American Honda year-to-date sales remain down 24.8 percent to 806,907. "Honda's August sales speak to the attributes customers were looking for under CARS and will continue to look for as the economic recovery takes shape," said John Mendel, executive vice president of American Honda. "The challenge will be maintaining this momentum going forward." Honda Division sales of 151,814 set a new August record, up 19.6 percent, driven by car sales that increased 33.2 percent to 100,895. Two Honda vehicles posted all-time record months: the fuel-efficient Fit with sales of 13,593, up 194.1 percent, and the CR-V with sales of 30,284, up 58.3 percent. Civic posted record August sales, up 49.6 percent to 43,294. Civic, Accord and Fit were among the top 10 new vehicles purchased under the CARS program. Honda Division light-truck sales of 50,919 reflect a decrease of 0.4 percent. Honda Division year-to-date sales are down 23.9 percent to 737,538. Acura Division reported sales of 9,625. Sales of the TSX sports sedan increased 7.1 percent for August to 2,925. (1) All percentages in this release reflect the daily selling rate as calculated with 26 days for August 2009, versus 27 for 2008. Year to date, the daily selling rate is calculated with 204 days for 2009, versus 206 for 2008. Press Release

August 2009: August 2008:

Lol, thanks guys. I wouldn't mind a nice little honda-powered go-kart. :AH-HA_wink:

These grid-powered cars sound like they would have even more infrastructure problems than hydrogen FCV's, and you'd be very limited in where you could go. A hydrogen tank and fuel cell stack together weigh FAR less than current batteries for the same distance and performance. Hydrogen FCV's can be recharged at home with a solar or natural gas powered hydrogen generator. Sounds like the most efficient way to go.