Beta Culture

Do you get the feeling like companies don't care as much as they used to about quality, about getting a product tested and 100% perfect, before getting it out the door?

Ah, we'll just issue a firmware update later if there's a problem.  

Jesus Diaz at Gizmodo presents a scathing, enlightened look at our present-day beta culture, as he calls it.

Felicitari Thanksgiving!

Mulţumesc.  :-)

WSJ: A Car Wreck Made in Washington

Somebody finally figured out (or had the balls to say) what really caused the auto crisis. Read this great Wall Street Journal article by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr: A Car Wreck Made in Washington.

As an aside: notwithstanding the obviously retarded jetpooling fiasco, what gives the country's elected officials to be so holier-than-thou with the car companies' leaders? I mean... is the country as a whole doing any better economically than the Big 3?

MADD: Vengeance at Any Cost

Just what you'd expect from a group with mad in their name. Like 2Pac eloquently explained...

Read on: Jim Baxter's NMA Column: Vengeance, Bad Data Make For Terrible DUI/DWI Policy. And whatever you do, be careful not to drink and drive this turey day. The witch-hunt is on...

Law Firm Sues for Linking To Their Website

Chicago law firm Jones Day is suing Blockshoopper, a real-estate information site, for linking to associates' biographies on Jones Day's own website. Hyperlinks are bad, m'kay? 

• The lawsuit | Exhibits to the complaint
• Offending hyperlinks: #1 | #2

Follow on to Electronic Frontier Foundation's action on this ridiculous suit.

I Always Did Like Seagate

Brought to you by the fine folks at One Disc Drive...

Awesome Twingo Ad: The Billboard

Too bad we're not cool enough on this side of the pond to show it. :-)

The Truth: Skyline GTR vs Porsche GT2 at The Nurburgring

After all the bench racing and press release bickering between Nissan and Porsche lately... the 'Ring was just dying to get a GT2 and a GTR head-to-head. And today, the fine folks at Driver's Republic stepped up to bring us this fantastic piece of automotive journalism. Somebody had to do it. Read Driver's Republic: The Truth. The Porsche comes out on top, even with the wet conditions encountered during testing. Of note: I was surprised to read about the brake fade on the Skyline... But overall I'm impressed that the GTR managed a 7:56 in the wet. Alas, Driver's Republic did postulate that a Perfect Lap (TM) would only be 10-15 seconds faster.

iPhone 2.2 Upgrade Fixes, Breaks SMS Preview Privacy: Displays Sender Identity

Remember the SMS message preview privacy vulnerability from iPhone 2.1? Apple just "fixed it" yesterday with v2.2. Per Apple:

This update addresses the issue by, in this situation, displaying only a notification that a SMS message has arrived, and not its content.

One problem. Configured just like before: Passcode Lock on, Show SMS Preview off. Unlike the nondescript SMS notification from previous iPhones that just said "new text message," the new notification tells passersby who sent you a message:

iPhone 2.2	iPhone 2.1 Thanks to Karl Kraft

And as far as I can tell there's no way to turn this off. This new feature privacy bug is going to get some people in serious trouble... ;-) My suggested fix: add a sub-option under Show SMS Preview for Show SMS Sender.

Update: I have notified Apple of the problem.

Seattle 2008 and My Nissan Skyline GTR Road Test

I had been talking with my friends Dan and Valerie in Seattle about going and visiting for a while now, and I finally did over Halloween weekend. I’m lucky to have such nice friends… It was a fun and interesting weekend. I even got to drive their Skyline GTR so I could quit being an internet bench racer. My review below, but first, check out the pictures... :-) First, a small disclaimer: It rains a little bit in Seattle. Ok, it rains a lot. Dan’s Skyline was freshly detailed and for sale, and a single raindrop could be disastrous. So, when the weather finally cleared up for a few minutes on Saturday, we took the car out for a short trip. Dan drove first while I played with the Playstation center screen. You want a boost gauge? No problem. How about boost mapped against g-force, all historically data logged. Now that’s cool. And you can pick all this stuff in real time. And the graphics really are good enough for Polyphony Digital to associate their name with it. Speaking of the interior… it’s damn nice. I like that it would piss PETA off. There’s leather everywhere, even up the dash. The rear seats seem like good CD holders and poor ass holders, but that’s the whole point anyway. The fronts seats, on the other hand, are awesome ass holders – truly top notch. The make my Z06 seats feel like ass trays. Dan points out how good the radio in the GTR, a Bose, is. I’m skeptical, but he turns it up and it actually sounds quite good. Bose builds radios like brokers pick stocks… you never know what you’re gonna get. (The one in the C6 Vette would be improved by a Macdonalds drive-thru speaker. Its predecessor was actually decent.) We switch drivers. I move the driver’s seat forward about a foot. I try to figure out how to move the thing since there’s no clutch, no putting it in D, nothing… Dan says there’s two modes – manual and auto. I try auto mode first. When you let go of the brake, the car just sits there. You touch the gas, and you feel like the passenger in a manual transmission car, as the invisible man revs the engine to 1500RPM and Honda-style slips the clutch to engage it for you. The invisible man does perfect manual upshifts for you as you continue to drive, but it just feels… odd. Unlike an automatic transmission, these upshifts have a slight delay, and like I said, it feels like you’re in the passenger seat of a manual transmission car. Then I try manual mode. Wow. This thing rev matches better than I do. And that’s saying something. And it won’t protest a downshift that puts you at 6000RPM – it’ll happily blip the throttle to almost redline and just sing. It’s delightful to watch the invisible man shift and rev-match for you. You find yourself doing useless upshifts and downshifts, hoping he’ll screw one up but he never does. No wonder these transmissions are blowing up left and right. The acceleration feels a bit like a strong BPU Supra, although a lot quieter. It sounds kind of like a quiet blender. Once your margarita is ready, it’s time to upshift. Driving this car, my suspicions were confirmed that the 125mph-trapping cars in mags had to be ringers; a C6Z would put a hurt on a Skyline from a roll. Or from a stop if the Skyline owner wanted to preserve his warranty. ;-) I wish I had more time to drive it and could report on handling impressions. I only drove it through a couple twisties which I took at 8/10ths… I did notice that the Skyline rides significantly rougher than the Z06, a necessary evil for good handling due to its avoirdupois. I’m really looking forward to driving one again, with warranty VDC off, to see how the car really feels. Special thanks to Dan and Valerie at VIPImports.com!

Some Good News: Porsche Cayman Finally Gets a Posi!

Cayman fans have been lamenting its lack of a limited-slip differential since the beginning of time its introduction. Fret no more, Zuffenhausenphiles. Your differential has arrived. This means that Porsche's most balanced chassis is finally no longer intentionally handicapped by a limp diff. What's next? A real engine? Oh, here's some cool 2010 Cayman wallpapers...

Australian Camera Company Profits from Our Hard Times

Cities are having budget shortfalls just like the rest of us. What are they to do? Our "friends" at Redflex have the answer, bless their hearts.

Class Action Lawsuit for GTR Warranty Claims; Nissan Responds by Discontinuing Launch Control

Recall that I blogged about the Skyline GTR's problems last month: Nissan GTR Black Box Abused for Warranty Denial... A member of the North American GTR Owners' Club announced a Class Action lawsuit yesterday against Nissan for "Launch Control /Void Warranty /Transmission Failure." Nissan responded in a roundabout fashion by telling Edmunds Inside Line that the 2010 Skyline will not have Launch Control. "It's gone," said Nissan at the LA Auto show yesterday. "We just don't want to deal with the warranty nightmare anymore. It'll make the 2009 GT-R really special. It'll be the only R35 with launch control." This begs the question: now that Nissan has officially admitted to Launch Control's existence as a feature on the 2009, can they still bury their heads in the sand with respect to warranty claims associated with its use? I'm also looking forward to a redo of the magazine comparo tests next year with the warrantyable sans-LC launches.

Related: Nissan Reprograms Skyline GTR Launch Control Anybody who Owns a Porsche... I Suggest You Leave Nissan GTR Black Box Abused for Warranty Denial What's the Big Deal with the Skyline GTR's Black Box?

Toronto: Let it Snow

From Toronto November 2008

I have good timing, first snow of the year and all... Toronto is beautiful. Major big-city feel in a good way. Quite a change from the US too. Who ever heard of a self-serve Starbucks? Seriously: I asked for a venti red-eye and the guy handed me a venti cup with a shot of espresso. I stared at him oddly for a second and asked: where's the coffee? I was told it was behind me in the self-serve thermoses. Odd. Click here for the gallery (which will be expanding as I take more pictures...)

What a Difference a State Line Makes for Online Liberty

• Duke University stands up to the entertainment industry bullies.
• Meanwhile, neighboring state Tennessee adopts $9.5 Million university anti-piracy measures despite school layoffs.
• Great commentary from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

TSA: Close One Loophole, Open Another

Michael Chertoff is closing the boarding pass loophole with digital boarding passes you display on your smartphone. I'm eager to see the lawsuits by the disenfranchised travelers that don't smartphones. And of course, the actual bad guys will continue to use the paper passes...

Action on Climate Change, and a Rant

• The car is the last symbol of freedom in America. Environmentalists and other control groups have been attacking it as long as I can remember.
• Gas is cheap again. SUVs are aplenty. But the auto industry has been all but destroyed.
• Barack Obama talks of ending our oil addiction; Promises climate change and green jobs.
• Patrick Bedard at Car & Driver gives an excellent counterpoint in his column: Save Energy, Take the Car

And now, the requisite George Carlin link. Finally, my rants. What is up with all these control freaks nowadays? They're everywhere. Don't smoke in any restaurant I might go to. Don't drink. Don't buy vodka on a Sunday. Don't drive anything that pollutes. Don't have a certain type of sex or another. Don't have an abortion. Don't drive faster than I do. Don't (insert I'm better than you control here). Get over yourselves. It's just as much my world as it is yours. And by the same token, it's just as much your world as it is mine. So long as you're not infringing on my freedoms, I wouldn't presume to write laws to tell you what to do. You want clean air? Stay home and get a nice HEPA filter. Outside you never know what you might encounter. Really feel a need to tell others what to do? If you must, multiply and then you can tell your kids what to do. Quit making laws just to restrict other people's freedoms. Wasn't the whole beauty of this country that we're all different and we respect that? Not that we legislate the lowest common denominator across the board? Cheers, Andi

Fun with Graphjam and xkcd

More gold:

• Use of front foglights
• Probability that an attractive girl is single

Jerry are you listening? (LOL).

And for the best solution to road rage ever, thanks to Autonet's new in-car WiFi, check out xkcd: Road Rage.

The Game of Pool

Men invented pool to watch women play it.

Sent from my iPhone

The User Experience: Microsoft Ergonomics Strikes Again

I recently upgraded to Office Professional Plus 2007 on my Windows box. Not by choice. 

What the hell is up with Microsoft removing the menu bars across the product line? Who had that brilliant idea? How about we remove all keyboard shortcuts, rename all commands, and make it a whole new product just to make it an equal learning experience to new and experienced users so nobody's disenfranchised?

Idiots.  

Good thing Steve Jobs is a zealot when it comes to UI design. It's a lot harder to creaate apps on a Mac than on a PC. Every pixel must be Steve-approved. FYI: One of the Tenets of creating a Mac-application is that it absolutely *will* have a menu-bar. And as such, Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac has a fully functioning menu bar just like every other Office that preceded it, and every other Mac app. Read Inside Steve's Brain for a glimpse into Steve Jobs' mind, and what kinds of restrictions he puts on developers... 

Too bad Microsoft gave people too much freedom in designing Windows apps, and in turn gave their own developers too much freedom to screw up Office 2007.  So much end user productivity lost.

I Have a New Appreciation for All Wheel Drive

EFF, ACLU Seek to Overrule Kentucky Judge, Self Appointed Ruler Of The Internet

Remember the Kentucky Judge that stole a bunch of domains because Kentucky residents were illegally visiting the out-of-state site? Maybe he was wrong after all. :)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, just urged a Kentucky Court of Appeals to vacate a lower court's order authorizing the seizure of more than 100 Internet domain names associated with websites operating around the globe. Update: Arstechnica weighs in.

Related: Kentucky Judge, Self-Appointed Ruler of Internet Overruled

Kentucky Judge Appoints Himself Ruler of The Internet

Autonet In-Car Wi-Fi Didn't Learn From TJX

Autonet's coming out with their mobile router for in-car 3G internet. They're even teaming up with Chrysler to install it in 2009 models. Click for Walt Mossberg's review and some random USA Today review. 

So, what's Autonet provide for security? According to their website, WEP. Good old, crackable in minutes from the next lane WEP. This should be fun. :) BTW, kudos to Walt Mossberg for mentioning the weak security...

And yet I still can't enter directions in my damned nav while driving...

A True Racer's Spirit

Dedication. It's getting under the hood and holding the throttle open to finish the race when the cable breaks. Yeah.

Equifax Wants to Simplify Getting a Fake ID

Equifax (yes, the guys who know more about you than you do, except that half of it is erroneous BS) wants to become the trusted source for online age verification. Enter the I-card. Oh, and it only works on Windows. 

Anybody want to take bets that this idea goes nowhere?

Apple is Late to The Cloud Party? Hmm...

According to this article, Apple missed the boat on cloud computing (and everything else for that matter). 

I've already opined on this.

Where's the Outrage for Us Car Guys?

Political correctness be damned. I'm sick and tired of environmentalists saving the planet itself instead of the people that are on it. (I'll skip the rest of that rant and just refer you to this.)

I happened to be watching FoxNews today and I saw a piece on these poor guys that can't reigster their little ecomobiles to drive on Massachusetts roadways. The newsfolks were genuinely concerned about these victims of lawmakers run amok. The 40mph top speed and marginal-at-best safety of these Chinese-made scooters-on-steroids didn't seem to concern the reporters.

Yet us car guys (and girls) haven't been able to legally register a 1996+ model car with a single major modification (or even line of code modified in the engine computer) in most metropolitan areas for years.

Where's the outrage for the disenfranchized car guy?

The Episode Finally Airs: Top Gear's ZR1, CTS-V, and Challenger Review

You may recall I tipped off Autoblog about the mods Top Gear was doing to these cars before running them at Bonneville.

It looks like the episode finally aired; I haven't even had time to watch it yet. Click here to watch, then come back here to comment and let me know what you think. Cheers...

Priceless: What if The Matrix Ran on Windows?

Can We Go Now?

Sent from my iPhone

What's Going On at GM? Heinricy's Leaving Too?!

• Last month, Corvette chief engineer Tom Wallace unexpectedly announced his retirement.
• A few days ago GM posted another dismal month.
• To add insult to injury, John Heinricy announced his retirement today. (Recall my blog entry, What Would Heinricy Do?). I think John Heinricy's departure marks the end of an era for GM. No more Win on Sunday, Engineer on Monday. What other auto exec could make the decision to send a car to a magazine duel, and then hire himself as the pro driver?
• Now, GM is set to announce "important changes" on Friday. What's going to happen, any guesses? Will they lose the quintessential car guy, Bob Lutz, thus throwing in the towel for good?

I bought GM stock last month. Now I'm starting to wonder... On the bright side, I do have to give The General credit for the sucking up they did this morning (I got the press release email this morning and laughed).

Viper ACR Mini-Review and Track Video

Grant writes in with a mini-review of his new Dodge Viper ACR as well as some in-car footage of his first track outing. 

I've been meaning to write a more detailed review, but here is a video of me at a local road course the VCA rented out: [streetfire.net] I know I was driving like a pussy, and missed a few apexes. It was my first time tracking the car or driving that course (which is pretty scary in places). It has a decent amount of understeer. Its not debilitating or anything; off-throttle it rotates nicely and trail-braking can easily get the car loose. When it does step out it tends to snap back, I think because you've often got to be somewhat rough to get the back end out in the first place. Its really an easy car to drive. The in-cabin shots look like I'm taking a Sunday cruise. Power-oversteer when you aren't cornering hard is downright peaceful. Really the best adjective I can think of to describe it is "tranquil". It doesn't really do anything surprising, except for maybe snapping back a bit hard after getting loose (and that may just be me being used to my C5, which feels like its set up for drifting). -Grant

The superimposed telemetry in the video is very nice... but I wish the video was actually in-car instead of bumpercam. In-car footage that show's the steering angle lets you see what the driver is doing and the car's yaw angle, de rigueur in my book.

I'm looking forward to seeing more track footage from Grant, hopefully actual in-car, and a more in depth review of this car I'm so jealous of. :-)  So Grant, you throwing H&C on it and doing One Lap of America with me or what?  

Appliance Security?

Who's gonna be the first to hack smart appliances?

Virginia Democrats Mull Taxing You Per Mile

Cliffs notes: You didn't buy enough fuel, so now you're going to buy RFID tolltags.

[The Newspaper]