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He said it was youtube material, but I can't find it on youtube.

Link?

Monteverdi is Swiss quality so shut up! The reason people like American power cars are because of the mainstream movies... If they made bullit with HAI, everyone would want it.
And only real cars that are American made (GTI) are from European parts...

People like American power cars in America because they're cheap, easy to repair and improve and parts are cheap.  The middle aged crowd grew up while they were the coolest thing on the market and they have a fantasy surrounding them.  It has very little to do with the movies, the movies are there because people like muscle cars not vice versa.  Where I live, stupid hillbilly rednecks, or historically oppressed poor white people, whichever you prefer you bigoted bastard, buy them for under $1000 in poor condition and then get spare parts from huge junkyards full of wrecked ones to make race cars out of.  I really doubt you could do the same thing with ANY European sports car here.

Even 20 year old beater BMW's can hardly be repaired because the imported repair parts are so expensive.

On the flip side, one of my friends traveled to Germany to play American football in a fit of irony.  He said that the American cars that we pretty much ignore here are super popular and thought of as high class while Mercedes cars we would drool over were used as taxi cabs.  Europeans see American cars as attractive because they are status symbols I guess, that's my best guess, in addition to their shaking thundering sound and power that Americans enjoy.

Personally I'd like to drive a smart car and I wish the Loremo was on the market.

edit:
Loremo:

A 100+ mpg car with a four passenger capacity.  Absolutely amazing.  Probably pretty cramped.

What in the holy hell is that?

It's a coal digger in Germany.  The wheel spins and those buckets on it harvest coal from the ground and send it down conveyors on the machines body.  I think it's the largest mobile machine on Earth.

Lots of churches in your area, mine, and others use more money than that to send missionaries to South and Central America to convert Catholics to *insert protestant religion here* and preach about it as if they're fighting heathenism and dealing with head hunters.

Furthermore, more than half of the area preachers here drive new model cars worth well over what their average parishioner makes in a year while living in houses filled with luxury goods all on the church's dime.

That's really only the beginning of the problems of Midwestern US organized religion.

Regrettably, I must admit I've seen one of those in person at a monster truck rally.

It was glorious.  It was like, it would show off its car crushing awesomeness for everyone gladly but you still better not mess with it or it would be peasant burninating time!

Hello!

Let me introduce you to two good friends of mine.

Line breaks.

   .. And indentations before paragraphs, which while being tedious with their extra 5 or so keystrokes will allow AGS'rs everywhere to read and scrutinize your post with all their brain powers instead of immediately giving up and writing a sarcastic post or pressing the back button!

Speaking of broadband,does anyone know if there is a way to connect broadband without a service provider? Like if you bought everything like the stuff  the ISP companies have, instead of renting it?

LOL, yes, you need tens of thousand dollars worth of cisco routers and a bunch of optical fiber or telephone/cable line.  Just connect that to another major internet hub with the same equipment and you're in business.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet

Nobody count out the possibility that the same satellite that shot the pictures.... perhaps shot a series of lasers?

I also have sharks with friggin' lasers on their heads! I will stop shooting the lasers if you will give me... *dramatic pause*  ONE MILLION DOLLARS!

Then, why don' t we go to sun panels, which are more ecological and (at least in my country) more reliable than the wind? 

1. 10 year lifetime, after that they still produce power but they have decreased their output gradually to this time such that you either must buy more or get some kind of additional power from other sources.

2. Most expensive "clean" energy on the market

3. Ecological damage due to manufacture and disposal because of this short lifespan

Windmills, if maintained properly, can last a hundred years.  How is a solar panel more ecological?  Is it because of birds?  I think that argument is really not so well founded.

I favor stirling (hot air) engines for sun power over solar panels, but by all accounts they're just too expensive to build.  One of my friends is working on a way to use refrigerants in a closed cycle for power production, I'm not so sure how well it's going to work out though.  His method of choice is known as the kalina cycle.

Holy crap! Just look at that satellite picture!

I heard a snippet about this on NPR but had no idea it was this crazy.

A 1 kW (peak) windmill will run $1500 (US$) on the low end and will not maintain that power unless the wind is constant.  They must be designed for the particular average speed of wind.  Lower wind speeds don't necessarily mean less power, just larger turbine blades.  Because of the aerodynamics a windmill can actually spin about 3 times the speed of the wind or it can be geared to the particular gen-set.

I've read about DIY windmills built by off-grid Colorado (Rocky Mountain) dwellers who couldn't get power to their locations.  It's possible to make one in a pretty modestly equipped home shop or garage.

Supposedly wind turbines just started approaching the economics of coal power a couple of years ago, but have yet to surpass it.

I've read, but never seen direct evidence, that people love the idea of windmills until they actually arrive and then they bitch about the noise.  I can see how a huge megawatt turbine could woooosh wooossh all night and disturb residents.

Back to my original thought.. supposing you could get a kW pretty regularly and used it to charge a battery set.. $1500 (windmill) + $1000 (electronics systems) + ~$600 (batteries LOW estimate assuming consistent windmill output) = $3100 (US).  My electric bill is about $40.  I suspect a family household only passes $100 in the summer.  Who is going to pony up for a system that they will have to pay to maintain and repair when it's so so much more expensive than just paying a small monthly fee?  Even the aforementioned windmillers in Colorado recommended windmills only for people with no other choice or excess cash and social conscience.

I kinda had to post because I've been meaning to build my own for quite a while, but because they need to be in laminar flow wind and I have so many trees I'd need a tower about 20 meters high for excellent yield.

What's really strange about the whole public knowledge thing in America is that you can figure out who the convicted sex offenders are, what they were convicted of in broad categories, but not what the situation was or how it happened.  There are google maps that show the homes of convicted sex offenders in the US.  They're not allowed to live within such and such distance from churches, schools, day care facilities, youth recreation facilities, public parks, etc. so they're usually pretty concentrated in certain areas.

Suppose you accidentally get caught taking a piss in public by an unsuspecting youngster and are convicted of exposing yourself to a minor, now you're a convicted sex offender even though you aren't anywhere near the level of those other freaks.

I work with a guy who is convicted of forcible sodomy and rape on a minor, a weird mofo that everyone pretty much hates, but what sucks is that we'll never know what he actually did, just this vague description of it.  So should we really be filling his gloves with grease and running the batteries out of his power tools every day or is what he actually did not so bad as it sounds?  Maybe some 14 year old threw herself at him, because the law here still calls that rape.  He already has a super crappy low paying dead-end job and has lost any other good opportunities as soon as people found out his history, so how bad does life have to be for this guy before it's gone too far?

People practically form lynch mobs around these people before they're even convicted or confronted with substantial proof.  Bad divorces sometimes lead to completely fabricated accusations that will lead to a group called "Bikers against child abuse" to form a 24 hour bodyguard team around your child that might shoot to kill if you come near.  Oh yeah, they also drive back and forth in motorcycle gangs in front of your house for no reason sometimes.

A touchy issue that needs a lot of restraint sometimes, but really who wants to try and be compassionate with a child molestor?

Those postage paid envelopes can also be attached to much larger packages (up to 10 lbs. or some such) and mailed back full of rocks in the US.  That has to cost them at least $20, and they'll probably stop sending them or block you from doing it from your post office.  If they do the latter, you only need to use a different post office.  Of course, your mileage may vary with British law.

When I was in college someone called my room and wanted me to buy something stupid and I said "This is a college dorm." and she said "Oh, I'm sorry, I'll remove you from our computers."

I wonder if they can't sell to college dorms? Give that a try!

When I was in a college dorm credit card call-centers would phone at 8:30 am (long before I was usually awake then) and try to sign me up.  I'd tell them no, go back to bed, and 15 minutes later they'd call back.. and ask for my roommate.

Bastards.

A lot of times they would be foreign students who could barely speak English (the call center was in my college town, they would go number to number in the college phone directory).  Once I was halfway signed up before I realized who it was and what they were doing.

A++++, will do business with again.

"Why did you call the band 'The Beatles'?"
"It's just a name.  We could've been called 'The Shoes.'"

The first is taken, so I suggest the latter!

and while you do that, I get the women

No, you don't understand, that's how I impress the women.  What was everyone else talking about?

Does the Budweiser in Britain taste the same as the Budweiser in America or does it contain some sort of hormones that change the flavor?

I can form the diamond dust into a molten diamond-lava.

Needs more sex and violence.

Mods, if you're in a classroom with one exit, which the gunman is blocking, where are you gonna go? People were jumping out of the windows.

It's a good thing we're not stupid enough to have airplanes, or something really... oops.