Prius vs Hummer and How to avoid getting Hacked

I was just browsing around the internet and I happened to stumble upon One Man's Blog and I found some interesting things out that I wanted to share with all of you beautiful people.

The first point of interest is about the environmental friendliness of hybrid cars. As you may or may not know, this is a subject dear to my heart, so I was kinda bummed to learn about this, finding that the way hybrids are produced is overall much worse for the environment then just burning a little more gasoline. Check out the whole blog here.

The next topic, how to avoid getting hacked is something that everyone should read. I know, people never think that they will be the ones to get hacked but it can happen to anyone, as this guy points out. He gives some pretty good advice on how to avoid being hacked by picking better passwords and even links to Microsoft's site that helps you test the strength of your passwords.

  1. About the Prius vs. Hummer

    The CNW report refered to in that artical seems to have a few “facts” wrong or at least skewed quite a bit.

    Why should a Prius have a lifetime of just 100’000 miles? Will it just break down at that mileage? No, most will last at least 200’000 miles, as some have already done. Will a Hummer H3 last 300’000 miles? Maybe, but it will need some repair and maintenance too.

    The facts on that nickel mine are just plain out of date, yes the situation there was terrible before the 90′s. The Prius wasn’t even being built at that time, though and things have changed dramatically. (http://www.inco-sudbury-airquality.com/) The Production of the Prius battery also only accounts for a very small part of worldwide nikel use, most is in any metall alloy, of wich the H3 is also made of.

    About mileage, the Prius EPA mileage was 55 combined but has been corrected to 46 combined. Aveo EPA MPG was 30 combined but has also been corrected now it is 27 combined, 46 is still more than 50% better.

    Adding research and development into the equation doesn’t help the Prius of course, as it is a newly developed vehicle. H3 is just a nice looking SUV on a old GMC cassis of course that didn’t take much R&D. Where would we be if we didn’t invest in R&D though? New hybrids will require less R&D so some of what it took to develop the Prius will be returned.

    Of course driving at all causes more environmental damage than riding the bus, bike or going on foot. But if we want to use a car and need to buy a new one I think the Prius is a pretty good choice. If you want to stick with the old one, sure that will also cause less pollution, as its has already been built. If you want a cheep economy car like the Aveo, well sure that will definitely be better than an SUV.

    That’s about all there is to say to that artical.

    Cheers
    crusy

    ps Also look at what GM has to say about rebuilding Chicago from wood out of the Sudbury area: http://www.gmcanada.com/inm/gmcanada/english/about/MissionGreen/Daily/Sep22.html

    crusy
    March 30th, 2007 at 11:08 am
  2. The study comparing Hummers and Priuses has bee pretty widely discredited. For one thing, they make the assumption that you will drive your Hummer for 300,000+ miles, but you will throw the Prius directly into the landfill at 100,000. Some of the numbers hey use are given without source and plenty of other researchers have better (and more favorable to the hybrids) data. I’ll write a full post on it later when I have time.

    One more note: you always have to be careful when looking at white papers. Programmers and IT people know this well, because of the thousands of pro-Microsoft, pro-Oracle, pro-Linux, etc. white papers that come out every day. Their findings tend to reflect whatever the people paying for them wanted.

    Jason
    March 30th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
  3. I hate to be a negative Nancy, but I just took a look at the “how not to get hacked” page and I’m not sure it offers much of a guarantee against hacking. Password strength is a valid issue, but a relatively small one. Brute force attacks aren’t really that useful against most systems, because they will lock up after 3-5 bad password attempts.

    With the constant bombardment of phishing scam emails, the prevalence of spyware and keyloggers, and the constant large-scale data thefts from large companies and government institutions, brute force attacks on passwords are the least of your worries.

    Jason
    March 30th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
  4. Sorry guys, I was really just lookin up stuff, thought it was interesting, and posted it. I guess I am glad that people are actually reading my stuff, but I am definitely not saying either is right or wrong, I just thought that they were interesting.

    S. H. Skuld
    March 31st, 2007 at 5:36 pm
  5. “The Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles – the expected lifespan of the Hybrid.
    The Hummer, on the other hand, costs a more fiscal $1.95 per mile to put on the road over an expected lifetime of 300,000 miles. That means the Hummer will last three times longer than a Prius and use less combined energy doing it.”

    So, this is the sleight of hand of this “article.” Not exactly a level playing field when the notoriously-costly-to-maintain Hummer is magically allowed to spread it’s cost over 300,000 miles while the famously low-maintenance Toyota is only allowed 100,000.

    Guess what? The Hummer comes in at $5.85 on a level playing field! And the Prius number is actually under $2.90.

    No question that the batteries present a negative for this stage in the technology [though you should ask yourself "How much of that mine's production does Toyota buy? Is it 90%? 20%? 2%? The article gives the Prius the single handed responsibility for all of it.] In fact, the Canadian mine suffered the environmental damage due to nickel smelting about 100 years ago. And Toyota recycles all Prius batteries as part of the purchase price.

    But the main thing to tip you off is that the “report” was written buy a marketing firm. They wont show their research calcs [unacceptable to scientists, and other Homo Sapiens].

    But it’s absurd on the face of it. Initial costs
    Hummer: $ 50,000
    Prius: $25,000
    Cost to operate:
    Hummer: 0.47 per mile
    Prius: 0.22 per mile

    Life expectancy:
    Gimme a break. They are the same.

    You gotta REALLY want to believe. I mean you REALLY gotta want to IGNORE REALITY to think this PR flack could be true in any stretch of the imagination.

    Be smart.

    Mad Mike
    April 9th, 2007 at 11:27 am

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