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Looks like Exige mixed with Carrera GT, but it's definitely nothing we haven't seen before, the proportions in the concept art make it look like a hot wheels car.

I thought the EXACT same thing when i watched that episode. I think the reason they push so hard to get the armor is that they know it's way beyond what their engineers can come up with. The Russian Crimson Dynamo or whatever it was is a brute force giant robot, nothing particularly high tech about it in contrast to Tony's armor. I think Stain is looking more at the potential of technology advancement to gain from the armor than the strict use of the armor itself. As far as Tony getting his ass kicked by the Russian bot, Tony has never really been known for his fighting ability, so i'm sure if his armor were in more capable hands then the Russian mech would've been in for a world of hurt. It was nice to see him resort to the Hulk Buster armor though (even if it wasn't referenced as such).

I've been catching this show more consistently, it's on Nicktoons for the greater part of the afternoon. I gotta say that the writing and character development has come along nicely and even more references to the comic (they recently had Hulk Buster armor on there). I was afraid that Iron Man;AA would focus too much on the mystical side of things with lots of Mandarin story arcs, but they've barely touched any Mandarin stories and have focused mostly on Obadiah Stain. So far it's made for some good action since it's mostly battles of technology (the tech Stain stole from Tony's dad vs Tony tech). The animation is still crappy when it's organic and fantastic when its mechanical, but i think that's just inherit with the type of animation they're using. I've watched up to the point now where Tony is refining his enemies technology and integrating it into his own armor. The first 5 or 6 episodes are kind of crap, but it picks up pretty strongly after that, so i would try catching it on nicktoons when it's on.

I own an Audi (A4 1.8t quattro manual), and while i agree it is slightly better, they're still a bitch to work on. It's nothing particularly difficult, but just little things that add up and make things cumbersome. For instance, yesterday i went to change the trans fluid, and it requires a twelve point security bit (the twelve points with the hole in the center) on the drain plug, and no tiny one that you could buy from home depot, the fat boy ones. I had to go to my mechanic friend to find the right size 12 point socket except his wasn't a security bit so we ended up having to grind out the security pillar in the center of the bolt. And when i did a steering fluid flush i couldn't use the BG synthetic from my buddies shop, i had to use Audi specific "synthetic mineral oil". You'd also think that since Audi's (A3/TT are exceptions) are longitudally mounted that it'd be easy to change out the belts (usually it's just pull the radiator and you're ready to get cracking) but not on the Audi, you have to remove the front bumper to get to everything. In all honesty though, i've had nearly no problems with it mechanically, while my VW was in my garage more often than on the road, so there must be better QC or manufacturing on the Audi side of things.

I agree with David, everything after the 360 has looked very "bleh", definitely not show stopping like some of the classics. I've always been a fan of Ferrari's older designs and Dante's list is pretty much what i'd go for with the addition of the 512's (bb/tr/m), 308 and 355. I'm not crazy about any of their modern FR designs, the 550/575 weren't bad but the 599 and up look like garbage. I hated the F50, i don't know how they went to that from the F40, if they went from the F40 to the Enzo then that makes a little more sense, but the F50 looks like crap to me. Also loved the P series cars.

What's neat is that the Hyundai Genesis Coupe 2.0L Turbo qualifies under the cash for clunkers bill, i'm not sure what your gas mileage is, but you could trade in your mustang + $5000 credit from the govt and pick up a Genesis, i know i would.

i didn't mean to write fuel injectors i meant to write spark plugs but thanks for finding the mistake, that changes the context completely The point i was making is that deisel fuel won't combust in a petrol motor due to there not being high enough compression so if it did "burn" somehow i can't imagine it being a good thing for the motor. EDIT: i'm brain dead today, spelling and grammar all over the place

I'm surprised the car was able to burn through the diesel, it must've just burned it as heavily diluted gasoline because diesel won't even combust in an unleaded gas motor. Diesels don't use spark plugs, they rely on high compression (hence why a lot of them are turbocharged as well) to ignite the fuel where as unleaded would rely strictly on the spark plug. Did you actually make it through the whole tank of diesel/unleaded mixture because i'd be concerned more for the motor if the diesel wasn't siphoned out. I don't think that would effect your coolant system at all though, they function pretty separately. I would imagine if it effected anything it would be your emissions system like O2 sensors since burning through the dilluted gas would be really tough on the motor. That's just my two cents though.

I do that exact same thing with puppy linux (using as a live cd), I have a friend who uses Knoppix and said good things about it, I've been meaning to try out Fedora but never got around to it. I've used Ubuntu in both VM and Server applications and it worked well. Some unix commands weren't supported but i was able to find work arounds, since i use Suse and Redhat at work a lot i'm not really into GUI's in my day to day hardly at all (and it also doesn't help that the rest of the time i'm in Cisco ios, or some other network CLI). If you're using Linux as a learning tool then go with something that has a feature rich terminal since that will be the most practical if you're going to apply it in a networking or data center environment. I hear Fedora is backed by Redhat so i'd look deeper to see if a lot of the features are carried over, also Debian is supposed to be really stable but haven't used it myself.

I use Ubuntu too, but don't use it too much at home as a main OS, i use Redhat at work all the time, but that's sort of a different breed. I know people like Ubuntu because it has a very strong support community and an enterprise release but there are other client distros out there that offer a prettier GUI. I've heard good things about Knoppix but haven't used it personally

Google would be the only company who has a chance at taking a slice of the OS pie (speaking long term). They have the resources and the manpower to start at the consumer level, it's the enterprise level that's a tough cookie to crack. If 5 or 10 years rolls by and Google is able to get an enterprise server version of their OS to the public, then Microsoft should be very worried.

i read he was just the stig for that particular episode, and bbc confirmed that he did in fact drive the ferrari around the track, they would not confirm if he was the stig for the past seasons however.

agreed, along with what Azrael said. I only have one UPS and it's for my server stuff (server, router, and switch), i'm also lucky enough to have cat5e already run through my house and terminated on a patch panel in my basement so all of that noisy, hot and heavy crap stays in one spot that i never see. Oh, also, i'm not sure where you work, but i got my UPS from my work as a DRMO item (just the chassis, the battery was expired), and then bought the battery separate. If you know anyone who works in government or government facilities, they throw away UPS' all the time (switches too!).

I love Tim Burton and i feel this is right up his alley. There's always going to be both sides of the coin of people who say dark, anorexic and spirally is overdone, but then if he didn't do it, you'd have the other camp who says it's not Tim Burton-y enough. That's like watching a kawamori project without giant transforming robots, it would be good, but not quite there.

Let's not forget WRC, that takes some real balls to do. When you think about it, it has a little element of everything involved in one sport. Ridiculously boosted cars; some elements of drifting; and of course going very very fast (but no circle jerk like nascar) in the dirt/snow/rain/mud/etc. etc. I love watching WRC too, the drivers aim to please it seems, lots of cursing, digging themselves out of mud pits and snow holes and one race i remember Gronholm doing a 720 in a hairpin turn as a crowd pleaser right in the middle of a race.

I'm trying to buy this as a box set so i can watch it with the wife, where's the best/cheapest place i can find it that isn't a HK bootleg?

I can't imagine that car being even remotely street legal. It's a JGTC car without the cool sponsorship stickers so it looks kind of hokey and over the top. Probably would've helped if they used an S15 instead of an S14, the S15 has much stronger contours than the S14.

agreed, their cars are getting uglier with each generation while their motors are becoming works of art

My brother is in the market to purchase a 89-93 as a project car. Him and I already made the list of things he has to do to it right away to make it a fun and acceptable ride and the list is pretty short: Get rid of automatic seat belts/get better seats Change out Rear Tail lights to the OEM JDM rear tail lights (it has a dual rear circles with center turn signal like 0|0 looks awesome) Decide between turbocharging the KA24DE or dropping in an SR20DET or RB25DET He's leaning towards the RB25DET swap since everyone does the SR20 and the turbo KA's, plus the RB block is invincible and the extra displacement is welcome. I'm going to wait five or so more years and then pick up an R32 GT-R since the 25 year rule will take effect and it will be considered an antique. I found the official way to work around the import problem, but it's a lot of hassle, paperwork, but most of all time, and i don't have a lot of the last one so i'm willing to be patient.

I've loved the Nissan's i've owned, i've also fallen victim to the desire of owning a 240SX, i'm not in so much a pickle of not affording it as simply not having time for it. I would love to get an S13 240SX and then go all mad scientist on it. Oh! to the unanswered question of the Mazda Speed3, that car is fantastic, they're fast out of the box but can be made faster and they're VERY practical. Only problem is they're FWD, so i hope you're used to torque steer, but even with FWD they still handle the curves really well. Ideally, it would've been great if Mazda put their 2.3 Turbo motor in a new SPEED Miata, or provided an AWD option for their 3 (since they discontinued the SPEED 6) but maybe they'll surprise us as the redesign gains some sales momentum. The best part of the 3 is getting this great package for a great price, you can pick up the speed3's for very reasonable prices (at least in my area), I say go for it... and attend some professional driving courses ;-)

Intercooler on the front, so he either turbocharged the KA24DE or dropped an SR20DET in there, or if he had some real money he went with an RB series motor, but they're a lot more expensive and difficult to do. In any case, the hood shouldn't be raised like that (i've seen the RB swaps fit flush no problem), it's probably just a fitment issue or he didn't close it all the way.

lotsa nice cars, Ascari KZ1, Gallardo, F430, Ford GT, Audi R8, veeerrry nice selection.

hell yeah it would, there was talk for awhile that they were going to increase each housing from 650cc to 800cc and make the twin rotor a 1.6L (or 2.4 tri rotor). The more rotors you add to the rotary the better it gets, the 787B had a quad rotor motor with three spark plugs per rotor, and generated over 700hp and it was Naturally Aspirated! If they went with a tri rotor 800cc per housing (2.4L), direct injected, tri spark plug, twin scroll turbo that would be the sickest motor/car in existence. Mercedes actually had a tri rotor they messed around with and got outstanding results but decided not to go through with it due to marketing concerns.

the seal/oil burning problem is not a problem it's essential to the design, which is why you don't use synthetic oil either (blends sure, but full synth is a no-no). The apex seals are cast iron and the oil is burnt in the process of the seal sliding along the interior housing, if the oil doesn't burn, it gets pushed into portions of the housing that it doesn't belong and can pool and over time heat up and warp the housing or burn holes through it. The "problems" with a rotary are almost never design related, and the life span of a rotary is no less than any other motor with appropriate maintenance (i've seen FC's with over 200,000mi, original parts), the "problem" is the ignorance of the owners not knowing how to care for a rotary motor. You see this same ignorance with owners and turbocharged motors as well, but that's a whole other topic. As long as you put the right oil in, and check the oil regularly, a rotary is an incredibly efficient design. Rotary's are much lighter, smaller, and have less moving parts (housing, rotor, and lobe), so from a design perspective, they're actually superior to your typical four stroke motor. The problems that A7 pointed out can be remedied (more so compensated for), the reason they develop half the torque that they're supposed to is because they have compression loss at low rpm. Often times this is remedied by turbocharging, and with the 787B Mazda went one step further and added an extra spark plug to help with full combustion and more precise timing. Why Mazda never decided to add an extra spark plug to the Renesis is beyond me, furthermore they no longer turbocharge the 13B which IMO is crippling the motor a lot. Mazda only has a handful of options they could explore to help compensate for compression loss at low rpm, they can make the combustion even more efficient with a proprietary direct injection system (which costs $$$), they can add an extra rotor a la 20B (which costs $$$), they can increase the the housing (displacement) so that the combustion chamber is bigger (costs LOTS of $$$), or turbocharge it (not so much $$$). With Ford's fate uncertain, i don't think they have the financial backing to make any further advancements with their long in service 13B. If they turbocharge it, the fuel economy will remain about the same but you'd see a considerable jump in performance. Ideally, it'd be great if they employed turbocharging in conjunction with one of the aforementioned advances, but even with just turbocharging, it'd help the low end compression loss (which actually helps fuel economy since it doesn't have to squirt so much fuel to get the motor hopping), give it more power (torque included), and then the current fuel economy numbers would be very acceptable since they'd be about the same as other cars in its class. They did well with the Renesis by employing side porting which solved a huge reliability issue but this motor in its current state is designed to be turbocharged and they really need to bring that back if they want this to compete with anything else on the market.

I watched the first few episodes on one of the nickelodeon channels (there's like four of them), and it's not a bad series, the animation is hit or miss. When they're showing mechanical designs, and the city scape the animation is quite nice, but when they go to the scenes with pepper pots, tony and james the animation is a bit distracting. The story is catered to a younger audience but the writing is still well done and it's definitely fun to watch, there are lots of little nods to the comics and he uses a lot of his more iconic gadgets as the series progresses. I wouldn't go out of my way to watch it, but if its on it's definitely worth a look.