HOYA SWALLOWS PENTAX !

Bob Hickey wrote:
"Pudentame" wrote in message
...
OTOH, my own experience indicates a smaller, more nimble vehicle allows
the driver avoid accidents he might not be able to avoid in a larger,
heavier, less maneuverable automobile. That's the
whole problem right there. Avoid, nimble, maneuverable? That's a joke,
right? I'd be happy to see "awake". I'd be happy to see "off the phone" I'd
be happy to see "make-up already done"..The limit of most peoples driving
knowledge is that soon after an accident, something will blow up right in
their face to save them. Mostly, after the crumple zone is done crumpling;
said air bag is much closer to the victim.

If you want to see a decent driver, watch for long term motorcyclists
who have survived commuting for 25+ years in a crowded metropolitan
area. When you see one of them get in a cage, you can be pretty sure
that they're not going to be causing *OR* involved in any of the
problems in their vicinity on the road.

Oh, and BTW, my 2wd standard cab shortbed Chevy pickup is small enough,
nimble enough, and handles well enough to avoid idiots on the road.
The fact that it is large enough and stout enough to provide protection
should one of said idiots manage to somehow launch him or herself
UNAVOIDABLY into my path of travel is merely a bonus.

"Laurence Payne" lpayne1NOSPAM@dslDOTpipexDOTcom wrote in message
...
On Mon, 25 Dec 2006 22:03:39 -0800, "William Graham"
wrote:

But I had a friend who walked away from an accident where his engine ended
up where his lap would have been had he been wearing his seat belt......He
didn't think much of them either....

Well, there had to be one. You really reckon this makes seat belts a
Bad Thing? Or is it merely fuel for a pro-personal-choice agenda?

Hey! - I didn't say that I was against them. I was just remembering that
guy, and why he was against them. Actually, the only thing I have aginst
them is their ****-poor design. I used to own a racing corvette.....The guy
who owned it before me raced it. It had a beautiful racing harness that
locked me to the rear firewall and offered much better protection than the
very poor spindly thin straps that they put in the new cars today. Between
my roll bar, and that racing harness, I really felt well protected in that
'vette. Most of the seat belts they put in the new cars won't keep you from
sliding under them in a real crash. But if I had that vette harness today,
the cops would be stopping me every time I went anywhere because it would
look from outside the car, like I wasn't wearing my normal seat belts. IOW,
they are not only poorly designed, but the laws that have been built up
around that poor design have now locked us into it!




I am impressed, however with these formula I cars that can hit the rails
at
175 MPH, fly end over end a dozen times, completely come apart at the
seams
until there is nothing left of them but the cage containing the driver,
which, after he unbelts himself, he walks away from without a
scratch....Why
can't they do that with the family sedan?

They do, to an extent. Crumple zones.

BTW, petrol IS $5 a gallon here in the UK. It's made no difference to
the pattern of car usage. The only thing that DID make a difference
was one week a few years back when an industrial dispute caused a
petrol famine. Somehow, everyone got most places they HAD to get. But
"convenience" trips were cut out, the roads were empty, and travel
became a pleasure. Even allowing for some necessary journeys being
postponed, there's obviously lots of scope for cutting down on car use
without life grinding to a halt.

Sure.....This is normal, and to be expected....And, had the gas crisis
continued, people would have found a way to get where they needed to go on a
more permanent basis. As I say, we here in the US are
individual-transportation oriented, and we will find a way to continue in
that mode, even if we end up each driving our own electric scooters....

"Alan Browne" wrote in message
.. .
jeremy wrote:
"Alan Browne" wrote in message
.. .

Laurence Payne wrote:


petrol famine. Somehow, everyone got most places they HAD to get. But
"convenience" trips were cut out, the roads were empty, and travel
became a pleasure. Even allowing for some necessary journeys being
postponed, there's obviously lots of scope for cutting down on car use
without life grinding to a halt.

People can make somewhat minor changes to their auto usage and have a
great impact on fuel consumption. Immediate convenience always triumphs
over thoughtfulness, however.


If we stop buying new cars and keep our present ones for an extra five
years, the automobile industry will grind to a halt and our governments
will find the needed petroleum.

Who wants to pay beaucoup bucks for a car, only to be unable to use it?
I think we squandered the 3 decades after the 70s Oil Embargo to have
come up with autos that used alternative fuels. I am told that Brazil
runs their cars on alcohol, which can be manufactured, rather than
imported. How is it that a third world country can put a big dent in the
oil shortage problem, while we cannot.

While I agree with your basic sentiments, by minor changes in automobile
use I simply mean using vehicles more efficiently. This includes
maintenance and driving habits. (Such as combining erands).

Brazil's automobile ethanol use is about 40 - 45%. Their feedstock is
sugar cane which gives a very high energy return (you need energy to make
ethanol).

The US auto industry has made (so far) over 6M vehicles capable of burning
E85 (85% ethanol; 15% gasoline). One issue is the price: you pay almost
the same for a gallon of E85 as you do for gasoline. But you get 20 - 25%
less miles per gallon when burning E85.

Using ethanol is part of a good substitution strategy, however the first
environmental tenant is "reduce".

As to finding more petrol, we have burned the easiest and cheapest to
find, easiest and cheapest to refine oils. Now we have to further, spend
more (money and energy) to get oil that needs more money and energy to
refine...

The Canadian lunacy of using relatively clean burning ( but CO2 emitting )
natural gas to extract oil from tarsands to sell to the US who are the
most prolifically wasteful energy users on the planet is personally
shaming to me as a Canadian.

Cheers,
Alan


There is no reason to be ashamed of selling something you have in large
quantities to a bunch of idiots who are willing to pay an inflated price for
it because they are too stupid to develop a better way of transporting
themselves. When our economics warrents it, we will (reluctantly) develop a
different way of getting where we want to go. In the meantime, you should
sell us whatever our little hearts desire, and enjoy your profits! I can see
a number of alternative ways to drive cars on the horizon. Some are out
there on the roads right now. But as long as gasoline is cheap, (which it
is) then we are gonna keep the pedal to the metal on these SUV's, boy, and
don't you forget it!

David J. Littleboy wrote:
"Kennedy McEwen" wrote:

I personally don't want to see someone in my rear view mirror approaching
at 175MPH while I am stuck at traffic lights on my way home from work.

The easy way to avoid that is to not own a car. (That's one of the reasons I
ended up in Tokyo.)

Seriously, I don't understand why more people don't decide not to own cars.
The (quite rational*) decision not to own a car ought to be a possibility,
right?


Unfortunately, many of us live in places where we would not be able to
get to work, buy groceries, get to school or do just about anything else
in life without a car.

I currently have to be at work at 3:00am. It's just over 5 miles away,
slightly more than an hour walking. There's no bus service at that time
of night, and damn little at any other time. And the streets I'd have to
walk do not have sidewalks for over half that distance.

The nearest grocery store is halfway to where I work. It's just about
where the sidewalks start. So to get groceries, I'd have to buy a wagon,
or some other cart and drag it 2-1/2 miles along busy streets with no
sidewalks to the store, and then drag it back along those same busy
streets with no sidewalks to get them home. Included in this stretch is
a long hill with a blind curve going to the bridge at the top. There's
thick hedges planted along the roadside to keep people from walking
along the shoulder where there's not even a place you could dive off the
road if you had to.

There is a convenience store with limited selection (and higher prices)
within a couple of blocks of my house, and I do always walk there.

Finally, what is *not* within walking distance of my house is many of
the places I want to go to take pictures.


*: Cars are dangerous and expensive (at the least; breathing gasoline fumes
can't be good for one). And one can buy a lot of camera equipment for the
price of a car.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

On Tue, 26 Dec 2006 08:50:29 +0000, Kennedy McEwen
wrote:

In article , William
Graham writes


I am impressed, however with these formula I cars that can hit the rails at
175 MPH, fly end over end a dozen times, completely come apart at the seams
until there is nothing left of them but the cage containing the driver,
which, after he unbelts himself, he walks away from without a scratch....Why
can't they do that with the family sedan?

To an extent, most of them are designed to deform protectively in
exactly the same way - hence the presence of crush zones etc. Of
course, they won't withstand a 175MPH impact with all/any passengers
surviving, but the suspension doesn't fall apart when they drive over a
pothole either. Drivers and passengers of the average family sedan
wouldn't accept being strapped into the harness by a 3 man team (drivers

I took a "test drive" in a new airplane to do some aerobatics. I got
in was tightening the 5-point harness while the demo pilot for the
corporation was checking things out. I pulled the harness as tight
as I could pull, then slipped my hand under it. Sooo, I braced my hand
and pulled a bit harder, but I could still work my fingers under it.
About the time I got to the point where I could no longer get my thumb
under the harness I noticed him watching me. His only comment was "I
see you've done this before". IOW if the harness is comfortable it
isn't tight enough. If you can work your hand under it, it isn't tight
enough.

Very few drivers would ever put up with that. OTOH few are capable of
even tightening a harness that tight by them selves.

cannot tighten the harness enough by themselves), wearing a HANS brace

At least in aerobatics we don't have to have some one else tighten the
harness. :-))
or flameproof overalls every time they get into the vehicle either or
being fit enough to withstand 10g differential forces on their neck
muscles before being given a license every season.

But we do regularly pull 6 or more G's even at my age.


There have been many technologies that have transitioned from F1 to
commercial cars, seat belts, anti-lock brakes, monocoque/unibody chassis
to name a few, but ultimately they are different vehicle types with
vastly differing requirements. One common aspect is that if you make
the car capable of going fast enough, that is as fast as some people
will drive it, and I personally don't want to see someone in my rear
view mirror approaching at 175MPH while I am stuck at traffic lights on
my way home from work.

It was far from 175 MPH but one afternoon on the way home for work I
was stopped at a stop light. I was the only car in that lane. There
was a lot of crossing traffic. All of a sudden I noticed a van coming
up behind and he was coming fast. There was a small opening in the
crossing traffic. I hit the horn and put the throttle to the floor
with that Corvette engine in the TA. I made it through the
intersection leaving a cloud of smoke. The van came through right
behind me. I hit 60 in a 30 zone as he stopped getting closer about 3
feet behind me.

Yes, that was the same TA I totaled when the SUV pulled out in front
of me. I don't think I'd have fared nearly as well had I been rear
ended at that speed.
Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

Laurence Payne wrote:


So what's your point? DO American insurers charge more for
high-mileage drivers? (UK insurers don't.)

Yes, they do. UK insurers would if the government would let them. US
insurers are less regulated.

The theory is that higher mileage = greater exposure to possible
accident, i.e. more time on the road gives more idiots a shot at you.

DO they take account
of years of experience, or just of age?

Yes. One or the other ... or both ... or neither.

On Tue, 26 Dec 2006 20:58:03 +0900, "David J. Littleboy"
wrote:


"Philip Homburg" wrote:
David J. Littleboy wrote:
*: Cars are dangerous and expensive (at the least; breathing gasoline
fumes
can't be good for one). And one can buy a lot of camera equipment for the
price of a car.

However, often a car is the most convenient way to get all that gear to
where you need it. :-)

It's not only convenient, here in the states with wide open spaces
it's a necessity. Howeve I have found that for trips it is cheaper to
rent a car than drive your own unless your car is paid for and has a
lot of miles on it.

Going from Michigan to Denver is cheaper to fly my own airplane
compared to driving. Coach class commercial flights are cheaper yet
and by far the cheapest was to rent a car.


I can hire a cab for a day for many more days than I have days to go out
shooting on the money I save not having a car. (Not that I've ever done
that, since public transportation here is flipping amazing, but it's on my
list of things to try for rural locations.)

I could also legally rent a car, but that wouldn't be a good idea (I've
never driven in Japan, and only drove for a year in the US and converted my
US license to a Japanese one).

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

In article ,
Pudentame wrote:
I currently have to be at work at 3:00am. It's just over 5 miles away,
slightly more than an hour walking.

The nearest grocery store is halfway to where I work.

Ah, so all you need is a bicycle. :-)


--
That was it. Done. The faulty Monk was turned out into the desert where it
could believe what it liked, including the idea that it had been hard done
by. It was allowed to keep its horse, since horses were so cheap to make.
-- Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

On 2006-12-21 14:13:36 -0600, "jeremy" said:

No, the driving factor is that Pentax has lagged behind Canon and Nikon
in the digital camera business, and is now having to deal with
competition from companies that previously had not entered the camera
business, like Sony, Panasonic, Casio and HP. Pentax screwed up,
big-time, and they are no longer viable.

Sorry, I don't see it.

The DSLR market is exploding, and Pentax is making waves with the K100D
and K10D. The K10D is selling substantially above Pentax's forecasts.
I can't see any logical reasons for Hoya to walk away from that
business when it's being handed to them on a plate.


Hoya will get no more mileage out of the Pentax brand name than Konica
got out of their use of the Minolta name. People are getting wise to
the fact that the mere presence of a well-known brand name does not
guarantee that the former quality levels are going to be maintained.

So far the K100 and K10 are getting glowing reviews. I'm not aware of
anything in their quality levels that people should be shying away
from. We'll see if they continue that course under Hoya. . . But
there's no question that Pentax has the resources to compete
successfully, because they are already doing it.


I don't anticipate crowds lining up to buy the "Hoya-Pentax" brand of
cameras and lenses ("SMC Hoya-Pentax?")

They'll still have the Pentax name on them. Although, I personally
wouldn't care if the cameras had Black & Decker marked on them as long
as they deliver the goods. And who knows, if Hoya-Pentax fumbles, then
maybe Samsung will pick up the ball and keep the K-mount alive and do
good things with it?


It just may be the right time for me to embrace plastic bodies and buy
some Nikon or Canon digital gear. I'm just in the dumps over hearing
that news of Pentax's upcoming demise. We're going to become orphans.

Get a grip, man!

If Pentax vanishes tomorrow, your camera and lenses will keep right on
working. In fact, there will probably be a lot of good, inexpensive
gear hitting eBay from people who just can't stand the thought of being
"orphans".

--
Tony Belding, Hamilton Texas

"Tony Belding" wrote in message
news:2006122617465316807-zobeid@techiecom...


The DSLR market is exploding, and Pentax is making waves with the K100D
and K10D. The K10D is selling substantially above Pentax's forecasts. I
can't see any logical reasons for Hoya to walk away from that business
when it's being handed to them on a plate.


DSLRs have been around for years, and Pentax has not carved much of a
marketing niche for themselves.

Their investors have been pressing management to make some changes. Well,
this is it. Pentax is not allowing itself to be gulped down by Hoya because
they have glowing prospects of future success, you know. This is an
admission that either management or the investors have diminished faith in
the company to prosper in the future.

Companies don't sell out (or, excuse me "merge") for no reason. And sure
Hoya will try to reassure buyers that Pentax will survive into the future,
now that Hoya has assumed responsibility for Pentax. But the real question
is whether serious amateurs will commit to a camera system that may or may
not be around for very long.

I'm betting that they won't.

If and when I ever buy a DSLR, it will be a Nikon or a Canon. I am looking
for long-term reliability in terms of upgrades, parts and service, and I
don't want to be another Minolta customer. AND, I'm betting that a lot more
of us will feel the same way, and will decline buying Pentax cameras and
lenses--especially those that don't already have an investment in Pentax
gear.

Much as I appreciate my legacy Pentax gear, I'll be the first to admit that
Pentax never did have the depth of product line that Canon or Nikon had, and
that Pentax essentially abandoned the Pro market when they withdrew the
LX--maybe even before then, as they never came out with LX-II or LX-III.
Pentax made a good line of MF gear for pros, but those that shot 35mm were
left hanging. That did not affect me, as an amateur, but if I made my
living with photo gear I could never have remained with Pentax, no matter
how good some few of their lenses might have been. One cannot sustain a
professional career on just three FA-Limited lenses.

When I look back on it, Pentax's glory days ended when they withdrew the
Spotmatic from production. They blamed the need to go to a bayonet
mount--which was understandable--but they came out with a series of
uninspiring camera models, most of which were clearly oriented toward the
consumer. I used to think that Pentax's Achilles Heel was its reluctance to
advertise, but I think now that they just didn't have their priorities
straight. Nikon had an excellent support network in place, where one could
rent lenses and even get loaner cameras if theirs were being repaired.
Pentax had nothing like that.

Again, for me, as an amateur, it didn't matter, but news photographers and
photojournalists took one look at the differences between support from Nikon
and Canon versus support from Pentax, and the choice was clear.

Pentax made an excellent line of lenses in the early 70s--the SMC
Takumars--and I own 19 of them. But they cannot be sent back for repairs if
they malfunction, and Pentax never did make replacement lenses that had the
mechanical build quality of those legendary screwmounts. Twenty years after
withdrawing those lenses from their catalog, the digital revolution took
place--and Pentax was at the back of the line.

As for their current digital offerings, made in their new factory in
Vietnam--all I can say is that it takes more than one or two models to make
a reputation. I think that, for Pentax, it was a matter of being "a day
late and a dollar short," when they finally got around to introducing their
latest models--and the bulk of camera enthusiasts had already cast their
respective lots with Canon or Nikon.

It was a nice run. Sorry to see Pentax shrivel up, but I am convinced that
their days of being any kind of significant force in photography are
limited.