Largely techie type stuff...
Can't put a long legged 5sp cruise box on a 1 litre car (cuz its 4-speeder's crazy revs on the motorway were driving me nuts, wasting fuel and causing undue wear) and have it still be driveable, or even move at all in top... did it anyway, as i'd done all the maths and got sick of arguing them with the owners club skeptics. Worked fine, could even hold court in the fast lane without changing down. And looky here, now, what are VW, Kia, Renault et al doing in their perfectly driveable eco versions of popular models? Small engine, long gears.
Apparently it's also impossible to run a 486-class chip at 160mhz. Ha. It was easy and stable enough that I tried for 200. Got past POST, but never much further; if only I'd known of the existence of high powered HSF's and thermal paste at the time...
Can't use a 250Gb hard disk under Windows 9x, can't run 9x with more than 512mb RAM or more than a 1Ghz CPU, can't use a 1980s AT-class keyboard with a modern USB-only machine, can't run a 14" monitor at more than 800x600... I'll point you to exhibit A which is still working fine as an emergency backup in an external enclosure, having vacated my long since retired 98SE desktop, and exhibits B thru D (a 1600Mhz AMD, 768mb of 266mhz DDR and the motherboard holding them) which are still in that case waiting to be recycled into a smaller box for use as a media player or something, exhibit E which does just fine via an AT-PS2 converter and a PS2-USB box, and the ghost of exhibit F which gave a couple years sterling service at a mix of 960x720 (at 74hz) and 1024x768 (69hz) thanks to some minor .ini file tweaks (then replaced by a 17" LCD).
Can't make a VCD that's 2 hours long but still watchable. Would you like me to dropbox you the ISO, then, and you can make your own mind up? Shit, I made one that was a bit artefacty but wouldn't have looked out of place on a streaming service... and was 110-plus minutes on an 8cm CD. Actual MPG1, not divx or whatever. Ways and means.
Can't take a 125cc bike on the motorway without dying. Feh. Not only that, but I'm rarely stuck in the slow lane except for long uphills with strong headwinds, and even then there's usually a struggling truck I have to pass. Can't put heated grips on it without running the battery flat. Can't put a brighter bulb in the headlamp without melting the plastic lens or turning it yellow. Ha. All of which makes me fairly confident that my next two "you can't do that" challenges - adding a side stand to a model never supplied with one (but with a mount point) and increasing the gearing for lower revs but probably higher speed - won't actually cause anything like the predicted levels of drama.
Can't drive something with less than 100hp or 2 litres without dying... certainly can't merge into freeways... in fact a 2 litre 120hp car is downright weedy. I see this a lot from americans. It baffles me. I could come to an american city in a 50hp volkswagen and be the fastest thing on the street and the local freeway.
And though it's not so much as a "can't", being on the "that's BS" side of the 55mph=most efficient speed argument. Look. It so isn't. I have spreadsheets. I have photos of my trip computer. I have fuel receipts. Let me show you them. If I'm careful, in my non-hybrid car, I can get better mileage around town than on the open road at 55-60. It's most efficient actually at 25-30, and a similar pattern is painted with other vehicles I've tested; a few mph variance here and there, but generally at the point where there's a confluence of wind resistance becoming noticable even with a jacket and full-face helmet on, and your ride running smoothly in top gear with mostly closed throttle, that's where you find the peak. Similarly the arguments that its more efficient to change down when you drop below peak torque (only even necessary for progress if you're in a TDi with harsh turbo lag), and you can't run for long distances at very low rpm without suffering oil starvation, battery drain or vibration damage (how come its ok to idle, then?) - myths pretty much busted.
Can't ride a bike in the snow on summer tyres... actually its fine if you keep the speed down. In severe winter, even 15mph is faster than the 4-wheeled traffic... so cycling would be an option too, if it wasn't for the rather jerksome power delivery and moisture-affected caliper brakes. (It's all good until you get ambitious and reach for 25-30 on a seemingly open road, then some dickhead decides to turn across the front of you out of a side road, wheels spinning furiously for very little movement. Emergency stops are not an option. Swerving around them and pirouetting to the floor in a damage-free yet highly embarassing ballet, however, is.)
Can't go halfway across wales with a broken clutch cable. Pffft. Right.
Can't get 400kg of catalogues into a small hatchback. It's all about how desperate you are.
Can't install a smartboard, solo. Let me count them off...
Can't repair a knackered LCD projector. O RLY. Three successes, by the last count, and maybe more to come.
Can't get an old atari running (including monitor, and original floppies) after 15 years of absolute neglect. Shit, I barely had to do anything except reseat some wires in the keyboard connector (because the sellotape of an early 90s bodge had rotted away) and it sprang to life all by itself. Only two games out of those tested wouldn't load ok, and they always had been dodgy... think one had stopped working even before we retired it. On the other hand, another non-game program that I thought was broken came back to life. Even the one we'd seen it being demonstrated with before buying it secondhand in 1990 still worked.
Can't use a mid 90s laptop for anything useful in the mid 2000s. Feh. Only its lack of Cardbus (can't find any PCMCIA wi-fi cards) and a failing battery eventually forced its retirement. Even pre-dating the concept of USB wasn't an issue, with a parallel port smartmedia reader and a matching USB adapter (and a usb floppy drive) for modern machines. Office 2000 runs just dandy in double digit Mhz and RAM and a VGA screen, as do a lot of awesome abandonware games.
Can't keep a modern laptop usefully current for more than 3 years... meet my "daily driver", 5 1/2 yrs old and its lower performance is only gradually becoming noticeable (not yet an "issue") vs cutting edge machines... Hell, it's even tested as Win7 compatible, should I go completely insane.
(Pre-rise-of-Android) - can't get a decent/usable web browsing experience, apps, video calling, decent camera pics, etc if you haven't got an iPhone. Oh wow. I was doing shit online with a cheap pay-as-you-go phone whilst iMacs and iBooks were still dressed in primary coloured plastic (heh, and iBooks weren't yet called MacBooks) and soft edges were still a welcomed concept. I don't think they'd even yet launched the iPod to steal the market from under Creative and Diamond's noses. I had 4 generations of reasonably competent semi-smart phones with decent built in browsers and app download capabilities (though not touchscreens) before getting my droid. Which was indeed a massive step forward in terms of ability, performance and reliability, but it was still more evolutionary than revolutionary. And I kind of miss the nokia's built in TV-out and FM transmitter, as hateful as Symbian eventually turned out to be.
Similarly, if you want a slimline notebook, you have to get an EeePC or MacBook Air. Sorry, mine fits into an A4 Manila envelope just fine (and remember the age). Or if you want a decent sized touch-screen, you need an iPad... uh, yeah, this has a 12" touch screen, wifi and (unrestricted!) bluetooth, runs full fat WinXP, gets a 5-6 hour life off a fresh battery, and cost as much when new as an iPad does now; in fact, add a cheap 3G USB dongle, and it undercuts the most expensive pad by a slim margin with greater capabilities. Your point was, again? OK, it's not as razor thin, but I do like to be able to find my devices and, at least occasionally, to touch-type or have pixel-accurate mousing control.
"You can't read under energy saving bulbs" - I think you get your eyes tested for glaucoma/cataracts or get a better lampshade then. I've found it easier to read by the light of an 8w saver (turns on quick, too!) in a decent shade than a 100w incandescent in a crappy one. Or try direct-replacement halogens (save 20%, which is still worth a try, turn on instantly, and aren't super expensive; nb these aren't the downlighter things), a different brand from a proper lighting shop rather than the supermarket, or the latest LED ones - the star trek styled Philips ones are apparently very highly rated, but I haven't been able to get hold of any thanks to the demand.
You can't stand up against your government, you've just got to take it and we're all inevitably doomed.
Can't this, that, the other...
Myths confirmed:
Running at very high rpm for extended periods tends to knacker your engine or things attached to it. So far leading to a minor overhaul on one, and a new alt and main "water rail" in another. Hence the hunt for higher gearing, because lowering the ground speed is a less desirable option.
Can't do my own ironing... well, ok, can't do it very well or very fast.
Integrated graphics are just fine for anything you want to do... up a point, after which they descend exceptionally rapidly through "a little jerky" to "unusable" to "doesn't work at all". Which is a problem when they're not upgradeable.
And a reverse one: washing your clothes at 15'c saves you loads of money. OK, what it actually does is approximately halve the amount of electricity you use per wash, not counting the need for drying. Problem is, even with a crazy expensive tariff, you'll only be spending about 5p per cycle on power (I have measured this). I have a feeling the 15'c detergent carries a per-wash premium that's somewhat higher than 2.5p...
Experience, experimental testing, well informed theory and in-place measurements beat hell out of fear, folk knowledge, superstition and common sense.
I just wish I had the money to try out my own concept of a cheaply producible (possibly even as an add-on to existing powertrains), flexible, powerful hybrid system, because it'd probably get denounced but I think it could work well. Only, it can't be proven until it's tried, and no-one's made it my way yet. You could happily take a vastly downsized ICE and fuel tank, more or less duct-tape this system on (with an electric motor about equal in power to the remaining combustion engine), fill all the spare spaces with batteries and a simple controller, and have a very nice efficient car within the existing boundaries of a mass market model. Cheap, effective, easily understood, low on snags... somehow doesn't match anything on the market... is that because no-one else yet thought of it, or because they did, they tried it, and found it wanting?
