DUBLIN, Ireland -- 10 March 2005 -- Microsoft Corp. today announced that it will establish a new centre for research and development (R&D) at its campus in Sandyford, County Dublin, Ireland. Details of the new investment were announced by Microsoft EMEA CEO Jean-Philippe Courtois with the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, at an event celebrating 20 years of Microsoft investing in Ireland.
And which Commissioner pressed for software patents in the EU? McCreevy, that's who. And when did he do it? Around the time Microsoft was building its R&D centre, that's when.
The parent post can be described as putting a good face on some dubious behaviour. Anybody who wants to know if I have a case (basically that McCreevy is a shill for specifically Irish interests rather than doing his supposed job which is remove impediments to the internal market) is invited to use Google and their own resources to see which of us is right, or at least more right, and whether in fact corruption in Ireland is "low". As the parent poster admits, businessmen gave the Taoiseach a "ton of money" to help him out of difficulties. You may choose to believe that Ireland is full of selfless businessmen who thrust piles of Euros at anybody having a hard time, or you might not.
Please go and learn some recent Irish history. And please note that I am not being anti-Irish. You will see I have confined myself to comments on Irish politicians, priests and gangsters. All my comments can be verified by mainstream sites on the Internet. The difference now is that the Internet, the lack of support among the younger Irish for the Church, and the growing pressure from the EU, are all making it hard to keep the corruption concealed. Which is why the Taoiseach has had to step down.
Ireland had a declining population for years (not owing to the Troubles; it was the South that was declining, not the North) due to the endemic corruption, lack of personal freedom, and poor educational opportunities. Think Iran without funny hats, and with the Catholic Church in the Shia role, and you about have it. Then they came up with two wheezes: no tax for artists, to try and encourage them to live (or more correctly officially live) there, and a complete free for all based on EU money, which transferred taxpayers money from the rest of the EU to some very, very nasty criminal gangs with connections at the highest level of government. If you doubt this, look at what happened to investigative journalists like Guerin and Taoiseachs like Bertie Ahearn.
The upshot is that shills like McCreevy are trying to keep the artists on board by proposing that they get something which no other professional gets, (if 95 years copyright for a writer, why not 95 years for a patent?) hoping that Ireland will benefit in some way from tax collection. Apple is also strongly represented In Ireland and can presumably afford lobbyists.
The economic downturn and the gradual ending of EU structural funding (supposedly for building railways and roads but actually diverted to building country houses for the rich Irish) is putting a strain on the Irish economy. They need the money
Something like viton. There are some really exotic fluoropolymers about with remarkable properties, and they turn up all over the place especially in O-rings. I keep an emergency supply of viton rings for fixing weeps in metal to metal olive joints, as they can withstand everything from hotlubricating oil with additives through to vacuum with UV.
In the Discworld, the ruler of Ankh-Morpork deals with crime by making it into a Guild, which then ensures that crime stays at an acceptable level by permanently removing unlicensed criminals. It is not only a satire on the Mafia, it is a satire on corrupt police forces and insurance companies (the criminals do not have protection rackets per se, they offer insurance against their own activities).
The study of crack dealers mentioned in Freakonomics showed a heirarchy similar to any US corporation, with the lowest level getting about the same hourly rate as in McDonalds. There really is no hard and fast line between organised business and crime, just degrees of criminality ranging from (say) welfare friendly food providers on the West Coats down to crack dealers. As Enron and Bear Sterns have shown us, size and visibility is no guarantee of legality.
Auction houses in the real world depend for their success on reputation. They employ experts, real experts, to check the provenance of anything of any value. eBay is not a true auction house; it is a vehicle for the sale of stolen and counterfeit goods. Which means that, no matter what happens in the US today, eventually someone will come after it. Perhaps in the next big share collapse the real auction houses and goods manufacturers will buy its shares and simply shut it down; perhaps the Chinese will do what the US did, change from a country that encourages piracy to one that tries to stop it, and take action.
In the meantime eBay has created a hole for a real on-line auction system. It would be quite difficult to set up, require heavy means of seller verification, but provide a way to sell high value items securely.
Not that I am defending the "luxury goods manufacturers" who themselves are now fake. "Burberry", for instance, is just another Chinese knock off shop, while Barbour and Mulberry in the UK are real local manufacturers. Burberry has destroyed some of the value in the real manufacturers by its faking. It's Gresham's Law in action. There really should be a law that all vendors must state clearly in any advertisement what the main country of manufacture of their goods actually is.
Because, conspiracy theorists, it is very hard to build safe, reliable, high capacity, rapid discharge batteries. Like fuel cells, it has proven much harder to commercialise them than anyone suspected. Looking at the design of the Mercedes A-Class, it's obvious it was intended to be a Mk 1 fuel celled or battery powered vehicle (the giveaway is the underfloor space for the batteries, and the very restricted space for the engine.) In fact, it just didn't happen.
It looks like the thing that has largely fixed the EV issue is the laptop computer/mobile phone - which has justified the research effort into lithium batteries.
From a volume point of view in the short term the manufacturer to watch is Mitsubishi: they have a joint venture factory with Yuasa, and last week they delivered a test sample EV to a Japanese police force (they already have them with Tokyo utilities.) The Miev may not be as large and fast as the Tesla, but it is likely actually to be affordable. $100000 will only appeal to the rich who want a status symbol, as the payback compared to (say) a Mercedes Bluemotion clean Diesel will be forever. But a $30000 commuter vehicle may well make economic sense. I could justify one right now if oil reaches $200/barrel.
In fact, there are reports that sales of the EVs currently available are very poor, presumably because people who might have bought one as a third car are spending the money on new, efficient vehicles which will show a real cost saving in a sensible payback period.
and had I not posted on this thread already I would have modded you accordingly. Another poster has made the point about population density often being a good thing. I would like to add to this.
A neighbour is a senior project manager for a development charity, and his view is that a lot of Africa's problems stem from too few people. Below a certain density you do not have the GNP to develop transport, or the manpower to clear swamps and get rid of malaria (for instance.) This is why most Third World development takes place in crowded cities rather than rural areas.
But as to why you are a troll. One North American baby = nearly 12 African babies in terms of resource consumption. In terms of resource consumption, the US uses as much as a Third World country of around 4 billion people, and the EU probably uses as much as 2-3 billion Third World people. Now do you get it? The answer is for US, you (and to a lesser extent me) to stop having growing populations, not the Third World. Then we don't need to build kleptomaniac corporations that steal all their resources.
The average North American uses twice as much energy as the average Briton or German, and two and a half times as much as the average Italian. Germans and Italians have a pretty good lifestyle; I'd much rather live in Munich, say, than most American cities. New York has almost European population densities and energy efficiency, yet it is a desirable place to live. If you could just drive sensibly, live in adequate but not bloated houses, and stop trying to commute fifty miles each way to work by three tonne truck, you would free up enough energy to make a significant difference to the entire Third World. And then you would not need that huge army and the array of missiles, because nobody would be coming after you.
I've posted a brief extract from Dante below, but the Ulysses reference may not be to the return from Ilion (Odysseus/Ulysses are usually assumed to be the same hero). It is the last voyage not mentioned by Homer, but for which there seems to be another source. After his return to Ithaca Ulysses decides to make a last voyage with his companions to see the Western Mediterranean. He eventually passes beyond the Straits of Herakles (Gibraltar) and never returns.
In Dante (Commedia,Inf 26) his voyage beyond the Straits takes him to a point spherically opposite Jerusalem where he encounters the Mount of Purgatory (don't blame me, I didn't invent Catholic mythology) and his ship is sunk by a tornado before he can land on it. I assume that the idea of the voyage beyond the limits of what is known is the reason it is called Ulysses, not the ability to invent nasty tricks to defeat the Trojans.
Incidentally, Odysseus got a mention recently because astronomical references in Homer have allowed his return to Ithaca and defeat of the Suitors to be exactly dated. A knowledge of the classics may be utterly irrelevant nowadays, but it is interesting.
One thing that holds poor people back is that their equipment is often very primitive. Any method of cooking that needs an open fire or has to heat up a lot of stone is very energy intensive. A Western halogen or induction hob is, by contrast, extremely efficient, heating only what is needed when it is needed. An open fire will often put 80% of the heat output straight up the chimney, whereas I have a very efficient Scandinavian solid fuel stove which puts more than 80% of its output into the house. But the cost of a Jotul or Morso stove would represent maybe five to ten years total income to a third world family.
This is why thinking like this is needed. Expensive but efficient technology needs to be commoditised for Third World production to bootstrap their economies.
Written over 700 years ago and still brilliant. This is just a small extract:
"O frati", dissi "che per cento milia
perigli siete giunti a l'occidente,
a questa tanto picciola vigilia
d'i nostri sensi ch'è del rimanente,
non vogliate negar l'esperienza,
di retro al sol, del mondo sanza gente.
Considerate la vostra semenza:
fatti non foste a viver come bruti,
ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza''.
Li miei compagni fec'io sì aguti,
con questa orazion picciola, al cammino,
che a pena poscia li avrei ritenuti;
e volta nostra poppa nel mattino,
de' remi facemmo ali al folle volo,
sempre acquistando dal lato mancino.
Tutte le stelle già de l'altro polo
vedea la notte e 'l nostro tanto basso,
che non surgea fuor del marin suolo.
"O brothers", I said, "who through a hundred thousand perils have sailed together towards the West
In this so small watch of our senses that is left to us, I do not wish to miss the experience
of following the Sun to the world without people.
Consider the seed which gave rise to you: You were not made to live like animals, but to follow power and knowledge"
By this little speech I made my companions desire the journey so much I could scarcely have called them back:
We turned our poop to the morning, and made our oars wings in our mad flight, constantly gaining on the port side.
We saw at night all the stars of the South Pole, and our own could not rise out of the sea.
My eldest child is a lawyer, and has been involved in several Finnish cases. As far as I am aware, the position as regards the plaintiff is the same as everywhere else in Europe: the plaintiff is NOT allowed to lie. This is perjury.
I rather suspect you mean that the defendant is not prosecuted for lying, as such. This is usually the case in much of Europe. Criminals who plead not guilty do not receive extra sentences for having lied as well as having committed the original crime.
In fact Finland is a member of the EU, its judicial system must meet European standards, and a judicial system which permitted plaintiffs to lie would fail the European Union human rights test.
Please cut your geek card across with a pair of ceramic scissors and hand it in at your local Citizen's Advice Centre for controlled demolition.
True story, I once worked with an ex-Dixon's manager who admitted they looked for ignorant and easily cowed staff because they could exploit them, whereas the technically capable could easily get better weekend jobs somewhere else. Of course, you can guess the kind of managers they employ.
The Y axis is probability, the x axis is millivolts. The output of an avalanche photodiode is current. So what is being measured here and how does it relate to the article?
If this is the probability of finding particular signal amplitudes (time unspecified), how does it relate to single photon counting?
It seems all back to front. Naively one might expect that multiple photons would result in a larger initial avalanche current, but the graph doesn't seem to relate to this at all. It shows a high probability that the output at no photon will be around 5mV, whatever that is supposed to mean. Is that the dark current of the diode at a given bias, before it triggers?
I suspect that what we are seeing here is a diode biased with some low voltage from a limited current source, and that the pulse amplitude results from the self-discharge of the diode capacitance into the measuring resistor. In which case what is being shown is that the resting output is around 5mV, and that the pulse height depends on the number of simultaneous photons. If so, this could have been shown quite clearly on a conventional graph with the output pulse height represented on the Y axis, the number of photons on the X axis, and the probabilities shown by the shape of the distribution.
So, either I don't get it (always a possibility) or someone needs to go and (a) read up statistics again and (b) read Tufte.
Joe Armstrong's Erlang textbook is interesting, but I did not have time to learn the language and recode the part of our current project that would benefit from it. So I did what any sensible person would do: raided the concepts, and used them to redesign the critical parts of the application. I was initially provoked into doing this because, in the book, the comparison at one point between the Erlang and Java way of doing something is just plain wrong. When I thought out how I would actually do it in Java, I realised that it helps to stick to a language you know well.
Most Slashdotters probably don't need to be told this, but anyone interested in historical fact about Bletchley Park shouldn't miss Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges. It's entertaining, rich in technical detail and, wait for it, true.
You wouldn't believe we were once world leaders in the field.
I'm sorry, but if the nest we can do is Rockstar (not knocking them, just being realistic) then will the last systems designer in the UK please turn off the server before emigrating? Fortunately, I expect to retire in a couple of years. Hopefully to somewhere where Government and other systems work.
Slightly off topic, today we discovered that the UK Government new release of the on-line tax system shows the accountant name, not the actual person for whom the form is being filled in. The guy on the help desk, when asked when it would be fixed, replied "I am not at liberty to disclose that". Not only is UK Government IT incompetent, it is secretive about it. (The Editor of Computer Weekly said that on the box last week.) So
In the US, drivers have been trained by the manufacturers to rate cars on size,horsepower, smoothness and "safety", perceived as "head on collision with another vehicle". Reading US reviews of European cars, they tend to be dismissive because the perceived safely is less, but also because our (mainly 4 cylinder turbo Diesel) efficient engines vibrate more than US V-6 petrol engines, and produce less peak horsepower. Their continuous horsepower may in fact be the same or better, but the US consumer doesn't understand this.
In fact both Europe and Japan have developed really efficient small Diesels. My commuter vehicle has a tiny 1.5 liter 3 cylinder turbo intercooled Diesel engine, basically half a V6, seats 5 European-size adults, gets 45 miles to the US gallon at 65-70 mph, and tops out at over 110mph. But I cannot see that it would sell in the US, because all the American visitor notices is that the engine vibration is more than in his SUV or van, and the 6-speed automated gearbox is not quite as smooth as an energy absorbing slushbox. Your Kohler generator engine is way behind Daihatsu, Mercedes or VW technically (after all it has to run on inferior fuel and withstand other abuse, and be cheap to repair, I am not knocking it) but it would only sell to the converted.
It has taken sixty years to persuade the US consumer that bigger and more powerful is always better. How long will it take to persuade them to buy a Toyota Yaris, a Suzuki Swift or a Hyundai i10, in their Far Eastern/European engine variants?
Something Americans just do not get is that these vehicles are to a greater or lesser extent motorcycle replacements. If you visit the rainy Stuttgart area you will rapidly see that the Smart is often used there where in warmer, drier countries you would use a motorcycle. This VW concept is basically what a well off German with eco credentials might want to show off with where his US counterpart might buy a Harley or a Gold Wing.
More people in the world with high disposable incomes drive on roads where American SUVs are in a small minority. Here in the UK SUVs have been making inroads which have come to a sudden halt as fuel approaches $3/liter. On the other hand, the sales of class A,B and C vehicles - microcars, minis and superminis - are rising fast. Expect European roads to look rather different in 2010, when the first of the new technologies really start to reach the market.
The guy who wrote the article did not get this - quoting US gallons is pretty irrelevant. 1 liter/100km, or miles per UK gallon, are appropriate because that is where they will be used.
Look at the picture on the right. Some geeks will not know what it is, but it is in fact a picture of a bra falling off. This is not something that usually happens as a result of late night discussions about dark matter.
Memo to self: must get out more. Also, must try harder not to trivialise serious subjects.
I just put my little bottle of indium oxide in the safe. But, to be on the safe side, perhaps I should buy shares in OLEDs, or interference displays, or indeed any of the new technologies coming along.
Had the transistor not come along, doubtless by now the computer industry would have run out of the molybdenum for vacuum tubes.
They just totally underestimated how difficult it is to design a workable scramjet system. The US would love to have a Mach 15 air breathing missile but have not achieved it yet. There is this annoying thing of what to do with the turbojet and the ramjet you need just to get to the point that the scramjet starts to operate, but which then have to be got out of the way to stop them melting and remove the drag. Then there is the difficulty that the geometry needs to change continuously as the airspeed increases. Then the other little difficulty that a fuel failure does not cause loss of ignition, it causes the engine to melt. The latest on scramjets is that the solution to reasonable efficiency is to run them on hydrogen, which is wonderfully probable for human carrying vehcles given the potential insurance costs (even if the passengers waive their rights, the people underneath the flight path don't.)
The sad fact is that in the UK we get into projects that are too difficult, under-fund and mismanage them while wasting money in corruption aka unexpected expenses, and then whine when they prove completely impracticable. This happened with the British ICBM project, it will happen with the Olympics. It will probably happen if we replace Trident, though at least our all-British submarine is likely to be built by the French with American missiles.
Paradoxically it took Richard Noble and Andy Green to go supersonic on land while everybody rubbished them, including British Aerospace (aka BAe, aka Saudi Graft Inc.) who missed out on some rare good publicity by refusing to help them. But that was because, in fact, they stuck with tested and proven conventional technology.
I just had an argument^^^^^^^^discussion with a lawyer about this. Apparently the legal position is that the legal system is perfect and so we don't have anything to worry about. Unless, of course, we are not lawyers.
I have actually done research into chloride corrosion of brasses, and the answer is that it is enormously variable. Whether the brass is turned or stamped, the temperature, the number of steps in the stamping process, the sharpness of turning tools, the final treatment (grind to size, polish etc.) all affect the rate of attack. One would expect much the same for other metals, though considerable research would be needed. This will probably become a nice little earner for expert witnesses.
Slashdot Mirror
And which Commissioner pressed for software patents in the EU? McCreevy, that's who. And when did he do it? Around the time Microsoft was building its R&D centre, that's when.
The parent post can be described as putting a good face on some dubious behaviour. Anybody who wants to know if I have a case (basically that McCreevy is a shill for specifically Irish interests rather than doing his supposed job which is remove impediments to the internal market) is invited to use Google and their own resources to see which of us is right, or at least more right, and whether in fact corruption in Ireland is "low". As the parent poster admits, businessmen gave the Taoiseach a "ton of money" to help him out of difficulties. You may choose to believe that Ireland is full of selfless businessmen who thrust piles of Euros at anybody having a hard time, or you might not.
Please go and learn some recent Irish history. And please note that I am not being anti-Irish. You will see I have confined myself to comments on Irish politicians, priests and gangsters. All my comments can be verified by mainstream sites on the Internet. The difference now is that the Internet, the lack of support among the younger Irish for the Church, and the growing pressure from the EU, are all making it hard to keep the corruption concealed. Which is why the Taoiseach has had to step down.
The upshot is that shills like McCreevy are trying to keep the artists on board by proposing that they get something which no other professional gets, (if 95 years copyright for a writer, why not 95 years for a patent?) hoping that Ireland will benefit in some way from tax collection. Apple is also strongly represented In Ireland and can presumably afford lobbyists.
The economic downturn and the gradual ending of EU structural funding (supposedly for building railways and roads but actually diverted to building country houses for the rich Irish) is putting a strain on the Irish economy. They need the money
Something like viton. There are some really exotic fluoropolymers about with remarkable properties, and they turn up all over the place especially in O-rings. I keep an emergency supply of viton rings for fixing weeps in metal to metal olive joints, as they can withstand everything from hotlubricating oil with additives through to vacuum with UV.
The study of crack dealers mentioned in Freakonomics showed a heirarchy similar to any US corporation, with the lowest level getting about the same hourly rate as in McDonalds. There really is no hard and fast line between organised business and crime, just degrees of criminality ranging from (say) welfare friendly food providers on the West Coats down to crack dealers. As Enron and Bear Sterns have shown us, size and visibility is no guarantee of legality.
In the meantime eBay has created a hole for a real on-line auction system. It would be quite difficult to set up, require heavy means of seller verification, but provide a way to sell high value items securely.
Not that I am defending the "luxury goods manufacturers" who themselves are now fake. "Burberry", for instance, is just another Chinese knock off shop, while Barbour and Mulberry in the UK are real local manufacturers. Burberry has destroyed some of the value in the real manufacturers by its faking. It's Gresham's Law in action. There really should be a law that all vendors must state clearly in any advertisement what the main country of manufacture of their goods actually is.
It looks like the thing that has largely fixed the EV issue is the laptop computer/mobile phone - which has justified the research effort into lithium batteries.
From a volume point of view in the short term the manufacturer to watch is Mitsubishi: they have a joint venture factory with Yuasa, and last week they delivered a test sample EV to a Japanese police force (they already have them with Tokyo utilities.) The Miev may not be as large and fast as the Tesla, but it is likely actually to be affordable. $100000 will only appeal to the rich who want a status symbol, as the payback compared to (say) a Mercedes Bluemotion clean Diesel will be forever. But a $30000 commuter vehicle may well make economic sense. I could justify one right now if oil reaches $200/barrel.
In fact, there are reports that sales of the EVs currently available are very poor, presumably because people who might have bought one as a third car are spending the money on new, efficient vehicles which will show a real cost saving in a sensible payback period.
A neighbour is a senior project manager for a development charity, and his view is that a lot of Africa's problems stem from too few people. Below a certain density you do not have the GNP to develop transport, or the manpower to clear swamps and get rid of malaria (for instance.) This is why most Third World development takes place in crowded cities rather than rural areas.
But as to why you are a troll. One North American baby = nearly 12 African babies in terms of resource consumption. In terms of resource consumption, the US uses as much as a Third World country of around 4 billion people, and the EU probably uses as much as 2-3 billion Third World people. Now do you get it? The answer is for US, you (and to a lesser extent me) to stop having growing populations, not the Third World. Then we don't need to build kleptomaniac corporations that steal all their resources.
The average North American uses twice as much energy as the average Briton or German, and two and a half times as much as the average Italian. Germans and Italians have a pretty good lifestyle; I'd much rather live in Munich, say, than most American cities. New York has almost European population densities and energy efficiency, yet it is a desirable place to live. If you could just drive sensibly, live in adequate but not bloated houses, and stop trying to commute fifty miles each way to work by three tonne truck, you would free up enough energy to make a significant difference to the entire Third World. And then you would not need that huge army and the array of missiles, because nobody would be coming after you.
In Dante (Commedia,Inf 26) his voyage beyond the Straits takes him to a point spherically opposite Jerusalem where he encounters the Mount of Purgatory (don't blame me, I didn't invent Catholic mythology) and his ship is sunk by a tornado before he can land on it. I assume that the idea of the voyage beyond the limits of what is known is the reason it is called Ulysses, not the ability to invent nasty tricks to defeat the Trojans.
Incidentally, Odysseus got a mention recently because astronomical references in Homer have allowed his return to Ithaca and defeat of the Suitors to be exactly dated. A knowledge of the classics may be utterly irrelevant nowadays, but it is interesting.
This is why thinking like this is needed. Expensive but efficient technology needs to be commoditised for Third World production to bootstrap their economies.
Written over 700 years ago and still brilliant. This is just a small extract:
"O frati", dissi "che per cento milia
perigli siete giunti a l'occidente,
a questa tanto picciola vigilia
d'i nostri sensi ch'è del rimanente,
non vogliate negar l'esperienza,
di retro al sol, del mondo sanza gente.
Considerate la vostra semenza:
fatti non foste a viver come bruti,
ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza''.
Li miei compagni fec'io sì aguti,
con questa orazion picciola, al cammino,
che a pena poscia li avrei ritenuti;
e volta nostra poppa nel mattino,
de' remi facemmo ali al folle volo,
sempre acquistando dal lato mancino.
Tutte le stelle già de l'altro polo
vedea la notte e 'l nostro tanto basso,
che non surgea fuor del marin suolo.
I rather suspect you mean that the defendant is not prosecuted for lying, as such. This is usually the case in much of Europe. Criminals who plead not guilty do not receive extra sentences for having lied as well as having committed the original crime.
In fact Finland is a member of the EU, its judicial system must meet European standards, and a judicial system which permitted plaintiffs to lie would fail the European Union human rights test.
True story, I once worked with an ex-Dixon's manager who admitted they looked for ignorant and easily cowed staff because they could exploit them, whereas the technically capable could easily get better weekend jobs somewhere else. Of course, you can guess the kind of managers they employ.
If this is the probability of finding particular signal amplitudes (time unspecified), how does it relate to single photon counting?
It seems all back to front. Naively one might expect that multiple photons would result in a larger initial avalanche current, but the graph doesn't seem to relate to this at all. It shows a high probability that the output at no photon will be around 5mV, whatever that is supposed to mean. Is that the dark current of the diode at a given bias, before it triggers?
I suspect that what we are seeing here is a diode biased with some low voltage from a limited current source, and that the pulse amplitude results from the self-discharge of the diode capacitance into the measuring resistor. In which case what is being shown is that the resting output is around 5mV, and that the pulse height depends on the number of simultaneous photons. If so, this could have been shown quite clearly on a conventional graph with the output pulse height represented on the Y axis, the number of photons on the X axis, and the probabilities shown by the shape of the distribution.
So, either I don't get it (always a possibility) or someone needs to go and (a) read up statistics again and (b) read Tufte.
Joe Armstrong's Erlang textbook is interesting, but I did not have time to learn the language and recode the part of our current project that would benefit from it. So I did what any sensible person would do: raided the concepts, and used them to redesign the critical parts of the application. I was initially provoked into doing this because, in the book, the comparison at one point between the Erlang and Java way of doing something is just plain wrong. When I thought out how I would actually do it in Java, I realised that it helps to stick to a language you know well.
Most Slashdotters probably don't need to be told this, but anyone interested in historical fact about Bletchley Park shouldn't miss Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges. It's entertaining, rich in technical detail and, wait for it, true.
I'm sorry, but if the nest we can do is Rockstar (not knocking them, just being realistic) then will the last systems designer in the UK please turn off the server before emigrating? Fortunately, I expect to retire in a couple of years. Hopefully to somewhere where Government and other systems work.
Slightly off topic, today we discovered that the UK Government new release of the on-line tax system shows the accountant name, not the actual person for whom the form is being filled in. The guy on the help desk, when asked when it would be fixed, replied "I am not at liberty to disclose that". Not only is UK Government IT incompetent, it is secretive about it. (The Editor of Computer Weekly said that on the box last week.) So
In fact both Europe and Japan have developed really efficient small Diesels. My commuter vehicle has a tiny 1.5 liter 3 cylinder turbo intercooled Diesel engine, basically half a V6, seats 5 European-size adults, gets 45 miles to the US gallon at 65-70 mph, and tops out at over 110mph. But I cannot see that it would sell in the US, because all the American visitor notices is that the engine vibration is more than in his SUV or van, and the 6-speed automated gearbox is not quite as smooth as an energy absorbing slushbox. Your Kohler generator engine is way behind Daihatsu, Mercedes or VW technically (after all it has to run on inferior fuel and withstand other abuse, and be cheap to repair, I am not knocking it) but it would only sell to the converted.
It has taken sixty years to persuade the US consumer that bigger and more powerful is always better. How long will it take to persuade them to buy a Toyota Yaris, a Suzuki Swift or a Hyundai i10, in their Far Eastern/European engine variants?
More people in the world with high disposable incomes drive on roads where American SUVs are in a small minority. Here in the UK SUVs have been making inroads which have come to a sudden halt as fuel approaches $3/liter. On the other hand, the sales of class A,B and C vehicles - microcars, minis and superminis - are rising fast. Expect European roads to look rather different in 2010, when the first of the new technologies really start to reach the market.
The guy who wrote the article did not get this - quoting US gallons is pretty irrelevant. 1 liter/100km, or miles per UK gallon, are appropriate because that is where they will be used.
Memo to self: must get out more. Also, must try harder not to trivialise serious subjects.
We just ran out of the unobtainium for the space elevator.
Had the transistor not come along, doubtless by now the computer industry would have run out of the molybdenum for vacuum tubes.
The sad fact is that in the UK we get into projects that are too difficult, under-fund and mismanage them while wasting money in corruption aka unexpected expenses, and then whine when they prove completely impracticable. This happened with the British ICBM project, it will happen with the Olympics. It will probably happen if we replace Trident, though at least our all-British submarine is likely to be built by the French with American missiles.
Paradoxically it took Richard Noble and Andy Green to go supersonic on land while everybody rubbished them, including British Aerospace (aka BAe, aka Saudi Graft Inc.) who missed out on some rare good publicity by refusing to help them. But that was because, in fact, they stuck with tested and proven conventional technology.
I just had an argument^^^^^^^^discussion with a lawyer about this. Apparently the legal position is that the legal system is perfect and so we don't have anything to worry about. Unless, of course, we are not lawyers.
I have actually done research into chloride corrosion of brasses, and the answer is that it is enormously variable. Whether the brass is turned or stamped, the temperature, the number of steps in the stamping process, the sharpness of turning tools, the final treatment (grind to size, polish etc.) all affect the rate of attack. One would expect much the same for other metals, though considerable research would be needed. This will probably become a nice little earner for expert witnesses.