The PDF documents exactly the devices used to monitor input power
Which is proof of what exactly? How does that prove that all power inputs were accounted for? How does it prove that the power measuring device wasn't tampered with? That doesn't eliminate fraud, experimental or measurement error.
Correction: A power input provided by the "inventor" was monitored. That is not evidence that all power inputs were accounted for or monitored.
At this stage, either this is the most elaborate scientific/engineering hoax in history, or he's stumbled upon something novel.
If you believe that you are really quite gullible. Sometimes it's fun to be fooled but this isn't one of those times. Big claims require proof and transparency and this has neither.
Unfortunately, the exact inner workings (fuel composition,...) are being protected as a trade secret.
That's because there is nothing in there to protect except a magician's trick. Real inventors and scientists don't work that way. Stage magicians do.
In this case, the claimed energy density is far outside the realm of anything achievable by chemistry, so if it was real it would be prima-facie evidence of something non-chemical going on.
Exceptional claims require exceptional proof. First you would have to eliminate all possible causes including experimental error, measurement error and of course fraud. The results need to be reproducible by genuinely independent third parties and ALL parts of the apparatus need to be examined. Anything else should be regarded as attempted fraud.
Although I do agree that the claims being made are so extraordinary that even then it would be difficult to credit it as a real phenomenon.
It would be very easy to determine if it is real. One merely has to describe what was done and let other scientists have a go at it. Couldn't be easier.
Which of course is exactly what a lot of people told me here on Slashdot when I wrote that we really don't have any evidence it's a hoax, so let's just wait and see.
We don't have any evidence that it is not a hoax. What we do have is a lot of behavior that looks exactly like what would be expected if it was a hoax.
But I was willing to wait for real evidence before screaming "Hoax!" to the heavens, the way a lot of people here did.
Scams are nothing new and this has all the trappings of being one. If the "inventor" wants to follow real scientific procedures and provide real transparency into what he is doing then I'll do the sitting and waiting. But when someone is behaving exactly how I would expect a scam artist to behave then I'm going to scream "hoax" until proven otherwise.
Explain that part about explaining inputs and outputs being "meaningless".
Because if you cannot see the entire process there is ample room for fraud. I can hand you a black box that you plug into the wall of your house which will emit more power than you put in. Have I invented some magic box? No. It means that I have a battery in the box that I won't let you examine.
If you hand me something that seems to violate the known laws of physics you had better be able to explain what is going on and/or be very transparent about what you've found. Anything else just screams scam.
Since the machine needs to be charged with fuel for each run and the fuel changes isotopic composition by the end of the run, your objections as to "perpetual machines" are moot and misplaced.
If you believe that then I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.
These experts haven't figured it out. They are not exactly idiots. Google them.
Are you certain these "experts" are actually independent observers? You are being FAR to credulous.
Given a choice between making $400k a year (minus operating and maintenance expenses, which we have no idea of) and potentially making billions off an invention, which would you choose?
There is no invention and thus there is no choice. This is no different however than the scam artists who sell courses on how to get rich selling houses or investing in the stock market rather than actually doing it themselves. They know there is no money in actually doing what they are selling but there is money in convincing gullible people to give them money.
I'm just saying that there is no reason to think he's a hoax just based on his business strategy.
Yes there is. I've worked in and with private equity. I've done fund raising for real companies. I know how real companies do this and you can be sure that this is NOT how honest people sell an invention. This is how a scam artist works. If this were real he would be able to march into any private equity firm on the planet and they would absolutely throw money at him after some due diligence.
But you contradict yourself. If (as you said yourself) that he could not get a patent, then trade secret is his only real protection.
There is no contradiction. If he could not get a patent it is because his "invention" is a scam. It's demonstrably not hard to get a patent these days. A trade secret is only helpful if there is actually something to protect. This guy couldn't get a patent because his "invention" couldn't even pass the most basic scrutiny.
I would not for a second recommend that you drive one, but ye olde VW diesel golf-based pickup can do better.
The old Rabbit pickups are pretty hard to find in good shape since most have long since rusted away. They also don't have enough cab space for my particular needs - I need a crew/extended cab. There are some light pickups sold in Europe that have better fuel economy than anything available in the US but we seem to have an allergy to good fuel economy in a pickup on this side of the pond.
Because despite what you might believe, the process hasn't been debunked.
Right. That's why they are not publishing the results in reputable scientific journals for peer review. That's why power companies are not funding this. If this was real then companies would be throwing serious money at it if it even had a modest hope of being a commercially viable power source. While I'm open minded that real breakthroughs in some new power technology are possible, I also know what a scam looks like when I see one.
If this is real then the burden of proof is on the "inventor". Since the "inventor" is not forthcoming then the default position is that it is hokum until proven otherwise.
There are theories on why it might be fake, and theories on how it could be real.
Which means precisely nothing unless subjected to proper scientific scrutiny. Theories without serious scrutiny are nothing more than science fiction.
Why is this nonsense getting the time of day here? I know the editorial staff doesn't exactly check the sources or the grammar but this article doesn't even pass a sniff test. Why is slashdot giving an obvious charlatan the time of day? "reputable researchers"? Please...
So, 3 sick patients leads to 1 sick healthcare worker. That isn't a particularly good ratio. If we had 100 people with Ebola then you'd expect 33 sick healthcare workers, and then you'd expect those to go on an infect another 11, then another 4, and then one more for good measure. If you're keeping count that is 50 healthcare workers in total, from treating 100 sick people.
Extrapolation from small numbers is rarely a sensible idea.
You know, I've heard that many times now, yet Ebola continues spreading.
And it is still correct. There is no need to panic. Ebola gets WAY more press than the severity of the actual risk justifies.
Basically stop freaking the hell out. The people that can and will deal with this outbreak are dealing with it. Panic will accomplish nothing productive. Quite the opposite in fact.
So perhaps it would be better to panic and spend some serious dough to crush the outbreak while it's still possible, rather than wait for it to turn into the doomsday scenario a deadly and highly contagious disease has every potential to become?
First off, ebola is NOT "highly contagious". It's actually rather hard to get. Unless you have been in direct contact with the sweat, blood, tears, feces or other bodily fluids of a symptomatic ebola patient then you have nothing to worry about. Medical personnel who are treating such patients directly are at highest risk for obvious reasons. This is nothing shocking though it probably means someone made a mistake.
It is incorrect that "every" pathogen has to potential to become a "deadly and highly contagious disease". Go talk to an infectious disease doctor and they will tell you that the biology of most viruses and bacteria prevents them from ever becoming a threat to humans. It's actually quite hard for that to happen even in a rapidly mutating virus which ebola is not. What you are suggesting is almost as unlikely as all the air in the room suddenly deciding to be on just one side of the room because, hey, it's theoretically possible. The real world probability of most viruses and bacteria mutating into something harmful to humans is actually vanishingly small if not actually zero.
So, before the press rushes out another set of Not-One-Girl-In-Wyoming-Took-an-AP-CS-Exam stories, let's point out that no Wyoming students of either gender took an AP CS exam again in 2014
There are 31 CITIES in the US with a larger population than the entire state of Wyoming. It's the least populated state in the US. It's most populous city is the capital of Cheyenne with 60,000 people. Heck, the District of Columbia which doesn't get 2 senators and a voting representative in the House has more people than the state of Wyoming. The fact that AP technology classes aren't exactly hugely popular there should surprise no one. I imagine their school budgets are tight enough trying to keep the lights on with populations that small.
Wrong, *standards* don't matter, the actual fuel economy of U.S. vehicles has risen year after year in the last 30+ years.
Really? The facts say you are wrong. Average fuel economy barely budged between the early 1980s and 2007 when the new fuel economy standards were put in place. They started to creep up a bit in 2004 as fuel prices rose. After 2004 the average fuel economy has risen steadily due to a combination of higher fuel prices and increased mandated fuel standards. Now I'm no genius but I'm pretty sure that's a cause and effect relationship there. The fact that car companies are selling certain vehicles at a loss to ensure higher average fuel economy standards is proof positive that the standards are forcing the car companies to make more fuel efficient cars.
Obama's (actually Congress) new standards came from the auto industry, it is their roadmap.
The first increase in 2007 came under the Bush administration we've seen a steady increase in fuel economy since. In 2011 the Obama administration along with the major auto manufacturers came up with new CAFE standards that will take effect in 2017 and beyond.
Got any more unsupported "facts" you'd like to make up?
What's interesting is over the past 20 years OEMs made tremendous strides in efficiency, but instead of boosting MPGs they invested these gains into cars that were bigger and more powerful while meeting the same standards.
Exactly. And the reason is that people don't shop for cars primarily by fuel efficiency because they have no economic reason to do so. Gas is (relatively) cheap and people like big cars that go faster than necessary with lots of frivolous bells and whistles. Fuel economy is nice to have but generally considered as an afterthought.
Unless the government either mandates higher fuel economy standards or taxes gas prices until they are high enough to adjust buying behavior, then companies will build cars with the lowest possible fuel economy. We've seen this happen for the last 20 years. It's just an economic law of nature. Absent economic incentives people will do things that may not be in their own or in society's interest in the long run.
I'm as guilty as anyone else. I drive a pickup truck for practical reasons but even the most economical pickup available tops out at just under 30mpg highway (currently RAM 1500 Ecodiesel). I'd happily drive something with better fuel economy but nothing exists. I suppose I could make do with a different type of vehicle but I don't have any economic incentive to do so. So I don't.
I agree, for all the praise people give him, all Jobs really did was be a guy that could get people to buy stuff.
If you think that is all he did then you really haven't bothered to look or are cherry picking facts. Yes he was an outstanding salesman but only someone with an ax to grind would pretend that there was nothing more to the man. Could I sum you up in one sentence? I doubt it. Let's not make more of the man than what he was but let's not make less either, ok?
He invented nothing, he treated his family and friends like shit, I'm not even going how he acted to his employees.
And what have you invented that we should all be impressed by? Steve Jobs has his name on 313 patents. How many do you have? Steve Jobs founded Apple, Next and turned Pixar into a powerhouse. How many successful businesses have you founded? Just because he was not really an engineer doesn't mean that he didn't create anything. Business is a team sport and there is no one who denies that he had a big role in the development of the Macintosh, iPhone, iPad, iPod, the desktop laser printer, the graphical user interface and more. He didn't do it himself and people shouldn't talk as if he did. But his contributions are undeniable.
Yes by all accounts he could be a colossal prick to other people. And yet a lot of people really liked him too. So perhaps the real story is a bit more complicated than you are insinuating? He could not have succeeded like he did if he was a d-bag to everyone around him all the time.
They did? I sort of thought he just "invented" slightly tweaked things that already existed and respectively made the second most popular version of them, and then the most popular version of them.
Without getting too hyperbolic about it, yes you could say Apple's products have changed the world. I'm old enough to remember the world before Apple computers. Yes they really did change things. EVERY PC, smartphone, tablet computer, and MP3 player you buy today was influenced in demonstrable ways by Apple. While we shouldn't overstate the importance of that, we should shouldn't understate it either.
As an aside, you keep saying "he" as if Steve Jobs was personally responsible for them. He was the leader of the company that did these things. He gets a lot of credit but let's keep the credit to what he actually did shall we?
At least with the computer you could say that he was the co-designer of the modern computer, designer because neither of them invented the idea just popularised and commercialised on the idea.
You're going to find that very few ideas are truly original. That doesn't make turning them into a commercial success any less impressive. I'm not sure you appreciate how rare a success like Apple is. Steve Jobs genius (if that is the appropriate word) was in his business acumen and apparently his design chops. Those are important things and he used them as well as anyone I've ever seen. He had a vision and he got people to buy into it. That's what effective leaders do.
And while he was the leader in mp3 players and then smartphones, I am not sure that his designs were anything other that high-quality copies of what others had already done well before him.
Again, it isn't "he". It was Apple of which Steve Jobs was an important part. What Apple did was create the versions of those product categories that everyone else cribs off of. Do NOT underestimate the value and difficulty of that. Apple completely changed the game in smartphones. Same with the graphical interface. Same with the desktop laser printer. Where they've had the biggest effect is in software. The main thing that makes Apple products different and sets the apart is the software. (Mac hardware running Windows is no different than a Dell) You don't have to be an Apple fanboi (I'm certainly not) to appreciate what they've accomplished and the influence they've had.
Fuel economy standards were fixed for 25 years, and the average fuel economy remained constant. Companies design to the standard.
Quite so. Companies don't compete on fuel economy and fuel economy is usually about 20th on the list of things car buyers actually care about. So unless the government forces their hand either directly through mandated standards or indirectly through gasoline taxes, car companies are going to meet the fuel economy standards and not much more. I fully expect our current fuel standards to not be updated for another 20-30 years regardless of what might be actually achievable.
It's important to know what companies can achieve so you don't make impossible goals, but standards drive change.
Nothing in even the most absurd proposal for CAFE standards was technologically impossible and it is unlikely that it was economically impossible either despite protests from certain groups. We have the technology TODAY to make cars that get well over 100mpg or the electric equivalent. They would be quite different from what we are accustomed to seeing on the road but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. (Tesla is a good example) Any automotive engineer (and I am one) who tells you doubling average fuel economy in passenger cars is impossible is either lying or badly misinformed. Modern engines are far more efficient than those from 30 years ago but we've increased the horsepower so much that the net result is (almost) no change in fuel economy.
Progress is progress and "breakthrough"s only exist in the minds of the people who weren't paying attention to all the incremental steps that created them.
We've been "making progress" in fusion research for 50 years now and still are no where close to turning Pinocchio into a real boy.
A factor of a hundred here, a factor of a hundred there, and pretty soon you're talking about orders of magnitude.
It's easy to make big increases from a starting point near zero. When they show that they can repeat that same level of increase in similarly short periods of time then I'll pay attention. Until then it is simply a cry for funding.
Or, if they continue their current rate of increase of 100x/year, it'll take 2 more years.
Wake me when that actually happens. It's easy to double a small number. Going from 1 to 100 is not impressive when you need to get to 1,000,000. Are you aware of any reason I should have a realistic expectation that their progress will be such that they achieve breakeven power within 2 years? Within 5? 20?
"Although the result shows that a substantial number of reactions is taking place—100 times as many as the team achieved a year ago—the group will need to produce 10,000 times as many to achieve breakeven."
In other words they aren't even remotely close to a meaningful breakthrough. Nothing to see here, move along...
Who cares what "we" know? Why not leave the decision up to the individual involved?
Because people fearing for their life tend to make remarkably dumb decisions, particularly since few of them are actually knowledgeable regarding the facts involved. Because even if we give one person the drug we will have absolutely no way to know if it was effective because ebola doesn't kill everyone it infects. Was it the drug or some other factor that saved them?
We do things the way we do them for extremely good reasons. Rushing things actually ends up hindering things in the long run.
Slashdot Mirror
The PDF documents exactly the devices used to monitor input power
Which is proof of what exactly? How does that prove that all power inputs were accounted for? How does it prove that the power measuring device wasn't tampered with? That doesn't eliminate fraud, experimental or measurement error.
Have you read the report?
Nope. Would be a waste of my time.
Power input was monitored.
Correction: A power input provided by the "inventor" was monitored. That is not evidence that all power inputs were accounted for or monitored.
At this stage, either this is the most elaborate scientific/engineering hoax in history, or he's stumbled upon something novel.
If you believe that you are really quite gullible. Sometimes it's fun to be fooled but this isn't one of those times. Big claims require proof and transparency and this has neither.
Unfortunately, the exact inner workings (fuel composition, ...) are being protected as a trade secret.
That's because there is nothing in there to protect except a magician's trick. Real inventors and scientists don't work that way. Stage magicians do.
In this case, the claimed energy density is far outside the realm of anything achievable by chemistry, so if it was real it would be prima-facie evidence of something non-chemical going on.
Exceptional claims require exceptional proof. First you would have to eliminate all possible causes including experimental error, measurement error and of course fraud. The results need to be reproducible by genuinely independent third parties and ALL parts of the apparatus need to be examined. Anything else should be regarded as attempted fraud.
Although I do agree that the claims being made are so extraordinary that even then it would be difficult to credit it as a real phenomenon.
It would be very easy to determine if it is real. One merely has to describe what was done and let other scientists have a go at it. Couldn't be easier.
Which of course is exactly what a lot of people told me here on Slashdot when I wrote that we really don't have any evidence it's a hoax, so let's just wait and see.
We don't have any evidence that it is not a hoax. What we do have is a lot of behavior that looks exactly like what would be expected if it was a hoax.
But I was willing to wait for real evidence before screaming "Hoax!" to the heavens, the way a lot of people here did.
Scams are nothing new and this has all the trappings of being one. If the "inventor" wants to follow real scientific procedures and provide real transparency into what he is doing then I'll do the sitting and waiting. But when someone is behaving exactly how I would expect a scam artist to behave then I'm going to scream "hoax" until proven otherwise.
Explain that part about explaining inputs and outputs being "meaningless".
Because if you cannot see the entire process there is ample room for fraud. I can hand you a black box that you plug into the wall of your house which will emit more power than you put in. Have I invented some magic box? No. It means that I have a battery in the box that I won't let you examine.
If you hand me something that seems to violate the known laws of physics you had better be able to explain what is going on and/or be very transparent about what you've found. Anything else just screams scam.
Since the machine needs to be charged with fuel for each run and the fuel changes isotopic composition by the end of the run, your objections as to "perpetual machines" are moot and misplaced.
If you believe that then I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.
These experts haven't figured it out. They are not exactly idiots. Google them.
Are you certain these "experts" are actually independent observers? You are being FAR to credulous.
Given a choice between making $400k a year (minus operating and maintenance expenses, which we have no idea of) and potentially making billions off an invention, which would you choose?
There is no invention and thus there is no choice. This is no different however than the scam artists who sell courses on how to get rich selling houses or investing in the stock market rather than actually doing it themselves. They know there is no money in actually doing what they are selling but there is money in convincing gullible people to give them money.
I'm just saying that there is no reason to think he's a hoax just based on his business strategy.
Yes there is. I've worked in and with private equity. I've done fund raising for real companies. I know how real companies do this and you can be sure that this is NOT how honest people sell an invention. This is how a scam artist works. If this were real he would be able to march into any private equity firm on the planet and they would absolutely throw money at him after some due diligence.
But you contradict yourself. If (as you said yourself) that he could not get a patent, then trade secret is his only real protection.
There is no contradiction. If he could not get a patent it is because his "invention" is a scam. It's demonstrably not hard to get a patent these days. A trade secret is only helpful if there is actually something to protect. This guy couldn't get a patent because his "invention" couldn't even pass the most basic scrutiny.
I would not for a second recommend that you drive one, but ye olde VW diesel golf-based pickup can do better.
The old Rabbit pickups are pretty hard to find in good shape since most have long since rusted away. They also don't have enough cab space for my particular needs - I need a crew/extended cab. There are some light pickups sold in Europe that have better fuel economy than anything available in the US but we seem to have an allergy to good fuel economy in a pickup on this side of the pond.
Because despite what you might believe, the process hasn't been debunked.
Right. That's why they are not publishing the results in reputable scientific journals for peer review. That's why power companies are not funding this. If this was real then companies would be throwing serious money at it if it even had a modest hope of being a commercially viable power source. While I'm open minded that real breakthroughs in some new power technology are possible, I also know what a scam looks like when I see one.
If this is real then the burden of proof is on the "inventor". Since the "inventor" is not forthcoming then the default position is that it is hokum until proven otherwise.
There are theories on why it might be fake, and theories on how it could be real.
Which means precisely nothing unless subjected to proper scientific scrutiny. Theories without serious scrutiny are nothing more than science fiction.
Why is this nonsense getting the time of day here? I know the editorial staff doesn't exactly check the sources or the grammar but this article doesn't even pass a sniff test. Why is slashdot giving an obvious charlatan the time of day? "reputable researchers"? Please...
So, 3 sick patients leads to 1 sick healthcare worker. That isn't a particularly good ratio. If we had 100 people with Ebola then you'd expect 33 sick healthcare workers, and then you'd expect those to go on an infect another 11, then another 4, and then one more for good measure. If you're keeping count that is 50 healthcare workers in total, from treating 100 sick people.
Extrapolation from small numbers is rarely a sensible idea.
The evidence is continued exponential growth of Ebola to recent past.
Be careful of extrapolation.
You know, I've heard that many times now, yet Ebola continues spreading.
And it is still correct. There is no need to panic. Ebola gets WAY more press than the severity of the actual risk justifies.
Basically stop freaking the hell out. The people that can and will deal with this outbreak are dealing with it. Panic will accomplish nothing productive. Quite the opposite in fact.
So perhaps it would be better to panic and spend some serious dough to crush the outbreak while it's still possible, rather than wait for it to turn into the doomsday scenario a deadly and highly contagious disease has every potential to become?
First off, ebola is NOT "highly contagious". It's actually rather hard to get. Unless you have been in direct contact with the sweat, blood, tears, feces or other bodily fluids of a symptomatic ebola patient then you have nothing to worry about. Medical personnel who are treating such patients directly are at highest risk for obvious reasons. This is nothing shocking though it probably means someone made a mistake.
It is incorrect that "every" pathogen has to potential to become a "deadly and highly contagious disease". Go talk to an infectious disease doctor and they will tell you that the biology of most viruses and bacteria prevents them from ever becoming a threat to humans. It's actually quite hard for that to happen even in a rapidly mutating virus which ebola is not. What you are suggesting is almost as unlikely as all the air in the room suddenly deciding to be on just one side of the room because, hey, it's theoretically possible. The real world probability of most viruses and bacteria mutating into something harmful to humans is actually vanishingly small if not actually zero.
So, before the press rushes out another set of Not-One-Girl-In-Wyoming-Took-an-AP-CS-Exam stories, let's point out that no Wyoming students of either gender took an AP CS exam again in 2014
There are 31 CITIES in the US with a larger population than the entire state of Wyoming. It's the least populated state in the US. It's most populous city is the capital of Cheyenne with 60,000 people. Heck, the District of Columbia which doesn't get 2 senators and a voting representative in the House has more people than the state of Wyoming. The fact that AP technology classes aren't exactly hugely popular there should surprise no one. I imagine their school budgets are tight enough trying to keep the lights on with populations that small.
Wrong, *standards* don't matter, the actual fuel economy of U.S. vehicles has risen year after year in the last 30+ years.
Really? The facts say you are wrong. Average fuel economy barely budged between the early 1980s and 2007 when the new fuel economy standards were put in place. They started to creep up a bit in 2004 as fuel prices rose. After 2004 the average fuel economy has risen steadily due to a combination of higher fuel prices and increased mandated fuel standards. Now I'm no genius but I'm pretty sure that's a cause and effect relationship there. The fact that car companies are selling certain vehicles at a loss to ensure higher average fuel economy standards is proof positive that the standards are forcing the car companies to make more fuel efficient cars.
Obama's (actually Congress) new standards came from the auto industry, it is their roadmap.
The first increase in 2007 came under the Bush administration we've seen a steady increase in fuel economy since. In 2011 the Obama administration along with the major auto manufacturers came up with new CAFE standards that will take effect in 2017 and beyond.
Got any more unsupported "facts" you'd like to make up?
What's interesting is over the past 20 years OEMs made tremendous strides in efficiency, but instead of boosting MPGs they invested these gains into cars that were bigger and more powerful while meeting the same standards.
Exactly. And the reason is that people don't shop for cars primarily by fuel efficiency because they have no economic reason to do so. Gas is (relatively) cheap and people like big cars that go faster than necessary with lots of frivolous bells and whistles. Fuel economy is nice to have but generally considered as an afterthought.
Unless the government either mandates higher fuel economy standards or taxes gas prices until they are high enough to adjust buying behavior, then companies will build cars with the lowest possible fuel economy. We've seen this happen for the last 20 years. It's just an economic law of nature. Absent economic incentives people will do things that may not be in their own or in society's interest in the long run.
I'm as guilty as anyone else. I drive a pickup truck for practical reasons but even the most economical pickup available tops out at just under 30mpg highway (currently RAM 1500 Ecodiesel). I'd happily drive something with better fuel economy but nothing exists. I suppose I could make do with a different type of vehicle but I don't have any economic incentive to do so. So I don't.
I agree, for all the praise people give him, all Jobs really did was be a guy that could get people to buy stuff.
If you think that is all he did then you really haven't bothered to look or are cherry picking facts. Yes he was an outstanding salesman but only someone with an ax to grind would pretend that there was nothing more to the man. Could I sum you up in one sentence? I doubt it. Let's not make more of the man than what he was but let's not make less either, ok?
He invented nothing, he treated his family and friends like shit, I'm not even going how he acted to his employees.
And what have you invented that we should all be impressed by? Steve Jobs has his name on 313 patents. How many do you have? Steve Jobs founded Apple, Next and turned Pixar into a powerhouse. How many successful businesses have you founded? Just because he was not really an engineer doesn't mean that he didn't create anything. Business is a team sport and there is no one who denies that he had a big role in the development of the Macintosh, iPhone, iPad, iPod, the desktop laser printer, the graphical user interface and more. He didn't do it himself and people shouldn't talk as if he did. But his contributions are undeniable.
Yes by all accounts he could be a colossal prick to other people. And yet a lot of people really liked him too. So perhaps the real story is a bit more complicated than you are insinuating? He could not have succeeded like he did if he was a d-bag to everyone around him all the time.
They did? I sort of thought he just "invented" slightly tweaked things that already existed and respectively made the second most popular version of them, and then the most popular version of them.
Without getting too hyperbolic about it, yes you could say Apple's products have changed the world. I'm old enough to remember the world before Apple computers. Yes they really did change things. EVERY PC, smartphone, tablet computer, and MP3 player you buy today was influenced in demonstrable ways by Apple. While we shouldn't overstate the importance of that, we should shouldn't understate it either.
As an aside, you keep saying "he" as if Steve Jobs was personally responsible for them. He was the leader of the company that did these things. He gets a lot of credit but let's keep the credit to what he actually did shall we?
At least with the computer you could say that he was the co-designer of the modern computer, designer because neither of them invented the idea just popularised and commercialised on the idea.
You're going to find that very few ideas are truly original. That doesn't make turning them into a commercial success any less impressive. I'm not sure you appreciate how rare a success like Apple is. Steve Jobs genius (if that is the appropriate word) was in his business acumen and apparently his design chops. Those are important things and he used them as well as anyone I've ever seen. He had a vision and he got people to buy into it. That's what effective leaders do.
And while he was the leader in mp3 players and then smartphones, I am not sure that his designs were anything other that high-quality copies of what others had already done well before him.
Again, it isn't "he". It was Apple of which Steve Jobs was an important part. What Apple did was create the versions of those product categories that everyone else cribs off of. Do NOT underestimate the value and difficulty of that. Apple completely changed the game in smartphones. Same with the graphical interface. Same with the desktop laser printer. Where they've had the biggest effect is in software. The main thing that makes Apple products different and sets the apart is the software. (Mac hardware running Windows is no different than a Dell) You don't have to be an Apple fanboi (I'm certainly not) to appreciate what they've accomplished and the influence they've had.
Fuel economy standards were fixed for 25 years, and the average fuel economy remained constant. Companies design to the standard.
Quite so. Companies don't compete on fuel economy and fuel economy is usually about 20th on the list of things car buyers actually care about. So unless the government forces their hand either directly through mandated standards or indirectly through gasoline taxes, car companies are going to meet the fuel economy standards and not much more. I fully expect our current fuel standards to not be updated for another 20-30 years regardless of what might be actually achievable.
It's important to know what companies can achieve so you don't make impossible goals, but standards drive change.
Nothing in even the most absurd proposal for CAFE standards was technologically impossible and it is unlikely that it was economically impossible either despite protests from certain groups. We have the technology TODAY to make cars that get well over 100mpg or the electric equivalent. They would be quite different from what we are accustomed to seeing on the road but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. (Tesla is a good example) Any automotive engineer (and I am one) who tells you doubling average fuel economy in passenger cars is impossible is either lying or badly misinformed. Modern engines are far more efficient than those from 30 years ago but we've increased the horsepower so much that the net result is (almost) no change in fuel economy.
Can anybody help with their further insights here?
Allow me to introduce you to wikipedia. Keep it under your hat. Barely anyone knows about it. [/teasing]
Nonsense! At this rate they should have 10,000 times as many by next year!
Obligatory XKCD on extrapolation
Progress is progress and "breakthrough"s only exist in the minds of the people who weren't paying attention to all the incremental steps that created them.
We've been "making progress" in fusion research for 50 years now and still are no where close to turning Pinocchio into a real boy.
A factor of a hundred here, a factor of a hundred there, and pretty soon you're talking about orders of magnitude.
It's easy to make big increases from a starting point near zero. When they show that they can repeat that same level of increase in similarly short periods of time then I'll pay attention. Until then it is simply a cry for funding.
Or, if they continue their current rate of increase of 100x/year, it'll take 2 more years.
Wake me when that actually happens. It's easy to double a small number. Going from 1 to 100 is not impressive when you need to get to 1,000,000. Are you aware of any reason I should have a realistic expectation that their progress will be such that they achieve breakeven power within 2 years? Within 5? 20?
From TFA:
"Although the result shows that a substantial number of reactions is taking place—100 times as many as the team achieved a year ago—the group will need to produce 10,000 times as many to achieve breakeven."
In other words they aren't even remotely close to a meaningful breakthrough. Nothing to see here, move along...
Who cares what "we" know? Why not leave the decision up to the individual involved?
Because people fearing for their life tend to make remarkably dumb decisions, particularly since few of them are actually knowledgeable regarding the facts involved. Because even if we give one person the drug we will have absolutely no way to know if it was effective because ebola doesn't kill everyone it infects. Was it the drug or some other factor that saved them?
We do things the way we do them for extremely good reasons. Rushing things actually ends up hindering things in the long run.