Local multi-user is an aspect that has somehow been neglected in PC gaming. I think you are right, it should be possible.
On a more general note (and getting a bit off topic), using a generic PC as multi-user device should be possible too, as far as hardware is concerned. Take a modern PC with decent speed, plenty of USB ports and an ATI Eyefinity card that can handle 4-6 displays. Hook up all you need for 4-6 users and you have a relatively cheap way of equipping an office. But so far, there seems to be not much development in that direction. All I found is this link from 2004: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/html_single/XFree-Local-multi-user-HOWTO/
I mean this one:http://products.amd.com/pages/DesktopCPUDetail.aspx?id=623 The 910e is a "Deneb" core. At 2.6 GHz, it is not that bad in performance, and the official TDP is half that of most standard AMD quad cores at the time I bought it (65 W vs. 125 W). You may get lucky with a standard chip that happens to be close to the 910e in power consumption, but that is not certain. Also, the new FX processors are a questionable upgrade over the Phenom II;-) Note 1) In the meantime, the 1045T has appeared in shops. With 6 cores, 2.7 GHz and 95W TDP it looks very nice too, and today I'd be tempted to get that one instead of the 910e. Note 2) If Intel would support ECC RAM in their desktop chips, I might have bought an Intel Core i5-2400S instead. Same TDP in the specs and superior performance (even if Intel cheats a bit with the TDP, I'd consider the difference an acceptable tradeoff).
Considering the GPU, I wanted to keep things in the max. 70 W range. Not only because of power consumption, but also because of noise (70W can, in my experience, still be handled by a not too noisy air cooler).
There is a way, but it requires some (expensive) lab equipment most people don't have. You would need two versions of the same recording, one without artifacts (uncompressed), the other one run through the usual encoders with artifacts. Then show both versions to a test group and ask them in blind testing which one is better.
I remember a similar experiment from the audiophile world, about the audibility of digital artifacts in the CD system. The german magazine Stereoplay set up a high end analog stereo system consisting of turntable, pre-amplifier, power ampilfier and some very nice speakers. There were two configurations: 1) pre-amplifier directly connected to power amplifier 2) pre-amplifier connected to A/D converter connected to D/A converter connected to power amplifier So the difference was that setup 2) had the signal digitized and conveted back.
In the listening test, the test group was unable to detect a difference;-)
There is one aspect I'm missing in these comparisons:
The rather high wear on VHS tapes. I remember VHS from my parents' home as a system that would often introduce a buckle in the tape or even crinkle it, which had much worse effects on the quality than a few compression artifacts. In one or two worst-case events, we got tape spaghetti and had to open the recorder to remove it. The VHS recorders in question were moderately expensive models from then-respectable brands like Sony (that was way before the rootkit and PS3-Linux affairs). So the problems were not for lack of willingness to buy decent quality.
Bottom line: On durability, VHS loses out badly to DVD. Don't be surprised if your favorite VHS tapes develop problems after playing them back a few times.
This isnt about microsoft. This is about the Vendors (Lenovo in this case). They are the ones providing the Microsoft EULA contract. And this contract is written legally. Meaning: the Vendor states that they will offer a refund. The illegal part is when they decline a refund to the consumer when requested. This happened to me with Hewlett Packard. At first they said to me: call microsoft for a refund... but the agreement is clear: the contract is with the vendor (HP) and they r responsible for providing the refund as they wrote in the contract. Declining to do this is the antitrust violation. It is the Vendor and not Mircrosoft that is the problem here.
That's an interesting viewpoint that never occured to me (because in Germany, where I live, the EULA is most likely invalid because you get to see it only after the purchase). In other countries, a) is the EULA legally binding? b) is the vendor obliged to pay the refund, just because Microsoft wrote it into the EULA? If the answer to both questions is "yes", I'd say refusing the refund is a simple breach of contract. The French courts seem to see it this way, tough luck Lenovo.
So frankly when you figure in the money from crapware they are bundling I'd be amazed if they paid even $30 for Win 7 Home and they probably get Starter for nothing or even make a buck or two. Is this court gonna let them figure in the crapware losses or are they gonna act like these OEMs are paying retail? Because if its the latter I'd just sell blank boxes with a 40% markup and then make them order Windows separately. I don't give a shit how big the EU is NO OEM is gonna do business there if they could end up losing money on every PC sold, hell the ones like Dell that are making $8 a sale could lose money on entire shipments just by having a couple of hundred ask for their "Windows Tax" rebate checks.
I don't think the OEMs will give up selling to the EU. What might happen (as you suggested, and probably intended by the EU) is that hardware and Windows are sold separately.
At this point, you might get prices for a "blank" PC slightly lower than with Windows now - and it becomes really interesting how much Windows would cost. FYI: In July 2000, Microsoft lost a lawsuit in Germany about the legality of unbundling OEM versions. Now it is common in Germany that you can buy OEM versions separately, called "System Builder" versions. The price of a "System Builder" Win7 Home Premium is around 80 Euros.
At a visible and separate price of 80 Euros per copy, I guess more people would try some version of Linux. Not all of them would be happy with Linux, but there would still be a bunch of lost customers for Microsoft.
What resolution to this issue do you imagine is possible? Removing copyright from the equation doesn't seem like it would help.
Actually, I think it would help somewhat. The small guys would still be unable to defend their innovation against the de facto trusts (albeit for a different reason now), but the de facto trusts would also lose the stick they beat the independents with.
I remember that problem from the student's point of view. The professors were quite good at writing on the board while explaining at the same time. But I was not good enough at multitasking to process the information and also write down the important points at the same time. Eventually, I gave up on taking notes and concentrated on understanding as much as possible during the lecture. For preparing for the tests, this left two options:
1) Learn from lecture notes someone else had prepared. Fortunately, many professors offered cheap copies of their notes at the start of the semester. When those were of decent quality, they were the preferred material because they were guaranteed to match the content of the lecture. A version of this were professors who had written a textbook themselves, were using that as lecture notes and expected students to buy it. While that sometimes amounted to a shameless way of extracting more profit from teaching, at least the textbooks were usually better edited ald laid out than the photocopies.
2) Find a textbook that (mostly) covers the subject matter, learn from that and hope it does not leave too many gaps in what you need to know to pass the tests.
Thanks for the hint, but that was several months ago and I have since upgraded one of my other computers (an old P4). The upgrade consists of a new AM3 board, a Phenom II 910e quad core, 4GByte of DDR3 ECC Ram, a Radeon HD6670 and a new harddisk. While not the very fastest, this system is easy on the electricity bill (only about 80 watt when doing light duty) and should last me a few more years.
The ex-P4 is now my primary PC, and the dual core I tried APB on has been demoted to secondary.
So far, 3D acceleration is also significantly slower than in the closed sorce Catalyst driver. Some of that technology may also be owned by 3rd parties, but it is not as clear-cut as in the case of HDCP.
I suspect AMD's reasons for not releasing that stuff are part legal and part not wanting to give away the latest know-how. But the latter seems a bit silly, as NVidia drivers already have the better reputation and probably the better code. AMDs advantage seems to be on the hardware side, with their chips cranking out more (theoretical) GFlops/watt.
Take any shooter or MMO with really large maps and corresponding memory requirements.
For instance, "All Points Bulletin" comes to mind. After a few minutes, it always brought my PC (AMD dual core, 2GByte RAM, NVidia 8600 GT) to its knees due to requiring 2GByte of memory or more for itself. CPU and GPU seemed to have no problem, as the game ran fine until the memory limitation kicked in. So I guess the CPU and GPU in current-gen consoles might be able to handle the load as well. But memory-wise, they would run into problems even sooner.
The 7700 series will definitely be interesting, if you want to build a quiet computer that still can handle most games (albeit not at the highest graphics settings). My latest PC upgrade a few months ago used 6770, and so far it has handled all I've thrown at it.
Modern bombers are designed to be either very fast so they can hopefully outrun enemy fighters (B-1), or stealthy so they can sneak in (B-2). Cargo planes would be more like the old B-52, which is still in service but no longer considered first choice against countries with good air defenses.
The difference is that the "new" games from the bargain bin have everything on the DVD, including what used to be DLC. So the various DLC-annoyances discussed in this forum just go away.
Guess what? For reasons like that, I increasingly tend to buy older games, like two to five years after release. By that time, there is usually a "gold edition" with all the extras and patches included. Often cheaply from the bargain bin and without annoying DRM. And it's not like I'd miss much that way: Graphics were already pretty good in the mid-2000s, and gameplay has not improved at all (on average).
There are some indie games whose developers don't bother with DRM. Also, I found that bargain bin games (think 3-5 year old games, some of them considered AAA games when they were new) sometimes come without the copy protection of the original version. So there are ways around the problem (but it might take some of your limited free time to find the right games;-)
Unfortunately, even this is not enough. The non-US company would have to ensure any and all contact with the US is prevented, to ensure that there is not even a crack of a sliver of the door to US jurisdiction.
The question here is how compliant the local government is when the US asserts jurisdiction. If you live in a country that likes to suck up to the US, like most western countries, you may be out of luck even with a local company.
You might have better protection from abuse of US jurisdiction in a country like Russia (not too friendly with the US, and still powerful enough to be not easily bullied). Of course, you better avoid angering the local bigwigs;-)
In a typical (German, don't know about the US) home you have wire lengths of some ten yards and a thickness of maybe 1.5 mm (AWG 16). That is not that much copper, and adding pigtails at every splice might cost more in terms of work than it saves in metal. For cleaning up existing aluminum installations, it may be cheaper than ripping the old cables out though.
In power lines with much thicker cables and longer distances between slices, however, deciding on aluminium should be a no-brainer.
Any given R&D organization has plenty of engineers who are... expendable. If you don't know whether you are one of them, you are.
Short term, I guess a large part of all R&D organizations is expendable. Because it is not like the company will break down immediately if R&D is doing nothing for a while. The existing products will still sell for some time.
You might, however, eventually notice that you are now one technology generation behind the competition that has kept working on new products. That is where it becomes ugly, unless your company is so filthy rich that it can afford throwing tons of money at catching up. As an example of that, consider Microsoft's XBox business. They came late to the game console market, and today they are one of the leaders. But getting there has cost them some billion dollars. It will take a looong time to recoup that investment.
I agree, if you know what you are doing, it helps a lot. In over 10 years on the Internet, mostly without AV software, I had one infection and that was from a remote execution exploit (MSBLAST on Windows 2000). Even that one could have been avoided, I simply forgot to install the post-SP4 hotfixes after reinstalling the PC due to a non-virus related issue.
My safety measures at the moment consist of
- a DSL router with "lightweight" firewall and NAT - while not a 100% solution, it is better than nothing.
- not using products that have been frequently hacked in the past (except Windows). That means no Internet Explorer and no Outlook.
- generally checking downloads for their file type before opening them. If it is a.com or.exe I did not specifically download, it gets deleted.
RANT: Especially in this context, fuck Microsoft for making the hiding of file extensions the default in Explorer. I know to switch that off, but for inexperienced users it makes it even easier to fall for "AnnaKournikovaNaked.jpg.exe"./RANT
The biggest thing with Hybrids is that they are designed to invert the normal efficiency ideas. Usually, you get a lot more efficiency driving a steady rate on the freeway. It's one reason they list dual "city/highway" mileage targets on the sales brochures. With a hybrid, that's not the case, because a lot of the efficiency gains have to do with recapturing energy from stop-and-start driving.
Good point, and I'd like to add that the amount of stop-and-start driving depends a lot on where you are driving. In the city, you probably cannot avoid lots of stop-and-start. That's where the hybrid shines. I'd expect that cabs in the city eventually go mostly hybrid, as they also get the mileage to amortize the higher prize of a hybrid.
Driving a steady rate on the freeway, I agree that you won't see any improvements over a gasoline engine. A direct-injection diesel is the best engine for that kind of driving.
In short, the GPL is about forcing people to comply with others desires, if they use anyh GPL'd source code.
Of course, the GPL advocates will say that nobody forces you (yet) to use GPL'd code for anything (though if they had their way, that is what would be the case). It's rather disingenuous though to make that claim when they clearly would like to force everyone to have to use GPL'd code.
All licenses are about forcing people to comply with others desires. If the creators of the software had no such desires, they could simply make their code public domain and give it away without a license.
So the question is if the terms of license X are acceptable. I guess that depends a lot on your political views. Compared to BSD, yes, the GPL takes away the freedom to simply copy some code into a closed source project. But I think that the goal of a free software ecosystem justifies those means. And compared to most commercial software licenses which have a much longer list of "you cannot do this", the GPL positively shines even for those who are bound by it.
And the last part in your post, "they clearly would like to force everyone to have to use GPL'd code" really needs some evidence if you want to be taken seriously.
Many years ago, there was a CD-ROM drive on the market that did exactly this (cannot remember the manufacturer). The German C't magazine tested it and found that is was one of the fastest CD-ROMs available while relatively silent. It was, however, also one of the most expensive.
Overall, I guess it was not a commercial success because the design disappeared again.
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Local multi-user is an aspect that has somehow been neglected in PC gaming. I think you are right, it should be possible.
On a more general note (and getting a bit off topic), using a generic PC as multi-user device should be possible too, as far as hardware is concerned. Take a modern PC with decent speed, plenty of USB ports and an ATI Eyefinity card that can handle 4-6 displays. Hook up all you need for 4-6 users and you have a relatively cheap way of equipping an office. But so far, there seems to be not much development in that direction. All I found is this link from 2004:
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/html_single/XFree-Local-multi-user-HOWTO/
Did you mean the 9100e, as in this link: http://www.starmicroinc.net/product/HD9100OBJ4BGD/-AMD-Phenom-X4-9100e-AM2-18GHZ-4MB-3200MHZ-HD9100OBJ4BGD-CPU-OEM/?
I mean this one:http://products.amd.com/pages/DesktopCPUDetail.aspx?id=623 ;-)
The 910e is a "Deneb" core. At 2.6 GHz, it is not that bad in performance, and the official TDP is half that of most standard AMD quad cores at the time I bought it (65 W vs. 125 W). You may get lucky with a standard chip that happens to be close to the 910e in power consumption, but that is not certain. Also, the new FX processors are a questionable upgrade over the Phenom II
Note 1)
In the meantime, the 1045T has appeared in shops. With 6 cores, 2.7 GHz and 95W TDP it looks very nice too, and today I'd be tempted to get that one instead of the 910e.
Note 2)
If Intel would support ECC RAM in their desktop chips, I might have bought an Intel Core i5-2400S instead. Same TDP in the specs and superior performance (even if Intel cheats a bit with the TDP, I'd consider the difference an acceptable tradeoff).
Considering the GPU, I wanted to keep things in the max. 70 W range. Not only because of power consumption, but also because of noise (70W can, in my experience, still be handled by a not too noisy air cooler).
There is a way, but it requires some (expensive) lab equipment most people don't have. You would need two versions of the same recording, one without artifacts (uncompressed), the other one run through the usual encoders with artifacts.
Then show both versions to a test group and ask them in blind testing which one is better.
I remember a similar experiment from the audiophile world, about the audibility of digital artifacts in the CD system. The german magazine Stereoplay set up a high end analog stereo system consisting of turntable, pre-amplifier, power ampilfier and some very nice speakers. There were two configurations:
1) pre-amplifier directly connected to power amplifier
2) pre-amplifier connected to A/D converter connected to D/A converter connected to power amplifier
So the difference was that setup 2) had the signal digitized and conveted back.
In the listening test, the test group was unable to detect a difference ;-)
There is one aspect I'm missing in these comparisons:
The rather high wear on VHS tapes. I remember VHS from my parents' home as a system that would often introduce a buckle in the tape or even crinkle it, which had much worse effects on the quality than a few compression artifacts. In one or two worst-case events, we got tape spaghetti and had to open the recorder to remove it.
The VHS recorders in question were moderately expensive models from then-respectable brands like Sony (that was way before the rootkit and PS3-Linux affairs). So the problems were not for lack of willingness to buy decent quality.
Bottom line:
On durability, VHS loses out badly to DVD. Don't be surprised if your favorite VHS tapes develop problems after playing them back a few times.
This isnt about microsoft. This is about the Vendors (Lenovo in this case). They are the ones providing the Microsoft EULA contract. And this contract is written legally. Meaning: the Vendor states that they will offer a refund. The illegal part is when they decline a refund to the consumer when requested. This happened to me with Hewlett Packard. At first they said to me: call microsoft for a refund... but the agreement is clear: the contract is with the vendor (HP) and they r responsible for providing the refund as they wrote in the contract. Declining to do this is the antitrust violation. It is the Vendor and not Mircrosoft that is the problem here.
That's an interesting viewpoint that never occured to me (because in Germany, where I live, the EULA is most likely invalid because you get to see it only after the purchase). In other countries,
a) is the EULA legally binding?
b) is the vendor obliged to pay the refund, just because Microsoft wrote it into the EULA?
If the answer to both questions is "yes", I'd say refusing the refund is a simple breach of contract. The French courts seem to see it this way, tough luck Lenovo.
So frankly when you figure in the money from crapware they are bundling I'd be amazed if they paid even $30 for Win 7 Home and they probably get Starter for nothing or even make a buck or two. Is this court gonna let them figure in the crapware losses or are they gonna act like these OEMs are paying retail? Because if its the latter I'd just sell blank boxes with a 40% markup and then make them order Windows separately. I don't give a shit how big the EU is NO OEM is gonna do business there if they could end up losing money on every PC sold, hell the ones like Dell that are making $8 a sale could lose money on entire shipments just by having a couple of hundred ask for their "Windows Tax" rebate checks.
I don't think the OEMs will give up selling to the EU. What might happen (as you suggested, and probably intended by the EU) is that hardware and Windows are sold separately.
At this point, you might get prices for a "blank" PC slightly lower than with Windows now - and it becomes really interesting how much Windows would cost.
FYI: In July 2000, Microsoft lost a lawsuit in Germany about the legality of unbundling OEM versions. Now it is common in Germany that you can buy OEM versions separately, called "System Builder" versions. The price of a "System Builder" Win7 Home Premium is around 80 Euros.
At a visible and separate price of 80 Euros per copy, I guess more people would try some version of Linux. Not all of them would be happy with Linux, but there would still be a bunch of lost customers for Microsoft.
What resolution to this issue do you imagine is possible? Removing copyright from the equation doesn't seem like it would help.
Actually, I think it would help somewhat. The small guys would still be unable to defend their innovation against the de facto trusts (albeit for a different reason now), but the de facto trusts would also lose the stick they beat the independents with.
I remember that problem from the student's point of view. The professors were quite good at writing on the board while explaining at the same time. But I was not good enough at multitasking to process the information and also write down the important points at the same time.
Eventually, I gave up on taking notes and concentrated on understanding as much as possible during the lecture. For preparing for the tests, this left two options:
1) Learn from lecture notes someone else had prepared. Fortunately, many professors offered cheap copies of their notes at the start of the semester. When those were of decent quality, they were the preferred material because they were guaranteed to match the content of the lecture. A version of this were professors who had written a textbook themselves, were using that as lecture notes and expected students to buy it. While that sometimes amounted to a shameless way of extracting more profit from teaching, at least the textbooks were usually better edited ald laid out than the photocopies.
2) Find a textbook that (mostly) covers the subject matter, learn from that and hope it does not leave too many gaps in what you need to know to pass the tests.
Thanks for the hint, but that was several months ago and I have since upgraded one of my other computers (an old P4).
The upgrade consists of a new AM3 board, a Phenom II 910e quad core, 4GByte of DDR3 ECC Ram, a Radeon HD6670 and a new harddisk. While not the very fastest, this system is easy on the electricity bill (only about 80 watt when doing light duty) and should last me a few more years.
The ex-P4 is now my primary PC, and the dual core I tried APB on has been demoted to secondary.
So far, 3D acceleration is also significantly slower than in the closed sorce Catalyst driver. Some of that technology may also be owned by 3rd parties, but it is not as clear-cut as in the case of HDCP.
I suspect AMD's reasons for not releasing that stuff are part legal and part not wanting to give away the latest know-how.
But the latter seems a bit silly, as NVidia drivers already have the better reputation and probably the better code. AMDs advantage seems to be on the hardware side, with their chips cranking out more (theoretical) GFlops/watt.
Take any shooter or MMO with really large maps and corresponding memory requirements.
For instance, "All Points Bulletin" comes to mind. After a few minutes, it always brought my PC (AMD dual core, 2GByte RAM, NVidia 8600 GT) to its knees due to requiring 2GByte of memory or more for itself.
CPU and GPU seemed to have no problem, as the game ran fine until the memory limitation kicked in. So I guess the CPU and GPU in current-gen consoles might be able to handle the load as well. But memory-wise, they would run into problems even sooner.
The 7700 series will definitely be interesting, if you want to build a quiet computer that still can handle most games (albeit not at the highest graphics settings).
My latest PC upgrade a few months ago used 6770, and so far it has handled all I've thrown at it.
Modern bombers are designed to be either very fast so they can hopefully outrun enemy fighters (B-1), or stealthy so they can sneak in (B-2).
Cargo planes would be more like the old B-52, which is still in service but no longer considered first choice against countries with good air defenses.
The difference is that the "new" games from the bargain bin have everything on the DVD, including what used to be DLC. So the various DLC-annoyances discussed in this forum just go away.
Guess what?
For reasons like that, I increasingly tend to buy older games, like two to five years after release. By that time, there is usually a "gold edition" with all the extras and patches included. Often cheaply from the bargain bin and without annoying DRM.
And it's not like I'd miss much that way: Graphics were already pretty good in the mid-2000s, and gameplay has not improved at all (on average).
There are some indie games whose developers don't bother with DRM. Also, I found that bargain bin games (think 3-5 year old games, some of them considered AAA games when they were new) sometimes come without the copy protection of the original version. ;-)
So there are ways around the problem (but it might take some of your limited free time to find the right games
Unfortunately, even this is not enough. The non-US company would have to ensure any and all contact with the US is prevented, to ensure that there is not even a crack of a sliver of the door to US jurisdiction.
The question here is how compliant the local government is when the US asserts jurisdiction. If you live in a country that likes to suck up to the US, like most western countries, you may be out of luck even with a local company.
You might have better protection from abuse of US jurisdiction in a country like Russia (not too friendly with the US, and still powerful enough to be not easily bullied). Of course, you better avoid angering the local bigwigs ;-)
In a typical (German, don't know about the US) home you have wire lengths of some ten yards and a thickness of maybe 1.5 mm (AWG 16). That is not that much copper, and adding pigtails at every splice might cost more in terms of work than it saves in metal.
For cleaning up existing aluminum installations, it may be cheaper than ripping the old cables out though.
In power lines with much thicker cables and longer distances between slices, however, deciding on aluminium should be a no-brainer.
Any given R&D organization has plenty of engineers who are... expendable. If you don't know whether you are one of them, you are.
Short term, I guess a large part of all R&D organizations is expendable. Because it is not like the company will break down immediately if R&D is doing nothing for a while. The existing products will still sell for some time.
You might, however, eventually notice that you are now one technology generation behind the competition that has kept working on new products. That is where it becomes ugly, unless your company is so filthy rich that it can afford throwing tons of money at catching up. As an example of that, consider Microsoft's XBox business. They came late to the game console market, and today they are one of the leaders. But getting there has cost them some billion dollars. It will take a looong time to recoup that investment.
I agree, if you know what you are doing, it helps a lot. In over 10 years on the Internet, mostly without AV software, I had one infection and that was from a remote execution exploit (MSBLAST on Windows 2000).
Even that one could have been avoided, I simply forgot to install the post-SP4 hotfixes after reinstalling the PC due to a non-virus related issue.
My safety measures at the moment consist of
- a DSL router with "lightweight" firewall and NAT - while not a 100% solution, it is better than nothing.
- not using products that have been frequently hacked in the past (except Windows). That means no Internet Explorer and no Outlook.
- generally checking downloads for their file type before opening them. If it is a .com or .exe I did not specifically download, it gets deleted. /RANT
RANT: Especially in this context, fuck Microsoft for making the hiding of file extensions the default in Explorer. I know to switch that off, but for inexperienced users it makes it even easier to fall for "AnnaKournikovaNaked.jpg.exe".
Or that false takedown notices often have no consequences.
I think if there are statutory damages for copyright infringement, similar statutory damages should apply for unjustified takedown notices. Compare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_damages_for_copyright_infringement.
With sums like these, suing those who hassle you with false takedown notices might be worthwhile ;-)
The biggest thing with Hybrids is that they are designed to invert the normal efficiency ideas. Usually, you get a lot more efficiency driving a steady rate on the freeway. It's one reason they list dual "city/highway" mileage targets on the sales brochures. With a hybrid, that's not the case, because a lot of the efficiency gains have to do with recapturing energy from stop-and-start driving.
Good point, and I'd like to add that the amount of stop-and-start driving depends a lot on where you are driving. In the city, you probably cannot avoid lots of stop-and-start. That's where the hybrid shines. I'd expect that cabs in the city eventually go mostly hybrid, as they also get the mileage to amortize the higher prize of a hybrid.
Driving a steady rate on the freeway, I agree that you won't see any improvements over a gasoline engine. A direct-injection diesel is the best engine for that kind of driving.
In short, the GPL is about forcing people to comply with others desires, if they use anyh GPL'd source code.
Of course, the GPL advocates will say that nobody forces you (yet) to use GPL'd code for anything (though if they had their way, that is what would be the case). It's rather disingenuous though to make that claim when they clearly would like to force everyone to have to use GPL'd code.
All licenses are about forcing people to comply with others desires. If the creators of the software had no such desires, they could simply make their code public domain and give it away without a license.
So the question is if the terms of license X are acceptable. I guess that depends a lot on your political views.
Compared to BSD, yes, the GPL takes away the freedom to simply copy some code into a closed source project. But I think that the goal of a free software ecosystem justifies those means.
And compared to most commercial software licenses which have a much longer list of "you cannot do this", the GPL positively shines even for those who are bound by it.
And the last part in your post, "they clearly would like to force everyone to have to use GPL'd code" really needs some evidence if you want to be taken seriously.
Many years ago, there was a CD-ROM drive on the market that did exactly this (cannot remember the manufacturer). The German C't magazine tested it and found that is was one of the fastest CD-ROMs available while relatively silent. It was, however, also one of the most expensive.
Overall, I guess it was not a commercial success because the design disappeared again.
Just out of curiosity - what made "Delphi to Visual Basic" attractive (I think I can guess the motivation for the other three steps) ?