SUVs use somewhat more gas than cars, but not a lot. Most modern SUVs get better mileage and pollute far less than many cars from the 80's - go check the figures yourself. The much-maligned Ford Excursion actually offers one of the cleanest-burning engines on the market, and is officially classed as an LEV (Low Emissions Vehicle).
SUVs are in no way responsible for the increase in gas prices. I'm no SUV apologist (I'm neither for nor against them - I prefer Ferraris), but let's stick to facts here.
There's a LOT of innovation in Diesels that we don't see here in the US. (The VW TDIs being about all that's for sale here.)
Not only is range stupendous (the TDI wagon can go 800 miles before refueling!), but some manufacturers are even managing to deal with the problems of sluggish Diesel performance.
Look folks, when Alfa Romeo starts building Diesel cars, you know there's something afoot! (Italian cars are a sickness from which I've never recovered - I sure wish I could buy a new Spider or GTV here.)
Car & Driver had a side-splitting story about an attempt to travel coast-to-coast in a natural gas-powered car a few months back.
It was no picnic, and the guy's lucky he didn't blow himself up, but real drivers would do the same. It points out the importance of infrastructure, even for something so universally available as NG, and the pain that goes with being an early adopter.
I'm interested in your electric car - that's a pretty good hack in its own right. Do you have a page up for it?
BTW: Thanks for both Pilot DOC and the NetWinder work - netwinder.org taught me a lot about Linux on other platforms. Maybe Red Hat will buy Corel after all - someone should, you're a pretty good deal right now... Best wishes.)
I agree they're not required for hackermobiles like yours or one that I might build (and I've thouht about it), but the mass market is another thing.
AC motors are in the EV-1 becaue they're more efficient, primarily because AC power control circuitry can be made more efficient than DC.
The cooling system is required because of the high loads on the electric motor. It's highly loaded in an effort to keep the weight down, so power/weight ratios don't suffer.
As for the paddle charger, I read some papers by GM on that - It was the best way that they could safely provide a high-power interconnect. (As you certainly know, the EV-1 uses a special 220V charger that can deliver a lot of charge in a short period of time, something they considered a market requirement. Plugging into a regular outlet works, but you're not going to get the quick recharges the EV-1 offers.
That said, it's true the EV-1 is a technological tour-de-force using all the cool tehnology GM could bring to bear - but not even remotely economically feasible. In that regard, it's much like the Chrysler Turbine cars of the 1960s - it just showcased a concept as possible, not practical.
What I'm wondering is why they didn't take the lessons learned from the ultralight ultrarigid structure of the EV-1 and use it to build a super-efficient gasoline-powered car (possibly powered by a 2-cycle orbital, since they have to remain small in displacement to work well.)
The fact is that the automakers realize that he average buyer is not going to be satisfied with the tradeoffs you've made in your electric. So, for now, they're still niche vehicles.
(I'll admit I'm surprised at how much trouble we've had getting good battery technology. I really figured we'd be doing better on that front by now, but it's a hard problem.)
OK, I stand corrected. As a tourist, I buy my rides one at a time, which could get to be quite expensive.
Two of my three cars are paid for, and my total operating costs are quite reasonable. For that, I gat the ability to go anywhere, anytime, direct to my destination. I agree that mass transit makes some sense in high-density urban areas (which many of us despise and avoid), but it will not and cannot work in other contexts. I wouldn't use it here even if it were available and cheaper - it's worth the incremental cost to have the flexiblity of a car. I know people live with only mass transit, but I can't imagine living such a narrow and confined life.
There is a real differnce in culture and attitudes at work here, which is why mass transit generally fails in the South and West, where freedom and elbow room are more highly valued.
As for ozone depletion, first, there's room for reasonable scientific disagreement on the issue, and some reputable and serious atmospheric scientists insist it's a myth. Second, cars *produce* ozone, and that's one of the things the EPA is trying to prevent. It causes trouble down here, but eventually rises to the ozone layer. Cars do not hurt the ozone layer, alhtough jet airplanes may.
The biggest reason aircraft still use leaded fuel is that it prevents knocking at altitude - tetraethyl lead was invented in WWII for this purpose and our ability to produce it in quantity was a key to Allied air superiority.
I has huge benefits down here, too: it allows much higher compression ratios, resuling in higher efficiency, and it naturally lubricates and protects exhaust valve seats. (This latter is the reason it's so bad to run any old gasoline engine on unleaded gas - the older seats are *designed* to have lead protecting them. Running for a while with unleaded fuel will produce expensive engine damage if you don't replace the seats with hardened ones.)
There's are a couple of good reasons Middle Eastern crude is so much cheaper than ours, and they have nothing to do with labor cost:
1. They have really, really good oil. This means that there are a lot of light fractions suitable for things like gasoline, with very little of the tar and other goop that reduces output and creates environmental concerns. This directly translates to ME oil producing more product per barrel of crude, and at a much lower price. Some Mubaraq *crude* is light enough to be lit with a match! This difference in quality is one reason why even having to drag it halfway around the world doesn't kill the economic advantage.
2. It's really, really easy to get to. There's an old joke in the oil business that says "Sure their oil is cheap - all they have to do is poke a stick in the ground to get it." This is not much of an exaggeration. Complex (and consequently expensive) drilling methods are almost never needed there - a big contrast to the directional drilling, complex fracturing techniques, and secondary/tertiary recovery techniques that have sidelined so many US oilfields, especially here in Texas.
This is conspiracy theorist bunk! If you've got a clean, effiecient, cost effective alternative, then by all means go sell it and make billions.
But you don't do you? Niether does anyone else.
I suppose you think we'd all have flying saucers if the auto/oil/govt conspiracy hadn't suppressed the Dean drive, right? Time for a reality check, dude - those "much cleaner and more powerful energy sources" don't exist, or someone would be making money off of them.
Although there are many people out there spinning comely stories about the wonderfulness of hydrogen and fuel cells, the harsh reality is that hydrogen makes economic sense now or in the foreseeable future.
Car and Driver had an excellent set of articles exposing these realities a few months ago, and talking about what's possible in the lab vs. the real world.
and this article, which points out the extraordinary staying power of a continually improving internal combustion engine:
The Survivor News of the demise of the internal-combustion engine is greatly exaggerated. Again. By PATRICK BEDARD (December 1998)
Add to this that one big 3 automaker has pointed out how electrics are both hideously expensive and subsidized by thier makers by remarking that, " the absolute cheapest way for us to get batteries for an electric car is to go buy one from Toyota and throw away the car." Somehow I don't think Toyota would let them do that for very long...
Bottom line: We still use gasoline engines because they are teh best technological solution to the problem. They may not always be, but they are likely to remain so for the next several decades, anyway.
Actually, like most so-called "zero-emisions" vehicles, this one is in reality just a remote emissions vehicle.
Something has to compress the air, and compressed air is not a particulary high-density energy storage medium. That something may be electricity, which more than likely came from an oil or gas-fired power plant and further absorbed the non-trivial power losses incurred in transmission lines, transformers, etc. (Granted, nuclear is the cleanest overall, but effectively impossible because of environmental zealots - nuke plants are already a dying breed - and ther is that pesky waste problem.)
Further, it requires expensive, filament-wound composite tanks, which are themselves a serious non-trivial safety hazard in the event of an accident. (For all gasoline's faults, it is much safer in a crash than many alternative fuels such as ethanol, hydrogen, L[NP]G, etc., and it does not require complex, expensive, or heavy containment and fueling sytems.)
Further, a cursory look at the zero emissions engine (listed on another page at the site) raises the snake oil alert flags: Although a spherical combustion chamber has some benefits (hence the famous Chrysler "hemi" (hemispherical) head, common in many modern motors), it requires small, inefficient valves, and will have to deal with the friction of two cylinders rather than one. As an experienced motorhead myself, I fail to see how this concept could even theoretically approach, much less exceed, the efficiency of a conventional IC engine.
Keep in mind that some ideas that look great on paper have problems in the real world. Mazda's incredible rotary being a prime example: The motor is small, light, has low friction, only a handful of parts, and you can literally rebuild it on your kitchen table. Unfortunately, although its power-to-weight ratio is quite impressive, its fuel economy is not, so it has been relegated to use in high-performance sports car duty where efficiency is less of a concern. (That said, I'm a huge rotor-motor fan - the things are awesome marvels of engineering. With reasonable care (mostly making *very* sure it *never* runs low on oil), the things are darn near bulletproof, too.)
It's easy to put together a web page making incredible claims (like the split-cycle folks did in Australia a year or two ago) - it's another thing to deliver on them. The reality is that cars are as good as we can economically make them today. They will continue to get better, but painting the automobile as the enemy of the environment is simply not realistic - modern cars emit virtually no pollutants once the catalyst is warm, and there is much promising research on how to avoid those initial few seconds. (Many new cars emit more in the first few seconds after a cold startup than they do for the next several dozen miles of driving. That's impressive!)
Although there may be some small racist component, I think the real reason is the inherent cultural impedance mismatch between those that choose to live in the city and those that like their space and hence choose to live farther out.
The personality types that choose these locales are very different, and suburbanites fear (reasonably) that mass transit will result in the harsh, hostile, and bitter attitudes of the city encroaching on the friendly, laid-back atmosphere of the outlying areas. (This is true in most if not all of the South, but may not hold in the North - Jimmy Buffet was right about changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes.)
In any case, I've travelled to enough cities and ridden enough filthy, graffiti-encrusted marvels of public transportation ruled by roving gangs of thugs to ever vote for *any* kind of mass transit in my area. Personally, I think we're wasting our money on buses, and trains make even less sense. (One thing that's often left out of the equation entirely is that cities have the ability to regulate and encourage taxis - I was pleasantly surprised in visiting the UK to find clean, easily available taxis everywhere - and their drivers were courteous and spoke English well, too! Reasonable taxi fare rates and licenses contingent on condition, cleanliness, and conduct could help a lot.)
Mass transit is just a bad idea all the way around. And it's not really even cost-effective: I could make a nice car payment for what it costs to do a daily commute in some cities!
Let's see, it's nearly 100 degrees out there today, and oh, yes, Austin has a lot of steep hills. Sure I could ride a bike to work (to one of my offices, anyway), but I'd smell like a goat when I got there, and be worn out on top of it.
Cars make far more sense than any other form of transportation for most locales. And actually, cars are a quite efficient way of moving around - todays cars are an order of magnitude more efficient and three orders of magnitude cleaner than the cars of the 1960s.
Good question. I was wondering the same thing - the math doesn't work.
In any case, this is still *much* less than what will be required if we're ever to get usable interfaces. Even at 2 A-size sheets at a decent resolution, it's still tiny: A quick look around the stuff on my desk reveals 10 roughly A-size documents "open" and the corners of several others peeking out. The surrounding work area and walls have another severl pages available for reference.
So for $10,000, you can get a tiny fraction of the bandwidth of my standard-issue IBM desk. Killing trees isn't going to slow anytime soon until computer desktop bandwidth approaches or exceeds that of the physical desktop. Until then, I'll keep printing out the things I'm working on.
Really, though, this is a real problem - computers simply can't be really useful until they have big screens so we can stop trying to drive the freeway while looking at the world through a knothole. This is the sort of thing we should put all those extra CPU cycles to. Thank you, Gordon Moore.
Don't know if it's still true, since I've been away from the medical imaging business since leaving Sun (they *own* the OEM medical imaging market), but most of the med imaging vendors were using the X Inside (now Xi Graphics) X server to do this sort of thing. It has support for all kinds of high-end imaging hardware. I'd suspect they're still doing this, since it's not exactly the easiest thing for the uninitiated to jump into - there are some really arcane things to know for performance and fidelity. (And radiologists are to displays what the snobbiest audiophile is to stereo gear - they have very well-calibrated eyeballs...)
BTW: Imaging is very different from graphics. This was one of the revolutionary things about Sun's UPA/VIS architecture in the mid-90's: it was the first affordable graphics susbsystem that did a pretty respectable job at both. Previously serious users had to choose which they wanted and select their hardware accordingly.
Congratulations, you've just learned the first real lesson CAD engineers have to face all the time: The *way* a shape is expressed determines what it's useful for.
This is really nothing new, in fact a lot of the old B-Rep (Boundary Representation, defining the containing surface of a shape) vs. CSG (Constructive Solid Geometry, defining how a shape is built up from geometric primitives) battle centered around the fact that the models have different strengths.
In fact, this argument predates 3-D modelling - if you've ever dealt with early "stupid" CAD translators (AutoCAD's being a prime example), you know that there's a *huge* difference between defining a 3-D surface with IGES entity type 102 (IIRC) - the "copious data" type, defining a gazillion points along a path, and a conic equation for that path. The latter is more accurate, infinitely scalable, and takes up a lot less space, unfortunately, the former is easier. (Try building an NC program to cut a surface from a gazillion points and you'll soon realize two things: 1) It's a great way to take a very expensive high speed machine tool and make it *very* slow, and 2) you will have to jump through all kinds of izarre hoops to handle streaming the data, since the poor controller does NOT have enought memory for this kind of abuse.
It will be interesting to see if all these highly intelligent people can get together and make money.
They already have to some degree. I know Rose worked with Adams in forming PSI, O'reilly, Rose, and Malamud (I think) were involved in the ahead of its time GNN, arguably the world's first Web "destination" (although they didn't manage to make the transition to portal with the arrival of the search engines), and Rose and Malamud have worked togehter on a number of projects from Malamud's Internet TownHall and radio.com (both now defunct) to the Free tpc.int fax bypass network, which failed to generate much interest, although I think it soldiers on in a few locales.
In any case, Rose is one of the best protocol jocks in the world, so in general his suggestions should be taken seriously. One of the most enjoyable classes I ever took was his on Internet mail protocols back at the "old" Interop years ago, back when it was a get-together for the people actually building the Internet rather than a slick merchandise mart with suits hawking the latest lock-in.
And this is the crux of the real dispute within our community. I fall on the side of software patents being a very good and necessary thing. I do think, though, that due to the pace of innovation in computers and software, that patents for computer hardware, software, or methods should be limited to 5 (and certainly no more than 7) years.
That provides the best of bothe worlds. The extension of patent lifespans has only exacerbated the problem we face. There was no reason to extend their lifespan beyond 17 years, and a lot of reasons why the lifespan should be shorter.
As I see it, there are basically two options: Break the patent system eliminating protections entirely for at least a subset of important inventions, or reform it slightly. I argue the latter can be done via nothing more intrusive than limiting the lifespan of patents in certain high-activity areas.
Thank you, Steve. That was my point, and I thought it was obvious, but apparently some people have to have it spelled out for them.
Eliminating software patents would be one of the surest ways of ensuring the withering domination of companies with lots of money, especially companies with lots of money and no discernable ethics.
Arrgh! I have submitted articles on this topic no less than three times in the past two weeks, and each time they were rejected.
I'll try to fill in the gaps, because I've done a little bit of hunting for mor info about this. In particular, I found that one of the four people that opposed the bill in Congress was Ron Paul, a congressman from the district south of mine here in Texas. Paul is a libertarian conservative Republican (he once ran as the Libertarian candidate for President), and has a very good record on privacy rights. The fact that he voted against it was a warning signal to me.
Further, I strongly recommend reading this article analyzing the bill at Cryptome. (Pointers to other analysis of the bill would be welcome.) The author of this makes it clear that there's a daylight and dark difference between "electronic" signatures and "digital" signatures, the diference being that the latter provides significant protection against fraud and tampering that is completely absent in the former.
This is a terribly important issue, and I tried to sound the alarm two weeks ago because it is quite likely this will become the law of the land in the next few days. It may well be too late to stop it.
If you go back and reread my post, you'll find I was talking about brake CLEANER, not brake FLUID. I agree brake fluid is nasty, at least to paint - I've spilled it on me before, and wiped it up with rags and never seen anything like what you describe. I'm not sure it's really that dangerous, but those of us that know our hot-rodding always prefer silicone brake fluids anyway, since they're non-hygroscopic, virtually eliminating corrosion, and the silicone naturally protects seals in the system. It costs a little more, but silicone fluid is worth it in the long run, especially if you plan on keeping the car for a while (as I do nearly all of mine.)
But at least if that little guy can get a patent, he has some legal standing. My point is that if we significantly weaken (or even eliminate) some or all patents, that little guy will have lost what exiguous protection the current systems offers. In other words, much of what's advocated her on/. and elsewhere could well make things worse rather than better.
This is not an easy issue and we should not urge any actions that have not been very well-considered - the stakes are too high.
I'm posting this here because I think there are many on the open source community that don't realize the immense harm that would come to distributed control of IP if patents are abolished or weakened. If that happens, the guys with the most money win by default, since the smaller guys will have no protections whatever.
The following is a letter I wrote to LWN a few weeks ago outlining part of my argument. It will rub a lot of people the wrong way, but we can't afford to destroy the patent system unless we really want Microsoft and other huge companies to call all the shots. I don't think a lot of people here have thought these issues through.
I've gotten several challenges to my assertion about patents as a desirable thing (mostly asking for examples of small inventors that actually did profit from patents) so here's my quick response, FWIW:
Anyone saying patents don't do immense public good, and provide worthwhile, needed, and *effective* protection of small inventors against large corporations is simply ignorant of the history of even quite recent technology. Many inventors started small, but because of patent protection were indeed able to profit greatly from their inventions.
From the "gararge-shop" POV, well, just off the top of my head, there are the examples everyone is familiar with: Bill Hewlett and David Packard (HP, instruments), Steves Jobs and Wozniak (Apple, home computer), and outside the computer industry, folks like Edwin Land (Polaroid, polarized materials and instant camera), Chester Carlson (Xerox, xerography), Henry Ford (Ford, affordable automobiles), Thomas Edison (GE, light bulb, motion pictures, phonograph...), and Alexander Graham Bell (AT&T, telephone), all of whom profited greatly from their patented works. (One could argue for the inclusion of Jeff Bezos in that list, although around here, that's a bit like whacking a hornet's nest with a stick...)
But the classic twentieth century example of patents providing exactly the kind of protection I'm talking about is probably that of Philo T. Farnsworth, whom you may never have heard of, although you likely use his invention (electronic television) every day. Farnsworth was the prototypical individualist inventor who persevered against all odds and eventually defeated David Sarnoff and Vladimir Zworykin of the immensly powerful RCA. RCA was truly the Microsoft of its day in terms of control of the market and underlying technologies through acquisition - often under severe economic and other pressure. RCA had a policy of never paying royalties for any technology - a policy they managed to uphold until they met Philo Farnsworth, who just wouldn't give up.
Farnsworth fought virtually alone against all of RCA's power for seven years before the final court rulings that his patents had clear validity and precedence over Zworykin's, forcing a tearful RCA lawyer to sign a royalty payment agreement to Farnsworth. (Farnsworth publicly displayed television *five years* before Sarnoff unveiled RCA's infringing version to the world amidst great fanfare at the 1939 World's Fair, leading many to believe Sarnoff and RCA were the inventors of television - sound like anyone today?)
Farnsworth's experience is, if anything, a case study for the need to *strengthen* patents and either streamline patent appeals or extend the length of patents when thier commercial utility is impacted by unsuccessful challenges. (World War II intervened, and the government outlawed television for the duration of the war (the technology was needed for radar, night vision and other inventions Farnsworth then worked on), and so Farnsworth's patents expired before he could profit from them.
Do you still think patents are a bad idea? I'd argue experience shows that patents should be strengthened and perhaps that the duration of Farnsworth's patent should have been extended, due to RCA's clear abuse of the patent system and the courts. (I also think the government should have been upright enough to grant extensions in the name of fair play to all inventors whose inventions were commandeered for the war effort, but that's another issue entirely.)
History clearly shows that often patents are all that stands between real progress and innovation and the acquisition by force so typical of a Sarnoff or Gates. Strong patent law is the *only* effective defense against large companies stealing technology from small inventors. (What RCA tried to do could be accurately portrayed as theft.) I'm amazed more people don't get this, but they tend to avoid history, and fail to recognize that our American forefathers were wiser than we are in pretty much every way.
Although it's not perfect, there are very good reasons the patent system is the way it is, and we meddle with it at our peril. It would be nice to see a balanced discussion of this issue rather than the knee-jerk reactions that are more common in the open source/free software community.
Dub
P.S.: I recommend spending some time browsing through some of the links below to see how many of the great inventors of recent history were independent - the protection provided by the patent system allowed them to develop and in many cases profit handsomely from their inventions. You might be surprised at the diversity and "ordinariness" of many of these inventors of important breakthroughs - they're not such an elite group as you might imagine (the list is somewhat US-centric - our culture celebrates invention, and so links for US inventors are much easier to find):
I forgot about cases. Mineral oil removes sticky labels and a lot of scuff marks from plastic. (Goof Off is the best thing for removing sticky things off of non-plastics, but it will *ruin* the finish of most plastics on contact.)
I've also found Dow Scrubbing Bubbles Bathroom cleaner to be very good at cleaning cases (it's also great for tennis shoes.)
Finally, although it smells like it would eat anything, brake cleaner is safe on many plastics (as always, try it first in an hidden area) and cleans off nearly anything. You can use this stuff to clean really nasty engine grease out of a white shirt without a trace - just make sure you do this *before* running it through the wash. This stuff is so handy, I keep a can around the house all the time now.
Slashdot Mirror
O.K. time for another reality check:
SUVs use somewhat more gas than cars, but not a lot. Most modern SUVs get better mileage and pollute far less than many cars from the 80's - go check the figures yourself. The much-maligned Ford Excursion actually offers one of the cleanest-burning engines on the market, and is officially classed as an LEV (Low Emissions Vehicle).
SUVs are in no way responsible for the increase in gas prices. I'm no SUV apologist (I'm neither for nor against them - I prefer Ferraris), but let's stick to facts here.
There's a LOT of innovation in Diesels that we don't see here in the US. (The VW TDIs being about all that's for sale here.)
Not only is range stupendous (the TDI wagon can go 800 miles before refueling!), but some manufacturers are even managing to deal with the problems of sluggish Diesel performance.
Look folks, when Alfa Romeo starts building Diesel cars, you know there's something afoot! (Italian cars are a sickness from which I've never recovered - I sure wish I could buy a new Spider or GTV here.)
Car & Driver had a side-splitting story about an attempt to travel coast-to-coast in a natural gas-powered car a few months back.
It was no picnic, and the guy's lucky he didn't blow himself up, but real drivers would do the same. It points out the importance of infrastructure, even for something so universally available as NG, and the pain that goes with being an early adopter.
Pat:
I'm interested in your electric car - that's a pretty good hack in its own right. Do you have a page up for it?
BTW: Thanks for both Pilot DOC and the NetWinder work - netwinder.org taught me a lot about Linux on other platforms. Maybe Red Hat will buy Corel after all - someone should, you're a pretty good deal right now... Best wishes.)
I agree they're not required for hackermobiles like yours or one that I might build (and I've thouht about it), but the mass market is another thing.
AC motors are in the EV-1 becaue they're more efficient, primarily because AC power control circuitry can be made more efficient than DC.
The cooling system is required because of the high loads on the electric motor. It's highly loaded in an effort to keep the weight down, so power/weight ratios don't suffer.
As for the paddle charger, I read some papers by GM on that - It was the best way that they could safely provide a high-power interconnect. (As you certainly know, the EV-1 uses a special 220V charger that can deliver a lot of charge in a short period of time, something they considered a market requirement. Plugging into a regular outlet works, but you're not going to get the quick recharges the EV-1 offers.
That said, it's true the EV-1 is a technological tour-de-force using all the cool tehnology GM could bring to bear - but not even remotely economically feasible. In that regard, it's much like the Chrysler Turbine cars of the 1960s - it just showcased a concept as possible, not practical.
What I'm wondering is why they didn't take the lessons learned from the ultralight ultrarigid structure of the EV-1 and use it to build a super-efficient gasoline-powered car (possibly powered by a 2-cycle orbital, since they have to remain small in displacement to work well.)
The fact is that the automakers realize that he average buyer is not going to be satisfied with the tradeoffs you've made in your electric. So, for now, they're still niche vehicles.
(I'll admit I'm surprised at how much trouble we've had getting good battery technology. I really figured we'd be doing better on that front by now, but it's a hard problem.)
OK, I stand corrected. As a tourist, I buy my rides one at a time, which could get to be quite expensive.
Two of my three cars are paid for, and my total operating costs are quite reasonable. For that, I gat the ability to go anywhere, anytime, direct to my destination. I agree that mass transit makes some sense in high-density urban areas (which many of us despise and avoid), but it will not and cannot work in other contexts. I wouldn't use it here even if it were available and cheaper - it's worth the incremental cost to have the flexiblity of a car. I know people live with only mass transit, but I can't imagine living such a narrow and confined life.
There is a real differnce in culture and attitudes at work here, which is why mass transit generally fails in the South and West, where freedom and elbow room are more highly valued.
As for ozone depletion, first, there's room for reasonable scientific disagreement on the issue, and some reputable and serious atmospheric scientists insist it's a myth. Second, cars *produce* ozone, and that's one of the things the EPA is trying to prevent. It causes trouble down here, but eventually rises to the ozone layer. Cars do not hurt the ozone layer, alhtough jet airplanes may.
The biggest reason aircraft still use leaded fuel is that it prevents knocking at altitude - tetraethyl lead was invented in WWII for this purpose and our ability to produce it in quantity was a key to Allied air superiority.
I has huge benefits down here, too: it allows much higher compression ratios, resuling in higher efficiency, and it naturally lubricates and protects exhaust valve seats. (This latter is the reason it's so bad to run any old gasoline engine on unleaded gas - the older seats are *designed* to have lead protecting them. Running for a while with unleaded fuel will produce expensive engine damage if you don't replace the seats with hardened ones.)
There's are a couple of good reasons Middle Eastern crude is so much cheaper than ours, and they have nothing to do with labor cost:
1. They have really, really good oil. This means that there are a lot of light fractions suitable for things like gasoline, with very little of the tar and other goop that reduces output and creates environmental concerns. This directly translates to ME oil producing more product per barrel of crude, and at a much lower price. Some Mubaraq *crude* is light enough to be lit with a match! This difference in quality is one reason why even having to drag it halfway around the world doesn't kill the economic advantage.
2. It's really, really easy to get to. There's an old joke in the oil business that says "Sure their oil is cheap - all they have to do is poke a stick in the ground to get it." This is not much of an exaggeration. Complex (and consequently expensive) drilling methods are almost never needed there - a big contrast to the directional drilling, complex fracturing techniques, and secondary/tertiary recovery techniques that have sidelined so many US oilfields, especially here in Texas.
This is conspiracy theorist bunk! If you've got a clean, effiecient, cost effective alternative, then by all means go sell it and make billions.
But you don't do you? Niether does anyone else.
I suppose you think we'd all have flying saucers if the auto/oil/govt conspiracy hadn't suppressed the Dean drive, right? Time for a reality check, dude - those "much cleaner and more powerful energy sources" don't exist, or someone would be making money off of them.
Although there are many people out there spinning comely stories about the wonderfulness of hydrogen and fuel cells, the harsh reality is that hydrogen makes economic sense now or in the foreseeable future.
Car and Driver had an excellent set of articles exposing these realities a few months ago, and talking about what's possible in the lab vs. the real world.
Check out:
Hydrogen, cleanest of all no-pollution myths.
By PATRICK BEDARD (August 1999)
and
Fuel-cell miracles and urban sprawl.
By BROCK YATES (August 1999)
and this article, which points out the extraordinary staying power of a continually improving internal combustion engine:
The Survivor
News of the demise of the internal-combustion engine is greatly exaggerated. Again.
By PATRICK BEDARD (December 1998)
Add to this that one big 3 automaker has pointed out how electrics are both hideously expensive and subsidized by thier makers by remarking that, " the absolute cheapest way for us to get batteries for an electric car is to go buy one from Toyota and throw away the car." Somehow I don't think Toyota would let them do that for very long...
Bottom line: We still use gasoline engines because they are teh best technological solution to the problem. They may not always be, but they are likely to remain so for the next several decades, anyway.
Actually, like most so-called "zero-emisions" vehicles, this one is in reality just a remote emissions vehicle.
Something has to compress the air, and compressed air is not a particulary high-density energy storage medium. That something may be electricity, which more than likely came from an oil or gas-fired power plant and further absorbed the non-trivial power losses incurred in transmission lines, transformers, etc. (Granted, nuclear is the cleanest overall, but effectively impossible because of environmental zealots - nuke plants are already a dying breed - and ther is that pesky waste problem.)
Further, it requires expensive, filament-wound composite tanks, which are themselves a serious non-trivial safety hazard in the event of an accident. (For all gasoline's faults, it is much safer in a crash than many alternative fuels such as ethanol, hydrogen, L[NP]G, etc., and it does not require complex, expensive, or heavy containment and fueling sytems.)
Further, a cursory look at the zero emissions engine (listed on another page at the site) raises the snake oil alert flags: Although a spherical combustion chamber has some benefits (hence the famous Chrysler "hemi" (hemispherical) head, common in many modern motors), it requires small, inefficient valves, and will have to deal with the friction of two cylinders rather than one. As an experienced motorhead myself, I fail to see how this concept could even theoretically approach, much less exceed, the efficiency of a conventional IC engine.
Keep in mind that some ideas that look great on paper have problems in the real world. Mazda's incredible rotary being a prime example: The motor is small, light, has low friction, only a handful of parts, and you can literally rebuild it on your kitchen table. Unfortunately, although its power-to-weight ratio is quite impressive, its fuel economy is not, so it has been relegated to use in high-performance sports car duty where efficiency is less of a concern. (That said, I'm a huge rotor-motor fan - the things are awesome marvels of engineering. With reasonable care (mostly making *very* sure it *never* runs low on oil), the things are darn near bulletproof, too.)
It's easy to put together a web page making incredible claims (like the split-cycle folks did in Australia a year or two ago) - it's another thing to deliver on them. The reality is that cars are as good as we can economically make them today. They will continue to get better, but painting the automobile as the enemy of the environment is simply not realistic - modern cars emit virtually no pollutants once the catalyst is warm, and there is much promising research on how to avoid those initial few seconds. (Many new cars emit more in the first few seconds after a cold startup than they do for the next several dozen miles of driving. That's impressive!)
Although there may be some small racist component, I think the real reason is the inherent cultural impedance mismatch between those that choose to live in the city and those that like their space and hence choose to live farther out.
The personality types that choose these locales are very different, and suburbanites fear (reasonably) that mass transit will result in the harsh, hostile, and bitter attitudes of the city encroaching on the friendly, laid-back atmosphere of the outlying areas. (This is true in most if not all of the South, but may not hold in the North - Jimmy Buffet was right about changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes.)
In any case, I've travelled to enough cities and ridden enough filthy, graffiti-encrusted marvels of public transportation ruled by roving gangs of thugs to ever vote for *any* kind of mass transit in my area. Personally, I think we're wasting our money on buses, and trains make even less sense. (One thing that's often left out of the equation entirely is that cities have the ability to regulate and encourage taxis - I was pleasantly surprised in visiting the UK to find clean, easily available taxis everywhere - and their drivers were courteous and spoke English well, too! Reasonable taxi fare rates and licenses contingent on condition, cleanliness, and conduct could help a lot.)
Mass transit is just a bad idea all the way around. And it's not really even cost-effective: I could make a nice car payment for what it costs to do a daily commute in some cities!
Let's see, it's nearly 100 degrees out there today, and oh, yes, Austin has a lot of steep hills. Sure I could ride a bike to work (to one of my offices, anyway), but I'd smell like a goat when I got there, and be worn out on top of it.
Cars make far more sense than any other form of transportation for most locales. And actually, cars are a quite efficient way of moving around - todays cars are an order of magnitude more efficient and three orders of magnitude cleaner than the cars of the 1960s.
Good question. I was wondering the same thing - the math doesn't work.
In any case, this is still *much* less than what will be required if we're ever to get usable interfaces. Even at 2 A-size sheets at a decent resolution, it's still tiny: A quick look around the stuff on my desk reveals 10 roughly A-size documents "open" and the corners of several others peeking out. The surrounding work area and walls have another severl pages available for reference.
So for $10,000, you can get a tiny fraction of the bandwidth of my standard-issue IBM desk. Killing trees isn't going to slow anytime soon until computer desktop bandwidth approaches or exceeds that of the physical desktop. Until then, I'll keep printing out the things I'm working on.
Really, though, this is a real problem - computers simply can't be really useful until they have big screens so we can stop trying to drive the freeway while looking at the world through a knothole. This is the sort of thing we should put all those extra CPU cycles to. Thank you, Gordon Moore.
Don't know if it's still true, since I've been away from the medical imaging business since leaving Sun (they *own* the OEM medical imaging market), but most of the med imaging vendors were using the X Inside (now Xi Graphics) X server to do this sort of thing. It has support for all kinds of high-end imaging hardware. I'd suspect they're still doing this, since it's not exactly the easiest thing for the uninitiated to jump into - there are some really arcane things to know for performance and fidelity. (And radiologists are to displays what the snobbiest audiophile is to stereo gear - they have very well-calibrated eyeballs...)
BTW: Imaging is very different from graphics. This was one of the revolutionary things about Sun's UPA/VIS architecture in the mid-90's: it was the first affordable graphics susbsystem that did a pretty respectable job at both. Previously serious users had to choose which they wanted and select their hardware accordingly.
Congratulations, you've just learned the first real lesson CAD engineers have to face all the time: The *way* a shape is expressed determines what it's useful for.
This is really nothing new, in fact a lot of the old B-Rep (Boundary Representation, defining the containing surface of a shape) vs. CSG (Constructive Solid Geometry, defining how a shape is built up from geometric primitives) battle centered around the fact that the models have different strengths.
In fact, this argument predates 3-D modelling - if you've ever dealt with early "stupid" CAD translators (AutoCAD's being a prime example), you know that there's a *huge* difference between defining a 3-D surface with IGES entity type 102 (IIRC) - the "copious data" type, defining a gazillion points along a path, and a conic equation for that path. The latter is more accurate, infinitely scalable, and takes up a lot less space, unfortunately, the former is easier. (Try building an NC program to cut a surface from a gazillion points and you'll soon realize two things: 1) It's a great way to take a very expensive high speed machine tool and make it *very* slow, and 2) you will have to jump through all kinds of izarre hoops to handle streaming the data, since the poor controller does NOT have enought memory for this kind of abuse.
Of course data formats matter here.
What?! You mean Scott Mc Nealy was right and we have no privacy anyway? I guess we'll just have to "get over it"... ;-)
It will be interesting to see if all these highly intelligent people can get together and make money.
They already have to some degree. I know Rose worked with Adams in forming PSI, O'reilly, Rose, and Malamud (I think) were involved in the ahead of its time GNN, arguably the world's first Web "destination" (although they didn't manage to make the transition to portal with the arrival of the search engines), and Rose and Malamud have worked togehter on a number of projects from Malamud's Internet TownHall and radio.com (both now defunct) to the Free tpc.int fax bypass network, which failed to generate much interest, although I think it soldiers on in a few locales.
In any case, Rose is one of the best protocol jocks in the world, so in general his suggestions should be taken seriously. One of the most enjoyable classes I ever took was his on Internet mail protocols back at the "old" Interop years ago, back when it was a get-together for the people actually building the Internet rather than a slick merchandise mart with suits hawking the latest lock-in.
And this is the crux of the real dispute within our community. I fall on the side of software patents being a very good and necessary thing. I do think, though, that due to the pace of innovation in computers and software, that patents for computer hardware, software, or methods should be limited to 5 (and certainly no more than 7) years.
That provides the best of bothe worlds. The extension of patent lifespans has only exacerbated the problem we face. There was no reason to extend their lifespan beyond 17 years, and a lot of reasons why the lifespan should be shorter.
As I see it, there are basically two options: Break the patent system eliminating protections entirely for at least a subset of important inventions, or reform it slightly. I argue the latter can be done via nothing more intrusive than limiting the lifespan of patents in certain high-activity areas.
Thank you, Steve. That was my point, and I thought it was obvious, but apparently some people have to have it spelled out for them.
Eliminating software patents would be one of the surest ways of ensuring the withering domination of companies with lots of money, especially companies with lots of money and no discernable ethics.
Arrgh! I have submitted articles on this topic no less than three times in the past two weeks, and each time they were rejected.
I'll try to fill in the gaps, because I've done a little bit of hunting for mor info about this. In particular, I found that one of the four people that opposed the bill in Congress was Ron Paul, a congressman from the district south of mine here in Texas. Paul is a libertarian conservative Republican (he once ran as the Libertarian candidate for President), and has a very good record on privacy rights. The fact that he voted against it was a warning signal to me.
Further, I strongly recommend reading this article analyzing the bill at Cryptome. (Pointers to other analysis of the bill would be welcome.) The author of this makes it clear that there's a daylight and dark difference between "electronic" signatures and "digital" signatures, the diference being that the latter provides significant protection against fraud and tampering that is completely absent in the former.
This is a terribly important issue, and I tried to sound the alarm two weeks ago because it is quite likely this will become the law of the land in the next few days. It may well be too late to stop it.
If you go back and reread my post, you'll find I was talking about brake CLEANER, not brake FLUID. I agree brake fluid is nasty, at least to paint - I've spilled it on me before, and wiped it up with rags and never seen anything like what you describe. I'm not sure it's really that dangerous, but those of us that know our hot-rodding always prefer silicone brake fluids anyway, since they're non-hygroscopic, virtually eliminating corrosion, and the silicone naturally protects seals in the system. It costs a little more, but silicone fluid is worth it in the long run, especially if you plan on keeping the car for a while (as I do nearly all of mine.)
But at least if that little guy can get a patent, he has some legal standing. My point is that if we significantly weaken (or even eliminate) some or all patents, that little guy will have lost what exiguous protection the current systems offers. In other words, much of what's advocated her on /. and elsewhere could well make things worse rather than better.
This is not an easy issue and we should not urge any actions that have not been very well-considered - the stakes are too high.
I'm posting this here because I think there are many on the open source community that don't realize the immense harm that would come to distributed control of IP if patents are abolished or weakened. If that happens, the guys with the most money win by default, since the smaller guys will have no protections whatever.
The following is a letter I wrote to LWN a few weeks ago outlining part of my argument. It will rub a lot of people the wrong way, but we can't afford to destroy the patent system unless we really want Microsoft and other huge companies to call all the shots. I don't think a lot of people here have thought these issues through.
Letter to LWN (at http://www.lwn.net/2000/0420/backpage.pht ml)
I've gotten several challenges to my assertion about patents as a desirable thing
(mostly asking for examples of small inventors that actually did profit from
patents) so here's my quick response, FWIW:
Anyone saying patents don't do immense public good, and provide worthwhile,
needed, and *effective* protection of small inventors against large corporations
is simply ignorant of the history of even quite recent technology. Many
inventors started small, but because of patent protection were indeed able to
profit greatly from their inventions.
From the "gararge-shop" POV, well, just off the top of my head, there are the
examples everyone is familiar with: Bill Hewlett and David Packard (HP,
instruments), Steves Jobs and Wozniak (Apple, home computer), and outside the
computer industry, folks like Edwin Land (Polaroid, polarized materials and
instant camera), Chester Carlson (Xerox, xerography), Henry Ford (Ford,
affordable automobiles), Thomas Edison (GE, light bulb, motion pictures,
phonograph...), and Alexander Graham Bell (AT&T, telephone), all of whom
profited greatly from their patented works. (One could argue for the inclusion
of Jeff Bezos in that list, although around here, that's a bit like whacking a
hornet's nest with a stick...)
But the classic twentieth century example of patents providing exactly the kind
of protection I'm talking about is probably that of Philo T. Farnsworth, whom
you may never have heard of, although you likely use his invention (electronic
television) every day. Farnsworth was the prototypical individualist inventor
who persevered against all odds and eventually defeated David Sarnoff and
Vladimir Zworykin of the immensly powerful RCA. RCA was truly the Microsoft of
its day in terms of control of the market and underlying technologies through
acquisition - often under severe economic and other pressure. RCA had a policy
of never paying royalties for any technology - a policy they managed to uphold
until they met Philo Farnsworth, who just wouldn't give up.
Farnsworth fought virtually alone against all of RCA's power for seven years
before the final court rulings that his patents had clear validity and
precedence over Zworykin's, forcing a tearful RCA lawyer to sign a royalty
payment agreement to Farnsworth. (Farnsworth publicly displayed television
*five years* before Sarnoff unveiled RCA's infringing version to the world
amidst great fanfare at the 1939 World's Fair, leading many to believe Sarnoff
and RCA were the inventors of television - sound like anyone today?)
Farnsworth's experience is, if anything, a case study for the need to
*strengthen* patents and either streamline patent appeals or extend the length
of patents when thier commercial utility is impacted by unsuccessful challenges.
(World War II intervened, and the government outlawed television for the
duration of the war (the technology was needed for radar, night vision and other
inventions Farnsworth then worked on), and so Farnsworth's patents expired
before he could profit from them.
Do you still think patents are a bad idea? I'd argue experience shows that
patents should be strengthened and perhaps that the duration of Farnsworth's
patent should have been extended, due to RCA's clear abuse of the patent system
and the courts. (I also think the government should have been upright enough to
grant extensions in the name of fair play to all inventors whose inventions were
commandeered for the war effort, but that's another issue entirely.)
History clearly shows that often patents are all that stands between real
progress and innovation and the acquisition by force so typical of a Sarnoff or
Gates. Strong patent law is the *only* effective defense against large
companies stealing technology from small inventors. (What RCA tried to do could
be accurately portrayed as theft.) I'm amazed more people don't get this, but
they tend to avoid history, and fail to recognize that our American forefathers
were wiser than we are in pretty much every way.
Although it's not perfect, there are very good reasons the patent system is the
way it is, and we meddle with it at our peril. It would be nice to see a
balanced discussion of this issue rather than the knee-jerk reactions that are
more common in the open source/free software community.
Dub
P.S.: I recommend spending some time browsing through some of the links below
to see how many of the great inventors of recent history were independent - the
protection provided by the patent system allowed them to develop and in many
cases profit handsomely from their inventions. You might be surprised at the
diversity and "ordinariness" of many of these inventors of important
breakthroughs - they're not such an elite group as you might imagine (the list
is somewhat US-centric - our culture celebrates invention, and so links for US
inventors are much easier to find):
National Inventor's Hall of Fame
MIT's Invention Dimension Archive
Good Internet Public Library list of links to Inventor information
I forgot about cases. Mineral oil removes sticky labels and a lot of scuff marks from plastic. (Goof Off is the best thing for removing sticky things off of non-plastics, but it will *ruin* the finish of most plastics on contact.)
I've also found Dow Scrubbing Bubbles Bathroom cleaner to be very good at cleaning cases (it's also great for tennis shoes.)
Finally, although it smells like it would eat anything, brake cleaner is safe on many plastics (as always, try it first in an hidden area) and cleans off nearly anything. You can use this stuff to clean really nasty engine grease out of a white shirt without a trace - just make sure you do this *before* running it through the wash. This stuff is so handy, I keep a can around the house all the time now.