Re:I drove a VW Diesel
on
239 MPG Car
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· Score: 1
That's because the EPA measures pollutants in per volume of emission/exhaust. This is fine when comparing similar engine types, but in a diesel's case and in particular the TDI engine, volume of exhaust is a fraction of gasoline engines.
In terms of pollutants diesel is about even or better as compared to gas but could be much better: much less carbon although higher sulfur because the refinement process is poor [in North America] -- sulfur can be removed from diesel during refinement for miniscule cost.
2) For what its worth, the only nation with a proven track record of using weapons of mass destruction (chemical or nuclear) is the United States of America.
3) Indeed: because setting the precedent for justifying preemptive unilateral attack to stop terrorism, topple unfriendly regimes or whatever ambiguous issue-de-jour sounds like a recipe for prolonged peace!
Umm... there was a transition that occured in the late 70s, early 80s, from the status quo gas guzzlers to the more efficient Japanese imports. However your assumption that this was merely simple choice by the ever-green american consumer overlooks one important little detail: The OPEC oil crisis(1973 & 1979).
When the price of oil quadruples or quintuples *then*, and only then, will you see interest by the masses in fuel efficiency.
In the meantime I suspect these cars will continue to be more expensive and likely enjoyed only by hardcore environmentalists. What I'd like to see is the environmental impact of the production and disposal of these cars versus traditional vehicles. The process of lead smelting (for batteries) is known to be anything but environmental friendly.
If MS's Tablet PC has to compare itself to the Newton, technology that's 5 years old, then that says quite a bit!
Yes... write it yourself. That's the power of open source
By that logic, all software products have every feature imaginable, it is merely a trivial matter of implementation. What a wonderful world we must live in!
Yes, this is would be a good argument if it was based on fact.
Here is a detailed discussion regarding TDI emissions: here
We don't have anyone to blame for these emissions except ourselves and our elected government. The fact is most of these emissions are due to the exceedingly crappy refining standards for diesel fuels in the US. Fuel quality is far higher in Europe where impurities are all far lower since they've been removed from the fuel before they arrive at the pump. Sure, this may not change your mind and you may be tempted to dismiss the thought but we all breathe in the emissions from heavy trucks that use diesel. What kind of diesel emissions do you want to breathe in?
If that doesn't turn your crank, how about using biodiesel in your TDI: requires no conversion, just the challenge of finding a pump. But that's worth it right? Or is saving the environment only interesting if its also easy? Biodiesel is now commercially available in major metro areas, you just have to find it.
All of VW's TDI-able models in North America (Golf & Jetta) come with an optional, but very responsive automatic transmission. Surprisingly VW has gotten the transmissions to the point were there is very little power/efficiency loss over the manual.
Don't forget the other major "open source" components of websphere: DB2 or Oracle which are typically supported on AIX or Solaris. All hail the success of open-source!
Whats the philosophy behind Sorcery Linux... examination of the link informs me that its 'so advanced it might as well be magic', but it is apparently not quite at the telepathic stages yet.
There is almost no information on the website, except cryptic install instructions, a long explaination of the developer heirarchy and uber-cute magic-themed nomenclature. ("Can I cast spells in runlevel 3" -- umm, huh?)
Pick up any psychology book and take a gander. The tabla rasa argument which you purport has been proven to be mostly optimistic hot air by countless twin studies. Its true that your environment and the opportunities you've been exposed to play an important role in 'success' especially by our western definition of the word, but you're talking about human traits - something far more primal.
Sorry, but Einstein wouldn't have been 'retarded' no matter what his physical environment (please spare me the 'repeated head trauma' argument). If your parents are of limited genetic stock its mother nature's genetic plan - and not your hard-luck story of self-pity - that you can blame for not falling far from the tree.
And finally your last point: If you think genetics raises scary possibilities in China you should consider the thousands of abandoned Chinese girls and the thousands more killed at birth - by and large a result of the one child law. Its all well and good sit here and comfortably banter about genetics but don't confuse bad politics and bad science.
Complex compiling issues are NOT a result of CISC or RISC in this case. In fact, RISC is far easier to write an efficient compiler for than CISC. The instructions offered by RISC more closely mimic the kinds of basic operations compilers manipulate in the very back end of compilation. Register sets are usually general and very orthogonal, compared to CISC (Intel in particular) where you have very few registers and they all have special meaning depending on context.
The complexity in building compiling tools with respect to the itanium is all about VLIW, parallelization and scheduling. These are incredibly complex topics with many subtle features that make optimization and analysis very difficult.
Also, think again if you think compilers are written once for an achitecture and then set in stone -- 'once the damn thing is done' it definately will not be done. It will probably be buggy and poor at doing these new complicated tasks compiler writers have never had to do before. It will likely take a few iterations before the compiler tools start to show off the architecture. The question is which will come first, the latter or industry's frustration with poor performance out of expensive silicon.
Not silly at all. They have such roads, they're called toll roads. Whether they are privately or publicly owned is really besides the point. In fact, there ARE private roads in North America and I'd bet dollars to donuts that that trend will continue well into the future. If you believe in the Law of Perverse Outcomes (gov't is incompetent) you probably prefer that trend. If aim for a socially efficient, Pareto optimal solution you know that this is the only way to addresses the free rider problem.
The point is you pay for what you use. Is it unreasonable to expect users to pay for the bandwidth they use?
You may have a point about transportation and convenience, but your argument about insulation is nonsense. The insulative value of concrete is almost nil. (regular concrete, who knows about transparent concrete) In fact, 8 inches of solid concrete is equivalent to 1/4 inch plywood in terms of insulation.
About load bearing windows: unless its a firewall no one is going to construct an entire solid wall out of concrete, its too expensive! You may have noticed, during construction, that modern "sky-scraper style" building construction (which makes extensive use of concrete) requires no outside walls at all.
I can only relate the information I have received from various sources, some from economists and some from commerce/management types, some academic and some not. (ie. I consider what I speak to be of well-rounded reliable source, although I am always looking for new information on this topic)
The long and the short of it seems to be that if you enjoy managing people, you're a good salesman, an effective communicator or superb organizer then you should go for the MBA. This will give you an opportunity to use your skills, usually to manage people and projects in middle to top tier management.
If, on the other hand, you see your self as a visionary, a thinker or a strategist then you should probably pursue the economics degree. This will place you at first in an advisory position to top management and, if successful, will lead in very nicely to top management itself.
The former may sound like the sexier road to take in some respects but its also fraught with more difficulties, making big decisions is not easy and carry with them the burden of responsibility and consequence. Furthermore, effective people/project managers are _rare_, ineffective management is the bane of this industry particularly, if you can fulfill this role well then you can expect be very well paid, well respected and recognized for your leadership.
... Most of his grand predictions are based on work in artificial intelligence and if you have ever picked up an AI journal or read some papers you'll realize how much of a farce some of these predictions are.
How come? Well, you'll notice an interesting pattern, 1) the research solves a toy problem (see below), this is likely due to the relatively infantile state of artificial intelligence (a relatively new field); or 2) the research solution is totally ad hoc, these solutions are most often encountered in neural network work and data mining, likely indicating that, scientifically speaking, we're trying run before we walk (nobody funds failure). Either way, the point is: the 'technology' is very immature.
One of the examples he cites is perfect, building evolutionary algorithms (be it hardware or software) to distinguish two distinct tones is all fine and dandy (and should not be discounted) but lets be real, this is a trivial 1 dimensional problem with two states. It would be ridiculous to extrapolate that thinking machines are right around the corner. I would guess it is going to take an awful lot of progress before we can start to consider some of the things this guy is talking about. Note, that that's academic progress, never mind developing convincing commercial applications. That's probably why he's surprised no one else is considering these possibilities, because other people have more realistic expectations.
Besides we're notoriously optimistic when predicting the far future, find some magazines from the 60's or 70's and they'll predict flying cars and space vacations to mars in the year 2000. The fact that this guy predicted sending mail/information across networks 25 years ago, a time when technology to do so was already out of the lab does not, in my mind, qualify this guy as a clairvoyant.
Slashdot Mirror
That's because the EPA measures pollutants in per volume of emission/exhaust. This is fine when comparing similar engine types, but in a diesel's case and in particular the TDI engine, volume of exhaust is a fraction of gasoline engines.
In terms of pollutants diesel is about even or better as compared to gas but could be much better: much less carbon although higher sulfur because the refinement process is poor [in North America] -- sulfur can be removed from diesel during refinement for miniscule cost.
1) Yes pat ourselves on the back: "UNICEF estimated that about 500,000 children younger than 5 have died in Iraq since sanctions were imposed." Silly Europeans should let us go to war so we can stop killing children (and start killing adults)!
2) For what its worth, the only nation with a proven track record of using weapons of mass destruction (chemical or nuclear) is the United States of America.
3) Indeed: because setting the precedent for justifying preemptive unilateral attack to stop terrorism, topple unfriendly regimes or whatever ambiguous issue-de-jour sounds like a recipe for prolonged peace!
When the price of oil quadruples or quintuples *then*, and only then, will you see interest by the masses in fuel efficiency.
In the meantime I suspect these cars will continue to be more expensive and likely enjoyed only by hardcore environmentalists. What I'd like to see is the environmental impact of the production and disposal of these cars versus traditional vehicles. The process of lead smelting (for batteries) is known to be anything but environmental friendly.
Advantages over Newton
If MS's Tablet PC has to compare itself to the Newton, technology that's 5 years old, then that says quite a bit!
Yes ... write it yourself. That's the power of open source
By that logic, all software products have every feature imaginable, it is merely a trivial matter of implementation. What a wonderful world we must live in!
Yes, this is would be a good argument if it was based on fact.
Here is a detailed discussion regarding TDI emissions: here
We don't have anyone to blame for these emissions except ourselves and our elected government. The fact is most of these emissions are due to the exceedingly crappy refining standards for diesel fuels in the US. Fuel quality is far higher in Europe where impurities are all far lower since they've been removed from the fuel before they arrive at the pump. Sure, this may not change your mind and you may be tempted to dismiss the thought but we all breathe in the emissions from heavy trucks that use diesel. What kind of diesel emissions do you want to breathe in?
If that doesn't turn your crank, how about using biodiesel in your TDI: requires no conversion, just the challenge of finding a pump. But that's worth it right? Or is saving the environment only interesting if its also easy? Biodiesel is now commercially available in major metro areas, you just have to find it.
Mechanical Engineering's Take on Diesel
Note where VW has to import Euro Diesel to showcase its cars in the US
VW's take
A whole whack of info on the future of [bio]diesel
Nice troll FUDster:
All of VW's TDI-able models in North America (Golf & Jetta) come with an optional, but very responsive automatic transmission. Surprisingly VW has gotten the transmissions to the point were there is very little power/efficiency loss over the manual.
VW Jetta
Don't forget the other major "open source" components of websphere: DB2 or Oracle which are typically supported on AIX or Solaris. All hail the success of open-source!
Thank you IBM.
Whats the philosophy behind Sorcery Linux... examination of the link informs me that its 'so advanced it might as well be magic', but it is apparently not quite at the telepathic stages yet.
There is almost no information on the website, except cryptic install instructions, a long explaination of the developer heirarchy and uber-cute magic-themed nomenclature. ("Can I cast spells in runlevel 3" -- umm, huh?)
Nothing about what it actually is!!
Pick up any psychology book and take a gander. The tabla rasa argument which you purport has been proven to be mostly optimistic hot air by countless twin studies. Its true that your environment and the opportunities you've been exposed to play an important role in 'success' especially by our western definition of the word, but you're talking about human traits - something far more primal.
Sorry, but Einstein wouldn't have been 'retarded' no matter what his physical environment (please spare me the 'repeated head trauma' argument). If your parents are of limited genetic stock its mother nature's genetic plan - and not your hard-luck story of self-pity - that you can blame for not falling far from the tree.
And finally your last point: If you think genetics raises scary possibilities in China you should consider the thousands of abandoned Chinese girls and the thousands more killed at birth - by and large a result of the one child law. Its all well and good sit here and comfortably banter about genetics but don't confuse bad politics and bad science.
Don't forget the retarded sun. Geez, all it does is sit there smuggly wasting its time shinning its yucky light on us. Lets see if we can blow it up!
That and an obscure little OS called Windows NT/2000/XP.
You've missed the point.
Complex compiling issues are NOT a result of CISC or RISC in this case. In fact, RISC is far easier to write an efficient compiler for than CISC. The instructions offered by RISC more closely mimic the kinds of basic operations compilers manipulate in the very back end of compilation. Register sets are usually general and very orthogonal, compared to CISC (Intel in particular) where you have very few registers and they all have special meaning depending on context.
The complexity in building compiling tools with respect to the itanium is all about VLIW, parallelization and scheduling. These are incredibly complex topics with many subtle features that make optimization and analysis very difficult.
Also, think again if you think compilers are written once for an achitecture and then set in stone -- 'once the damn thing is done' it definately will not be done. It will probably be buggy and poor at doing these new complicated tasks compiler writers have never had to do before. It will likely take a few iterations before the compiler tools start to show off the architecture. The question is which will come first, the latter or industry's frustration with poor performance out of expensive silicon.
Not silly at all. They have such roads, they're called toll roads. Whether they are privately or publicly owned is really besides the point. In fact, there ARE private roads in North America and I'd bet dollars to donuts that that trend will continue well into the future. If you believe in the Law of Perverse Outcomes (gov't is incompetent) you probably prefer that trend. If aim for a socially efficient, Pareto optimal solution you know that this is the only way to addresses the free rider problem.
The point is you pay for what you use. Is it unreasonable to expect users to pay for the bandwidth they use?
You may have a point about transportation and convenience, but your argument about insulation is nonsense. The insulative value of concrete is almost nil. (regular concrete, who knows about transparent concrete) In fact, 8 inches of solid concrete is equivalent to 1/4 inch plywood in terms of insulation.
About load bearing windows: unless its a firewall no one is going to construct an entire solid wall out of concrete, its too expensive! You may have noticed, during construction, that modern "sky-scraper style" building construction (which makes extensive use of concrete) requires no outside walls at all.
Famous last words...
The long and the short of it seems to be that if you enjoy managing people, you're a good salesman, an effective communicator or superb organizer then you should go for the MBA. This will give you an opportunity to use your skills, usually to manage people and projects in middle to top tier management.
If, on the other hand, you see your self as a visionary, a thinker or a strategist then you should probably pursue the economics degree. This will place you at first in an advisory position to top management and, if successful, will lead in very nicely to top management itself.
The former may sound like the sexier road to take in some respects but its also fraught with more difficulties, making big decisions is not easy and carry with them the burden of responsibility and consequence. Furthermore, effective people/project managers are _rare_, ineffective management is the bane of this industry particularly, if you can fulfill this role well then you can expect be very well paid, well respected and recognized for your leadership.
How can we trust the opinion of anyone who can't even capitalize their letters appropriately?
FYI, a MBA takes 2 years full time. A Phd takes on average 4 years full time. Looks like twice as long rather than 'a bit'.
Absolutely... remember how ineffectual our political machinery was before the advent corporate/commercial donations to grease things up a bit.
How come? Well, you'll notice an interesting pattern, 1) the research solves a toy problem (see below), this is likely due to the relatively infantile state of artificial intelligence (a relatively new field); or 2) the research solution is totally ad hoc, these solutions are most often encountered in neural network work and data mining, likely indicating that, scientifically speaking, we're trying run before we walk (nobody funds failure). Either way, the point is: the 'technology' is very immature.
One of the examples he cites is perfect, building evolutionary algorithms (be it hardware or software) to distinguish two distinct tones is all fine and dandy (and should not be discounted) but lets be real, this is a trivial 1 dimensional problem with two states. It would be ridiculous to extrapolate that thinking machines are right around the corner. I would guess it is going to take an awful lot of progress before we can start to consider some of the things this guy is talking about. Note, that that's academic progress, never mind developing convincing commercial applications. That's probably why he's surprised no one else is considering these possibilities, because other people have more realistic expectations.
Besides we're notoriously optimistic when predicting the far future, find some magazines from the 60's or 70's and they'll predict flying cars and space vacations to mars in the year 2000. The fact that this guy predicted sending mail/information across networks 25 years ago, a time when technology to do so was already out of the lab does not, in my mind, qualify this guy as a clairvoyant.