Because, like a patent troll, Gordon wasn't trying to eliminate spam, he was trying to profit off laws against spam that might allow him to sue--a professional litigant.
"If it's worth doing, it's worth doing at a profit."
Why shouldn't somebody doing a public service get rewarded for it?... we're the one's footing the bill for the judge who has to oversee it all, and the courtroom and clerks they're using.
Actually, the payer of the "court costs" is footing the bill. That's what court costs are about.
Not many./ers are capable of understanding that sometimes bad people (Gordon) do good things (fight spam) for the wrong reasons (personal profit) at a cost to us all (tying up the court system).
That's what the court system is FOR: Penalizing the miscreants for their misbehavior in order to deter it and making them pay for their violations of law and/or harm to others. If it's not doing that why bother to have it?
"Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons" is a bogus concept.
Back in elementary school I was quite impressed by scientific progress and science fiction (it was the late "golden age" of sf.) I was expecting that, by the time my adult teeth needed repair, they'd be able to grow and implant, or stimulate the growth of, new ones to replace them.
I'm 62 now. Maybe I'll still be alive when they finally get around to it. (Like maybe if the FDA is ever overthrown.) B-(
You sign up with the people who aren't religious zealots, believing that life begins at conception and preventing the use of embrionic stem cells....
Creating stem cells from other tissues is possible, but adds extra costs.
In fact, using pluripotent adult or infant stem cells (such as cord blood and stem cells extracted from fat), rather than totipotent embryonic stem cells, is what has produced the most promising stem cell based treatment candidates so far. Embryonic cell transplants seem to be prone to getting confused and causing cancers.
The big reason for doing embryonic stem cell research is to gain an understanding of the differentiation signaling mechanisms, not to work toward using such cells for therapy feedstock.
Once the signals are understood it should be possible - and desirable - to perform the actual therapies with cells harvested non-destructively from adults - usually the patient in question - and selected for the proper cell type and/or reprogrammed into an appropriate state of differentiation (and perhaps edited to correct a genetic problem). But it's a lot harder to decode the mechanisms if you can only observe and experiment on cells where they've already run most of their course.
... in the USA... The embryonic stem cells research was never illegal just denied Government funding in most cases.
Unfortunately, if I understand it correctly, that included the research being done in any facility that had ever received federal funding that ended up contributing to its infrastructure. Which knocks out essentially all the university medical research centers and anywhere else that the results of the research would be published rather than being kept under proprietary wraps in hope of producing a product later.
Because you'd need to make a LOT of breakthroughs to get to a product, kicking it out of public institutions essentially killed any work on embryonic stem cells.
Now if such research could be done in publicly-funded facilities with private funding and the projects were just charged a higher "overhead" rate to reimburse the prior and current infrastructure contributions from the Fed, what you said would be true.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease. Therefore I guess your immune system would destroy your replacement pancreas just as it did with the original one. However IANAMD.
Looks that way.
And they've (very) recently come up with a short-term (weeks) drug therapy to cause the rejection segment of the immune system to reset and recognize whatever tissue you currently have, including transplants, as "self". Islet tissue in diabetes-I-model rats was what they tested it with, too, if I recall correctly, and resuming insulin production was the indicator that it had succeeded.
Hazardous of course. Impairs the immune system while the therapy in progress. (And I'd certainly expect raised cancer risk, from any tiny tumors your body was currently fighting.)
If that works out the immune system issue may be solved.
I read the partent posting as "They're using these browsers because they understand the risks and prefer a less vulnerable browser."
My reply was intended to be "Actually, it's they have a specific NEED to be immune to the attacks as part of their operation: Their own malware would break them if they don't use a browser that's immune to it."
That's a very significant difference: Between preference and inherent requirement. TFA and many of the comments here are talking about preference, as if the malware authors were just using FF and Opera because, in their expert opinion they were cooler. I took the parent to be doing so as well. If I was mistaken than the post was indeed redundant.
This just means that malware writers understand that Internet Explorer has more vulnerabilities to exploit, so they don't use it themselves.
No.
It means they need tools that won't get eaten by their own malware when they want to examine it or open a command-and-control connection. So they opt for a browser that can be configured to be immune.
It probably also means they don't write malware that would attack their own browser configuration - probably something like FF with noscript. That's a bonus security feature for FF and Opera.
A better reading could be "people that exploit vulnerabilities of browsers prefer to not use those vulnerable browsers".
In particular:
"People who create websites containing malware that takes over the browsing computer NEED to use a browser that is immune to their own takeover tools for their command-and-control console."
Jeez. Think about it a moment. How the heck are they going to work on the thing if it eats their machine when they touch it?
You're assuming it's still sent over the SMS portion of the network. I imagine GV app could set up push notifications to just use the data network,...
Note that SMS messages share the (very low bandwidth) control channel with all the other control messages. While SMS pricing is, of course, "all the traffic will bear", it CAN'T be free, because it must be rationed somehow. (It would be trivial to build an IP-over-SMS tunnel and swamp it.) Charging ten cents per 120-payload-byte packet keeps the traffic down to something the channel can handle - even with the texting explosion.
Switch it to the broadband data channel and a text message effectively becomes a minuscule email (fitting into a single tiny packet) with a vanishingly small cost. It's fine for that to be "free", meaning "having a marginal cost" like an elevator ride, i.e. "too cheap to meter, include it in the flat-rate overhead".
I'll be taking any such reports that are released during the "healthcare reform" legislative push with enough salt to raise my blood pressure to life-threatening levels. Until that frenzy is over I won't even be bothering to read such reports and check their methodology.
Emphasis mine. I think this pretty much sums up the right-wing argument. Hardly surprising, considering the well-known liberal bias of reality, but it is surprising to hear a right-winger admit it.
If you can't tell the difference between a libertarian and a right-winger it's pretty clear you've got the left-wing blinders on.
(Similarly it would be clear you had the right-wing blinders on if you mistook a libertairan for a left-winger.)
As to the right-wing AND the libertarian arguments against health care, my previous post didn't sum them up at all. It was directed JUST at the issue of the credibility of research reports with provocative summaries that appear during a major legislative push.
What's particularly blinder-revealing is your attribution of my statement to partisan bias, rather than to the scientific and political processes.
ALL science needs time for peer review and opportunities for replication and confirmation/falsification by independent researchers. This takes time. Until it has been through that mill, research results should not be relied upon for policy-making.
Research results that diverge from previous work in paradigm shifting ways, which come out DURING a major political decision-making frenzy and strongly support one side (while their followon fact-checking won't be out until after the decisions are made) are especially suspect.
I expect a lot of similar research reports with a message of "Oh, Horrors! US healthcare delivery is SO unequal and SO substandard!". Like "climate change" research. these projects are largely funded, directly or indirectly, by the fed, which is currently firmly in control of the Democratic Party. So a bias toward sucking up to their agenda in the hopes of continued funding can be expected - at least in the statements of conclusions. (Just like during the start of the Drug War, when the conclusions all wrung their figurative hands about how unhealthy LSD and Marijuana were, while if you actually read the data it often said just the opposite. Read back issues of journals from the late '60s and early '70s to see what I mean.)
I'll be taking any such reports that are released during the "healthcare reform" legislative push with enough salt to raise my blood pressure to life-threatening levels. Until that frenzy is over I won't even be bothering to read such reports and check their methodology.
Photons have inertia and momentum. (Though they have no rest mass their energy is equivalent to mass and they cause recoil when they interact with other matter.)
You're not trying to "absorb energy" with a solar sail (which would just heat it - and melt it if you get too close to the sun). You're trying to collect momentum. You get just as much momentum from the recoil when a photon leaves as you get from capturing it when it lands.
So if you reflect the incoming sunlight you get twice as much momentum from it. And while the direction of the momentum from the incoming light is fixed, you get to pick the direction of the outgoing light - and thus the direction of its recoil thrust.
The solar wind force is essentially outward (in the solar wind direction) only. (The particles initially stick to the sail and then are released, if at all, by a different mechanism such as electrostatic repulsion.)
Or penetrate it and deposit momentum from drag averaging out to be along their incoming direction of travel.
The solar wind force is essentially outward (in the solar wind direction) only. (The particles initially stick to the sail and then are released, if at all, by a different mechanism such as electrostatic repulsion.) And the portion of the light that is absorbed by the sail also produces an outward force.
But for a mirror-finished solar sail the portion of the light that is reflected (most of it) gives the vector sum of the momenta of its arrival and the recoil of its departure. So tilting the sail to reflect sunlight forward along the direction of orbit gives a strong deceleration and lowers the orbit.
Why would you keep your landline? If you really think you need one, I suggest getting cell phone and duct-taping it to your wall!
Townhouse:
- Fax.
- 56K modem to back up the DSL line (on the OTHER landline) to the desktop and mail server.
Cellphones won't carry DS0-based high-speed modem signals on the voice channel (even if it weren't prohibited by the terms of service) while the internet services on the carrier that covers my service area are still too pricey and restricted (and I have yet to find a suitable FAX bridge).
Ranch:
- Dialup internet. (Phone line capable of about 28k to my ISP's closest POP is $18/month. No DSL available. Only WISP carrier is $80/month for a WiFi shared T1 and that is a bit steep for a site that's currently only occupied for a few weekends per year - when we have other things to do than surf the net.)
- Burglar/fire alarm monitoring service.
These batteries will not last forever, likely somewhere around 24 hours.
Switching centers also have backup generators that come on when the batteries are getting low - or facilities to bring in and attach such generators if the outage is expected to go on longer than the batteries can handle.
(Had a problem last winter in Michigan when a storm took out a power feed for an AT&T center and BOTH backup generators failed. Cellphone service was out for something like a day in several states. Was a big issue for me because the rented car had a flat during that outage. B-( )
So they are not prone to breaking open on impact or interacting violently with water? Whoa, thank the gods...
Naw. They're just not prone to bursting into flame while you're cruising along at 65 MPH.
Honestly tho, whatever.. I'm not buying one for a few more years until all the magic is perfected...
Same here.
Bought a tow vehicle this year. (Ford F-150 Lariat. Sweet, but thirsty.) Plan to get a plug-in hybrid in about three years, once they're debugged and the auto companies figure out that they REALLY need more batteries than they plan currently.
What you say is true for GM and Chrysler. (Along with other things like Chrysler's transformation of the Jeep line into Mall Terrain Vehicles, giving away their recession-proof core market to Toyota.)
It WAS true of Ford for a while - until a few years ago when the family kicked out the hired management, took back control, and turned it around. Now they have some of the best vehicles in the US market (including THE highest-mileage and lowest-maintenance midsize sedan, beating the pants of the competition INCLUDING the Japanese).
Notice that GM and Chrysler took bailouts then were effectively nationalized, while Ford is doing fine on its own and is still free (as in speech).
Isn't it a feature of diesels that they run best in a narrow RPM range?
That's a characteristic of ALL internal combustion engines, not just diesels. The reason it has been associated with diesels is that the common applications of diesels are those that lend themselves to narrow-range or constant rpm applications...
Wait a minute. That's misleading.
All engines have some RPM where they have an efficiency peak and for a narrow range around that they are essentially at their peak efficiency (because the slope of a continuous function is zero at the maximums and minimums).
But the Otto cycle (spark-ignited gasoline engine) has a broad peak where the efficiency is near the max while the diesel cycle (compression-ignited) has a much narrower peak. This is largely because the compression heating and mixture requirements for ignition imposed more stringent limits on the amount that the operating parameters of a diesel could be adjusted for power/RPM combination than the spark-ignition of the gasoline engine did. (Better control of fuel injection and turbocharging is improving things for diesels now, though.)
Combine the narrow efficiency peak of a diesel - requiring more gearing in the transmission, increasing weight and reducing time lost to shifts, with its stronger structure requirements to survive higher compression, also increasing weight and impeding rapid RPM change, and the gasoline engine and its transmission had a significant power-to-weight-ratio and accelleartion advantage for passenger cars - at least in the pre-computer days.
Modern cybernetics and materials are putting turbocharged diesels on a better performance footing, while diesels are retaining their fuel efficiency advantage.
But of course for a hybrid - either with a pure electric transmission or an electromechanical one - the diesel's power curve is much less of an issue while its efficiency is a big win. So the diesel is a better match.
... efficient as electric motors are, they still have enough losses (mainly in the wiring resistance) that a gearbox is still better.
If we ever get high-current ambient-temperature type-II superconductors this should change drastically. Superconducting motor-generators will approach and perhaps beat a gearbox even with the losses from the electronics necessary for torque/speed variation.
Because, efficient as electric motors are, they still have enough losses (mainly in the wiring resistance) that a gearbox is still better. If some of your torque goes through lubricated steel you lose less to heat.
Look at the two-mogen planetary gear arrangement used by the Prius for an example: When cruising most of the power is transferred mechanically, for max efficiency. When accelerating, decelerating, or sitting still and charging, some or all of the power goes through the mogens.
(For standing-starts, for instance, one of the mogens is acting as a geneator and the other as a motor to create the equivalent of a lower gear ratio plus a battery/motor boost. Part of the power from the engine goes through steel gears to the output shaft, part from engine through steel gears to the mogen acting as a genny, then back out through the other one which is acting as a motor, while the battery also supplies some power to the motor.)
The Insight and the Prius are both parallel drive hybrids, which means the gas engine turns the wheels as well as powers up the batteries.
However the Prius (not sure about the Insight) uses a cute planetary drive and TWO electric motor/generators so the engine speed and drive shaft speed are unrelated. By adjusting the frequencies of the inverters for the two mogens (and the speed of one of them) you can run the engine at the peak efficiency speed and juggle power between it, the batteries, and the wheels independently. (And with continuous "gear ratio", too. No shift bump.)
By using less fuel you are shifting the tax burden onto those who cannot afford a high tech vehicle.
Thanks to "cash for clunkers" anybody who can't afford a high-tech vehicle also can't afford to buy a replacement when their current low-tech vehicle finally breaks down beyond repair. They'll have to walk or take public transit (if it is going from where they are to where they want to be).
The cashed-out clunkers get scrapped. The used car market has just dried up for lack of supply - and the few remaining used cars are priced out of reach of the poor.
... what if one of those new Li-Ion Battery Packs decides to ignite like a faulty Sony laptop?
Automotive applications which use Lithium batteries use (one of a number of) different technologies which are not susceptible to the disastrous failure mode in question.
Slashdot Mirror
Because, like a patent troll, Gordon wasn't trying to eliminate spam, he was trying to profit off laws against spam that might allow him to sue--a professional litigant.
"If it's worth doing, it's worth doing at a profit."
Why shouldn't somebody doing a public service get rewarded for it? ... we're the one's footing the bill for the judge who has to oversee it all, and the courtroom and clerks they're using.
Actually, the payer of the "court costs" is footing the bill. That's what court costs are about.
Not many ./ers are capable of understanding that sometimes bad people (Gordon) do good things (fight spam) for the wrong reasons (personal profit) at a cost to us all (tying up the court system).
That's what the court system is FOR: Penalizing the miscreants for their misbehavior in order to deter it and making them pay for their violations of law and/or harm to others. If it's not doing that why bother to have it?
"Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons" is a bogus concept.
Or ... They could give teeth to the old?
Back in elementary school I was quite impressed by scientific progress and science fiction (it was the late "golden age" of sf.) I was expecting that, by the time my adult teeth needed repair, they'd be able to grow and implant, or stimulate the growth of, new ones to replace them.
I'm 62 now. Maybe I'll still be alive when they finally get around to it. (Like maybe if the FDA is ever overthrown.) B-(
You sign up with the people who aren't religious zealots, believing that life begins at conception and preventing the use of embrionic stem cells. ...
Creating stem cells from other tissues is possible, but adds extra costs.
In fact, using pluripotent adult or infant stem cells (such as cord blood and stem cells extracted from fat), rather than totipotent embryonic stem cells, is what has produced the most promising stem cell based treatment candidates so far. Embryonic cell transplants seem to be prone to getting confused and causing cancers.
The big reason for doing embryonic stem cell research is to gain an understanding of the differentiation signaling mechanisms, not to work toward using such cells for therapy feedstock.
Once the signals are understood it should be possible - and desirable - to perform the actual therapies with cells harvested non-destructively from adults - usually the patient in question - and selected for the proper cell type and/or reprogrammed into an appropriate state of differentiation (and perhaps edited to correct a genetic problem). But it's a lot harder to decode the mechanisms if you can only observe and experiment on cells where they've already run most of their course.
... in the USA ... The embryonic stem cells research was never illegal just denied Government funding in most cases.
Unfortunately, if I understand it correctly, that included the research being done in any facility that had ever received federal funding that ended up contributing to its infrastructure. Which knocks out essentially all the university medical research centers and anywhere else that the results of the research would be published rather than being kept under proprietary wraps in hope of producing a product later.
Because you'd need to make a LOT of breakthroughs to get to a product, kicking it out of public institutions essentially killed any work on embryonic stem cells.
Now if such research could be done in publicly-funded facilities with private funding and the projects were just charged a higher "overhead" rate to reimburse the prior and current infrastructure contributions from the Fed, what you said would be true.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease. Therefore I guess your immune system would destroy your replacement pancreas just as it did with the original one. However IANAMD.
Looks that way.
And they've (very) recently come up with a short-term (weeks) drug therapy to cause the rejection segment of the immune system to reset and recognize whatever tissue you currently have, including transplants, as "self". Islet tissue in diabetes-I-model rats was what they tested it with, too, if I recall correctly, and resuming insulin production was the indicator that it had succeeded.
Hazardous of course. Impairs the immune system while the therapy in progress. (And I'd certainly expect raised cancer risk, from any tiny tumors your body was currently fighting.)
If that works out the immune system issue may be solved.
I read the partent posting as "They're using these browsers because they understand the risks and prefer a less vulnerable browser."
My reply was intended to be "Actually, it's they have a specific NEED to be immune to the attacks as part of their operation: Their own malware would break them if they don't use a browser that's immune to it."
That's a very significant difference: Between preference and inherent requirement. TFA and many of the comments here are talking about preference, as if the malware authors were just using FF and Opera because, in their expert opinion they were cooler. I took the parent to be doing so as well. If I was mistaken than the post was indeed redundant.
This just means that malware writers understand that Internet Explorer has more vulnerabilities to exploit, so they don't use it themselves.
No.
It means they need tools that won't get eaten by their own malware when they want to examine it or open a command-and-control connection. So they opt for a browser that can be configured to be immune.
It probably also means they don't write malware that would attack their own browser configuration - probably something like FF with noscript. That's a bonus security feature for FF and Opera.
A better reading could be "people that exploit vulnerabilities of browsers prefer to not use those vulnerable browsers".
In particular:
"People who create websites containing malware that takes over the browsing computer NEED to use a browser that is immune to their own takeover tools for their command-and-control console."
Jeez. Think about it a moment. How the heck are they going to work on the thing if it eats their machine when they touch it?
You're assuming it's still sent over the SMS portion of the network. I imagine GV app could set up push notifications to just use the data network, ...
Note that SMS messages share the (very low bandwidth) control channel with all the other control messages. While SMS pricing is, of course, "all the traffic will bear", it CAN'T be free, because it must be rationed somehow. (It would be trivial to build an IP-over-SMS tunnel and swamp it.) Charging ten cents per 120-payload-byte packet keeps the traffic down to something the channel can handle - even with the texting explosion.
Switch it to the broadband data channel and a text message effectively becomes a minuscule email (fitting into a single tiny packet) with a vanishingly small cost. It's fine for that to be "free", meaning "having a marginal cost" like an elevator ride, i.e. "too cheap to meter, include it in the flat-rate overhead".
I'll be taking any such reports that are released during the "healthcare reform" legislative push with enough salt to raise my blood pressure to life-threatening levels. Until that frenzy is over I won't even be bothering to read such reports and check their methodology.
Emphasis mine. I think this pretty much sums up the right-wing argument. Hardly surprising, considering the well-known liberal bias of reality, but it is surprising to hear a right-winger admit it.
If you can't tell the difference between a libertarian and a right-winger it's pretty clear you've got the left-wing blinders on.
(Similarly it would be clear you had the right-wing blinders on if you mistook a libertairan for a left-winger.)
As to the right-wing AND the libertarian arguments against health care, my previous post didn't sum them up at all. It was directed JUST at the issue of the credibility of research reports with provocative summaries that appear during a major legislative push.
What's particularly blinder-revealing is your attribution of my statement to partisan bias, rather than to the scientific and political processes.
ALL science needs time for peer review and opportunities for replication and confirmation/falsification by independent researchers. This takes time. Until it has been through that mill, research results should not be relied upon for policy-making.
Research results that diverge from previous work in paradigm shifting ways, which come out DURING a major political decision-making frenzy and strongly support one side (while their followon fact-checking won't be out until after the decisions are made) are especially suspect.
Oh stop already with the politics.
Darned right.
TFA sounds like the Ministry of Truth in action.
I expect a lot of similar research reports with a message of "Oh, Horrors! US healthcare delivery is SO unequal and SO substandard!". Like "climate change" research. these projects are largely funded, directly or indirectly, by the fed, which is currently firmly in control of the Democratic Party. So a bias toward sucking up to their agenda in the hopes of continued funding can be expected - at least in the statements of conclusions. (Just like during the start of the Drug War, when the conclusions all wrung their figurative hands about how unhealthy LSD and Marijuana were, while if you actually read the data it often said just the opposite. Read back issues of journals from the late '60s and early '70s to see what I mean.)
I'll be taking any such reports that are released during the "healthcare reform" legislative push with enough salt to raise my blood pressure to life-threatening levels. Until that frenzy is over I won't even be bothering to read such reports and check their methodology.
Photons have inertia and momentum. (Though they have no rest mass their energy is equivalent to mass and they cause recoil when they interact with other matter.)
You're not trying to "absorb energy" with a solar sail (which would just heat it - and melt it if you get too close to the sun). You're trying to collect momentum. You get just as much momentum from the recoil when a photon leaves as you get from capturing it when it lands.
So if you reflect the incoming sunlight you get twice as much momentum from it. And while the direction of the momentum from the incoming light is fixed, you get to pick the direction of the outgoing light - and thus the direction of its recoil thrust.
The solar wind force is essentially outward (in the solar wind direction) only. (The particles initially stick to the sail and then are released, if at all, by a different mechanism such as electrostatic repulsion.)
Or penetrate it and deposit momentum from drag averaging out to be along their incoming direction of travel.
Wrong.
The solar wind force is essentially outward (in the solar wind direction) only. (The particles initially stick to the sail and then are released, if at all, by a different mechanism such as electrostatic repulsion.) And the portion of the light that is absorbed by the sail also produces an outward force.
But for a mirror-finished solar sail the portion of the light that is reflected (most of it) gives the vector sum of the momenta of its arrival and the recoil of its departure. So tilting the sail to reflect sunlight forward along the direction of orbit gives a strong deceleration and lowers the orbit.
Why would you keep your landline? If you really think you need one, I suggest getting cell phone and duct-taping it to your wall!
Townhouse:
- Fax.
- 56K modem to back up the DSL line (on the OTHER landline) to the desktop and mail server.
Cellphones won't carry DS0-based high-speed modem signals on the voice channel (even if it weren't prohibited by the terms of service) while the internet services on the carrier that covers my service area are still too pricey and restricted (and I have yet to find a suitable FAX bridge).
Ranch:
- Dialup internet. (Phone line capable of about 28k to my ISP's closest POP is $18/month. No DSL available. Only WISP carrier is $80/month for a WiFi shared T1 and that is a bit steep for a site that's currently only occupied for a few weekends per year - when we have other things to do than surf the net.)
- Burglar/fire alarm monitoring service.
These batteries will not last forever, likely somewhere around 24 hours.
Switching centers also have backup generators that come on when the batteries are getting low - or facilities to bring in and attach such generators if the outage is expected to go on longer than the batteries can handle.
(Had a problem last winter in Michigan when a storm took out a power feed for an AT&T center and BOTH backup generators failed. Cellphone service was out for something like a day in several states. Was a big issue for me because the rented car had a flat during that outage. B-( )
So they are not prone to breaking open on impact or interacting violently with water? Whoa, thank the gods...
Naw. They're just not prone to bursting into flame while you're cruising along at 65 MPH.
Honestly tho, whatever.. I'm not buying one for a few more years until all the magic is perfected...
Same here.
Bought a tow vehicle this year. (Ford F-150 Lariat. Sweet, but thirsty.) Plan to get a plug-in hybrid in about three years, once they're debugged and the auto companies figure out that they REALLY need more batteries than they plan currently.
Depends on the auto maker.
What you say is true for GM and Chrysler. (Along with other things like Chrysler's transformation of the Jeep line into Mall Terrain Vehicles, giving away their recession-proof core market to Toyota.)
It WAS true of Ford for a while - until a few years ago when the family kicked out the hired management, took back control, and turned it around. Now they have some of the best vehicles in the US market (including THE highest-mileage and lowest-maintenance midsize sedan, beating the pants of the competition INCLUDING the Japanese).
Notice that GM and Chrysler took bailouts then were effectively nationalized, while Ford is doing fine on its own and is still free (as in speech).
Isn't it a feature of diesels that they run best in a narrow RPM range?
That's a characteristic of ALL internal combustion engines, not just diesels. The reason it has been associated with diesels is that the common applications of diesels are those that lend themselves to narrow-range or constant rpm applications ...
Wait a minute. That's misleading.
All engines have some RPM where they have an efficiency peak and for a narrow range around that they are essentially at their peak efficiency (because the slope of a continuous function is zero at the maximums and minimums).
But the Otto cycle (spark-ignited gasoline engine) has a broad peak where the efficiency is near the max while the diesel cycle (compression-ignited) has a much narrower peak. This is largely because the compression heating and mixture requirements for ignition imposed more stringent limits on the amount that the operating parameters of a diesel could be adjusted for power/RPM combination than the spark-ignition of the gasoline engine did. (Better control of fuel injection and turbocharging is improving things for diesels now, though.)
Combine the narrow efficiency peak of a diesel - requiring more gearing in the transmission, increasing weight and reducing time lost to shifts, with its stronger structure requirements to survive higher compression, also increasing weight and impeding rapid RPM change, and the gasoline engine and its transmission had a significant power-to-weight-ratio and accelleartion advantage for passenger cars - at least in the pre-computer days.
Modern cybernetics and materials are putting turbocharged diesels on a better performance footing, while diesels are retaining their fuel efficiency advantage.
But of course for a hybrid - either with a pure electric transmission or an electromechanical one - the diesel's power curve is much less of an issue while its efficiency is a big win. So the diesel is a better match.
... efficient as electric motors are, they still have enough losses (mainly in the wiring resistance) that a gearbox is still better.
If we ever get high-current ambient-temperature type-II superconductors this should change drastically. Superconducting motor-generators will approach and perhaps beat a gearbox even with the losses from the electronics necessary for torque/speed variation.
Because, efficient as electric motors are, they still have enough losses (mainly in the wiring resistance) that a gearbox is still better. If some of your torque goes through lubricated steel you lose less to heat.
Look at the two-mogen planetary gear arrangement used by the Prius for an example: When cruising most of the power is transferred mechanically, for max efficiency. When accelerating, decelerating, or sitting still and charging, some or all of the power goes through the mogens.
(For standing-starts, for instance, one of the mogens is acting as a geneator and the other as a motor to create the equivalent of a lower gear ratio plus a battery/motor boost. Part of the power from the engine goes through steel gears to the output shaft, part from engine through steel gears to the mogen acting as a genny, then back out through the other one which is acting as a motor, while the battery also supplies some power to the motor.)
The Insight and the Prius are both parallel drive hybrids, which means the gas engine turns the wheels as well as powers up the batteries.
However the Prius (not sure about the Insight) uses a cute planetary drive and TWO electric motor/generators so the engine speed and drive shaft speed are unrelated. By adjusting the frequencies of the inverters for the two mogens (and the speed of one of them) you can run the engine at the peak efficiency speed and juggle power between it, the batteries, and the wheels independently. (And with continuous "gear ratio", too. No shift bump.)
By using less fuel you are shifting the tax burden onto those who cannot afford a high tech vehicle.
Thanks to "cash for clunkers" anybody who can't afford a high-tech vehicle also can't afford to buy a replacement when their current low-tech vehicle finally breaks down beyond repair. They'll have to walk or take public transit (if it is going from where they are to where they want to be).
The cashed-out clunkers get scrapped. The used car market has just dried up for lack of supply - and the few remaining used cars are priced out of reach of the poor.
... what if one of those new Li-Ion Battery Packs decides to ignite like a faulty Sony laptop?
Automotive applications which use Lithium batteries use (one of a number of) different technologies which are not susceptible to the disastrous failure mode in question.
- Lasers were invented almost a half century ago.
Shoulda previewed. B-(