This is a stupid semantic game and we are all sick of it.
Well, if you are sick of stupidity, why did you write the next sentence?
Words change meaning - deal with it.
Words do not change meaning. Words are abstract visual/auditory symbols used by homo sapiens to communicate meaning. They cannot change thier meaning anymore than a rock can change itself into a chicken.
Human beings change what is meant by those abstract symbols known as words. This is sometimes done by accident, but more often by a small number of people with a specific agenda.
There are people who want to change the meaning of the word semite, and quite frankly I'm sick of it, and won't be brow beaten into accepting it's new meaning by someone who anthropomophizes words.
If the car bounces off whatever it hits, you rattle around the interior like marbles in a coffee can.
Crumple zones exist on new cars for a reason. The more kinetic energy absorbed by warping the car's frame, the less remains to transfer between the occupants and the rest of the car in a bloody impact.
How about surround-air-bags?;)
Sure, it's a technical challenge. Crumple zones can be simulated with hyraulics behind the panels. Most modern cars only have crumple zones at the front and back anyhow, so if you get T-Boned, you're still f... er in trouble.
There are millions of outstanding shares and their shareholders watching GM to make sure they maintain a profit focus. You need only look up their quote on your favorite finance site and read the news for numerous references to their profit focus. I can't say I can prove they have no other motives but I find the idea that they may in this situation dubious for many reasons especially since:
Having worked in the corporate world for a company that was part of an oligopoly in it's industry, my experience is that what a company tells it's shareholders and what it ACTUALLY does in practice, are two very different things. There were a great many opportunities for that company to become a great deal more profitable, but were unable to be implemented because of internal resistance (or sabotage, depending on how emotional you want to get about it). That is because changing the way a company is profitable changes the internal power relationships, something people resist to the very end.
1. The amazing new technology will be brought to market after the current generation becomes obsolete.
Well, my prediction is that the technology will be brought to market when the older capital infrastructure can be amortised in other markets. Or in other words, sell inefficient cars to China and India (and amortise the old plant over those sales), and build a new plant to make and sell new efficient cars in the US.
2. The cost savings and profit opportunities will be such that a competitor will emerge and force the current generation of technology to become obsolete sooner.
The mass-consumer-automobile market has very high barriers to entry, so the above scenario is less likely than in many other markets. There are boutique car makers that make very efficient cars, but these are mostly used in rally racing.
Dispite(sp) what all of the environmental groups would have you believe, anything we can do in 10-20 years is a drop in the bucket in a geological time frame, so it's not like it makes that big of a difference.
Well, for the planet, sure. But whether OUR (humans) time is running out and how fast is the real time frame to compare the 10-20 years to. Will the methane bubble up out of the ocean floor in the next 10-200 years? Who knows?
The real question should be, if the protections that will delay the introduction of a new-technology vehicle didn't exist, would a company with the resources of GM have existed, or spent the money to develop the technology when they did, or would we have had to wait 20 years for it to even be invented?
Most of the actual base technology in the GM Ultralite car was not actually developed by GM, so we didn't have to wait 20 years for that to be developed in any case.
But they are certainly to be applauded for using the technology to build the "proof of concept" cars as they did. Whether we would have had to wait twenty years for that is a really a hypothetical question that I can't answer.
In any case, it finally put rest to the bleating from the auto industry about how efficient cars are not possible, feasible or affordable.
It isn't about capturing the heat from the brakes, but preventing kinetic energy from the car to be converted to heat. Instead, what they can get is converted directly from KE to potential energy (stored in a chemical manner - i.e. batterry). There is still some loss as heat, but not nearly as much.
It was my understanding that there were two techniques, the one you mention above, plus capturing heat to pre-heat the fuel. Am willing to be enlightened.
And Ultralite implies very low weight. Below a certain threshold, any car not made out of extremely strong (and expensive) materials will fare poorly in a crash. I'd rather not get my wife and son killed when a deer jumps out in front of us?
Actually, the problem was that the materials they used were much STRONGER than steel, which means that you can't make a crumple zone at the front of the car, the car will just bounce off whatever it hits.
Oh, and there are still deer? They haven't been all shot yet?
The only reason GM wouldn't sell such a car is if they couldn't turn a profit on it. Since you're telling people to do research (with some totaly uncalled for obscenity thrown in), why don't you provide some references to back that claim up?
First of all, I don't see any references backing up your claim that the only reason that GM wouldn't sell such a car is that they couldn't turn a profit on it. The profit motive is not the only factor in corporate beauracracies, but that is a whole other argument altogether.
No, the probable reason that GM wouldn't produce and sell such a car (in the short term), is that they have X billion dollars invested in current capital infrastructure, and producing a sporty sedan with 100 mpg would completely cannibalise their current market, thus requiring them to write off said X billion dollars. Never mind the 100 or so suppliers to GM that would be put out of business due to the complete change in the manufacturing process.
Plus there are usually very profitable "kick back" arrangements from suppliers that certain employees would be very reluctant to give up, and general corporate inertia as well.
My references to the car itself don't specify why GM corporate decided not to proceed. Only that the two cars were built in 100 days "by hand", and the resulting manufactuing process would be simpler and cheaper than the existing one, offsetting the higher cost of the materials.
ut down the crack pipe, man. If an auto company could make their cars any more efficient, they most certainly would. It's a rather competitive industry, and fuel economy is a major selling point. Why the hell would a car maker not want to put the technology in their cars?
In 1991 a team of 50 General Motors employees built two "concept cars" using advanced materials and some clever engineering. The cars were two door, 4 seat sedans had an acceleration 0-60mph in 7.8s. These cars were between 2 and 2.5 times more efficient than a conventional sedan. That is, they averaged between 40-50 mpg.
Improving on this, the Rocky Mountain Institute's analysts predicted that if GM's Ultralite concept car was fitted with a hybrid-electric engine instead of the conventional GM engine, and using techniques like capturing braking energy (heat generated by the brakes), that the efficiency could be doubled again, taking it to 80-100mpg.
In April 1994 a student team at University of Western Washington had the US Dept. of Energy test the two seater, Corvette-sized car they had built.In Los Angeles traffic it got the equivalent of 202mpg.
And in 1994, a small swiss frim ESORO displayed a four passenger light hybrid car rated at about 100 mpg.
All of these cars were much simpler to manufacture than conventional vehicles, which offset the cost of the advanced materials used to make them. And all of these vehicles met the safety requirements of the countries they were built in. In other words, they were road-worthy.
So before you tell someone to put the crack-pipe down, perhaps you could do some fucking research.
You neglect the fact that somebody would have to support the student's system, and it couldn't be the students that wrote it because students graduate and move on.
How stwange, I could have sworn they were replaced with new enrollments. Hmmm... a Educational Institution that opens, takes one intake of undergraduates, and then closes. What would they need the system for after that?
Thinking that there is no such thing as inherently secure is absolutely ignorant. There are ways to do things which are inherently insecure, and there are ways to do things which are inherently secure.
Actually, your statement would be correct if you said "there are ways to do things which are NOT inherently insecure." The problem is that the known means to subvert the security of something is not a finite set. In other words, we don't know what we don't know about insecurity.
A secure cryptosystem is secure even when the source is released.
A secure cryptosystem is secure until it isn't. That is, until a system is broken through crpytanalysis, it is secure, but not after.
There is no such thing as entirely secure. That depends on what level of granularity you mean. A one-time pad is entirely secure at the level of encryption and decryption. However, it is still possible for the operators of one time pads to lose the key to the attacker through carelessness, theft, stupidity or betrayal.
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This is a stupid semantic game and we are all sick of it.
Well, if you are sick of stupidity, why did you write the next sentence?
Words change meaning - deal with it.
Words do not change meaning. Words are abstract visual/auditory symbols used by homo sapiens to communicate meaning. They cannot change thier meaning anymore than a rock can change itself into a chicken.
Human beings change what is meant by those abstract symbols known as words. This is sometimes done by accident, but more often by a small number of people with a specific agenda.
There are people who want to change the meaning of the word semite, and quite frankly I'm sick of it, and won't be brow beaten into accepting it's new meaning by someone who anthropomophizes words.
If the car bounces off whatever it hits, you rattle around the interior like marbles in a coffee can.
;)
Crumple zones exist on new cars for a reason. The more kinetic energy absorbed by warping the car's frame, the less remains to transfer between the occupants and the rest of the car in a bloody impact.
How about surround-air-bags?
Sure, it's a technical challenge. Crumple zones can be simulated with hyraulics behind the panels. Most modern cars only have crumple zones at the front and back anyhow, so if you get T-Boned, you're still f... er in trouble.
There are millions of outstanding shares and their shareholders watching GM to make sure they maintain a profit focus. You need only look up their quote on your favorite finance site and read the news for numerous references to their profit focus. I can't say I can prove they have no other motives but I find the idea that they may in this situation dubious for many reasons especially since:
Having worked in the corporate world for a company that was part of an oligopoly in it's industry, my experience is that what a company tells it's shareholders and what it ACTUALLY does in practice, are two very different things.
There were a great many opportunities for that company to become a great deal more profitable, but were unable to be implemented because of internal resistance (or sabotage, depending on how emotional you want to get about it). That is because changing the way a company is profitable changes the internal power relationships, something people resist to the very end.
1. The amazing new technology will be brought to market after the current generation becomes obsolete.
Well, my prediction is that the technology will be brought to market when the older capital infrastructure can be amortised in other markets. Or in other words, sell inefficient cars to China and India (and amortise the old plant over those sales), and build a new plant to make and sell new efficient cars in the US.
2. The cost savings and profit opportunities will be such that a competitor will emerge and force the current generation of technology to become obsolete sooner.
The mass-consumer-automobile market has very high barriers to entry, so the above scenario is less likely than in many other markets. There are boutique car makers that make very efficient cars, but these are mostly used in rally racing.
Dispite(sp) what all of the environmental groups would have you believe, anything we can do in 10-20 years is a drop in the bucket in a geological time frame, so it's not like it makes that big of a difference.
Well, for the planet, sure. But whether OUR (humans) time is running out and how fast is the real time frame to compare the 10-20 years to. Will the methane bubble up out of the ocean floor in the next 10-200 years? Who knows?
The real question should be, if the protections that will delay the introduction of a new-technology vehicle didn't exist, would a company with the resources of GM have existed, or spent the money to develop the technology when they did, or would we have had to wait 20 years for it to even be invented?
Most of the actual base technology in the GM Ultralite car was not actually developed by GM, so we didn't have to wait 20 years for that to be developed in any case.
But they are certainly to be applauded for using the technology to build the "proof of concept" cars as they did. Whether we would have had to wait twenty years for that is a really a hypothetical question that I can't answer.
In any case, it finally put rest to the bleating from the auto industry about how efficient cars are not possible, feasible or affordable.
Isn't a "stealth worm" that requires "user intervention" a paradox?
No, it's an oxymoron.
And how much did they cost to produce/maintain?
I don't know exactly.
It isn't about capturing the heat from the brakes, but preventing kinetic energy from the car to be converted to heat. Instead, what they can get is converted directly from KE to potential energy (stored in a chemical manner - i.e. batterry). There is still some loss as heat, but not nearly as much.
It was my understanding that there were two techniques, the one you mention above, plus capturing heat to pre-heat the fuel. Am willing to be enlightened.
And Ultralite implies very low weight. Below a certain threshold, any car not made out of extremely strong (and expensive) materials will fare poorly in a crash. I'd rather not get my wife and son killed when a deer jumps out in front of us? Actually, the problem was that the materials they used were much STRONGER than steel, which means that you can't make a crumple zone at the front of the car, the car will just bounce off whatever it hits. Oh, and there are still deer? They haven't been all shot yet?
The only reason GM wouldn't sell such a car is if they couldn't turn a profit on it. Since you're telling people to do research (with some totaly uncalled for obscenity thrown in), why don't you provide some references to back that claim up?
;)
First of all, I don't see any references backing up your claim that the only reason that GM wouldn't sell such a car is that they couldn't turn a profit on it. The profit motive is not the only factor in corporate beauracracies, but that is a whole other argument altogether.
No, the probable reason that GM wouldn't produce and sell such a car (in the short term), is that they have X billion dollars invested in current capital infrastructure, and producing a sporty sedan with 100 mpg would completely cannibalise their current market, thus requiring them to write off said X billion dollars. Never mind the 100 or so suppliers to GM that would be put out of business due to the complete change in the manufacturing process.
Plus there are usually very profitable "kick back" arrangements from suppliers that certain employees would be very reluctant to give up, and general corporate inertia as well.
My references to the car itself don't specify why GM corporate decided not to proceed. Only that the two cars were built in 100 days "by hand", and the resulting manufactuing process would be simpler and cheaper than the existing one, offsetting the higher cost of the materials.
My sources are the book Factor Four and the RMI site.
Sorry about the expletive
ut down the crack pipe, man. If an auto company could make their cars any more efficient, they most certainly would. It's a rather competitive industry, and fuel economy is a major selling point. Why the hell would a car maker not want to put the technology in their cars?
In 1991 a team of 50 General Motors employees built two "concept cars" using advanced materials and some clever engineering. The cars were two door, 4 seat sedans had an acceleration 0-60mph in 7.8s.
These cars were between 2 and 2.5 times more efficient than a conventional sedan. That is, they averaged between 40-50 mpg.
Improving on this, the Rocky Mountain Institute's analysts predicted that if GM's Ultralite concept car was fitted with a hybrid-electric engine instead of the conventional GM engine, and using techniques like capturing braking energy (heat generated by the brakes), that the efficiency could be doubled again, taking it to 80-100mpg.
In April 1994 a student team at University of Western Washington had the US Dept. of Energy test the two seater, Corvette-sized car they had built.In Los Angeles traffic it got the equivalent of 202mpg.
And in 1994, a small swiss frim ESORO displayed a four passenger light hybrid car rated at about 100 mpg.
All of these cars were much simpler to manufacture than conventional vehicles, which offset the cost of the advanced materials used to make them. And all of these vehicles met the safety requirements of the countries they were built in. In other words, they were road-worthy.
So before you tell someone to put the crack-pipe down, perhaps you could do some fucking research.
"The workers have nothing to lose but their chains." - Karl Marx The workers can also lose their lives - Joseph Stalin
You neglect the fact that somebody would have to support the student's system, and it couldn't be the students that wrote it because students graduate and move on.
How stwange, I could have sworn they were replaced with new enrollments. Hmmm... a Educational Institution that opens, takes one intake of undergraduates, and then closes. What would they need the system for after that?
Thinking that there is no such thing as inherently secure is absolutely ignorant. There are ways to do things which are inherently insecure, and there are ways to do things which are inherently secure.
Actually, your statement would be correct if you said "there are ways to do things which are NOT inherently insecure." The problem is that the known means to subvert the security of something is not a finite set. In other words, we don't know what we don't know about insecurity.
A secure cryptosystem is secure even when the source is released.
A secure cryptosystem is secure until it isn't. That is, until a system is broken through crpytanalysis, it is secure, but not after.
There is no such thing as entirely secure.
That depends on what level of granularity you mean. A one-time pad is entirely secure at the level of encryption and decryption. However, it is still possible for the operators of one time pads to lose the key to the attacker through carelessness, theft, stupidity or betrayal.