The reason we all drive gasoline vehicles is because there's not much other use for the gasoline that comes from a barrel of crude. Diesel has more energy per gallon, it's inherently a better automotive fuel, but if we all drove diesel vehicles, gasoline would be free.
In the US, the trucking fleet uses the diesel fuel - leaving the gasoline leftover for everyone else. If there were suddenly no more semi-trucks, then, yes, we could introduce more diesel cars into the mix.
This balance is more the reason you don't see many American diesel cars. And, yes, there are stupid tariffs and tax breaks too, especially in the pickup-truck segment, but there's no legislator on this planet who can change the mix of fuels that fraction out of a barrel of crude oil.
In 1993-ish, I "inventend" a rotary engine topology, that upon researching was damned similar to one patented a couple of decades earlier by Mr. Charles Bancroft. Out of curiosity, I called directory assistance in his town and ended up speaking with his son, Charles had been dead for a few years at that time. His son told a very similar story about how his dad had built prototypes, demonstrated remarkable efficiencies, and shopped the deal to Detroit and other engine makers, including Mercury Outboard. Basically, there was a collective yawn from the established players. The story they were told was that the industry has sunk billions upon billions of dollars into refinement of the reciprocating piston engine, associated tooling, etc., and at that time - in the mid 1970s, just after the oil embargo, they were _still_ not interested in starting to develop somebody else's patented idea due to the long ramp up required to reach cost/efficiency parity with their existing designs.
Rotary engines, including the Wankel, generally suffer from seal problems, and they're also not so great at keeping all the components cool enough under load. They look great on early examination, a 3x efficiency improvement is easy to extrapolate from early results, but it really is hard to compete with the millions of man hours of sequential development that has been sunk into the steam piston engine topology since the 1800s.
This one looks very much like the RandCam engine that has been "in development" for decades.
There's an old story about the inventor of modern hydraulic assist power steering, he put it on his model T, patented it and drove to Detroit, showed it around to the big makers of the day, who all nodded and told him "very nice, but we're not interested." The year the patent expired, hydraulic assist power steering appeared in every major manufacturer's lineup.
Invention is a tiny piece of the puzzle, invention and patents alone never made anyone rich, or famous.
The problem is that most organization have no way of actually tracking productivity, so they pay people basically for being on site for X hours a day.
Think: Dilbert's pointy haired boss. How hard would it be for him to develop a new way of tracking productivity that he can sell to his superiors? Also, how much risk would he be taking by innovating like that? He's got a posh spot as it is, all he has to do is show up and demand his reports do the same, why take chances?
Really, I would think that the company themselves should be willing to pay more for someone who telecommutes, due to needing less facility needs (space, cubicles, utilities) that would be saved from allowing telecommuting....
Perhaps, if you live on planet Vulcan.
Humans tend toward the illogical. I think most larger organizations have a significant slice of management who aren't secure that they're doing their job unless they can physically see their minions at their posts, and they, in turn, don't trust their lower level managers to trust the worker bees...
Free Range Kids works great - for some kids, in some neighborhoods. In other circumstances, the kids can actually get themselves into significant danger, and the local townspeople might actually prosecute for child endangerment.
Mostly depends on the kids, you don't get to choose, you've got to raise the ones you've got.
I consider it an act of "electrochemical empathy" that they did not run the battery so flat that the car would not move to make their point. Whether the battery was in-fact dead or not is irrelevant, they certainly could have run it flat, everybody knows that.
I find it reprehensible that Tesla is using the court system for free PR, and if I were the judge, I would fine them punative court costs to the approximate amount of the PR value they have received. Even when they win on appeal, it would hopefully discourage others from duplicating their stunt.
In 1995 AT&T tried to change (triple) their rates on me without prior notice "your bill is your notice, sir" as I recall. I demanded a copy of the agreement I signed that said they could do that - they never produced one, though several years later they did send me a "change of terms" notice that included the ability for them to change their rates with only notification via checking their website, "payment of your bill indicates agreement with these terms."
Damn collection company called me at work, just once.
Thanks for the tip, I tried Microsoft's "premium" tool - it was extremely weak.
What impressed me about Shark was that I started it up with zero reading of help, instructions, howtos or anything, and it was producing useful information for me within less than a minute. Other tools may be better, but for something so important that is also used so rarely, ease of use is a really big factor for me.
One positive thing I can say for OS-X based development is Shark (code profiler) - having an OS-X system means you have access to Shark - it's a good thing, I get good use out of it once every 6 months on average.
Otherwise, OS-X is pretty much just another platform to test on for me - things crash differently there, usually less, but that's not a good thing because OS-X tends to mask programmer errors better than Windows/Linux, better to detect and fix the errors early before the fixes become onerous.
My thoughts exactly - I set up a number of dev tools in an "all OSX" shop, then repeated the exercise on a vanilla Debian install on an ancient Dell box. Results:
Debian based installation of tools required 4 hours, OS-X / Fink / Google research required 40.
MacMini running the tools was "cheap" at $700, 10 year old Dell box was basically free, since nobody wanted it for a desktop anymore.
Mac based tools ran well, needed the occasional maintenance every month or two - Debian based tools ran for 400 days without touching them, serving more users and hosting more content.
So, if I am forced to do this on Mac hardware again, yes, I will be installing Linux over OS-X, either in a VM, or preferably native boot. But, why would anybody ever do this on purpose? (as opposed to getting hardware that's more suited to the purpose in the first place.)
When I sent my VAIO back to the factory for its 2nd service in a year (1st was a bad backlight inverter), they said they fixed it by vacuuming out dust accumulated in the fan.
Is there no dust in Tokyo? Or, do they all chuck their 500,000 yen laptops every year to get a new one "when the ashtray fills up"?
Funny thing, I've got a $400 POS (Asus / Atom) netbook that I've let my 5-9 year olds loose with, and it has been more reliable than the $3K Sony Vaio that I carefully protect in a padded carry case - it doesn't play StarCraft, but it does still have a 3+ hour battery life.
Concur, for the stated use, one step up from a Netbook should do the job for years to come.
I bought my last Windows 7 laptop based on power consumption and computing power- I needed a little more than what you state (compiles take 1 minute on a desktop, 2 on my chosen laptop and 5+ on a netbook...) Having a low power chipset was important to me, especially after suffering through a lap burning MacBook Pro, and a similarly hot, noisy, and unreliable "high performance" laptop I was fortunate enough to win from Intel.
So, I looked at the CULV market (much more limited than the broad laptop market), and then my choice was easier - settled on an ASUS and quite happy with it.
Ever try to haul a 4'x8' sheet of plywood on a Honda Civic? How about 12 of 'em at one time?
Or, try a 1200lb pallet of top-soil (30 bags). A cubic yard of mulch, or sand, or rocks? 80 cubic feet of brush cutting gear and camping equipment? Two weeks luggage, groceries and various recreational gear for a family of five. Pull a trailer with a boat, or a riding lawnmower? Carry a riding lawnmower without a trailer. Or a sectional sofa? Or a queen size bed?
Drive home through a storm with 2' deep flood waters? Or drive logging roads in the mountains with bare rock "bumps" 18" tall?
I've owned a pickup truck for the last 20 years - done all of that and a whole lot more with it. We have a smaller car that we use in town for "daily life" - but, it would probably be more efficient to just drive the truck everywhere instead of manufacturing, maintaining and insuring a whole other car just to "save gas" when we drive it.
Mostly, parking a truck and maneuvering it in urban spaces is such a pain, that's why we have the smaller car too.
Or, if "cheap" energy hadn't come around to power all these 6000lb personal transportation houses on wheels (aka SUVs), maybe we'd have stuck to a less commuter oriented lifestyle, even with the interstates.
Seriously, raise a tax on crude oil, increase it $1/barrel per month until people start to move closer to work - increased revenue and urban renewal in a single stroke.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather pay $7/gallon for gas before having one of these things stuck in any of my vehicles, including my pickup truck that averages 14mpg.
40 year old badly designed reactors survived the worst earthquake and tsunami in living memory... not much of a story there
It's easy to blow it off as "out of date tech, who cares" - until you consider that the newest reactors in the US are currently 30+ years old.
This hype is overblown, but I'd much rather see a nuke plant replacement program (for each new one built, shut down and clean up an old one) than the current grandfather stalemate we're in.
20 years ago I interviewed for a job as nuke plant inspector with the NRC (Atlanta office), they told me about all the wonderful new designs ready to be built and the bright future of the industry. Now, consider the fact that your actual nuke plant inspectors are the kids who fell for that line of bull.
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The reason we all drive gasoline vehicles is because there's not much other use for the gasoline that comes from a barrel of crude. Diesel has more energy per gallon, it's inherently a better automotive fuel, but if we all drove diesel vehicles, gasoline would be free.
In the US, the trucking fleet uses the diesel fuel - leaving the gasoline leftover for everyone else. If there were suddenly no more semi-trucks, then, yes, we could introduce more diesel cars into the mix.
This balance is more the reason you don't see many American diesel cars. And, yes, there are stupid tariffs and tax breaks too, especially in the pickup-truck segment, but there's no legislator on this planet who can change the mix of fuels that fraction out of a barrel of crude oil.
Yep - and it's a very popular engine in light-sport aircraft. Not exactly taking over the entire world, but it has its place and is holding its own.
In 1993-ish, I "inventend" a rotary engine topology, that upon researching was damned similar to one patented a couple of decades earlier by Mr. Charles Bancroft. Out of curiosity, I called directory assistance in his town and ended up speaking with his son, Charles had been dead for a few years at that time. His son told a very similar story about how his dad had built prototypes, demonstrated remarkable efficiencies, and shopped the deal to Detroit and other engine makers, including Mercury Outboard. Basically, there was a collective yawn from the established players. The story they were told was that the industry has sunk billions upon billions of dollars into refinement of the reciprocating piston engine, associated tooling, etc., and at that time - in the mid 1970s, just after the oil embargo, they were _still_ not interested in starting to develop somebody else's patented idea due to the long ramp up required to reach cost/efficiency parity with their existing designs.
Rotary engines, including the Wankel, generally suffer from seal problems, and they're also not so great at keeping all the components cool enough under load. They look great on early examination, a 3x efficiency improvement is easy to extrapolate from early results, but it really is hard to compete with the millions of man hours of sequential development that has been sunk into the steam piston engine topology since the 1800s.
This one looks very much like the RandCam engine that has been "in development" for decades.
There's an old story about the inventor of modern hydraulic assist power steering, he put it on his model T, patented it and drove to Detroit, showed it around to the big makers of the day, who all nodded and told him "very nice, but we're not interested." The year the patent expired, hydraulic assist power steering appeared in every major manufacturer's lineup.
Invention is a tiny piece of the puzzle, invention and patents alone never made anyone rich, or famous.
You have been selected to defend the Frontier from Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada.
The problem is that most organization have no way of actually tracking productivity, so they pay people basically for being on site for X hours a day.
Think: Dilbert's pointy haired boss. How hard would it be for him to develop a new way of tracking productivity that he can sell to his superiors? Also, how much risk would he be taking by innovating like that? He's got a posh spot as it is, all he has to do is show up and demand his reports do the same, why take chances?
Really, I would think that the company themselves should be willing to pay more for someone who telecommutes, due to needing less facility needs (space, cubicles, utilities) that would be saved from allowing telecommuting....
Perhaps, if you live on planet Vulcan.
Humans tend toward the illogical. I think most larger organizations have a significant slice of management who aren't secure that they're doing their job unless they can physically see their minions at their posts, and they, in turn, don't trust their lower level managers to trust the worker bees...
Free Range Kids works great - for some kids, in some neighborhoods. In other circumstances, the kids can actually get themselves into significant danger, and the local townspeople might actually prosecute for child endangerment.
Mostly depends on the kids, you don't get to choose, you've got to raise the ones you've got.
I have seen the show in question.
Booooo. That's almost as bad as claiming to have read TFA.
I consider it an act of "electrochemical empathy" that they did not run the battery so flat that the car would not move to make their point. Whether the battery was in-fact dead or not is irrelevant, they certainly could have run it flat, everybody knows that.
I find it reprehensible that Tesla is using the court system for free PR, and if I were the judge, I would fine them punative court costs to the approximate amount of the PR value they have received. Even when they win on appeal, it would hopefully discourage others from duplicating their stunt.
I like watching most of the Top Gear shows but I expect them to flog cars not their egos and stubborn pride.
I've only watched a handful of TopGear episodes in the past few years, but they ALL seemed to focus on flogging the host's egos and pride.
In 1995 AT&T tried to change (triple) their rates on me without prior notice "your bill is your notice, sir" as I recall. I demanded a copy of the agreement I signed that said they could do that - they never produced one, though several years later they did send me a "change of terms" notice that included the ability for them to change their rates with only notification via checking their website, "payment of your bill indicates agreement with these terms."
Damn collection company called me at work, just once.
Thanks for the tip, I tried Microsoft's "premium" tool - it was extremely weak.
What impressed me about Shark was that I started it up with zero reading of help, instructions, howtos or anything, and it was producing useful information for me within less than a minute. Other tools may be better, but for something so important that is also used so rarely, ease of use is a really big factor for me.
One positive thing I can say for OS-X based development is Shark (code profiler) - having an OS-X system means you have access to Shark - it's a good thing, I get good use out of it once every 6 months on average.
Otherwise, OS-X is pretty much just another platform to test on for me - things crash differently there, usually less, but that's not a good thing because OS-X tends to mask programmer errors better than Windows/Linux, better to detect and fix the errors early before the fixes become onerous.
My thoughts exactly - I set up a number of dev tools in an "all OSX" shop, then repeated the exercise on a vanilla Debian install on an ancient Dell box. Results:
Debian based installation of tools required 4 hours, OS-X / Fink / Google research required 40.
MacMini running the tools was "cheap" at $700, 10 year old Dell box was basically free, since nobody wanted it for a desktop anymore.
Mac based tools ran well, needed the occasional maintenance every month or two - Debian based tools ran for 400 days without touching them, serving more users and hosting more content.
So, if I am forced to do this on Mac hardware again, yes, I will be installing Linux over OS-X, either in a VM, or preferably native boot. But, why would anybody ever do this on purpose? (as opposed to getting hardware that's more suited to the purpose in the first place.)
When I sent my VAIO back to the factory for its 2nd service in a year (1st was a bad backlight inverter), they said they fixed it by vacuuming out dust accumulated in the fan.
Is there no dust in Tokyo? Or, do they all chuck their 500,000 yen laptops every year to get a new one "when the ashtray fills up"?
Funny thing, I've got a $400 POS (Asus / Atom) netbook that I've let my 5-9 year olds loose with, and it has been more reliable than the $3K Sony Vaio that I carefully protect in a padded carry case - it doesn't play StarCraft, but it does still have a 3+ hour battery life.
Concur, for the stated use, one step up from a Netbook should do the job for years to come.
I bought my last Windows 7 laptop based on power consumption and computing power- I needed a little more than what you state (compiles take 1 minute on a desktop, 2 on my chosen laptop and 5+ on a netbook...) Having a low power chipset was important to me, especially after suffering through a lap burning MacBook Pro, and a similarly hot, noisy, and unreliable "high performance" laptop I was fortunate enough to win from Intel.
So, I looked at the CULV market (much more limited than the broad laptop market), and then my choice was easier - settled on an ASUS and quite happy with it.
Ever try to haul a 4'x8' sheet of plywood on a Honda Civic? How about 12 of 'em at one time?
Or, try a 1200lb pallet of top-soil (30 bags). A cubic yard of mulch, or sand, or rocks? 80 cubic feet of brush cutting gear and camping equipment? Two weeks luggage, groceries and various recreational gear for a family of five. Pull a trailer with a boat, or a riding lawnmower? Carry a riding lawnmower without a trailer. Or a sectional sofa? Or a queen size bed?
Drive home through a storm with 2' deep flood waters? Or drive logging roads in the mountains with bare rock "bumps" 18" tall?
I've owned a pickup truck for the last 20 years - done all of that and a whole lot more with it. We have a smaller car that we use in town for "daily life" - but, it would probably be more efficient to just drive the truck everywhere instead of manufacturing, maintaining and insuring a whole other car just to "save gas" when we drive it.
Mostly, parking a truck and maneuvering it in urban spaces is such a pain, that's why we have the smaller car too.
Yes, and also imagine the security implications of having a tracking device in every vehicle on the road, mandated by law.
Yes, it is. But voters drive SUVs and Pickup Trucks, this gives those hardworking folks a break while sticking it to the eco-weenies in their Priuses.
How much infrastructure did your vehicle registration buy?
My 3 vehicle registrations for the last 20 years might have totaled enough to pave 100' of single lane driveway, one time.
Or, if "cheap" energy hadn't come around to power all these 6000lb personal transportation houses on wheels (aka SUVs), maybe we'd have stuck to a less commuter oriented lifestyle, even with the interstates.
Seriously, raise a tax on crude oil, increase it $1/barrel per month until people start to move closer to work - increased revenue and urban renewal in a single stroke.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather pay $7/gallon for gas before having one of these things stuck in any of my vehicles, including my pickup truck that averages 14mpg.
40 year old badly designed reactors survived the worst earthquake and tsunami in living memory ... not much of a story there
It's easy to blow it off as "out of date tech, who cares" - until you consider that the newest reactors in the US are currently 30+ years old.
This hype is overblown, but I'd much rather see a nuke plant replacement program (for each new one built, shut down and clean up an old one) than the current grandfather stalemate we're in.
20 years ago I interviewed for a job as nuke plant inspector with the NRC (Atlanta office), they told me about all the wonderful new designs ready to be built and the bright future of the industry. Now, consider the fact that your actual nuke plant inspectors are the kids who fell for that line of bull.