This is Europe, not the US. Politicians are supposed to pretend to be just like us. Look at the British Prime Minister. He is in fact a member of the traditional upper classes (but Scots) just like his Conservative opposite number, but he tries to talk and behave in public like a typical City of London bank worker. (Mind you, Bush is a Connecticut aristo who pretends to be a Texan. No difference there.) It is necessary to give the illusion of democracy, even though the UK is actually run for years at a time by elective dictatorships. So when someone turns up at the gates of Downing Street with a long petition, the security guards check them out then allow someone to deliver the petition to someone inside
Downing Street who passes it on to the duty PR officer who decides what action to take. (Bin or spin)
The French expect their politicans to be crooks but they expect them to be 'un mec' - to give the impression that they behave just like us despite having gone to ENA. (c'est un vieil escroc mais c'est notre escroc a nous, as a taxi driver said to me once.) Perhaps the security guard here was confused between his role as soother of nutters ("Of course the Minister will read your petition") and his role of protecting politicians from rude and vulgar Americans. You just can't get the quality of security guards these days.
Conventional wisdom is that species evolve to fit particular ecological niches. It is difficult for another species to arise to fill that niche because the one already in it is well adapted to it, therefore a less well suited species will fail to take over - unless there is a change which leads to extinction of the current niche occupier or its becoming less fit. This applies to all sorts of things, even the population of bacteria in our intestines which will adjust to suit changes in diet, or as a result of antibiotics.
So the answer is "lots of existing species of animals", many of which would have been amphibians, reptiles, crossopterygians. Dinosaurs have more sophisticated circulatory systems than ordinary reptiles, so if the atmospheric oxygen percentage went down (for instance) as a result of vegetation changes, they might be at a selective advantage.
Speaking as a former technical director and designer of chemical plant, for the sort of quantities and hazards that home experiments produce fume extraction would NOT cost tens of thousands of dollars. You can home build a garage extractor system for a few hundred dollars (and if you work on cars it is useful for extracting e.g. degreaser fumes) which has enough capacity and exhaust velocity to handle solvents.
You can in fact go out and buy caustics (sodium hydroxide, calcium hydroxide) from the local hardware store, supermarket or builder's merchant. You can accidentally create chlorine gas quite easily using common household products. You can buy lethal poisons almost anywhere. It would be BETTER if more people had practical chemical experience because at the moment Joe Public is mostly totally unaware of the risks he runs. He is afraid of "acid" because he does not know that acidity alone is harmless. He is unafraid of bleach, caustics, solvents, and any alkali which comes in a brightly coloured plastic box. And your solution is?
Between 16 and 18, roughly equivalent to the first two years of a US first degree.
And yes, I did make a small amount of guncotton in the 6th form. I can still remember going around deaf all afternoon...our chemistry master preferred nitrogen tri-iodide, because the smoke is purple.
Brand names acquire legitimacy through the associations that cluster around them, and not vice versa.
If Ubuntu succeeds in the market, it will be because of positive associations that will
eventually get Joe Public aware of the name. The psychologists in marketing research already
know this. They know that you can even make a brand name out of a grimy, crime ridden northern English
city (Manchester United), but if it is then taken over by a US entrepreneur and loses its core
values it will quickly start to go down the toilet. The entrepreneur may not know that...in exactly the same
way, the associations of Windows are starting to go negative. I am sure there are plenty of researchers
in Microsoft who know that, but does the management want to listen? If they don't, in ten years time
people will be saying "Windows - what a stupid name for something to do with computers. You might as well
call it "plasterboard"."
I find myself boring anybody who will listen with how well printing is supported in this release. What printers are you using? For HP devices I am using both direct print and printing to Windows spoolers, for unsupported devices I am printing both directly to generic postscript and to Windows shares. I am connecting without problems to Win 2000 and XP servers and workstations including VMWare instances. What exactly is the issue?
Semantic web and growing databases will just cause people to elect to disappear behind a cloud of confusion. Many Google searches are already useless because of dishonest advertisers; Godwin's Law says that eventually the web will become useless because bad information will flood out good information. Meanwhile, the technically literate will continue to hide themselves with anonymity and usage patterns that are deliberately inconsistent and disruptive. Eventually the only people the government and the advertisers will know about is the people too poor or stupid to take steps - and they are not the people whose data is wanted.
Although I'm not particularly paranoid, I have no loyalty cards, only one credit card, frequently pay with cash and never borrow. In the UK, other people are registering cars at accommodation addresses so they cannot be located by speed trap and congestion charge operators, renting to avoid local government records, and generally finding ways to disappear.
Or I would do if I understood what it meant. Is somebody making allegations about me and ducks? Besides, nothing promoted by Microsoft is a dead duck, it is just resting while they spend enough money on it to achieve critical mass.
An article in April 2006 Sci Am puts the case that hybrid vehicles are far more cost effective and feasible than a hydrogen economy. Ni metal hydride and LiIon batteries are already commercial whereas fuel cells have been just around the corner now for 50 years (if it's true that fuel cells for notebook computers are coming very shortly, why does a 100W marine fuel cell cost $6000?). The cost of NiMH has fallen 50% in the last 8 years, and the excess weight has halved. And NiMH doesn't need palladium.
The argument is that hydrogen uses a completely new infrastructure for transport,storage, generation and end user while hybrids only need incremental improvements to battery technology. Hybrids also create the huge distributed electrical storage grid that allows conventional generator capacity to be used more efficiently (in the US, power stations have spare capacity at night in summer because of the need to meet daytime air conditioning load, and this capacity can be used to charge hybrid vehicle batteries. Smart chargers such as the ones already in long term marine use could be remotely controlled to supply current according to spare capacity, meaning that generators can run at constant output.)
Hydrogen is popular, I suspect, because it is a technical fix that appeals to some engineers (gee whiz, new technology) and to the oil industry because they get to retain control over the power infrastructure instead of those boring electrical utilities. Whereas a vehicle economy running mainly on electrical utility power and biofuel would take away a good part of the power over consumers currently enjoyed by Exxon and the like. A farm cooperative could easily produce its own biodiesel and bioethanol with a surplus for sale.
Every time I make this point I get banged on by somebody who claims that the likes of Exxon only do what they do to make shareholders happy. It's good to know that oil industry PR people can not only read but can navigate Slashdot, but at the end of the day a hydrogen economy just hands over too much power to the technocrats, whereas a mixed hybrid electric/biofuel economy leaves far more power in the hands of communities. The shareholders are happy when they can see no way that their monopoly can be challenged or dismantled, because it guarantees a continued revenue flow. If that means distorting markets, they are all for it.
The Venetian Empire was constantly threatened by the Turkish Empire...but their traders just couldn't resist doing business with the vast expanse of Asia Minor. And the long term outcome? Venice lost.
Interestingly Dubai looks like its ruler is consciously aiming at becoming the next Venice, and his relations with the US are going the same way (trying to obtain harbours in the Turkish empire==trying to buy ports in the US).
The parallels are considerable. Venice relied on seapower and built the greatest manufacturing business in the world - the Arsenal, which employed 16000 men and could turn out three ships a day at its peak. But when it tried to rely on dominating trade and took its eye off manufacturing and naval power, it went into decline. The current US emphasis on creating a world of "intellectual property" and slowly de-emphasising manufacturing is not a good long term trend, at least for the US. Look at the UK, which is now a very third class power dependent on managing financial flows.
It looks like Marx was right; US capitalism may be destroyed by the internal contradictions, in that the interests of capitalists are contrary to the security of the country. Meanwhile, China while claiming to be business friendly is using Lenin's approach of using capitalism against itself.
Sorry to be a lens Nazi, but these are hardly telephoto lenses. "Telephoto" does not just mean "Long focal length", it has a specific meaning. A telephoto lens has its optical centre OUTSIDE the front element; it is how it is possible to produce (say) a 600mm lens that is only 300-400mm long. These are 200mm f/1.8 and I suspect the optical centre of being inside of the front element. 200mm wide aperture lenses (which are hardly routine amateur stuff) usually work with matched telephoto adaptors at which point they DO usually become telephoto lenses in combination.
Telephotos are always an optical tradeoff where the compact dimensions are at the expense of various kinds of optical goodness. Reverse telephotos, used to give enough room in the shutter box between the film and the rear element of, say, a 21mm lens, are a different matter; they can be well designed because the greater distance to the rear element means the maximum angle of the exit rays is lower. Leitz were always able to get the best optical quality for their M series rangefinders, though, because the absence of the mirror box give fewer constraints in rear element placement.
Interestingly, if you are a lens geek, telephotos were originally developed because early news photographer cameras did not have enough extension on their baseboard bellows to focus long lenses.
bellows to
Although in British English we have ceased to use an apostrophe between an abbreviation and its plural s, this is not the case in American English. The New Yorker is the guide in this, and if ever a publication was full of punctuation extremists, that one is. Older British writers may still use the convention, and certainly I am old enough that I will write (say) MP3's and 1980's.
The apostrophic status is made clear from context, e.g.
The UFO's had little green men inside
The UFO's crew were little green men (singular UFO)
The crews of the UFO's were little green men (plural UFO's)
Increasingly that accounting and banking uses hard to trace electronic transfer and takes place in what, for want of a better word, could be called rogue states. The EU has a depressingly large number of states which depend on dodgy banking - The Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey, Gibraltar to name a few. One thing the US obligingly does in invading places like Iraq is to arrange for a supply of dollars so that terrorist funds can circulate efficiently, while the accumulating assets are stored electronically elsewhere. Paradoxically, one thing that would affect terrorists and drug dealers is a large scale shift to the Euro as the world currency - because the physical cash flows built up over so many years would have to change and this would create new patterns detectable by data mining.
At least one of their recent digital cameras has a CMOS sensor in the "APS" format. The main benefit of CMOS is power consumption, because the clocking needs are simpler. People who used to crack off the covers of the old dual in line DRAMs and make crude 1-bit sensors (with gaps for the read and write circuitry) will remember how far back the CMOS approach goes.
In a way it is funny that an industry that famously runs on cocaine, hookers and brown envelopes suddenly has so much respect for the law. But then what do we expect? People who have become used to inflated incomes, being able to give vent to their personality disorders, and a general lack of accountability are suddenly under threat. And they react just like any other mob, except that they use lawyers rather than guns (though if things start to go against them enough, I wouldn't bet on it.)
Despite frequent anti-lawyer postings on Slashdot (I confess, I do it too) lawyers are better than guns; they destroy greenbacks and leave people standing. Paradoxically, the RIAA is an example of why we actually need lawyers. Or would you prefer Apple HQ to be taken out by the RIAA's Somali IP department? Or downloaders to be taken out in drive-by shootings.
The business of lawyers is to be cheap enough that "businessmen" go to them rather than to hit-men, and expensive enough that "businessmen" have to be at least partly selective about who they sue.
I am a management consultant working mostly with large companies. I have also worked at director level in one multinational and one (rapidly expanding) SME, as well as working for a range of companies from medium sized to very large. My wife oversees the accounts of nearly 60 small enterprises. And I stand by what I say. I believe we are now at a period where a number of large companies are in fact in long term decline, and this is most likely the end of the business cycle that began in WW2. All the outsourcing and cost cutting is a symptom of that decline, not the rise of China. Economic pressure from China, Russia, resource constraints etc. may be the birth of a new business cycle. In the meantime I am looking to put my money into small businesses with interesting ideas that ideally have local roots and global reach, even though recently most of my asset growth has been the stock market. Because I really do not know what sustains the present bull market other than high commodity prices, and that is no basis for long term growth.
The obsession is with what elsewhere in the world would be called medium sized companies and startups. And there is a simple reason why it is a good thing. SMEs are the feedstock. Many fail, some succeed, but they have the speed of action to exploit new opportunities. Apple began as an SME. Google was until recently an SME. eBay was an SME. Now tell me any large scale enterprise that shows real organic growth? Most of them can only try to absorb other companies and save money to pay the huge acquisition fees. They employ a lot of people - and frequently wish they did not and try to get rid of them by outsourcing, They run strange tax avoidance schemes that cause their profits to be relocated far from where their employees and customers are based. They incur nonproductive costs (lawyers, borrowing, lobbying) that don't impact nearly so much on small companies.
Show me a large company and I will show you an organisation with huge inbuilt inefficiencies and vast inertia. In the long term it is going to die or split up. That's part of the business cycle. To drive the business cycle, you need new dynamic startups and a regime in which, when they become medium sized, they can still grow. You need strength in depth, like the German Mittelstand. Some will be winners and turn into large companies. But if you only have large companies, in the long run there is nowhere but down. Small companies cannot monopolise their markets, so they have to do something well to survive.
I am surprised myself, but I find myself agreeing with Cringely - over the long term. Until recently it has taken a very big enterprise to build cheap computers, phones, or volume software. The problem is that these things are now commoditised to such a degree that they do not command a premium. It's like the transition from a world in which iron was a scarce commodity and the man who could afford a steel sword could be a military leader, to a world in which iron was a cheap building material and the emphasis moved to poeple who could think of new things to do with it. That this transition is happening over a couple of decades rather than a couple of millenia is a sign of some sort of progress.
There is an interesting article about hybrids, pointing out that, among other things, Diesel engine hybrids have the capability of being more fuel efficient than current gas engine hybrids, and that, as batteries continue to evolve, the possibility arises of using all the batteries of hybrids to store electricity, acting as a load balancer for conventional generation. (Most of the time your car is idle in the garage - connect it to the mains and it becomes part of a load balancing network.)
Why is this exciting? Because it makes the "hydrogen economy" a waste of time and effort. No need for expensive tanks or hydrogen distribution, no need for huge reformer plants. The existing electricity network provides the main commuter charge for vehicles, the (greatly reduced) gas and Diesel network provides for longer trips. Result: a mixed energy economy based largely on existing technology which allows wind and wave power, nuclear power and biofuel to contribute effectively to energy needs.
Why won't it happen? Because in this economy the oil companies are downgraded in importance, whereas in the hydrogen economy they rule the world. Let's just hope George hasn't been paying Condi in oil shares, so President Rice (or McKain, don't mind really) can do the Right Thing.
How can I possibly take seriously the views of someone who smokes and drinks Oolong? You might as well stick to the floor sweepings they put in teabags, since you've taken the decision to wipe out your taste buds followed by your epithelial cells and possibly uncontrolled cell division of your lung tissue. It's almost as bad as people who think they are sophisticated and smoke cigars while drinking port - which should be at least a capital offence in any truly civilised society.
I don't know what you mean by absolute engine speed; it's not a performance parameter. If you mean RPM, that is definitely nothing to do with performance except that from a transmision and wear point of view lower is better. If you mean mean piston speed, the same applies. The objective in engine design is to get the necessary performance from the lowest economic rpm.
As for powerband, you need to compare like with like. To get a wide power band from a gas engine you need relatively low performance coupled with variable valve timing and probably a variable manifold. To achieve the same with a Diesel you need a variable vane turbocharger and an engine management system. Power band is relative, i.e. a power band of 1200 to 3600 rpm is wider than a power band of 3000 to 6000 rpm. The first one may only cover 2400 revs versus 3000, but it covers a 3 to 1 range of road speed versus 2 to 1.
I should have perhaps clarified by pointing out that the meaning was not that a single representative Diesel could outperform every gas engine on every parameter. That would be utter nonsense. The meaning is that the largest IC engines are Diesel; the engines with the lowest fuel consumption per KWH are Diesel; it is possible to design an extremely compact high output Diesel engine that would outperform any gas engine on KW/cubic metre; it is possible to design Diesel engines with a flatter torque curve over a higher RPM ratio than any gas engine; it is possible to build a Diesel with a higher MP than any gas engine. However, it is possible to design a spark ignition engine which outperforms any Diesel on power to weight ratio, unless you include the very smallest model aircraft engines which are semi-Diesel (glow plug).
The latest IC engine development may have given the lie to some of this, especially if you count in direct injection SI engines (which are hybrids, i.e.they compress air, mix fuel and then create a spark.) But the last I heard, direct injection SI engines weren't exactly taking over the world. As for the Wankel well, unfortunate name probably didn't help but nor did the oil consumption.
Slashdot Mirror
but let me be the first (and last) to ask "But will it be possible to run this Zen processing on top of Xen?"
The French expect their politicans to be crooks but they expect them to be 'un mec' - to give the impression that they behave just like us despite having gone to ENA. (c'est un vieil escroc mais c'est notre escroc a nous, as a taxi driver said to me once.) Perhaps the security guard here was confused between his role as soother of nutters ("Of course the Minister will read your petition") and his role of protecting politicians from rude and vulgar Americans. You just can't get the quality of security guards these days.
Listening to the original, we could never be sure whether it was "drink you under the table" or "think you under the table", which is cleverer.
It's Wilhelm Friedrich HEGEL
and SCHLEGEL
There is no Z in Nietsche.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for a bottle
? (can someone supply this one?) was fond of a dram
In philosophy, even cod philosophy, accuracy is essential.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann darüber muß man schweigen.
So the answer is "lots of existing species of animals", many of which would have been amphibians, reptiles, crossopterygians. Dinosaurs have more sophisticated circulatory systems than ordinary reptiles, so if the atmospheric oxygen percentage went down (for instance) as a result of vegetation changes, they might be at a selective advantage.
You can in fact go out and buy caustics (sodium hydroxide, calcium hydroxide) from the local hardware store, supermarket or builder's merchant. You can accidentally create chlorine gas quite easily using common household products. You can buy lethal poisons almost anywhere. It would be BETTER if more people had practical chemical experience because at the moment Joe Public is mostly totally unaware of the risks he runs. He is afraid of "acid" because he does not know that acidity alone is harmless. He is unafraid of bleach, caustics, solvents, and any alkali which comes in a brightly coloured plastic box. And your solution is?
And yes, I did make a small amount of guncotton in the 6th form. I can still remember going around deaf all afternoon...our chemistry master preferred nitrogen tri-iodide, because the smoke is purple.
- Mercedes - giving a car a girl's name
- Cadillac - doesn't sound like anything
- MAAPICS - pictures of Mars?
- Virgin - you have to be joking
- Starbucks - first mate on a whaler?
- Kodak - deliberately doesn't sound like anything
Brand names acquire legitimacy through the associations that cluster around them, and not vice versa.If Ubuntu succeeds in the market, it will be because of positive associations that will eventually get Joe Public aware of the name. The psychologists in marketing research already know this. They know that you can even make a brand name out of a grimy, crime ridden northern English city (Manchester United), but if it is then taken over by a US entrepreneur and loses its core values it will quickly start to go down the toilet. The entrepreneur may not know that...in exactly the same way, the associations of Windows are starting to go negative. I am sure there are plenty of researchers in Microsoft who know that, but does the management want to listen? If they don't, in ten years time people will be saying "Windows - what a stupid name for something to do with computers. You might as well call it "plasterboard"."
I find myself boring anybody who will listen with how well printing is supported in this release. What printers are you using? For HP devices I am using both direct print and printing to Windows spoolers, for unsupported devices I am printing both directly to generic postscript and to Windows shares. I am connecting without problems to Win 2000 and XP servers and workstations including VMWare instances. What exactly is the issue?
Although I'm not particularly paranoid, I have no loyalty cards, only one credit card, frequently pay with cash and never borrow. In the UK, other people are registering cars at accommodation addresses so they cannot be located by speed trap and congestion charge operators, renting to avoid local government records, and generally finding ways to disappear.
Or I would do if I understood what it meant. Is somebody making allegations about me and ducks? Besides, nothing promoted by Microsoft is a dead duck, it is just resting while they spend enough money on it to achieve critical mass.
The argument is that hydrogen uses a completely new infrastructure for transport,storage, generation and end user while hybrids only need incremental improvements to battery technology. Hybrids also create the huge distributed electrical storage grid that allows conventional generator capacity to be used more efficiently (in the US, power stations have spare capacity at night in summer because of the need to meet daytime air conditioning load, and this capacity can be used to charge hybrid vehicle batteries. Smart chargers such as the ones already in long term marine use could be remotely controlled to supply current according to spare capacity, meaning that generators can run at constant output.)
Hydrogen is popular, I suspect, because it is a technical fix that appeals to some engineers (gee whiz, new technology) and to the oil industry because they get to retain control over the power infrastructure instead of those boring electrical utilities. Whereas a vehicle economy running mainly on electrical utility power and biofuel would take away a good part of the power over consumers currently enjoyed by Exxon and the like. A farm cooperative could easily produce its own biodiesel and bioethanol with a surplus for sale.
Every time I make this point I get banged on by somebody who claims that the likes of Exxon only do what they do to make shareholders happy. It's good to know that oil industry PR people can not only read but can navigate Slashdot, but at the end of the day a hydrogen economy just hands over too much power to the technocrats, whereas a mixed hybrid electric/biofuel economy leaves far more power in the hands of communities. The shareholders are happy when they can see no way that their monopoly can be challenged or dismantled, because it guarantees a continued revenue flow. If that means distorting markets, they are all for it.
Interestingly Dubai looks like its ruler is consciously aiming at becoming the next Venice, and his relations with the US are going the same way (trying to obtain harbours in the Turkish empire==trying to buy ports in the US).
The parallels are considerable. Venice relied on seapower and built the greatest manufacturing business in the world - the Arsenal, which employed 16000 men and could turn out three ships a day at its peak. But when it tried to rely on dominating trade and took its eye off manufacturing and naval power, it went into decline. The current US emphasis on creating a world of "intellectual property" and slowly de-emphasising manufacturing is not a good long term trend, at least for the US. Look at the UK, which is now a very third class power dependent on managing financial flows.
It looks like Marx was right; US capitalism may be destroyed by the internal contradictions, in that the interests of capitalists are contrary to the security of the country. Meanwhile, China while claiming to be business friendly is using Lenin's approach of using capitalism against itself.
Telephotos are always an optical tradeoff where the compact dimensions are at the expense of various kinds of optical goodness. Reverse telephotos, used to give enough room in the shutter box between the film and the rear element of, say, a 21mm lens, are a different matter; they can be well designed because the greater distance to the rear element means the maximum angle of the exit rays is lower. Leitz were always able to get the best optical quality for their M series rangefinders, though, because the absence of the mirror box give fewer constraints in rear element placement.
Interestingly, if you are a lens geek, telephotos were originally developed because early news photographer cameras did not have enough extension on their baseboard bellows to focus long lenses. bellows to
The apostrophic status is made clear from context, e.g.
The UFO's had little green men inside
The UFO's crew were little green men (singular UFO)
The crews of the UFO's were little green men (plural UFO's)
</punctuationwarmfuzzyliberal>
Increasingly that accounting and banking uses hard to trace electronic transfer and takes place in what, for want of a better word, could be called rogue states. The EU has a depressingly large number of states which depend on dodgy banking - The Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey, Gibraltar to name a few. One thing the US obligingly does in invading places like Iraq is to arrange for a supply of dollars so that terrorist funds can circulate efficiently, while the accumulating assets are stored electronically elsewhere. Paradoxically, one thing that would affect terrorists and drug dealers is a large scale shift to the Euro as the world currency - because the physical cash flows built up over so many years would have to change and this would create new patterns detectable by data mining.
At least one of their recent digital cameras has a CMOS sensor in the "APS" format. The main benefit of CMOS is power consumption, because the clocking needs are simpler. People who used to crack off the covers of the old dual in line DRAMs and make crude 1-bit sensors (with gaps for the read and write circuitry) will remember how far back the CMOS approach goes.
Yes, I do know the answer to that one:
if you can get the drivers.
Despite frequent anti-lawyer postings on Slashdot (I confess, I do it too) lawyers are better than guns; they destroy greenbacks and leave people standing. Paradoxically, the RIAA is an example of why we actually need lawyers. Or would you prefer Apple HQ to be taken out by the RIAA's Somali IP department? Or downloaders to be taken out in drive-by shootings.
The business of lawyers is to be cheap enough that "businessmen" go to them rather than to hit-men, and expensive enough that "businessmen" have to be at least partly selective about who they sue.
I am a management consultant working mostly with large companies. I have also worked at director level in one multinational and one (rapidly expanding) SME, as well as working for a range of companies from medium sized to very large. My wife oversees the accounts of nearly 60 small enterprises. And I stand by what I say. I believe we are now at a period where a number of large companies are in fact in long term decline, and this is most likely the end of the business cycle that began in WW2. All the outsourcing and cost cutting is a symptom of that decline, not the rise of China. Economic pressure from China, Russia, resource constraints etc. may be the birth of a new business cycle. In the meantime I am looking to put my money into small businesses with interesting ideas that ideally have local roots and global reach, even though recently most of my asset growth has been the stock market. Because I really do not know what sustains the present bull market other than high commodity prices, and that is no basis for long term growth.
Show me a large company and I will show you an organisation with huge inbuilt inefficiencies and vast inertia. In the long term it is going to die or split up. That's part of the business cycle. To drive the business cycle, you need new dynamic startups and a regime in which, when they become medium sized, they can still grow. You need strength in depth, like the German Mittelstand. Some will be winners and turn into large companies. But if you only have large companies, in the long run there is nowhere but down. Small companies cannot monopolise their markets, so they have to do something well to survive.
I am surprised myself, but I find myself agreeing with Cringely - over the long term. Until recently it has taken a very big enterprise to build cheap computers, phones, or volume software. The problem is that these things are now commoditised to such a degree that they do not command a premium. It's like the transition from a world in which iron was a scarce commodity and the man who could afford a steel sword could be a military leader, to a world in which iron was a cheap building material and the emphasis moved to poeple who could think of new things to do with it. That this transition is happening over a couple of decades rather than a couple of millenia is a sign of some sort of progress.
Why is this exciting? Because it makes the "hydrogen economy" a waste of time and effort. No need for expensive tanks or hydrogen distribution, no need for huge reformer plants. The existing electricity network provides the main commuter charge for vehicles, the (greatly reduced) gas and Diesel network provides for longer trips. Result: a mixed energy economy based largely on existing technology which allows wind and wave power, nuclear power and biofuel to contribute effectively to energy needs.
Why won't it happen? Because in this economy the oil companies are downgraded in importance, whereas in the hydrogen economy they rule the world. Let's just hope George hasn't been paying Condi in oil shares, so President Rice (or McKain, don't mind really) can do the Right Thing.
How can I possibly take seriously the views of someone who smokes and drinks Oolong? You might as well stick to the floor sweepings they put in teabags, since you've taken the decision to wipe out your taste buds followed by your epithelial cells and possibly uncontrolled cell division of your lung tissue.
It's almost as bad as people who think they are sophisticated and smoke cigars while drinking port - which should be at least a capital offence in any truly civilised society.
Nokia LPS-4 works perfectly with my hearing aid, and no big lump hanging off my ear.
As for powerband, you need to compare like with like. To get a wide power band from a gas engine you need relatively low performance coupled with variable valve timing and probably a variable manifold. To achieve the same with a Diesel you need a variable vane turbocharger and an engine management system. Power band is relative, i.e. a power band of 1200 to 3600 rpm is wider than a power band of 3000 to 6000 rpm. The first one may only cover 2400 revs versus 3000, but it covers a 3 to 1 range of road speed versus 2 to 1.
I should have perhaps clarified by pointing out that the meaning was not that a single representative Diesel could outperform every gas engine on every parameter. That would be utter nonsense. The meaning is that the largest IC engines are Diesel; the engines with the lowest fuel consumption per KWH are Diesel; it is possible to design an extremely compact high output Diesel engine that would outperform any gas engine on KW/cubic metre; it is possible to design Diesel engines with a flatter torque curve over a higher RPM ratio than any gas engine; it is possible to build a Diesel with a higher MP than any gas engine. However, it is possible to design a spark ignition engine which outperforms any Diesel on power to weight ratio, unless you include the very smallest model aircraft engines which are semi-Diesel (glow plug).
The latest IC engine development may have given the lie to some of this, especially if you count in direct injection SI engines (which are hybrids, i.e.they compress air, mix fuel and then create a spark.) But the last I heard, direct injection SI engines weren't exactly taking over the world. As for the Wankel well, unfortunate name probably didn't help but nor did the oil consumption.
I was completely out on the Bugatti cost, you are correct. I was thinking of the cheapo Porsche.