Recent Comments:
Satellite-based road tax in the Netherlands in 2011 {Autoblog Green}
May 5th 2008 5:36PM Herkimer:
Fuel tax will be increasingly less useful for governments.
Why?
Because more and more vehicles are appearing that require significantly smaller - or even zero - amounts of fuel. So the revenue on fuel duty is falling, but these vehicles are still using the infrastructure as much as they were before, and it all still needs to be maintained.
The PSP Cyber Case 2: let's just say that we're not enthused {Engadget}
Apr 25th 2008 5:39PM Hold back on the vitriol. It was excessive - if its really that bad, just dont post post it. I dont want to come to engadget to hear some 12-year-old style rant.
U.S. gas prices rise. Yes, again. {Autoblog Green}
Mar 11th 2008 4:44PM Its about the equivalent of $8.50 per american gallon for petrol in the UK.
And tomorrow the tax on petrol is being increased as well, by 2p a litre they think, or about 15 american cents an american gallon. Lets call it $8.65 at current rates.
I have to work in central London so driving to work isn't an option anyway, but what annoys me is we are being priced out of driving, yet on my train journey to work each day the trains are literally at their maximum capacity. We cant fit any more people on public transport as it is!
After a 20 minute train journey with someone's head about 3cm from my nose, and someone else's arm wedged in the small of my back, I then had to wait for 3 trains on the jubilee line because there literally wasn't any space on the first 2.
Lets hope not many more people decide to start using public transport after tomorrow!!!
The Newton Virus spreads joy {Engadget}
Mar 7th 2008 6:13PM Hmm..
So, a mac can be silently infected with a virus just by putting a USB key into it for a couple of seconds with no other interaction? And this is seen as good? I can't begin to imagine the reaction if this was for a windows machine.
"Don't worry! Its just art!"
Says who? The authors of the virus? People thought BonziBuddy was cool at the time too.
IBM's z10 mainframe to take on the upstart PC {Engadget}
Feb 26th 2008 5:27PM "How is this different from distributed computing where many tightly-coupled or loosely-coupled computing elements work together to perform tasks? One failed computing element has no impact on the uptime of the entire cluster."
Its different because its in one box.
Instead of having 1000-2000 x86 machines all taking up power, space and pumping out loads of heat and noise you have a single box running 1000-2000 guest OSs. Savings in electricity alone are thought to be about 85% which can be a significant amount of money (hundreds of thousands a year apparently), then you save loads of cash on support and maintenance...imagine troubleshooting a network problem in a server room with 2000 machines and the associated costs!
Then there are various other benefits, for example the internal "network" interconnects between the guest OSs (its really all done in software) are running significantly faster than ethernet can ever dream of (several gig/s), you can increase your processing capacity significantly in an instant ("On Demand" - call IBM and they remotely turn on more processors/memory/storage) instead of building, installing, testing, rolling out new hardware - a lengthy process that wont react quickly enough to a Slashdotting/Digging! Then you have centralised management, 24/7/365/100/∞ uptime, IBM support, backward compatibility to the 60s and beyond.
Its good stuff.
Peugeot 308 runs the length of the M25 motorway on less than £10 of fuel {Autoblog Green}
Feb 14th 2008 5:39PM It may not be a "good job" but they are typical real-world conditions and tests - after all I dont care about the number that my car technically gets, I care about how often and how much I need to pay to fill it up with fuel!
Anyway - for comparisons with a Prius: HDi 90 is £13295 on the road. Prius is £17777 on the road. £4482 buys you roughly 1000 gallons of diesel, which even at these potentially reduced MPG figures is enough for 58,000 miles of driving on the motorway. The official MPG figures would have that at 62,700 miles.
You can rant all you want about a hybrid being better. The fact remains that this car is approaching prius levels of economy without the batteries or motors. Imagine what diesel can do with it.
Electric vehicle drivers get some not-so-good news in London {Autoblog Green}
Feb 12th 2008 6:35PM Electric cars still get benefits - namely free parking in certain places (worth more than you save from not having to pay the charge!) and the fact that you aren't paying £1.10 a litre!
Dean Kamen's "Luke" artificial arm gets demoed on video {Engadget}
Feb 5th 2008 4:28PM "I fed myself for the first time in 26 years."
Impressive stuff, and it will only get better in the years to come.
Traffic woes in Britain and some possible solutions {Autoblog Green}
Dec 28th 2007 8:25PM The best way to solve the traffic problems would be to remove the buses from the roads.
YES I know that buses are "green" in that they potentially reduce the number of vehicles on the road (assuming all the passengers would be driving otherwise) - BUT - in my experience in London, 75% of slow traffic is caused by people being stuck behind or having to move around buses, or buses having to move around OTHER buses, or buses going down roads not suited to buses meaning the traffic going the other way has to stop and try and squeeze through.
Basically what I am ranting about is that buses seem to cause more traffic. Maybe if all those passengers were in cars, we'd all be zipping along at 30mph without any issue. As it is, we are crawling along at 0-10mph, stopping with the buses as they stop ever 150metres.
Video: Jeremy Clarkson says Porsche 911 Turbo cleans LA's air {Autoblog Green}
Nov 12th 2007 4:14PM "I can't wait until gas is $10+ a gallon. That will wipe the smug right off Clarkson and every other I.C.E.-lover's face."
In the UK its £4.68 for a gallon of petrol. Thats $9.85. Everyone still drives their cars just as much as before.
