Posts by Irne Barnard

Pothole-spotter app aims to stop arse ache

Already available in most phones

Just look at a little app: http://world.waze.com/

A whole lot more comprehensive than just showing "holes". Though it doesn't go and show each municipality where what happens - it would be nice if someone could go and do such though. Any type of problem, from accidents, dead traffic lights and other hazards can easily be shown to all. And you can then be updated to see where these are, since all reports are shared to all members - thus you can "try" to avoid these problem areas.

Here in SA we've gotten so fed up with the non-existent service (or rather corrupt government officials using taxes to line their pockets without doing anything to the roads) that there's now a private organization (read: insurance company) to which you can report potholes: http://www.potholebrigade.co.za

Typical South Africa: we pay huge taxes, then we have to get a private company (taking more of our hard earned bog-rolls) to actually do what the taxes were meant for. They started about 2 months ago ... and already over 4000 potholes filled (or at least they state so on their site). I like their "politically correct" phrase: "... in conjunction with the Gauteng Provincial Department of Roads and ..." - Sarcasm like there's never been before!!!!

I think the insurance co has ulterior motives (besides the extra adverts), since there's constantly people breaking wheels, axles, etc. And the insurance cos then end up having to sue the roads agency - which of course takes years to even get heard in our overloaded court system. Which means a 6 month old pothole here is considered a very young hazard indeed!

"Marmite" ... ha ha ha ... we're lucky if the roads agency goes and throws some gravel into the sink-hole (when you need rock-climbing equipment to get out of the car after driving into one it's not called a pot-hole) after numerous cars have been written off in that specific spot. Look at some of the photos:

http://www.google.co.za/images?hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENZA259&biw=1744&bih=967&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=johannesburg+roads+potholes&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=

Who are the biggest electric car liars - the BBC, or Tesla Motors?

Ha ha ha ....

What a joke! And you thought a "leccy" friendly company like Tesla wouldn't lie? Come on! If journalists can do it, why not PR? They've even got a more direct motive!

At least this article starts showing some extra considerations not mentioned by the 2 tests, both pro and con. For that I give it a thumbs-up, though to me it's still falling short in some respects.

The only way I can see leccies doing any form of long distance is if a standard easily swappable battery system is implemented. That way the "filling" station would only need to stock spares, charging them in a bank in a room at the back. Then you'd park your car for just a few minutes while swapping with a newly charged battery - the station owner could then charge for this service over and above the elec-cost ... making it a bit more economical to him. This just "might" also allow for actual recycling of batteries ... hopefully. Though the major stumbling block would be to get vehicle manufacturers to agree on a standard battery ... which I think is going to be a dead-end.

And for some reason I don't see any fuel-cell vehicles these days. These would make the "filling / charging" times a non-issue. But no, it's either hybrids / full leccies. I wonder what's up with that? Someone got their fingers stuck in a pie somewhere?

California's green-leccy price system will stifle plug-in cars

Fail yet again

Again, just another media hype which focuses on only one single aspect: i.e. Price of one energy source over another. And then as pointed out by someone, even this isn't taking in any facts.

Still no comprehensive comparison between even 2 alternative energy source / usage methods.

Please, if you can't / won't give us the facts: the truth, the WHOLE truth, and nothing BUT the truth ... shut the hell up. Methinks the reg is owned by some of these oil barons / eco mentalists ... I even get the impression they're one and the same, since all that articles like these do is confuse the issues even more.

Ford unveils all-electric Focus for 2012

RE: All the naysayers and their mislead opinions..

I'm with you on the centralized idea ... up to a point, you're assuming the inefficient, corrupt, BS-riddled government is actually using the most effective power plant instead of the tech which gave them the biggest back-hander.

And I'm also with you on the extra (hidden) expenses of petroleum ... but then what about the same for other sources? And being stuck with petrol / diesel - don't be surprised if we are, new techs have been extremely thin on the ground: leccies are actually older than ICE's. And in nearly all instances of power plants we're still using the very first industrial engine: a steam locomotive (just improved a bit and called a turbine).

Hope that getting some form of leccy production vehicle would up the anti on other power source / usage techs as well. Since IMO leccy isn't the be-all-end-all answer, it may be a step in some direction - maybe even the right direction ... but only sufficient test data can confirm that.

Blu-ray barely better than DVD

Scaling and other myths

Blackcat's got it in one! As long as your output source is matched exactly to your input, you'll be able to get the best possible picture (given that it wasn't garbage to start off with). Saying they used the same TV does not mean that the TV actually showed the HD correctly, maybe it even had a true native resolution more suited to the DVD (an upscale of 2:1 would look better than an upscale of 1.25:1 - the pixels would still be evenly spaced at the former, but the later would need some fuzzing to make them fit onto the screen). Any form of up-scaling usually gives poor quality, even some down-scaling could negatively affect the quality (over and above the fact that you're watching something at a lower res).

The "quality" of the story's a different matter and can't be improved using just higher resolution. If it's a bad story it stays that way - whether you've got more of it flooding into your eyes or less is not going to make it more interesting.

As for the rest, every little aspect in the entire chain of events since the producers first thought of making the film ... up to (and including) you finally sitting down in your sofa after feeding the disc into the player, is going to affect the "technical" quality. Be that a decision to use cheaper / older technology films / cameras, a cheapskate way of remastering and encoding, trying to bunch too much onto one disc - thus over compressing it, the disc becoming dirty / damaged, the viewing equipment being made as cheaply as possible (compromising on its decoding / transmit / display qualities), the cables having bad connections / interferance, the TV doing something to the signal to make it fit onto its screen, and your own perceptions - all of these affect the quality you perceive.

So saying 50% of BD's are about the same quality as their DVD counterparts, is not so unbelievable in the test's circumstances. Although I'd have liked to see a much more statistically significant sample than just 17 films! And their testing method is arguably not perfect either, were they sure they setup all the stuff to get an exactly perfect match for the equipment (both for DVD and BD)? It might be a better test to use something which is perfect for DVD's and then something else which is perfect for BD's - you're testing the quality between the digital info on the discs aren't you? Not the interchangeability of the equipment.

Then someone else has also mentioned: Was this a blind-test? If not, it's extremely biased at it's inception.

26,000km 'leccy joy ride crosses finish line

Epic FAIL!

I wish they'd have published more than just the leccy's consumption levels. As any pro-leccy-tron would jump to explain when someone shows a diesel using less: but there's other considerations such as refining, etc. But then when the coin turns to the other side, they don't want to hear about any such thing: "No you don't have to worry about where the charge comes from" ... "No there's no pollution when mining and refining Lithium" ...

If this was deemed a testing scenario to accumulate data as Mr. Flintsone's mentioned, I'd give it a thumbs up. But no-where in the article does it even refer to it being something to try and make inroads to making leccy's more efficient / less pollutant. To the contrary: "It was also about demonstrating to communities along the way the effectiveness of low-carbon vehicle technologies, which the team has done in spades. Well done!"

Gives me tears in my eyes Mr. O'Nion!

It certainly did show how "low-carbon" vehicles are extremely effective. I'm betting one or more of the support vehicles (which were probably diesel) had better figures in the first instance (never mind when taking manufacture, mining, refining, etc. in account as well) ... and still my biggest gripe: there's no data about how much raw materials went into the SRZero's manufacture, how much lithium was used (and if that battery can still be used), etc. It's always like someone only showing the positive side, but never allowing anything negative to leak out. The epic fail? Well, as exampled by Matt 21, even the "positive" portion fall flat on its face.

Only thing out of this which seems positive is as Mr. Clarke's noted: charge time seems better and charging seems easier. I'm all for further experimentation, but I don't think leccies are the sole answer - we need something much more comprehensive than sticking a washing machine on a wheelbase and a lithium-ion poison box under your rear. We need other SOURCES of energy much more than we need other CONSUMPTIONS of energy.

2 CPUS 1 CUPP

Don't think non-geeks are going to like this

Hope that Ubuntu looks and feels the same as the Win ... not to mention works on the same files, using the same programs ... etc. etc. etc. Otherwise I can't see anyone but geeks trying this out for a laugh. No wait, a geek can go an install a VM for himself on a i7 (which switches down anyway depending on usage, no need for OS switch).

So as far as I can tell, the non-geek who's "stupid" enough to buy this will run it in Win all the time (since they "Simply can't use the other one.", or more probably "Don't want to"). And the geek who's bought one of these is doing so in order to do something which it was never designed for, like changing the CD tray into a 2 heat coffee warmer - switching between high & low depending on OS.

Windows malware dwarfs other viral threats

Soooo Obvious

It's probably the most useless survey in a while. Why not make a survey like: water is wet is it?

Sounds like more spurious work to waste some government money ... now that might just be a eye-opener survey! How many surveys provide no benefit whatsoever? I'll wager it's also going to be in the high 90's.