Re: G5 fans

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[..]
That's possibly so. However, it still doesn't mean that we didn't have
the means to improve many years ago.

<puzzled> We had the means to `just not make this mistake in the first
place' - but it wasn't taken.

Indeed.

[..]
What's heartening is to find that now that sort of person is in charge,
a lot of the technology has been developed to enable them to do what
they'd like to do.

I really do hope you're right.

I think that you'll be convinced inside a decade - not that things will
have changed over completely by then.

OK. What really gets me going mostly, is the pressure (financially) that
is being put on Joe Public (i.e. *me*) to live my life in a more 'green'
fashion, but without (yet) being given viable (i.e. cheaper)
alternatives. Indeed, there no alternatives for me to use, that I can
afford, right *now*. Yet I'm being priced out of the 'green' market
already.

[As one might expect, because science and engineering tends to get there
before business and politics (and centuries before most religions -
Buddhism being a notable exception)}

We're at the stage where we have a broad and solid technological base
for `green technology' - not all that's needful exists, but what you
*do* need is generally only one development step ahead of what's already
out there. Conditions are just right for thrusting, dynamic newcomers
to enter the scene with their new ideas and new techniques and work
wonders.

I still can't help feeling that we're doing too little, too late.

<shrug> `We'? You and me are doing bugger all to sort out the problem.
Public policy is lagging a long way behind optimum response as ever.

'We', as in human race.

The consequences will be: rich countries have a very expensive job ahead
of them; poor countries will be screwed.

And why? Because `We don't want to do anything to hurt economic growth'
according to the fucking Yanks. Bastards - screw the poor, screw the
future, all I give a *** about is me in the here*now.

Yup.

[..]
Thing is, business people tend to be very conservative. They mostly
want to do things `the same as everyone else' and `the proven way' and
`the normal way'.

Quite so, that's what we normally see happening.

But sensible big business also looks ahead, and for the last few decades
it's been `all change big time' with rates of change accelerating.

Sensible people running big business sensibly can see this, and they can
see that new ways of doing things are needed if they want to carry on
making good money indefinitely.

<shrug> They want to carry on doing things just the same, do things the
same as everyone else, be different enough to have an edge, adapt to the
new realities, /and/ use proven methods.

You might notice some contradictory pressures in that list. ;-)

Of course. It's what makes being a successful business so hard - it's
knowing when to react.

[..]
Not if it has to be transported hundreds, thousands, or tens of
thousands of miles between factories.

Eh? Yes it is. What do you think cargo ships are for? They exist to
provide dirt cheap transport over - yes - tens of thousands of miles if
need be.

Cheap in terms of $s, but not in terms of wasted resources, and
pollution.

My daughter recently had a project to do at school about this kind of
thing, and we found that, for example, more weight of diesel is used to
bring Kiwi fruits here, than the weight of fruits actually brought in.

[..]
It's all about how competent you are at budgeting, and whether or not
you can do your own car maintenance.

To a certain degree yes.

As far as I can tell, it's entirely down to that. `I can't afford to
buy books' is something I've heard - from people who smoke 20 a day.

Absolutely, I've heard that all too often too. However, I can't afford a
lot of things, yet don't drink, smoke, or go on foreign holidays every
year (we went last year - my second time *ever* - while I had a little
money to do it).

[..]
The 'world' according to the USA only exists between the two oceans.

Not so. I've been reading Time. Lots of foreign coverage. Almost all
of it's barking mad, utterly misses the point, and feeds the readership
with ***.

That's quite possible, but where else does Joe public get any reliable
information? However, that's the impression I get from what I see of the
USA.

[..]
Indeed. Now of course we have computers and such, but then it was very
much trial and error (more error I'd suspect).

They had computers back then. Look up the word in the dictionary.

Computers can't help with this sort of thing until you've characterised
the materials and the operating environment in any case.

Trial and error is indeed how they did it - but with *good* engineer on
the job, the trials are less `error' than you might think. For sure
it'll look like it's all gone wrong until they get it right - but each
step of `error' is all about making good progress, sorting out problems,
optimizing another bit and so on until they got it spot on.

Don't forget that at the time, there were all sorts of contraints of
material supply and available production facilities, so there was always
a tendency to see if you could get away with `something a bit less
flashy than I'd like in an ideal world', sort of thing.

I read a rant from one Hermann Goering about the Mostquito fast light
bomber - I forget the exact words, but it was along the lines of `The
British have more aluminum to use for aircraft than we have, and what do
they do? They built this marvellous aeroplane - out of WOOD! Wood!!!!
Argharghargh foam splutter foam' und so weiter.

Aye, it worked didn't it? :-)

[..]
`Bomber' Harris's lot are the main reason: he really *HATED* Germans and
wanted to smash up Germany as much as possible. Bomber command didn't
do badly at it - and the seeds of that onslaught were sown in 1915. The
rage that people felt in 1915 had not been forgotten come 1939. I've
read about it - the anger was *scary*.

I believe it was a similar reason that Hitler became as he was too
though - he was gassed by the British during WW1.

The Germans were the ones who first used gas, just like they were the
ones who first bombed civilian targets in that conflict[1].

Well, they wouldn't have seen that would they.

Thing is, everyone was gassing everyone else back then. Once the Boche
started it, everyone else joined in pretty much (not sure about the
Eastern front, mind).

Hitler was a big fan of P.G. Wodehouse and the `Jeeves' stories. I get
the idea that he thought Britain was full of Bertie Wooster and similar
Drones club members. He should have realised that while that was true
to an extent, it takes a lot of very competent `Jeeves' types to support
the useless upper class twits.

<grin, I'll bet.
--
Andy Hewitt
<http://web.mac.com/andrewhewitt1/>
.