Exactly. Mazda seems to get thermo. I'd bet on them, this breakthrough sounds really promising.

There's a section in John Gall's "Systemantics" that discusses what he calls "Climax Design": the biggest, the awesome-est, and that's where the big donut fails IMO. The place is over-designed and meant to do exactly what someone envisaged, but what if that's not what it needs to do? After all, the real thinking bit of Bell Labs - to take one example - was a hodgepodge of shacks that the occupants felt entirely free to modify any way they damned well pleased. It's the diametric opposite of the big donut: so exactlingly built that pushing the first tack into the wall will feel like a violation of some kind.

California loves taxes.

In most other states, for example, beverage containers have a tax ("deposit") that is meant to get all the containers taken away from public spaces, whether by gleaners or by thrifty citizens. In contrast, California sets the tax low enough that it's not worth redeeming unless you're desperate - figuring enough people will blow it off that the state can just keep the majority of it.

Dave Barry said it best: California taxes are high, government is incompetent and corrupt in contrast to Florida: taxes low, government incompetent and corrupt.

Wow, a lot of these posts imply that 'a technological solution that can render the essential features of the device inoperable when the device is not in possession of the rightful owner' must be a kill switch.

A decent technological solution might be to sense some unique component of the rightful owner's smell and not work if that isn't present.

Look: we're not "the audience", expecting to be amused or enlightened. We're slashdot. The point, which you seem to be missing, is slashdot is its contributors, who come here to interact.

Every time I see the beta design I grope for the alternate link that gets me back to the perhaps-weird but familiar interface I like. That's what I expect. If you want to change it, fine, it's your site, but the contributors will go somewhere they prefer and it won't be here.

It may be you're right but the requirements might have led Yuasa to believe the battery management would be taken on by other system elements. Requirements writing is not all that easy, especially when you're trying to anticipate problems in equipment no one has had to rely on to such an extent before.

Damn fine work by the Japanese MoT nonetheless, aggregating clues from all over the place.

Came here to say this. Leaving satisfied.

Dealing with suppliers or manufacturers of anything in China presents the possibility of low costs but adds risk. The reward/risk calculus is seriously out of whack these days: for example, a tremendous amount of world HDD capacity is located in Thailand, where floods can stop everyone's production. China's industral advancement is going to be short-lived unless they start treating contracts as binding instead of a general idea.

A responsible supply chain manager would second-source everything they bought in China except for plastic toys, shower curtains and flip-flops - and I'm not so sure about the toys because high lead or selenium (or both) levels have been found in Chinese toys.

Eucalyptus trees were implicated in the spread of the Oakland Hills firestorm. They are flammable weeds. There isn't anything except the rapid growth rate and the smell to recommend them for anything at all in the USA, though in Australia it is my understanding that various pests constrain their growth and they're useful wood (for furniture) there.

If every single eucalyptus tree in California died it would bother me not a bit except for the brief time during which they were falling down.

Yup. Samuel Delany tries a little of this here and there and it not only looks strange, it's also difficult to read. Hyperlinking is throwing off some ideas like multiple finishes to a novel. If it's going to flower as a new art form, it has to start with an idea that is really new and not just an obvious mechanism. It's probably even odds that someone has actually come up with genuinely new fiction that is enhanced a lot by its hyperlinking, and it's sitting on a drive someplace with the creator wondering what it is for.

These days, you only have to whore yourself out once to be fixed for life. Reaching the desired conclusion for money has corrupted so many fields that there is a serious credibility problem with anyone getting funded by entities that have oxen and fear their being gored. It has gotten so bad with the unholy alliance between politics and drug companies that many people have begun giving up paying attention to it altogether.

The way these studies are conducted might be unimpeachable and the conclusions with these particular tests (wherein the changes are said to be "insignificant" (on what basis?)) might be statistically supportable. However, this is one conclusion and not a Fact. Similar studies show that coffee|Brussels sprouts|dietary fiber|control of sodium intake is good | bad for you (related summary here), and reaching opposite conclusions shows either that experiments are not being repeated, or that the effects are not clear.

and find out what you think might be wrong, instead of what is wrong.

Engage the users. It's your problem, not theirs.

Harlan Ellison is going to release "The Last Dangerous Visions" right about that time. What a coincidence.

Look at page 4 of this: http://www.lytro.com/science_inside. You can read the founder's Ph.D. dissertation and I guarantee you'll get your geek on if you can follow it. It's a really excellent piece of work, and at the same time it is written in such a pleasant style that it keeps you curious and interested.

It's war infrastructure pure and simple. It's analogous to the Duomo in Siena. Those big, wide boulevards? Meant for crushing civil insurrection with cavalry. China has roads strong enough to accept tanks already, to Nepal and Laos, but rail moves things so much faster.