scott wrote:
>> Hmm. I wonder how many people there are in the US? Even so, that's A 
>> LOT of cars. You buys must be loaded! :-D
> 
> In 2004 2.6 million new cars were sold in the UK.  There's 60 million 
> people in the UK.

Dude, how do you know all this??

>> I believe my dad had a curtisy car like that one time... Damn weird. 
>> It also had a dashboard that looked like the bridge of a starship...!
> 
> The prize for that one has to go to the Honda Civic I had a few months 
> back. Definitely like controlling a spaceship with it's 2-tier curvy 
> dashboard, blue lights everywhere, and big 7-segment digital speedo at 
> the top.

Yeah, IIRC this car didn't have a speed dial, just some numbers. In big, 
green 1980s style retro LEDs. You know, the big chunky ones...

>> I still can't figure out why they don't make a car that's electric, 
>> but has a small deisel generator in the boot...
>>
>> (You'd only need to run it when the battery gets low. You wouldn't 
>> waste fuel sitting in traffic. Electric motors don't require a gearbox 
>> or a differential, so you'd get continuous acceleration without gear 
>> shifts...)
> 
> Actually you would need a gearbox for it to be useful.  Electric motors 
> generate maximum torque at very slow speeds, the faster the motor goes 
> the lower the torque.  This is exactly the wrong thing you need for a 
> car, where the faster you go the more torque you need to overcome the 
> speed squared air drag.  If you didn't use a gearbox you'd end up with a 
> car capable of burning out the tyres at low speed, but that took 10 
> minutes to accelerate from 60 to 70 mph.

Mmm, interesting. I was told for example that some large freight train 
used electric motors because if they used diesel motors they would need 
a gearbox, and it would be impossible to make one strong enough...

> And "small" diesel generator?  What happens if you run out of juice 
> while doing 80mph on the motorway?  Stop and wait 45 minutes for it to 
> recharge the batteries enough to get you home without being run over by 
> trucks?

Well no, the generator cuts in when the batteries get down to 80% or 
something, charge them back up to 100%, then stop. [Unless you run out 
of fuel. Don't do that! In ANY car...]

>> Do I really give that impression? Interesting... Certainly when 
>> everybody tells me I'm an idiot for not knowing who Stallman or So 
>> Greats is, I don't *feel* particularly cleaver. :-S
> 
> But compared to the average person in the street earning an average 
> salary doing an average job, yeh, you seem pretty clever.

Really? Hmm, interesting...

I find it curios that anybody who speaks to me for more than a few 
minutes ends up saying "you're very cleaver". And "you need to be more 
positive". (Even if I don't say anything negative...)

>> Anyway, I'm hoping to get a better job soon. The problem is going to 
>> be that I have no experience as a commercial programmer, and I don't 
>> know any of the trendy languages except Java... [And I have to give 3 
>> months' notice.]
> 
> Don't worry about the 3 months notice, a lot of people have that and 
> your new employer will expect it.

Er, actually... when I spoke to the nice lady at the recruitment agency, 
she said "three MONTHS?! Jesus Christ!... Why so long?"

> Is there not anything else you would 
> like to do apart from being a full-time programmer in some language you 
> probably won't even like?

Well, given that I don't have any other useful talents... unless 
somebody is going to pay me to surf the net? Oh, wait, that's my current 
job...

> Even just applying to be an IT dude for a 
> larger company will likely get you more money, or at least the 
> opportunity to move on in your career.  And then you might get the 
> opportunity to show off some of your programming talent.

I don't like being the support guy. Almost all problems that occur are 
beyond my ability to fix, so everybody just hates me... Even when I fix 
it, everybody is still pissed that I didn't prevent it from happening in 
the first place. :-(

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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