Delicious LiveJournal Links for 11-25-2010

[andrewducker]

• Japanese firms to start making superconducting wire for cars and plants. I didn't realise this was feasible!
  (tags: superconductors technology electricity power)
• UK Railways to get £8bn investment
  (tags: rail uk government)
• Longer life expectancy pushes up pension costs
  (tags: life health pension)
• Jury Rules SAP Owes Oracle $1.3 Billion - the largest amount ever awarded for software piracy.
  (tags: software law piracy)
• Building a distributed social network on IMAP and SMTP
  (tags: socialnetworking technology)
• Huge snow robot for Edinburgh city centre. Does _your_ city have a gian snow robot? Then you lose!
  (tags: edinburgh snow robot)
• Breaking news: In a country where vast sums are spent on elections, rich people are elected.
  (tags: politics wealth usa)
• On the use of "the n-word", "n-----" and "nigger".
  (tags: words racism english language)
• 12 Sky-High Abandoned Buildings
  (tags: architecture urban photography abandoned decay city)

Comments

[dalglir.livejournal.com]

I know that UK rail deserves some investment but raising ticket prices is fail. It's still _cheaper_ and _quicker_ and _more productive_ for me to drive to my base office than it is to take the train.

EDIT: base office is in Redditch ~350 miles from home office.

If the government is really serious about encouraging public transport they need not only to make it more efficient but also a cheaper alternative to private transport.

[andrewducker]

Well, the electrification will make it cheaper in the long run. But short of large subsidies there's not a lot else they can do.

High Speed 2 will, of course, make it a lot faster to get from Edinburgh to London, but we won't be seeing _that_ for about 15 years.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I think by 2030 most of the Beeching cuts will be in the process of being reversed and most lines will be in the process of being electrified, if they haven't already.

Rail transport (like energy projects) are one of those class of goods where no matter how you fund them pretty much the same people end up paying. You can subsidise them out of taxation, which means tax rises or you can increase the fares but as there is a large cross over between tax payers and rail passengers the impact on the average pocket is not different depending on the funding methodology. (This holder truer for electricity and gas than for rail).


One of the main benefits of High Speed 2 and subsequent high speed lines is that they remove intercity traffic from existing lines which means the number of commuter trains can be increased.

It's frustrating but these things take a long time, unless your China and are prepared to bulldoze peasants and kill railway workers.

[andrewducker]

Yeah - getting high-speed and low-speed trains on different tracks will make a great deal of difference. I'm looking forward to the future!

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

It's frustrating when you look at countries like France, Spain and Japan and see what can be done with the available technology. Building these things takes time and money so I'm not grousing that I have to wait but I'd like them to hurry up (but not so much that I have to pay any more for anything right now).

As someone who travels from Edinburgh to Cotswolds often I'd love to have a high speed train from Edinburgh to Bristol and London

[andrewducker]

Absolutely. They do take time - I just wish they'd started earlier!

[blackmanxy.livejournal.com]

Yeah, let us know how that giant snow robot works out for you when it inevitably rampages through the city.

[andrewducker]

I don't understand why anyone would want a giant robot that _didn't_ rampage through the city.

[blackmanxy.livejournal.com]

Point!

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I'm looking forward to a snowy rampage and I hope it will direct it's anger towards the park outside my flat.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Feasible for a given value of feasible. I think the high tempreture super conductors still need to be chilled to several hundred degrees below zero which makes them difficult to deploy.

[andrewducker]

This is what made me curious that they were mentioning electric cars. I'd have thought that chilling an electric car engine that much would be incredibly energy expensive.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Chilling the motor on an electric car would be expensive, technically difficult and make the whole thing inefficient. Also, I'm not sure I'm a big fan of liquid nitrogen spraying all over the road after a wee fender bender.

it's either future based hyperbole (At some point we'll make a superconductor that can operate at room tempreture leading to better electric cars) or we are missing something.

Not sure I know anyone who knows enough about to find out. (Apart from my pal in China but I don't want to ask him in case he gets arrested).