Synthetic fuel from green energy - News

[Tim Streater]

Yes, feasible but not practical, because the necessary metallurgy did not exist at the time.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Oh, the metallurgy did, just not the machine tools

Turing's machine was a theoretical concept till the exigencies of war meant the impossible had to be attempted and under run valves proved nearly good enough.

But it took the transistor and the integrated circuit and y6hings like electron beam diffusion to make the sort of CPU chip we see today.

NOT garage level stuff.

[John Rumm]

Yup, that would work... so long as you don;t mind popping over to spain for for your next fill up ;-)

[tabbypurr]

everything necessary existed, read the history. Babbage's character was a big problem.

Obviously things requiring massive investment arent done in a garage.

NT

[Simon Brown]

I'm not convinced. The personal computer is in fact just as much a serious breakthrough as a viable flying machine was.

DNA was clearly a serious breakthrough by any measure.

Even that is arguable. Yes, the detail has changed with us not seeing as many small mechanical inventions as we used to, but in fact what we have seen is the lone inventors keeping on doing that in other areas, particularly with apps now.

That change has been seen in the past too with lone inventors mostly inventing mechanical stuff that helps with agriculture and domestic stuff in the past, moving on to electronics, radio and stuff like that, and then on to the personal computer and now on to apps.

Yes, even the wheel is that.

Yes, particularly with apps now.

And is just one of the things that did that, with everything from plant and animal breeding through to firearms, fire itself, tools, language, myths, legends all sorts of things doing that as well.

Very little money is needed with apps now.

[Simon Brown]

He worked out how to make a personal computer affordable by almost anyone who wanted to have one.

Whoever did the telephone produced a significant breakthrough too.

[bert]

Well it's no damned use for anything else.

[The Natural Philosopher]

So did IBM, clive sinclair - or chris curry - and a dozen other people who worked out what a low cost 8 bit processor made by a VERY big company could do. When hooked up to a mass produyced TV made by another VERY big company.

Not recently - none of it. Those days are GONE.

[Simon Brown]

Still is when the government owns the oil and gas and much of the hydro industries and the largest bank.

The state has large ownership positions in key industrial sectors, such as the strategic petroleum sector (Statoil and Aker Solutions), hydroelectric energy production (Statkraft), aluminium production (Norsk Hydro), the largest Norwegian bank (DnB NOR), and telecommunication provider (Telenor). Through these big companies, the government controls approximately 30% of the stock values at the Oslo Stock Exchange. When non-listed companies are included, the state has even higher share in ownership (mainly from direct oil license ownership).

[Simon Brown]

Yes, but since then Wozniak did something even more useful in his shed.

And while Visicalc wasn?t produced in a shed, it was even more of a serious breakthrough.

[Tim Streater]

Don't be a sap. He wasn't even the first and there were various others at the time. He made it slightly better, perhaps slightly more easy to use for the averagely technical. I speak as one who owned an Apple ][ for a while in 1978 and saw one or two Imsai 8080s at work at the time.

The personal computer was, as with powered flight, inevitable, once it had been worked out how to make the first integrated circuits. The path to sufficient miniaturisation for all the components of a viable computer to be on a small number of circuit boards was assured.

I'd say the real breakthroughs there the transistor, and after that the integrated circuit.

[Simon Brown]

We aren't discussing solving the world's problems, we are discussing whether invention still happens today.

Visicalc is a better example for solving some of the world's problems and is another relatively recent invention.

Dan Bricklin didn?t get one. Arafat did tho.

[Capitol]

I thought Oregon Scientific were first?

[The Natural Philosopher]

You have to be kidding.

A serious breakthrough would be if you developed intelligence

[The Natural Philosopher]

No we were discussing whether you could do a SERIOUS breakthrough in a shed.

So far you have come up with trivia - profitable, but still trivia.

[Simon Brown]

And that produced an affordable personal computer and so was a significant breakthrough.

And if you don't like that one, VisiCalc certainly was a significant breakthrough a bit later than that.

No thanks. It's an obvious example of what isn't derivative.

Still not derivative with something like VisiCalc.

There was with VisiCalc.

Not with VisiCalc. Or with Linux either.

[Simon Brown]

I didn't way his had anything to do with aircraft.

It was him.

Read the wiki entry.

[Simon Brown]

And the biggest bank is state owned too.

Can't get any more socialist than that.

[Simon Brown]

Sure, I never said that what he did was unique, just that it was a useful advance on what we had before he did that.

No they are not, we keep seeing significant advances like with VisiCalc and other useful apps.

We have just seen useful advances with mobile phone OSs too.

[Simon Brown]

Just because powered flight was inevitable doesn?t stop it being a serious breakthrough that eventually ended up with stuff like the A380.

Sure, but other stuff like VisiCalc was too. So was Linux.

The point is that hasn't stopped, it just happens in different areas now.