Book Of Norm

The NHTSA is thinking about regulating backup cameras for all cars by 2014 They say that the new cameras could save 100 or more off the 300 people killed a year in "back-over" accidents. The cost? $1.9 to $2.7 billion dollars a year. Billion. That means saving each life costs between $17 million and $27 million dollars. The very best case scenario, by the government's own estimates, is that 300 people are saved for $1.9 billion. Which means each life saved would cost $6.3 million. Does that make any sense? I'm sorry, but no. Realistically spending $20 million per person saved just does not make any sense. Maybe in 100 years, when all other threats are dealt with, this legislation would make sense. Right now, this is completely ridiculous. There are so many better things that the world should be spending its money on, that would actually contribute in a meaningful way. In case you have not noticed, this is just one in a string of new 'safety' regulations which ...

Boeing again won the $35 billion competition for the Air Force's new tanker. However, everyone knows that the EADS bid (basically Airbus), was better. It was a better airframe, better engines, better operational capability, and lower costs. What did Boeing have that EADS did not? Two things: a "Made in the USA" sticker, and lots of bribery. Boeing has been bribing people for years. The contract was first awarded 7 years ago, and was pulled because of a corruption scandal. While nothing illegal has been found, yet, on this latest round, Boeing outspent EADS $18MM to $3MM on lobbying efforts. What is just idiotic about this is that the US is happy to export its arms around the world and pushes our allies to buy them, but then refuses to accept a far superior European product at a lower price, with lower operating costs. Cost the taxpayers billions because of corruption and isolationism. Brilliant.

When people talk about "green" power - they often talk about baseline vs. peak capacity. But here's the rub: green "peak" capacity does not usually come at the peak consumption times. Generally, wind and solar align alright with peak times, but by no means perfectly. If you want perfect alignment, you need instant, on-demand power. A pipe dream you say? Nope. Meet the electric mountain. Dinorwig Power Station (aka Electric Mountain) Gwynedd, Wales The Dinorwig Power Station is a 1,800 MW pumped-storage hydroelectric scheme, near Dinorwig, Llanberis in Snowdonia national park in Gwynedd, north Wales. It comprises 16 km of tunnels, 1 million tons of concrete, 200,000 tons of cement and 4,500 tons of steel. It does not actually "produce electricity" in the sense that it is about 75% efficient. Water is pumped up to the reservoir at low-demand times (middle of the night), and then is released when there is a sudden surge in demand. And why does the UK espe...

I just saw a Pepperidge Farm commercial, which I think is one of the worst I have ever seen. Why? Because it starts out with Milano's, which I love (and I know you do too), and shows a big spread of delicious chocolate. Right after that, right after you have been thinking about Milanos and chocolate, it switches to advertising their garlic bread. And if you are anything like me your mind jumped to mixing chocolate and garlic bread together, and then you were instantly treated to a sense of revulsion so deep that you wanted to get up and run from the tv. It would be like co-marketing orange juice and toothpaste. Ugh.

In one context, the Space Shuttle has been a complete failure. It has had two spectacular and horrific failures. It costs 10x more per launch than it 'should' have. It has completely lost the satellite launch market and was never commercially viable, and only briefly viable for the interests of national security. In another context, it has been an amazing achievement. We build a reusable space plane. Come on, that's pretty damn cool. We built a plane which goes into space, stays up there for weeks at a time, and then comes back and lands on a runway. Getting into space is goddamn hard. Operating in space safely is harder still. Space is less forgiving than your mother in law, harder than a monk at a strip club, and more expensive than keeping peace in the middle east. Was the Space Shuttle ever really great at what it did? Not really. But in the big picture, we still built a goddamn space plane. And it is now in space for the last time. It is the end of an era, but I think,...

In CA, the family of a woman sued Mazda after their crapbox 1993 MPV hit another vehicle head on back in 2002. Why would Mazda be liable? Because the woman was in the middle seat in the back, and was only wearing a lap belt, there was no shoulder belt. The other three people in the car, all with shoulder belts, survived. The suit claimed that even though the MPV met all safety requirements at the time it was sold, and even though a goddamn idiot knows that a lap-belt is not going to be as safe as a shoulder belt, the suit was seen as having merit. On what basis, I don't know, because this is friggin idiotic. Mazda did nothing wrong. Absolutely nothing. They built a car which for 1993 was a safe and perfectly normal car. There was no malice, intent to cover up defects, or intentional use or instillation of unsafe features. At the time, lap-belts for the middle seat were standard. Let me repeat, it is absolutely clear that Mazda did absolutely nothing wrong, had followed all regulat...

No, the Xoom (Motorola's new tablet) does not run webOS. However, Android 3.0, the tablet version of the OS, has been largely designed by Matias Duarte, the man who designed webOS. Why is this? Google realized as soon as webOS came out that they were way way behind in building an intuitive interface. First, they copied webOS. Then, when Palm crashed and burned in one of the great marketing failures of our times, El Goog started to poach devs and execs jumping off the sinking ship. The result? Android 3.0 and to some extent 2.2 as well. Read the review over at engadget , but basically, like a lot of 1st gen Google services - this is more of a Beta. However, down the road, it seems that the new user interface and software package will be enough to challenge and then take down the iPad.

General Motors has officially announced earnings for its first full year of business after its emergence from bankruptcy. The automaker brought in $135.6 billion in revenue with a net income of $4.7 billion, which marks GM's first profit since 2004. Additionally, that profit was the largest for The General since 1999. Previously, GM had racked up $100 billion in losses, most of which were stuck to the secured bondholders so that the Obama administration and the UAW could have their undeserved $. So will the General make it? Yeah, they will. They are building better cars, and have streamlined the business. Personally, I would have kept Pontiac and made GMC a commercial-only brand, but maybe that's just me. However, life is hard, and because the market is down, and because the street was looking for more, GM is currently down 6%. Make sense? Not really. 32.44 -2.15 ‎ ( -6.22% ‎) Feb 24 1:46pm ET ‎ Open: 34.90 High: 35.00 Low: 32.37 Volume: 42,374,193 Avg Vol: 16,513,000 Mkt C...

Morgan makes some of the coolest cars on the market today. Some people think that they looked dated. Well, yeah, sorta. Its more that they have not changed in so long that they have gone from current, to dated, to retro. Some of their latest models are simply gorgeous, and drive well to boot, ash (real wood) frame and all. For example, the Aero 8. Mmmm However, Morgan used to be known for more than quirky cars. They also used to build quirky threewheelers. I have actually seen a couple of these over in the Lake District in the UK, and I have some pics of them somewhere I will try and put up. First, let me point out that they build the threewheeler the right way around (2-1) rather than the 1-2 more-roll-than-Jack-and-Jill Reliant Robin And so now Morgan is bringing it back. And it looks fantastic. It will counts a motorcycle for regulatory and insurance reasons, is powered by a fuel-injected, 115-horsepower V-Twin engine mated to a Mazda five-speed gearbox. In other words, it should b...

Quick, name this car: Nope, not the A4, this is the new A8. Confused? You should be. Because they are pretty much identical looking. The A8 is just 30% larger. The car is meant to be great and all, but I think it is pretty interesting that Audi is back to building the same car in three sizes. This is the old old Audi strategy, one that they used to follow much more than Mercedes or BMW ever did. Audi has said they expect to grow massively over the next five years, and personally, I think they are going to have a hard time doing it when their $80,000 flagship looks exactly the same as the entry-level A4. Mebbe thats just me, but I don't want people thinking their perspective has gotten all screwed up and rear-ending me.

Back in the day, I wrote about my 10 Best Performance Bargains . Since that time, I have owned two of them: the 300zx, and more recently, the Saab 9000 Turbo, specifically a '94 9000 CSE Turbo. In the pic, you can see the car, and what killed it: a little old lady in a Prius speeding for a green light and hitting the front of my car. Sadly, I did not do my civic duty and take a Prius off the road. It will go down as one of the greatest failures of my life. First, let me tell you that the rated 200hp is a complete lie. It has much more than that. I would estimate 230hp or so, a number backed up by a lot of owners and Saab insiders. You have to remember the time and context: back in '94, 200hp was a lot, and Saab was trying to sell the car as a luxury car as well as performance vehicle, while the range-topping Aero was given a higher hp rating. So they lied. And that's a good thing. This thing is a Rumpelstiltskinian sleeper. The damn thing is fast. Granted, with front whee...

Aston Martin has been building some of the most beautiful cars in the world, dating back to the Ian Callum design of the Jaguar XK8 from 1996, one of my favorite cars, and the car which really saved the Jaguar brand. At the time, Aston Martin was the big brother to Jag, and they developed the DB7 off of the Jag platform. And it was gorgeous. Since that time, the new cars (Vantage, DBS, Vanquish, Rapide) have really been just an evolution of that styling. And now there is the Virage. While the ultra-rare One77 is nice, this is the car I want.

I always liked the Golf Convertible. It was the small, fun little convertible which you could justify buying because it just did not cost that much. Similar in some ways to the older Saab 900/9-3 convertibles from the mid-90's, one of which I just sold. Get it with a stick-shift and even with less than 130hp, you could have a lot of fun in the summer. If I had a beach house, or a place on a little island off the east coast, I would love to keep one of the old ones around. But in 2003, with the New Beetle convertible and the folding-hardtop Eos on the way, VW killed off the drop-top-golf. And now its back. Convertibles are rarely a practical option. And at this price range, you are generally looking at the convertible as a second car, one which can do commuting duty and be fun in the summer. The Eos is too expensive and too heavy: folding hard-tops are nice, but they are often the worst of both worlds rather than the best (no trunk space, heavy, complex, expensive). The new Golf? It...

Ok, this is more a personal call than a stock call, but let me explain. Apple has jumped the shark. The iPad this summer was the peak of Apple for the foreseeable future. The last 10 years have belonged to Apple in terms of innovation. The next 10 will belong to Google and their Asian hardware partners. Android will beat iOS, have no doubt. The iPad is a nice piece of hardware, as is the iPhone. But there is a reason that Mac's are only 10% of the market, not 90%. One form factor, closed down ecosystem, limited channel distribution, high price point and limited feature set will mean Apple looses in the end. And right now they are overvalued. Wildly overvalued. They are the second largest company in the world by market cap. Which makes about as much sense as electing a college professor to be President. So, short AAPL is my call. If you want to buy something, but SNDK - the future will be ruled by flash memory, and SanDisk will be providing it.

Libya is burning, as Quaddafi is trying to hold onto power through the use of force. The situation is so bad in the country that Quaddafi has been importing thousands of mercenaries from other African nations, and those mercenaries have been firing indiscriminately upon protesters, and using small aircraft to bomb the squares as well. His own special service (a clear sign of a crazy dictatorship is always when there are two separate militaries) has also been firing on protesters, but regular police and the traditional Army have been standing aside or joining with the protesters. He really needs to go. the man is insane. In his last UN speech, he stated that Jack Ruby was an "Israeli," the Security Council is a "terrorist" group, and Barack Obama is "my son." It is disturbing that the US and the UK have done quite a lot to keep the madman in power. The recent deal with the UK for the Lockerbie bomber in exchange for BP oil rights will do down as one of the ...

The Sea Shepherds have defeated the Japanese whalers. Woot woot. First a little background. The Japanese have continued to commercially hunt whales even with the international whaling ban, a treaty which they have signed. They kill about 1,000 whales per year, mostly in the Antarctic whale sanctuary. In the last few years, they have been increasingly harried by an environmental action group called the Sea Shepherds. This group, founded by the crazy but intelligent Paul Watson, is sort of a militant wing of environmentalists for the oceans. Funded by the hit TV show Whale Wars and by a couple of big donations (Bob Barker and Steve Irwin both donated large funds and have ships named after them). Now, let me be clear, I do not generally support militant environmentalism, or a lot of the ecomentalist BS which is foisted upon the world. But whales are different. Whales are intelligent animals, possibly the most intelligent animals on earth (including us - some studies show that humpbacks e...

Putin has built himself a 80,000sq foot palace. Whoops, got that wrong.. 800,000sq ft. Oh no wait, I was thinking in you know, western kinds of terms. This is Mother Russia. Putin has built himself a 8,000,000sq ft palace. Yes, 8 million. To put that another way, the INSIDE of his 'house' is 184 acres. Read on.. Vladimir Putin 'has £600 million Italianate palace' Vladimir Putin has had a lavish £600 million Italianate palace built for himself near a Black Sea resort with the proceeds of "corruption, bribery and theft", a Russian businessman has alleged. Image 1 of 6 Set in 74 hectares of prime land near the Black Sea coast, the palace is reported to be almost eight million square feet Photo: AFP/GETTY By Andrew Osborn , Moscow 6:24PM GMT 14 Feb 2011 The claim, made in a letter to Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's president, was boosted on Monday after the Novaya Gazeta newspaper obtained what it said was an authenticated copy of the original contract for the ...

Intel has been pushing a mobile linux based OS called MeeGo. For a while, MeeGo and Nokia's Maemo were set to merge, and become the new high-end touch screen OS for Nokia phones. But Nokia just abandoned that option and instead has gotten in bed with Bill Gates to create some Finnish-American love children. For some reason, perhaps the anger of a jilted partner, Intel has been advertising MeeGo extensively. Which really does not make sense, because there are 0 major release devices in the world which run MeeGo. It also does not make sense because Intel does not even produce a chip which can run the OS, or run any mobile OS for that matter.

Yeah, so turns out that HP did not just want webOS to build the Pre 3 and a tablet. Turns out that HP, the largest computer manufacturer in the world, is going to put webOS on all of its computers. The interesting part here is exactly what webOS is doing on laptops and desktops. And on that, no one is completely sure.. HP says that it will be "integrated" and not some kind of virtualization or dual-boot option, and they say they are working with Microsoft on the OS experience. So, not really sure what HP is going to be doing here, but a big webOS install base will be good, because it means more devs, more apps, and a better chance of not going to the great OS graveyard in the sky.

Over the past 10 years, many drug "submarines" have been captured and confiscated. However, most of these were not at all submarines. They were boats which floated with very little above the water line. In other words, they were designed to be difficult to be seen from the air and by ship-borne radar, but they were not actually submarines. Until now. This new submarine is 100ft long, can carry four people and up to eight tonnes of cargo, cost an estimated $2 million to build, and... here's the kicker... can travel up to 30ft below the surface. Pretty damn interesting. Given the history of small and homemade submarines, I would never want to get into this thing, let alone take her down.

Egypt has seen continuing protests. This is not a good thing. The military has taken control of the country, and it seems that the nation would be on track for democratic elections in September. But, as the pendulum swings, it often swings too far. Now, protests have moved on to wages. And while yes, wages are terrible right now, the one thing that the military cannot do (or one of the things really) is immediately start raising wages. First, they need to figure out how to get the economy going again, and people should really go back to work and get things going: big, positive, economic change does not come overnight. In a move of some hilarity, the Cairo police are also now protesting. These police officers, agents of the deposed regime, are protesting over pay and the fact that they were "forced" to fire tear gas etc at protesters before the military stepped in and stabilized the situation. They are generally hated by the Egyptian people, and I think now recognizing that th...

Quick question: which company spends more on R&D: 1) Apple 2) Nokia How about I told you that Nokia spends not just more than Apple, but more than twice what Apple spends? Nokia throws down $4 billion a year into its R&D rat-hole. Apple, $1.8 billion. That makes no damn sense. What the hell has Nokia been doing with that money? Symbian is a disaster, and is about 3-5 years out of date at this point. Their dark-horse operating system, MeeGo/Maemo, never really reached maturity, much as my Nokia N770 tablet was badass back in 2006. And yeah, their hardware is nice, always has been, but is not nearly as nice as all of the touchscreens that the relatively tiny HTC has been churning out. Nokia has now announced that they are ditching their operating systems and going to use Windows Phone 7. While this is a big win for Microsoft, it is pretty pathetic coming from the world's largest phone maker, that they have failed so completely. But really, where the hell does their $4 billion...

This is courtesy of PopSci, but is a very good overview of what you are really looking at when you go to buy that "4G" phone this summer: All of the mobile carriers are liberally tossing around the same "4G" label for their new networks and gadgets here at CES, but the real meaning of the word is not as clear-cut By John Mahoney Posted 01.05.2011 at 2:35 pm 5 Comments The Four 4G Networks Almost every high-profile smart phone to be unveiled at CES this week boasts a super-fast "4G" network connection. But depending on the carrier, "4G" can mean many different things. Here's the breakdown. Essentially there are three types of networks the carriers are currently calling 4G: HSPA+ (High Speed Packet Access Plus), LTE (Long Term Evolution) and Wi-Max. And each carrier uses a different one (or a combination of two or more). You're probably already familiar with the GSM/CDMA divide, with Verizon and Sprint on CDMA and AT&T and T-Mobile on G...

Well, I'll be fair: they already had internet access. But only by satellite. Actually, all international calls and internet access in Cuba had to be routed through satellite connections, which is damn expensive. Due to this and the extensive government control, only 3% of the population has internet access. The Communist government has always blamed this on the US economic embargo, as Florida is less than 100 miles away. Now, Chavez has funded a 1,000 mile fiber optic cable from Venezuela to Cuba. Interestingly, they say that they will still limit access and are trying to play down what this will offer, because they don't want everyone getting on the internet all of a sudden. This to me is another example of where freedom leads to freedom, and where capitalism and open trade would be more likely to lead to revolution and democracy rather than embargoes and limited freedom of expression. Quite simply, look at Egypt, where Mubarak has just fled Cairo. I think the US giving the in...

Palm is now officially dead, but will live on in spirit. And by spirit, I mean operating system. The New WebOS HP/Palm webOS, Plam's last chance at survival was... well.. fantastic from a software point of view, and a complete and utter failure from a marketing point of view. Someday, someone will write a case about this, because it really was an incredible screwup. How good is webOS from a technical standpoint? Android has heavily ripped off webOS since it was launched, including a new home screen they called "more webOS like." Apple has tried but failed to copy webOS's fantastic notification system. Symbian and Win Phone 7 have ripped off the "card" system. And finally, the new OS found on the BlackBerry PlayBook is a complete and direct ripoff of webOS. Basically, everyone else knew that Palm had created the easiest to use, most intuitive, and most advanced mobile OS. They just failed to sell any phones. However, along with killing off Plam, HP did have ...