But can it run Vista?

That was an awesome analogy.

1. Your 40 - 60% number is way off.

2. If your engine has a knock sensor (anything remotely modern), your ECU should be able to change the timing to take advantage of the higher octane and better burn characteristics the ethanol gives the fuel, which in some cases can even increase economy, while at the same time giving you a boost in performance. This is especially the case for turbo engines.

I'd class myself as a motorhead and I'm totally in favour of ethanol. Sure it's less calorific than petrol, but it's vastly higher octane, and it burns a lot cooler and more completely. Basically meaning that if you run a higher compression engine (which you can because of the octane rating) then you can close the gap on the petrol advantage.

Another result of the better burn is far fewer emissions, which petrol engines need to be tuned for. I'm not sure on the numbers, but what if you didn't need the power/economy sapping catalytic converter anymore?

It does however, have to be neat ethanol to take full advantage. The flex fuel cars are hampered by the petrol component, but if Brazil can do it then why not everyone else?

Those pesky buses, always trying to clip people!

That might be a valid point if the only thing that mattered was speed. Windows 95/3.1/DOS might be faster, but I don't know how you could argue against the fact that all of them would be vastly unsuitable for the bulk of what people do on PC's these days.

You might be right in what you say, but you'd also be right in saying the sky is blue. Either way you'd be contributing about the same amount to what's being discussed.

My Father is a civil engineer by trade, his only programming experience was a small amount of pascal in college. However during my own college degree in programming I was pretty astounded at the insight he had into what I was doing based on the small overview of things I gave him. He wasn't able to deal with specific syntax but he could clearly see what was happening on a conceptual level - sometimes even to the point where he could assist. Frustratingly, I particularly found this happened after extended stints of fighting with language specifics - he tended to pop up at the end of said stints and say "why didn't you do it this way", proceeding to point out something that tended to be a lot simpler than what I was doing.

I'm not really trying to make a larger point with regard to this topic, but sometimes people _can_ just be intelligent and insightful enough to the point of indeed being able to even see the overall picture better than someone one who spends their time doing it.

An anonymous source in Taiwan? http://www.misterbg.org/AppleProductCycle/

Genius! Instead of removing the mice from the situation, you remove your pipe-playing-fancydress-self to the local rodent-free mental institute!

FATALITY!

I'm glad you're not my neighbour.

VLC player is your friend.

Nah, people in Ireland are too willing to put up with crap like this. We like to complain, just to neighbours, not people that will actually do something about it.

Allied to the fact that Eircom controls all the phone lines in the country (charging over â23/$30 a month for rental), and the fact that the state of cable and wireless broadband in Ireland is a shambles; I'm not sure Eircom will have much to worry about in terms of prospective customers.

Eircom adapts this voluntarily.

Reminds me of the speed cameras - after years, just as the UK discovers that speed cameras do essentially nothing for road safety, Ireland plans to hand out a license to private companies to get hundreds installed.

I hate some of the stuff on this Island.