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Comment Re:Rest of the world already ahead (Score 1) 992

Actually, yes, it's harder in Europe in general to get a license, but... really, the level you need to get the license is only considered as basics in Europe. You MUST still increase your skills after the license to drive safely. When you get the license in Europe, you are still considered as a very low level driver, even though it's much higher than many US drivers... In Nordic countries, if I remember well, they even have some mandatory ice track like courses.

Comment Re:Redundant (Score 1) 721

amount of work that can be done using an given quantity of gasoline == efficiency

True

The muscle cars turn the more efficient burning of gasoline into more horsepower per gallon

Wrong

I will stop arguing after this post.
US cars are generally less efficient as they pack much less power per liter capacity.
For example, the iconic Dodge Viper gets 600bhp for a 8.4 liter engine (and something like 14mpg) while the Bugatti Veyron SS packs 1182bhp for 8 liter engine. If you want near the power of the Viper without turbos, just take the Ferrari 458 which packs 562hp with only 4.5L and 17.7mpg. Mean mpg doesn't mean much as it's not calculated based on the engine running at full power.
But again, it's not the same market. In Europe most people generally do not want a very big overtaxed engine with poor efficiency. Also our roads are not as wide and straight as in the US, so we focus more on reasonable power with good handling.

Comment Re:Redundant (Score 1) 721

Let me formulate this another way. In 1998, Ford could probably already produce a 5.0L 400bhp engine, but there was no market for it from their point of view. Obviously, they have more power each year, because the market demands that. Most stock US cars have always been very inefficient compared to european or japan models because the market didn't need efficiency. Probably because gas is very cheap in the US (I just looked right now and the highest price in New York is 4.69$/gallon while in Europe it's 1.8eur/liter, which means converted, in Europe we are at about 8.7$/gallon).

Comment Re:Redundant (Score 1) 721

What you describe is market evolution and demand, not technical evolution or efficiency.
A Lamborghini Gallardo of 2007 with the same capacity as your Mustang (5.0L) had 625bhp.
A Lotus Esprit S4s from 1995 with a 2.2 liter engine, less than half the size of your 1998 Mustang, had 300bhp, almost 50% more than the Mustang.

Comment Re:Not really news (Score 1) 721

Diesel engines have better efficiency only because compression ratio is higher. The loss from the pressure drop due to the throttle is relatively small compared to the loss due to the compression ratio.
With the same compression ratio, a diesel engine is far less efficient than a gasoline one, but (until now) there were no gasoline engine with the same compression ration as the diesel ones.

Comment Re:Any engine technicians around to translate? (Score 3, Informative) 721

Efficiency of gasoline is better than oil in the same conditions. But diesel engines have much higher compression ratios (needed to burn the oil and give the self combustion). The problem with gasoline is/was that you could not get those compression ratios until now without explosion or engine melt.
Sorry for the simplification :)

Comment Re:What's the advantage over diesel? (Score 2) 721

Gasoline is more efficient than oil in the same conditions. The problem is (or was in this case), the 2 types of engines cannot run in the same conditions, you can get more compression ratios with oil and it needs it to burn. Previous attempts at making a gasoline engine with a very high compression ratio like the diesel one resulted in explosions or melted engines.
Also, when you produce 1 liter of oil, you also produce some gasoline (even more than a liter if I recall correctly). So both should still coexist.

Comment 95% accuracy (Score 1) 81

While 95% accuracy at detecting spam may sound like "wow", it's a very low rate. Simply using correctly configured greylisting gives an accuracy in the 99% range. So I doubt this technique really improves anything but it will allow to say 'we did it another way'. Given than more and more spam comes from official mail relays, accuracy will only increase when analysing the body of the mail.

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