NEWS, COMMENTARY, DEBATE AND ACCESS TO FUTUREWORLD'S COMPLETE KNOWLEDGE BASE
It's not before time that people become self employed. The best service that I get either in my personal or business life is from owner businesses not corporates.The challenge to all of us is that we need to be 'foxy" as Clem Sunter puts it, and many of us have not developed this trait in business. It's been too easy to rely on the boss to take the risks.Outcomes based work is nothing ...
When I read "Automotive Engineering" [ the monthly journal of Society of Automotive Engineers, USA] a very large part of this journal has been devoted to electric car technology in the last year or two. All the big names are there with various technologies from new generation battery systems to high efficiency electric motor drives in wheel hubs. All product development costs ...
There are few competent technical resources in the age group 30 to 45.Companies that persist in the mandatory retirement age of 65 will only shoot themselves in the foot. In our own organisation we have extremely competent engineers in the 60 plus age group several of whom have selected their lifestyle to balance work and leisure by working as contractors rather than permanent employees and ...
How about expanding this thinking along the route of carbon capture and the reduction of global CO2 emissions?
Remember back in the days of the idle aristocracy that they had servants and minions to do all the hard work and so they did several things - spent time bored to tears, went to war or found ways to indulge their sexual and other fantasies such as art. As a result they were not known for their left brained intellectual prowess and most of the inventions of the industrial revolution in fact ...
Wonderful!!! As a wearer of a permanent leg orthotic, I can tell you that building some intelligence into any of these devices would make the wearer's life much easier and restore agility that has been lost. Issues of chafing, skin irritation, pore infection and general discomfort in the prosthetic or orthotic limb contact areas are very real and need constant watching and extra hygiene ...
A strategic issue that you have identified in the longer term is that all businesses are cyclical and how long will the energy business cycle last- this has a major effect on power utility capital projects business models as they need to plan for 40 + years of operation and 5 to 10 years to design and build power plants and possibly another 15 years for decomissioning. This long term capital ...
I started off by having a good laugh. However it is a serious subject as we have family experience with learning disabilities and the effects of drugs like ritalin and their impact on powers of concentration. Whether they raise IQ or merely make the synapse paths more effective we can debate but the enhanced ability to focus on learning is proven without doubt.
The note book PC must be the most maintenance intensive "portable" device ever invented and accounts for something like 80% of every corporate IT department's maintenance budget and time. They have a practical shelf life of 2 years at best and then are either outdated or mechanically unreliable. They can't handle aircraft or vehicle vibration either. They have to go. Those of you ...
I love it! It is only a matter of time before some extremist or dissatisfied employee in some technical field does this. The question that begs is how secure are any one's IP systems if they can be hacked by some crazy or vengeful person. The idea of assassinating some prominent political figure has lots of bling but what about CEOs and other figures who manage technology companies and what ...
The USA is curently sitting on the world's largest coal reserves estimated at 258 Gigatonnes. Next Russia at 225 Gigatonnes folowed by China at 115 Gigatonnes. Africa as a whole has only 56 Gigatonnes. Cost per tonne of South African power station coal has to be escalated to global prices and this immediately affects power generation costs as well as the reserve finance needed for urgent ...
I can't support the notion that energy conservation is dangerous. But I agree that sustainable energy policies and principles needs to the the driver for our future as a civilisation. The notion of wasting energy vs conserving it should be the focus of debate not the issue of depriving people of energy to the detriment of their lives.I have just listened to Dr Patrick Moore ex co founder of ...
Hicks is right in what he says and having tramped around South East Asia last year for several weeks we saw the worst of Western European excesses in the sex trade in Thailand,locals touting brazenly for business with mobile PA systems, and foreign traders [non Thai] jostling out the locals for tourist business. We were left sadly disillusioned too by the behaviour of many tourists towards ...
The organic food debate seems to be largely the whim of the wealthy households who have the disposable income to browse far from home choose what they purchase [read increased carbon emissions].The claimed increased nutrition of organic foods is not readily quantifiable. My experience of so called organic products is that they are expensive and the price differential does not indicate a ...
LEAN thinking- taking the human congestion factor out of systems.The global automotive industry introduced LEAN manufacturing systems and has perfected this process to optimise use of resources both physical and human. Toyota has been spectacularly succesful with this thinking. Recently the LEAN philosophy has been taken into the service industry where the British National Health has ...
Technology is replacing many routine office tasks especially in engineering where the software packages are now so powerful that a single engineer can do conceptual design, model the item or plant and then break it down into piece-part drawings and even bills of material and spare parts manuals. These workstations are expensive , currently some cost in the region of USD 200 000 but they ...
Two issues1.0 The legislation is too lax on people obtaining mega-lethal [semiautomatic] weapons. The undesirables slip through the checking systems anyway. Banning won't solve the problem but merely drive it underground. 2.0 In South Africa it's alleged that you can rent an AK47 for a USD100 a night and bullets cost about USD20 each from various criminal elements. Where did these weapons ...
The immediate future for the next ten years is being able to attach the prosthesis directly to the bone of the residual limb. It removes all the problems of fitting a prosthesis socket to an already compromised residual limb. The Russians have apparently experimented with this and there is allegedly some pioneering work in Britian prompted by the London underground bombings and the casualties ...
Already there are letters to newspaper editors from prominent black South Africans questioning the rationale of the world cup in South Africa. The electricity issue is one stumbling block but there are larger political issues with the spilt in ANC leadership and the lack of critical decision making by the country's political leaders on issues of crime and state corporate governance.If South ...
