"If a UK VW Passat (as an example) passed its MoT test emissions levels last year, "
What MoT emission test .? AFAIK only particulates are checked
http://www.ukmot.com/manual/7.4/Exhaust-Emissions-Compression-Ignition
2677 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Mar 2010
"'ve had lying around for years with the express intention of installing some flavor of Linux, not knowing which one to try. I regularly try out Ubuntu and some others, but they all require that you know Linux to use them (aka mounting hard disks, etc). Nuisance."
Just try out a few live-CDs to see what you like - no need to worry about your HD at this point, but allow for it being quite a lot slower. Once you find something you like then install it - usually just a click on OpenSUSE for example, answer a few questions about location/language and a default install will usually be OK without worrying about mounting or very much else.
"Agreed. They passed the tests. That much is fact.
Also a fact, they don't emit levels of NOx when driven that match the tests."
The test value can only be a marker of the possible emissions in real driving conditions allowing (if no cheating) some comparison of make/model and some rough prediction of likely effects on short-term air pollution. Given how fuel consumption varies over a large range with such variables as length of journey, stop start driving, high or moderate steady speeds and so on how could it really be anything else.
The 'easy' alternative would be to issue the worst case measurement for any model and that wouldn't reflect real-life use either.
After all take Euro6 - the test value is 80 milligrams of nox /km for cars whereas the environmental limits of nox are concentration measurements so are not directly correlatable - put another way it's some function of other sources of nox + vehicle density & usage pattern ( & wind speed/direction & rain ) for any location
"run out of urea"
Just to put it in context many (all ?) urea injection systems have a limit to the number of engine starts that can happen after the urea runs out.
For example : "If the tank reaches one gallon, the car notifies the driver. It does so again with only 20 starts remaining. To reset the system, at least two gallons of AdBlue--or four half-gallon bottles, at $7.75 each--must be added. Roadside assistance plans cover AdBlue, however."
http://www.businessinsider.com/adding-urea-to-clean-diesel-cars-can-i-just-pee-in-the-tank-2011-5?IR=T
"Urea injection, which only really works during emissions tests too."
Would you like to ref. that. because AFAIK it's simply not true.
Petrol engines also produce less nox than diesel but still a moderate amount.
In my experience diesels use considerably less fuel ( by volume) than petrol engines in similar vehicles partly due to the increased energy content of diesel and partly due to the better thermodynamic efficiency. Indeed large ship diesels are the most efficient internal combustion engines that are available.
"Nitrogen oxides are produced in combustion processes, partly from nitrogen compounds in the fuel, but mostly by direct combination of atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen in flames. Nitrogen oxides are produced naturally by lightning, and also, to a small extent, by microbial processes in soils.
"
http://www.apis.ac.uk/overview/pollutants/overview_NOx.htm
"The other problem here is that too much credence is applied to the test results."
Indeed. In fact it will be very difficult to have a test that accurately reflects 'real-world' usage as that varies so much.
The extremes might be the city dweller who mostly does short trips in busy conditions with lots of stop/start/idling/acc.
My car might be the other extreme - almost no short journeys, live in the country, travel mostly fast A-roads and motorways at quiet times (overnight), little acc.
I suggest no testing regime will adequately reflect that and that's without considering driving 'style'
" It takes 23 seconds on average for Writer to start on my desktop machine"
Well as I mentioned below on this laptop,OpenSUSE 13.1, LO 4.1.6.2 500GB HD i7 it take (at the most) 2 secs from clicking the icon to Writer open with a cursor. .
In fact it takes 2 secs to load Calc and my finance spreadsheet and that's via WiFi from my fileserver
"Last time I checked, the continent still extends past Moscow, and well past Istanbul."
Not quite that simple. Some countries are 'transcontinental' like the Russian Fed. & Turkey. The demarcation line for Turkey for example is the Bosporus and Dardanelles. So Istanbul is in Europe but most of Turkey is in Asia.
@Michael H.F. Wilkinson
I seem to remember there was a publication "Journal of Irreproducible Results" where the title font tailed off into a wastebin. You seem to be the sort of chap that might remember it.
This ball wouldn't qualify, of course, as no-one is likely to try to reproduce it ! It also gives a whole new meaning to paint-balling of course.
"Plants don't. They need CO2 and water (plus the minerals for growing). Plants will PRODUCE oxygen."
Plants do need oxygen - it's just that in sunlight and CO2 they produce more oxygen than they need. When it's dark they are a net consumer of oxygen. Plants do need oxygen to survive.
http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=760
"'ve seen something, somewhere, about how to solve that part...
... Oh, I remember, they call them "plants"..."
Well oddly enough I'm a physical scientist and I've come across them - well at least on Earth where they have a reasonable supply of carbon dioxide and oxygen.
Problem on Mars is the high percentage of carbon dioxide still represents a pitifully small amount due to the very low atmospheric pressure and there's very little oxygen which plants need as well. Now I'm not a botanist so I can't tell you if current plants will grow under such conditions but I'd bet it's not too likely.
Oh I wonder who might know ? Maybe NASA
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2005/mars_plants.html
"The plants would probably be housed in a greenhouse on a Martian base, because no known forms of life can survive direct exposure to the Martian surface, with its extremely cold, thin air and sterilizing radiation. Even then, conditions in a Martian greenhouse would be beyond what ordinary plants could stand. During the day, the plants would have to endure high levels of solar ultraviolet radiation, because the thin Martian atmosphere has no ozone to block it like the Earth's atmosphere does. At night, temperatures would drop well below freezing. Also, the Martian soil is poor in the mineral nutrients necessary for plants to thrive."
"'ve hated Linux for as long as I can remember."
At the risk of opening a very large can of very spiky worms - why ? It's an OS - it has faults but if it can enable you to do all you want what's the problem ? If it can't don't change.
For me the advantages massively outweight any disadvantages -in fact I can't think of any disadvantages for me
"Fool me once... "
As usual posting as A/C ( without any reason) tends to remove any serious credibility from your post.
In my experience KDE uses more resources than other Linux desktops but it's still quick even on modest hardware unless all the (large number) of mostly trivial effects are enabled.
"Because I will happily lay down real money that at least 80% of those self-proclaimed penguinistas are using Windows 8.n and have never owned a linux box in their lives. It's pretty easy to spot them if you've been using a linux distro since 1998 or before."
What ?
(Linux since the mid-90s, exclusively since ~2007)
Posted using Firefox 40.0.3, OpenSUSE 13.1
"Thanks for the recommendation for dark table"
Powerful and has many modules for image processing. I esp. like the profiled denoise if I have to boost the exposure by a large amount due to considerable underexposure.although I generally use a lot less than the default setting. Depending on the model/lens it might not be found in the lens correction module but that uses an external database. The shadows/highlight module is also very useful.
I've just updated Lazarus from 1.0.10 to 1.4.2
OpenSUSE software center website (http://software.opensuse.org)
Search for Lazarus, choose distro, 13.1 in this case, - choose 1.4.2 and press 1-click install. A few clicks and root password and it's done ( after a modest download time - it's quite big)
Note : The root password is for the local client GUI installer not the website
I'm sure you know the pitfalls of blindly installing software outside of the distro environment. Most people should be very conservative.
"buy into the fact that opening a terminal window for anything other than once in a blue moon disaster"
So don't use such a distro. Although I'm perfectly happy with the command line I use OpenSUSE so don't need to use the command line on a regular basis except where I've written CLI only programs and even then I usually wrap them up in a launchable icon form for regular use.
All system admin/program installs/updates via GUI (Yast2/Config desktop)