On Fri, Oct 19, 2012 at 1:57 PM, Michael Chesterton <che...@chesterton.id.au > wrote:
> Its primary goal is safety though, not efficiency. > > I want to add a linux angle, but can't think of one. > > The powers-that-be-here don't even want you to know what can actually be achieved with Linux. In Tokyo they have a crazy robot train (crazy for a sydney person) that runs into town and back. Anyway, you can sit where the driver would normally be. It's fully automated, and therefore, without doubt consumes less power than having a human being driving the train. I say this because an industrial pc having about 5w energy consumption. No metal is needed for the drivers compartment, or aircon, so there's definitely an energy saving there. The trains use a Linux RTOS like QNX. Which is very popular over there. The Japanese systems are very safe. They look at it the other way around in that when there are deaths, it's caused by human error. Not the machines. I tend to agree with their perspective. The issue is about Jobs. The Japanese don't mind having 10x Linux Engineers in preference to 10x Train Drivers. In Sydney, sadly, they seemingly would prefer to have 10x train drivers and less Linux Engineers than have the balance the other way around. The assertion is that Linux Engineers are dangerous and train-drivers and people that ride bicycles are not. We have to accept our backwards looking leaders. That's just how it is. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
