Posts by Endymion

Re: vowed to "never practise any form of tax avoidance".

Totally agree.

Tax avoidance is part of the fiduciary duty of a companie's officers, and it is board's resposibility to conduct tax planning so as to maximise profit for shareholder by reducing tax liabilities. Tax avoidance is completely legal - if UK Gov doesn't like people playing according to HMCE rules, then change them. so-called 'aggressive tax avoidance' is nothing of the sort - it's just companies being better at this game than the treasury and HMCE. A simple and transparent tax system would reduce the ability of UK Gov to play politically motivated games with the system, but also reducethe opportunities for their cronies to benefit in a way that the ordinary people can't, which isn't good for donations... it has ever been thus.

Re: 8,698,558

I believe this is the technology used in the Devialet D110 power amplifiers - class A stage provides voltage gain and a Class D stage provides the current?

Re: Success Story Eh?

Yes, that model worked very well for British Leyland, didn't it? Clearly you weren't around in the 1970s to see how that principle worked out last time around

Ok, they weren't set up as a not-for-profit organisation, but they lost money for the taxpayers at such a rate under public ownership they were forced to sell the remnants to British Aerospace for a pittance, so the dilemma of what to do with the profits never really arose. The Post Office was hardly a beacon of shining excellence in telecoms service delivery and innovation either. In fact which nationalised industries are still with us?.

There are far too many ways to avoid making a profit that don't involve delivering either an excellent service or value for money for customers and consumers. At least a profit motive drives innovation and an interest in launching revenue earning services that PAY for evolution of national infrastructure.

Re: The engine

The bugbear of older turbo installations was oil being carbonised by the heat after shut-off, and coking up the bearing housings, depriving them of an oil feed. This has largely been dealt with by water cooling the bearing housings and sometimes fitting an electrical circulation pump to keep the engine coolant circulating and avoiding heat-soak.

Lots of modern diesels have problems with variable nozzle turbos and a build-up of soot causing the vanes to seize up, causing an actuator fault. The rotating parts of the turbo have been absolutely fine in both cases. My Mercedes has needed two replacement turbos is 50,000 miles, and this is a very common type of failure for diesels that are driven around town a lot.

Petrol turbos don't suffer from this isssue, and are pretty reliable nowadays for the most part. There isn't a specific reliability issue caused by boosting small engines (provided the internals are strong enough and thermal limits aren't exceeded), although oil quality becomes more critical. The fuel efficiency gains make it inevitable that manufacturers will continue downsizing engines.

Re: Could be...

Yes, possibly. I didn't think that such detail orientation was required for the post, but some people are so picky about little things like that.

It woule be openreach, but Zen would have to request replacement on your behalf