From: bill.sloman@ieee.org   
      
   On 4/02/2026 10:24 pm, john larkin wrote:   
   > On Wed, 04 Feb 2026 05:44:07 GMT, Jan Panteltje    
   > wrote:   
   >   
   >>> john larkin wrote:   
   >>>> On Tue, 03 Feb 2026 05:50:47 GMT, Jan Panteltje    
   >>> wrote:   
   >>>   
   >>>>> john larkin wrote:   
   >>>>>> On Mon, 2 Feb 2026 18:29:58 -0000 (UTC), Phil Hobbs   
   >>>>>  wrote:   
   >>>>>   
   >>>>>> john larkin  wrote:   
   >>>>>>> On Sun, 01 Feb 2026 11:58:27 GMT, Jan Panteltje    
   >>>>>>> wrote:   
   >>>>>>>   
   >>>>>>>>> john larkin wrote:   
   >>>>>>>>>> On Thu, 29 Jan 2026 14:09:28 GMT, Jan Panteltje    
   >>>>>>>>> wrote:   
   >>>>>>>>>   
   >>>>>>>>>>> john larkin wrote:   
      
      
      
   > Sure, China has cheap labor and can pollute all they want.   
      
   Nobody can. Once the air pollution in big cities is bad enough to start   
   killing people, the Chinese, like the Indians, started doing something   
   about it.   
      
   The Chinese have spent a lot on closing down dirty and inefficient   
   coal-fired power stations. They invested a lot on making solar cells on   
   a large enough scale to make them the cheapest source of electric power,   
   and we are now on the point reducing our CO2 emissions (not that you   
   have the sense to see that as pollutuion).   
      
   > Long-term prospects aren't good.   
      
   They are a lot better than they were a few years ago.   
      
   >> My Raspberries (not the food variant) are from:        the UK   
   >> ARM was invented in:                                                          
   the UK   
   >   
   > Yes, the brits still invent things. Mainland europeans don't very   
   > much. The Chinese and Japanese don't very much. That's interesting.   
      
   John Larkin doesn't know much about mainland Europe, and the newspapers   
   he reads aren't all that interested in what is going on there.   
      
   Blue LED's were a Japanese invention. American tend to be unaware of this.   
   >   
   >> You may have heard about ASML:                                        The   
   Netherlands   
   >   
   > They bought Cymer, in San Diego, to get the EUV technology. My company   
   > designed the first gen tin droplet electronics.   
      
   Phil Hobbs did the design work. You put the electronics together for   
   him. A curious observer might wonder why Philips were the firm to buy   
   Cymer. America had dropped the ball on semi-conductor fabrication a few   
   years earlier, so presumably none of the local firms were interested.   
      
   > The US invents things, more than any other country. There are lots of   
   > reasons for that. For example, we have lots of really smart Russian   
   > engineers here now.   
      
   And a strong culture of patenting anything that looks even faintly   
   patentable. The country is crawling with lawyers, and lawyer love patents.   
      
   When I was working at EMI Central Research in the UK one of my   
   colleagues in the medical ultrasound group submitted more patent queries   
   in one year - about fifty - than anybody else in the entire research   
   labs. None of them turned into a real patent. I got two patent out my   
   three years there - one was for a digital hyperbolic function generator   
   that got folded into a patent for an analog hyperbolic function   
   generator, even though it had never stuck me as patentable, and the   
   other one was for an idea that had struck me as obvious until I found   
   myself explaining why it was obvious to people who were skilled in the   
   art, and turned it into a patent query to save myself the trouble.   
      
      
      
   --   
   Bill Sloman, Sydney   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)