The Zeitgeist Movement... why not?

[paximperium]

UNESCO: http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=29008&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

Private Groups:
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Pages/home.aspx
http://www.iie.org/

 

[Travis]

There's also the Fulbright Program that has had pretty good results.

 

[lightfire22000]

Depends on what you mean by "fraudulently." Cars, like any other designed object, have a designed lifespan or "life expectancy." I believe the current standard is eight years or 150,000 miles. There is no technological reason why we couldn't overengineer cars and give them a twenty-year life expectancy, nor is there a technical reason why we couldn't design them out of Kleenex and spit with a one year life expectancy.

LOL, but sometimes cars have risks that are unrelated to automobile aging. The odds of certain occurrences, say fender benders, don't change with automobile longevity. However, the damage caused does. If a twenty year car can't be driven, and a ten year car can't be driven, the ten year car is the more minimal loss. That's one possible advantage of built-in obsolescence.

 

[drkitten]

LOL, but sometimes cars have risks that are unrelated to automobile aging. The odds of certain occurrences, say fender benders, don't change with automobile longevity.

Actually, catastrophic damage is usually factored into the MTTF figures for systems, at least if the risks are large enough to be measurable. How many fender-benders do you get into in five years? If the insurance company statistics say one per five years, then part of designing a car for twenty-years involves designing it to make sure it can take a fender-bender without loss of drivability -- and for that matter, designing it to take a once-in-twenty-years major accident without loss of drivability. That's part of why they do the crash-test ratings -- which are indeed a major part of the costs of automotive engineering.

Or conversely, if you're designing a disposable car with a one year lifespan, you may not worry about collision damage at all.

Now, there are of course limits; I don't think anyone has reliable figures for the likelihood of a car getting hit by a meteorite or for survivability against air-ground missiles. And in an area where air-ground missile strikes are yearly events, it may not be economically practical to design a car for a twenty-year lifespan (I don't think we can design tanks to take twenty missile hits.)

 

[realpaladin]

(I don't think we can design tanks to take twenty missile hits.)

Technically, we could, but they would not be of much practical use; the immense weight of armor, reactive armor and the sheer bulk of the thing would defeat at least two design-goals; speed/agility and low visibility.

Then you would need a contingent of grunts to shield it off against some guy just running up to it and start working on it with a spanner.

 

[drkitten]

Technically, we could, but they would not be of much practical use; the immense weight of armor, reactive armor and the sheer bulk of the thing would defeat at least two design-goals; speed/agility and low visibility.

Then you would need a contingent of grunts to shield it off against some guy just running up to it and start working on it with a spanner.

I stand corrected.

 

[paximperium]

Technically, we could, but they would not be of much practical use; the immense weight of armor, reactive armor and the sheer bulk of the thing would defeat at least two design-goals; speed/agility and low visibility.

Then you would need a contingent of grunts to shield it off against some guy just running up to it and start working on it with a spanner.

Panzerkampfwagen VIII Maus
192metric tons!!!
Top speed: 8mph

 

[lightfire22000]

Actually, catastrophic damage is usually factored into the MTTF figures for systems, at least if the risks are large enough to be measurable. How many fender-benders do you get into in five years? If the insurance company statistics say one per five years, then part of designing a car for twenty-years involves designing it to make sure it can take a fender-bender without loss of drivability -- and for that matter, designing it to take a once-in-twenty-years major accident without loss of drivability. That's part of why they do the crash-test ratings -- which are indeed a major part of the costs of automotive engineering.

Or conversely, if you're designing a disposable car with a one year lifespan, you may not worry about collision damage at all.

Now, there are of course limits; I don't think anyone has reliable figures for the likelihood of a car getting hit by a meteorite or for survivability against air-ground missiles. And in an area where air-ground missile strikes are yearly events, it may not be economically practical to design a car for a twenty-year lifespan (I don't think we can design tanks to take twenty missile hits.)

Yeah, but it's still a bigger investment to buy a car that lasts 20 years. A short term car is still a safer bet overall. There are also numerous ways cars can breakdown. I'm going by real experience in power boat manufacturing, which isn't automobiles, but it's more similar than one might think when dealing with obsolescence.