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... provides a universal environment in which to run both Windows and UNIX applications on a single system.... reduce development time while leveraging existing employee skills sets.... a UNIX environment that runs on top the Windows kernel, enabling UNIX application and scripts to run natively on the Windows platform alongside Windows applications.... you can continue to get value out of your UNIX scripts and applications -- simply reuse them on Windows.

Windows NT has a minimum level POSIX compliance and has become the de facto client/server standard for small server requirements because of widespread usage.... Windows NT has been chosen as the server with the best workstation/small server capabilities. SUN Solaris' UNIX will continue as the operating system choice for enterprise or robust solutions....

Get some real information on fusion:

European Community, Fusion Programme

U.S. Fusion Energy Sciences Program

International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor or (ITER) site

a special Canadian ITER site

This page has a lot of links to different fusion sites around the world. These websites probably contain a lot more useful information than the slashdotted article.

By the way, my university happends to have a research center on plasma physics. It's not as easy as "some basic engineering skills, this site and the inspiration necessary to make your very own 'fusor' produce more energy than it consumes" =)

The CD is a "dead" media, it's not something that magically comes to life and starts transmitting information.

You know, that's just what I used to tell people about email. Remember the Good Times "virus"? I don't know how many emails I sent to people in the mid-nineties explaining to them that emails were just text and weren't "executed" in any way and thus were incapable of harming your computer. Just like (as my example went at the time) no audio CD, no matter how malicious, could contain instructions that could break your CD player.

Well, guess what? Now everyone* uses an email client that defaults to executing, without notification, code embedded in received emails. By changing the rules, they made a liar out of me in less than six years (the "Good Times" hoax first appeared in December of 1994; the "Love Letter" email worm appeared in May of 2000).

And in five or ten years, who knows? Maybe everyone* will be running CD player applications that default to "facilitating said information gathering and transmission".

You and I know better, and this doesn't personally affect us. But that doesn't change the fact that the estimated economic impact of the Love Bug was over $8 billion. Mind you, this is from something I thought was patently impossible a few years earlier.

Never say never.

* not everyone

The U.S. get the critical last fourth of its oil from the Middle East, te expensive fourth that drives our policy. The other 3/4, mostly domestic, is taken for granted. We also import from Nigeria and Venezuela, getting caught up in their politics, too. Then there's the rising star of Kazakhstan. It leads to conflicts of interest, to put it mildly.

The Times published a map a week or two ago showing int'l reserves and annual production by country -- wish I could find it, they did a nice job. Iraq has 1/10 of the reserves, and Saudi Arabia far more -- all easily extracted oil. (Another DOE chart.) Kuwait has about as much as Iraq, or Iran, and so on. Here is some of the data. Canada, like the U.S., doesn't have that long a future at current extraction rates. The USGS also has a detailed int'l map of projected reserves.

The Middle East, meanwhile, has a staggering amount of oil untapped. It makes me wonder why Iraq's Hussein doesn'y just kick back and get rich, buying the affection of his people. He has the oil. There's something missing, perhaps just his sanity.

The U.S. needs some long-term planning. One of these days we should just invade an oil-rich country and make a colony or something out of it. It fact, I think such plans are in the works as we speak.

Obviously I have an opinion or two... none of this means Canada is irrelevant, it's just too peaceful for us to get all worked up about and bomb or something. Disappointed?

I think Canadians make great neighbors. I never got used to that vinegar-on-french-fries thing, though.

Except we do have lots of oil. According to your Department of Energy (search for Canada) we are your biggest source for total oil imports and third biggest for just crude oil imports. There is a nice summary for Canada too. We may even be sitting on more oil than Saudi Arabia if we can ever fully develop Alberta's oil sands.

I think Canadians make great neighbors. I never got used to that vinegar-on-french-fries thing, though.

Except we do have lots of oil. According to your Department of Energy (search for Canada) we are your biggest source for total oil imports and third biggest for just crude oil imports. There is a nice summary for Canada too. We may even be sitting on more oil than Saudi Arabia if we can ever fully develop Alberta's oil sands.

A typical automotive gasoline engine has a brake efficiency of 38% these days. State of the art is over 40% and the DOE believes natural gas engines will do 50% by 2010. 25% is a rating I'd expect from something with an FAA certification.

I am in Ireland (the Republic of), hence the "here in Ireland" part of my previous post. ;) Here is a table that shows the October 2002 averages of petrol prices in European countries and in the US as a whole. The US Department of Energy breaks the US average down by region, and also includes information on tax percentages (33% of the pump price is tax in the US, compared to approximately 75% in the UK and Europe). Again, UK prices are undeniably higher on average than US ones, but European prices aren't always. It's also notable that California uses the "cleanest-burning gasoline in the world", according to the Western States Petroleum Association. I am trying to find comparison data between CARB Phase II gasoline and European diesel quality, as I know there are some who will say diesel is still cleaner. [Whether that's true or not in the case of the diesel used in Europe, I don't know. I do know that ARCO themselves admit diesel-fueled vehicles in California are 2% of vehicles on the road, but emit 30% of the nitrogen oxides present, which doesn't sound cleaner to me, at least not by that measure.]

When I purchased my diesel Beetle, someone suggested I look into BioDiesel. As far as I can tell, the only way I would be able to use BioDiesel in my car would be to purchase the stuff in bulk and store it somewhere. I don't think I can legally do that in my condominium. And at $1.90 to $3.00 a gallon, I don't think I can afford it compared to the $1.55 a gallon (or so) that I will generally pay for standard diesel.

I work in the DC area, so reducing emissions would seem to be a priority here. Except that someone apparently removed funding for BioDiesel. Someone who, I think, currently lives in the White House. Someone who, I think, has more of an interest in preserving oil company interests (being something of an oil man himself) than protecting even his own health.

Anyway, here's a couple of useful links:

BioDiesel.Org

US Government's Alternative Fuels Data Center Homepage

The last link is particularly nice. While I will fault the US government for doing anything substantive, they at least have provided a lot of interesting research on the topic.

Michael, please point your browser here. It's got both a station locator, and a route mapper (trip planner) so you can plan stops to refuel on long trips.

You think third world villages a really aware or concerned with the dangers high tech litter has?

India already has a lot of pollution control mechanisms. Plastic bags are banned in many Indian smalltowns. Delhi's buses are court-mandated to run on LPG alone.

There are a lot of implementation issues yes, but the pollution problem is getting serious attention in India nowadays.

Oh? Why not?

Why are people so clueless.

Were do you think electricity comes from? Check this page for a hint.

A Segway will be running, mostly on coal power. Now what do you think burns cleaner, gasoline or coal? Electrical vehicals are a load of crap until we develop a cleaner way to provide electricity in bulk.

The people working on the design knew it, and the reactor control rod system was being redesigned when the accident occured. This was a little reactor, developed as a crash program for a military project, and deliberately installed in the middle of nowhere so that should the worst-case accident occur, the effects wouldn't affect anybody other than those directly involved at the test site.

There are plenty of government sources of data that is free and open to anyone. The Census Bureau, Energy Information Administration, Commerce Department, a good starting place is FirstGov .

In addition, most state governments and even county level governments publish large amounts of data.

You cannot usefully project the current growth trend very far. First, energy consumption in 2000 averaged 1.3e13W. Assume that energy consumption doubles every 50 years, which is a growth of around 1.4% a year. Then in 1000 years energy use is about a million (2^20) times as large, or 1.3e19W. The energy received by Earth from the Sun is around 2e17W. The temperature of the Earth would have to increase a lot in order to radiate all that waste heat away.

Now jump to just 10000 years, when energy consumption has increased 1.6E60 times to 2e79W. The Sun outputs somewhere around 4e26W. 5e46 new stars will have to be acquired.

Talking about millions of years just gets absurd. The historic trend will have to change.

One thing I've often wondered is whether a typical solar cell produces more energy in its lifetime than it takes to manufacture it?

I'm sorry I can't cite a reference, but it was either Home Power magazine or the US Department of Engergy that claimed solar cells pay for their energy (in terms of CO2 emissions) after 2-5 years of use, depending on location. 2 closer to the US Southwest, 5 closer to the Canadian border.

"Oh, the ignorance....
Most == greater than 50%, right?
I have no more recent figures, but in 1998 in England, 78% of households had one or more cars. Go figure."

• Passenger cars per 1,000 population Graph

• "In the United States, there are three vehicles for every four people. In Western Europe and Japan, there is typically one for every two people." Article

Also England != Europe. Maybe you should try to be a little less England-Centric in your thoughts

It may interest you to know that only about 4% of American oil comes from the Gulf, let alone Iraq. 80% is produced domestically and most of the remaining comes from South America and Africa. Hence it's ludicrous to suggest that an American attack on Iraq will raise local oil prices.

Hmmm.....

This is from the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy

Darn treehuggers? Well, this link is even more interesting they are the EIA (Energy Information Administration), their Website is even labeled "Official Energy Statistics from the U.S. Government" coool!

Check out figure 51, a little more than 20% imports...

A simple Google search seems to indicate that most people seem to quote between 50 and 60% net oil import for the US and not 20%. Domestic US supply is on the decline and imports are on the rise. I also think that a little more than a quarter of the US imported oil comes from the Gulf Region or other middle eastern sources.

We really don't give to shits about the oil in Iraq, there isn't much there in relation to other countries, and we never were importing much from them anyway. We DO, however, import quite a bit from Kuwait, which is where the original "Desert Storm" came from.

Huh. And here I thought that Iraq has the world's second largest oil reserve (more than 10% of the world's supply), and in fact has a larger reserve than that of Kuwait.

- Rob

"and were putting out about 1 terawatt of EMR."

Where did they get all the electricity for that? Especially considering that the total electricity generating _capacity_ was 811 gigawatts for the US in 2000 (note all generators/plants are probably never at peak capacity at the same time)?

I'd say that terawatt number is as reliable as a unmaintained 10 year old car...

10% of US energy is produced using non-fossil fuel sources.

technologies involved in the production of renewable energy sources is improving considerably.

so when i say "extra CO2" i guess i really mean "more CO2" (unlike potential car fuel cells which run off H + O2). oh well, a little C02 probably would beat nasty batteries :)

What we need here is a minature tunnel boring machine .

Other respondents here have suggested digging through to the hidden chamber from outside. With a minature tunnel boring machine Archeologist could bore through to the mystery chamber without marring the appearance of the pyramids outside or any of the passages.

What? That would cost a mint! Well maybe, but afterwards it could be used to lay cable under the streets of congested city centers. We discussed the pneumatic tubes being recycled into internet conduit a little while ago.

"We (America) has arguably more oil than the Arab world."

Not so according to the Department of Energy fact of the week. It's only 2% of the world oil reserves. The cartel has 79%...

Note that the worldwide total billions barrels of oil equivalent for coal reserves is almost three times that of oil. And the natural gas reserve including hydrates is again three times the coal reserve. Plus, there is enough capturable wind energy in a few windy central-american states to supply all of the US with electricity. Additionally, hydrogen can be directly harvested from natural renewable sources such as sugar.

Oil is 'big' now, mainly because of transportation needs with internal combustion engines. Hydrogen engines will help change that.

"We (America) has arguably more oil than the Arab world."

Not so according to the Department of Energy fact of the week. It's only 2% of the world oil reserves. The cartel has 79%...

Note that the worldwide total billions barrels of oil equivalent for coal reserves is almost three times that of oil. And the natural gas reserve including hydrates is again three times the coal reserve. Plus, there is enough capturable wind energy in a few windy central-american states to supply all of the US with electricity. Additionally, hydrogen can be directly harvested from natural renewable sources such as sugar.

Oil is 'big' now, mainly because of transportation needs with internal combustion engines. Hydrogen engines will help change that.

"most oil in the US is not used in cars, its used for consumer/industrial goods and power generation."

Not so. The paper version of the sciam article mentions that two-thirds of the US oil consumption goes to transportation.

As found on this government site, Oil use for electrical power generation is last after coal, nuclear, natural gas, hydro energy, and even less than renewables : During the first 3 months of the year, total U.S. net generation of electricity was 900 billion kilowatthours, 3 percent lower than in 2001. Fifty percent of the generation was produced by coal-fired plants. This was followed by 22 percent from nuclear, 16 percent from gas, 7 percent from hydro, 2 percent from petroleum, and 3 percent from renewables.

Ummm...Saudi Arabia itself has 25 percent of the world's known oil reserves. The U.S. only has 3 percent of the world's known oil reserves.

"Electric wheels just dont turn as hard as gas-driven ones. (torque)"

Electric motors actually have more torque, pound-for-pound, than gasoline engines do. Furthermore, electric motors have a perfectly flat torque curve from 0 RPMs, whereas most gasoline engines don't hit their peak torque until at least 1,750 rpm. This means electric motors have a MUCH larger area under the torque curve !! Thus, I would argue electric motors have substantially more torque than gasoline engines. If you don't believe me, check out this link and this link.

This approach is useful, but it always leaves the possibility of leaks, and has limited capacity.

The process of mineral carbonation exothermically reacts CO2 with certain silicate minerals (or materials derived from these minerals) to yield carbonates that are stable on a geological time scale. There are more than enough of the desirable silicates (serpentine, olivine) to react with all the CO2 that will ever be produced by fossil fuel combustion.

Fascinating article from the US
DOE says we've known about this stuff for a century: Methane hydrates
form in generally two types of geologic settings: (1) on land in permafrost
regions where cold temperatures persist in shallow sediments, and (2) beneath
the ocean floor at water depths greater than about 500 meters where high
pressures dominate. The hydrate deposits themselves may be several hundred
meters thick.

How many hillsides do you have to cover with windmills to match the power generation of a Grand Coulee or a Hoover Dam?

Untapped wind potential of over 10,000 billion KWH (gawd what an ugly unit - why didn't they use quads?), which is some 3 times current US consumption.

Rosebud Sioux reservation is good for 35,000 megawatts (that's 35 gigawatts) in ONE COUNTY.

The real problems with wind power aren't that it doesn't exist, it's that most sources are a long way from where consumers are (and nobody likes big transmission lines), and it can't be scheduled (you either use it when it's available or throw it away, and you need backup generation for your base load). If we had a much more opportunistic pattern of consumption we could get maximum benefit out of this, but right now our whole system is tied to consumers being able to flick loads on and off whenever they feel like it and most of them pay a flat rate regardless of the immediate supply/demand situation. Trying to re-engineer that to squeeze the most out of intermittent supplies like wind is going to be like pulling teeth on an irritable and unanesthetized orca.

In order for the US to match the Danish goal, approximately 250 billion kilowatt hours would have to be produced for half the 100 million (approximate) US homes occupied today.

Not sure I understand the math on this, but here goes. From this 1997 report I see that the US used 94063.6 Trillion BTU's in 1997. That's not a very useful page, but this conversion page leads me to believe that I can convert that at a rate of 10,280 Btu/kWh. That gets me a total usage of 9.15 trillion kWh for 1997, which would mean about 4.6 trillion kWh would be needed to match the Danish goal.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, since I'm not entirely familiar with the conversions and estimates I was working with here.

Oh, and by the way, that would mean installing about 105,000 5MW wind turbines.

Looking at my home state of NY, using the same numbers, NY would require 4,545 5MW wind turbines.

In order for the US to match the Danish goal, approximately 250 billion kilowatt hours would have to be produced for half the 100 million (approximate) US homes occupied today.

Not sure I understand the math on this, but here goes. From this 1997 report I see that the US used 94063.6 Trillion BTU's in 1997. That's not a very useful page, but this conversion page leads me to believe that I can convert that at a rate of 10,280 Btu/kWh. That gets me a total usage of 9.15 trillion kWh for 1997, which would mean about 4.6 trillion kWh would be needed to match the Danish goal.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, since I'm not entirely familiar with the conversions and estimates I was working with here.

Oh, and by the way, that would mean installing about 105,000 5MW wind turbines.

Looking at my home state of NY, using the same numbers, NY would require 4,545 5MW wind turbines.

...a lot of the renewable, or green energy policies have been put on hold.
You can read about renewable, or green electricity in this great report Green Power Marketing Abroad: Recent Experience and Trends from NREL'sGreen Power Network.
For lots of technical info on wind power, check out National Wind Technology Center which has a good online library.
The Danish Wind Industry Associationhas a lot of great info about Denmark's tremendous growth in wind power.

...a lot of the renewable, or green energy policies have been put on hold.
You can read about renewable, or green electricity in this great report Green Power Marketing Abroad: Recent Experience and Trends from NREL'sGreen Power Network.
For lots of technical info on wind power, check out National Wind Technology Center which has a good online library.
The Danish Wind Industry Associationhas a lot of great info about Denmark's tremendous growth in wind power.

Sounds like you might have come across some equipment from an attempt to build a nuclear ramjet. It was called
Project Pluto.

The US's imported crude and refined petroleum are almost entirely for automobiles, although the waste product from the crude is used for plastics.

The US does have many known yet undeveloped oil fields as strategic reserves. Removing the dependance on gasoline, petroleum diesel, and heating oil would make supplying the other petroleum needs use about 1/10 the currently used crude oil.
Here's a breakdown of how much crude oil is needed for different market segments:
D.O.E

The thing a lot of people are seeing is that biodiesel is an extremely likely candidate for making the transition away from foreign oil. Electricity generation needs aren't even an issue here. But your exactly right, electric car supporters just turn a blind eye to the cars being impractical and search someone out to blame the failures on. One last thing, battary should be spelled battery.

The sources used for this post: A government study of power plant efficiencies, The EV1 specs page and a government report on the efficiency of the 2002 mazda 626 (the most efficient non-HEV sedan this year).

-A coal powered power plant produces 920 kg of CO2/MWh -> 920/1000 = .92 kg / KWh

-An EV1 uses 26 KWh/100 miles -> 26*.92 = 24 kg CO2/100 miles

-average car produces 9 kg CO2/gallon of gas

-A 2002 Mazda 626 gets 1 gallon/26 miles -> 9kg/26 miles.

-Compare: an EV1 gets .24 kg CO2/gallon, a car gets .35 kg CO2/gallon...

So the difference exists, and is actually quite significant, but ultimatly the EV1 gets better fuel mileage. (Mind you, this does not count any of the inefficiencies introduced in the transmission of the electricity, nor does it account for highway driving, i used city driving stats only.)

Check out project Gasbuggy as well. Small device was used to help extract natural gas from the ground. DOE Site here

really are....It must be tracked...

Information and who's accessing it....

So as many may be trying to rationalize invasion of privacy by thinking only of terrorism excuses, perhaps there is the other side of the coin as to what the feds may be looking for......like those assessing information in order to see the truth:

take a look at this: World Meters

Take a good look at the different meters! Then look at this: What the World Wants

We have the technology and we have the funds to make good things happen.

So why is it not happening? You want to fight about it?

Assuming you don't want to fight about it, that fighting is not the goal or main desire of people, then there must be something else, something bigger that is the problem. You know, considering annual world military spending is $780 billion dollars (US) and to solve the major world humanitarian problems only needs 1/3 of that....

The problem has to be more than something under a trillion dollars.

A CIA Fact Sheet on Indonesia -- see the religion percentages (88% muslim).

OK, (given the above muslim population of indonesia): from the pbs trillion dollar bet article:

"In the summer of 1997, across Thailand, property prices plummeted. This sparked a panic that swept through Asia. As banks went bust from Japan to Indonesia, people took to the streets - events so improbable they had never been included in anyone's models."

and in Indonesia May 1998:

"Sources all over Asia tell Uscher that Asians know about local corruption but believe America is taking advantage of the situation to grab Asian markets and Asian wealth."

and (read the article!!!) another article from CNN:

"The austerity measures were a condition of the International Monetary Fund's $43 billion aid package to bail out the southeast Asian nation. "

World Bank wanted to help Indonesia out but charge interest (usery) entrapment???? Funny how China is the only country who did not participate in this stock game and are better off then the rest of us for not doing so.....

Where the US bailout was only (pbs article):

"We expect that they're going to explain to the members of this Committee why the Federal Reserve has organized the $3.5 billion bail-out for billionaires, why Americans should be worried about the gambling practices of the Wall Street elite"

And there is Something Else I have run across for that timeline as well (making the "trillion dollar bet" just icing on this cake?):

(note: overall I find information from this resource to be integratingly correct enough to be both useful and insightful, though with a touch of blind bias towards capitalism, though it does try not to be blindly biased, it is to subjective to capitalism to completely avoid it.)

"During the 1993-1999 bubble era of false economic progress, many CEOs, executives, employers, employees, even customers adopted the scams of clintonian-era politicians, lawyers, journalists, academics to become increasingly dishonest, corrupt, even criminal. The bubble-building, stock-market fraud began when Chairman Alan Greenspan clintonized the
Federal Reserve. He signaled that politicization by blatantly breaking a time-honored apolitical precedent when he sat as a special guest in the president's box during Clinton s first State-of-the-Union address. Greenspan, the former acolyte of capitalism-champion Ayn Rand, then married a socialist/clintonian journalist. His drive to create a Clinton-boosting, economic boom -- a high-tech bubble economy -- escalated from that point. He with Robert Rubin and Bill Clinton artificially increased the value of the dollar, relentlessly increased the M-3 money supply, recklessly created sloshing liquidity, and pied pipered consumers and corporations into bankrupting debt. He engineered those cancerous long-term policies to continually fuel the equity markets for baleful political ends and unearned glory.

The bubble burst in early 2000 causing losses of four-trillion dollars. After several sharp bear-market rallies, those equity losses launched a long-term economic decline -- the feared L-shaped recession or worse."

Oh yeah and this 5 year stock market link comparing the DOW with the S&P and most important the NASDAQ. Where you can tell where the money went and also know what the dot coms were all about.

Given the above

From theCBS article on the NSA (National Security Agency) total system failure:

"In January 2000, Gen. Mike Hayden, the director of the NSA, received a call from the agency's watch officer alerting him that all of its computers had crashed."

In that same article (in fact in the previous paragraph):

"A phone call intercepted by the NSA is often the first warning that a terrorist such as Osama bin Laden is planning an attack against Americans. To find that threatening phone call, email or radio transmission among the billions made daily, the NSA relies on rooms of supercomputers."

The date of this CBS article is Aug 29, 2001.

Do you really think maybe Y2K brought the systems all down? For what is supposed to be the top spy agency in the US? (they don't say what caused the three and a half day crash.)

Or do you perhaps see a simpler Truth to the matter, such as:

Stock market gamblers and Gov. screwed up the world economy so bad and especially for muslims that the NSA had damn good reason to KNOW what was going to happen and that they needed an excuse for their total inability to deal with it.

*And then there is this, how might Afghanistan participate in global* *humanitarian issues:*

And the Bill of Rights

How about now? Do you want to fight now? And if you were an Afghan Muslim, instead of a US citizen?

Targets....White House for it's political control over Pentagon military backed control over World Trade Center ....world economy.

We taught them how to do it, How to fight smart, how to learn what they need to know and where they can get supplies (anthrax, planes, etc..) from us to use against us....... then we lite a bon fire under their ass to motivate them into action while we turned our backs to intelligence....played ignorant......so they could more easily do it.

And Ted Turner (CNN) said something about the attack being an act of desparation. Which he later apologized for.....because of why?

Either way, if you really want to spend hours digging through all manner of excellent research and papers on alternate fuels, feel free to peruse the US Department of Energy's Alternative Fuels Data Centre.

Diesels do not burn petrol or any other highly volatile fuel (although they can burn jet fuel, kerosene, or home heating oil, with varying degrees of sucess).

Of course you are right, I simply used the two extremes diesel fuel vs petrol to make a point: fuel has different properties. Peanut oil is not diesel fuel, vegetable oil is not diesel fuel, biodiesel is not 100% diesel fuel and even among the diesel blends the properties differ dramatically.
See the DOE's fuel property database.

Yes, in the good old days of low-pressure distribution pumps (3000-5000psi as one other slashdotter mentioned) you simply could change the injection timing by tampering with the mechanically governor.
With modern cars being sooner a mobile network of dedicated ECU's, you can't do this anymore. Not only because of the inaccessability but also because you now have some more objectives than just burning fuel somehow to release torque on the flywheel: You need to control the combustion in order to comply with emission legislations.
I do not know if your extensive practical experience covers this topic as well. Usually NOx and smoke show contrary tendencies, so does CO2 and NOx, engine response and smoke etc... you have to think about all those factors when designing an engine and a combustion process. Really, it's not the old days anymore!
EPA staff has released an excellent paper where they try to summarize latest trends. Definitely worth a read!

To recap: Modern diesels burn "biodiesel" with no modifications. They can also burn vegetable oil with a few minor modifications, mostly because that's what Dr. Diesel originally designed his machine for.

Theoretically "minor" adjustments but this is only valid for the designer/manufacturer, not the individual customer. See above.
BTW: I am not quite sure that Rudolf Diesel ever was a "Dr.", AFAIK he studied Mechanical Engineering in Munich, but that's it. Just because other web sites keep calling him "Dr." doesn't mean it is true... But I'm not 100% sure about this either.

Diesels do not burn petrol or any other highly volatile fuel (although they can burn jet fuel, kerosene, or home heating oil, with varying degrees of sucess).

Of course you are right, I simply used the two extremes diesel fuel vs petrol to make a point: fuel has different properties. Peanut oil is not diesel fuel, vegetable oil is not diesel fuel, biodiesel is not 100% diesel fuel and even among the diesel blends the properties differ dramatically.
See the DOE's fuel property database.

Yes, in the good old days of low-pressure distribution pumps (3000-5000psi as one other slashdotter mentioned) you simply could change the injection timing by tampering with the mechanically governor.
With modern cars being sooner a mobile network of dedicated ECU's, you can't do this anymore. Not only because of the inaccessability but also because you now have some more objectives than just burning fuel somehow to release torque on the flywheel: You need to control the combustion in order to comply with emission legislations.
I do not know if your extensive practical experience covers this topic as well. Usually NOx and smoke show contrary tendencies, so does CO2 and NOx, engine response and smoke etc... you have to think about all those factors when designing an engine and a combustion process. Really, it's not the old days anymore!
EPA staff has released an excellent paper where they try to summarize latest trends. Definitely worth a read!

To recap: Modern diesels burn "biodiesel" with no modifications. They can also burn vegetable oil with a few minor modifications, mostly because that's what Dr. Diesel originally designed his machine for.

Theoretically "minor" adjustments but this is only valid for the designer/manufacturer, not the individual customer. See above.
BTW: I am not quite sure that Rudolf Diesel ever was a "Dr.", AFAIK he studied Mechanical Engineering in Munich, but that's it. Just because other web sites keep calling him "Dr." doesn't mean it is true... But I'm not 100% sure about this either.

Having worked with the development of high-pressure direct-injection diesel engines at both Volkswagen and Volvo, I am quite critical towards any replacement fuel that has not been widely and thoroughly tested.

To begin with, some links for self study:
- Dieselnet.com has a great glossary and provides some excellent links
- Delphi has some nice PDF's on Unit Injectors and Common Rail
- Here some information from Bosch - Siemens has some nice pictures of injection systems, mainly common rail

Due to the very high pressures (up to 2100 bars) and therefore high temperatures with modern fuel injection systems, you really go to the limit of what diesel fuel can do: You use it simultaneously as fuel, coolant and oil and it takes a good blend to fulfill all these requirements! The chemical formula is important as well as the physical properties. The DOE has a webpage about diesel fuels. Have a look at their online diesel fuel property database and see which properties are essential for characterizing fuel. Other important factors are
- durability
- particles/filtration
- compressability/resistance against cavitation


Not to forget resistance of all sealings etc against the fuel. Think RME and you know why almost everybody in the industry (e.g. SCANIA) only approves blends with max 5% alternative fuels...

Don't get me wrong, but if those fuels are ruining the car, we really can't talk about environmental advantages then, now can we? On the other hand, serious life cycle analysis like this one and field studies will hopefully help to develop cleaner cars. If those are then driven by gas engines, diesel engines or fuel cells... who knows?

Having worked with the development of high-pressure direct-injection diesel engines at both Volkswagen and Volvo, I am quite critical towards any replacement fuel that has not been widely and thoroughly tested.

To begin with, some links for self study:
- Dieselnet.com has a great glossary and provides some excellent links
- Delphi has some nice PDF's on Unit Injectors and Common Rail
- Here some information from Bosch - Siemens has some nice pictures of injection systems, mainly common rail

Due to the very high pressures (up to 2100 bars) and therefore high temperatures with modern fuel injection systems, you really go to the limit of what diesel fuel can do: You use it simultaneously as fuel, coolant and oil and it takes a good blend to fulfill all these requirements! The chemical formula is important as well as the physical properties. The DOE has a webpage about diesel fuels. Have a look at their online diesel fuel property database and see which properties are essential for characterizing fuel. Other important factors are
- durability
- particles/filtration
- compressability/resistance against cavitation


Not to forget resistance of all sealings etc against the fuel. Think RME and you know why almost everybody in the industry (e.g. SCANIA) only approves blends with max 5% alternative fuels...

Don't get me wrong, but if those fuels are ruining the car, we really can't talk about environmental advantages then, now can we? On the other hand, serious life cycle analysis like this one and field studies will hopefully help to develop cleaner cars. If those are then driven by gas engines, diesel engines or fuel cells... who knows?

Having worked with the development of high-pressure direct-injection diesel engines at both Volkswagen and Volvo, I am quite critical towards any replacement fuel that has not been widely and thoroughly tested.

To begin with, some links for self study:
- Dieselnet.com has a great glossary and provides some excellent links
- Delphi has some nice PDF's on Unit Injectors and Common Rail
- Here some information from Bosch - Siemens has some nice pictures of injection systems, mainly common rail

Due to the very high pressures (up to 2100 bars) and therefore high temperatures with modern fuel injection systems, you really go to the limit of what diesel fuel can do: You use it simultaneously as fuel, coolant and oil and it takes a good blend to fulfill all these requirements! The chemical formula is important as well as the physical properties. The DOE has a webpage about diesel fuels. Have a look at their online diesel fuel property database and see which properties are essential for characterizing fuel. Other important factors are
- durability
- particles/filtration
- compressability/resistance against cavitation


Not to forget resistance of all sealings etc against the fuel. Think RME and you know why almost everybody in the industry (e.g. SCANIA) only approves blends with max 5% alternative fuels...

Don't get me wrong, but if those fuels are ruining the car, we really can't talk about environmental advantages then, now can we? On the other hand, serious life cycle analysis like this one and field studies will hopefully help to develop cleaner cars. If those are then driven by gas engines, diesel engines or fuel cells... who knows?

Having worked with the development of high-pressure direct-injection diesel engines at both Volkswagen and Volvo, I am quite critical towards any replacement fuel that has not been widely and thoroughly tested.

To begin with, some links for self study:
- Dieselnet.com has a great glossary and provides some excellent links
- Delphi has some nice PDF's on Unit Injectors and Common Rail
- Here some information from Bosch - Siemens has some nice pictures of injection systems, mainly common rail

Due to the very high pressures (up to 2100 bars) and therefore high temperatures with modern fuel injection systems, you really go to the limit of what diesel fuel can do: You use it simultaneously as fuel, coolant and oil and it takes a good blend to fulfill all these requirements! The chemical formula is important as well as the physical properties. The DOE has a webpage about diesel fuels. Have a look at their online diesel fuel property database and see which properties are essential for characterizing fuel. Other important factors are
- durability
- particles/filtration
- compressability/resistance against cavitation


Not to forget resistance of all sealings etc against the fuel. Think RME and you know why almost everybody in the industry (e.g. SCANIA) only approves blends with max 5% alternative fuels...

Don't get me wrong, but if those fuels are ruining the car, we really can't talk about environmental advantages then, now can we? On the other hand, serious life cycle analysis like this one and field studies will hopefully help to develop cleaner cars. If those are then driven by gas engines, diesel engines or fuel cells... who knows?

Personally, I am looking forward to more widespread use of geothermal heat exchange systems (see this document and a few links at the bottom of that page for more info) to gain efficiency and save energy (and money). As every VW Bug owner knows, air is okay as a heat exchange medium, but it is not the best. Using the ground to move the energy around makes a whole lot of sense, and can be tacked on to an existing A/C setup (with a whole lot of digging, of course).

Living in Phoenix as I do, I can definitely appeciate this invention, and let's not forget Carnot.

Vison Quest's windfarm of 67 turbines generate a peak capacity of 43.5 MW. I can't find figures for a city the size of Boston, but NY has a forecasted demand of 10,470 MW for 2001. However, don't think of either wind farms or something else. As this poster shows, you can have wind farms AND something else, mainly farm land.

When looking at only crude oil, Saudi Arabia is our biggest single supplier. However, once you add in gas and refined products, Canada blows everyone out of the water.

Take a look at this PDF of oil and oil product imports to the US for 2001.

The original post suggested that all oil money goes to support terrorist regimes. Look over those import numbers and you'll see that while we do import a great deal of petroleum products from Arab countries (which tarring Arab nations as terrorist is pretty racist anyway), there's a lot more coming to us from places like Venezuela, Canada, Mexico, etc.

As for offshore drilling and Alaska...while the technology of searching for oil has improved tremendously, we still can't tell exactly how much is there and how much we'll get out until we poke a hole in the ground. That's why the statements against drilling in ANWR saying "there's only x months worth of supply there" are so misleading.

I'm really suprised that the oil companies haven't waged a PR campaign for the image of oil wells. Everyone apparently has images in their mind of the old oil rush days in Texas and Oklahoma, where big black geysers shot into the sky for days. It simply isn't like that anymore. Look at the current wells in Alaska. Look at the gas production wells in the Gulf near Mobile. They're all among the cleanest facilities you can find.