Slashdot Mirror

Is every wind turbine ALSO going to house a giant water reservoir?

There actually was a suggestion for something like that.

Is this supposed to be impressive, that such a massive investment of resources still can't replace the energy of even a single gas turbine on one small site?

Could you quantify that? I'm not sure how much a single gas turbine on one small site should produce, but a quick web search shows that GE's gas turbines produce 34 MW to 557 MW, so even the top end is less than the 659MW output given in the summary above.

Do you ever fly? What do you suggest other than petroleum-based fuel?

Biofuels work fine in jet engines.

Scramjets run on hydrogen.

It isn't quite 90%, but I get your point...

Companies hide income all the time, look at Apple, Microsoft, GE, etc.

That being said, they go to such lengths because the tax rate for them is 35% and they just aren't going to pay it if they can avoid it.

Lower it to 20% and many of those companies will bring that cash back to America and pay tax on it.

As for what is "income" for a company?

Example: GE

http://www.ge.com/investor-rel...

GE announced fourth-quarter 2014 operating earnings of $5.6 billion, with operating earnings per share of $0.56, up 6% from the fourth quarter of 2013.

So in the 4th quarter of 2014, GE earned $5.6 billion. Great, 20% of that goes to the US government or $1.12 Billion.

Now wait a minute you say, not all of that was earned in the US. Fair enough, the only deduction they can take is actual taxes paid in other countries on that income. If they paid a total of $500 million in taxes oversea to various governments, then they owe the US government $620 Million.

No other deductions, simple accounting, it is the only way to do it, or the games get played to the point of silly.

Example of silly:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

General Electric also paid ZERO corporate taxes. This is while they are laying off thousands and raking in record profits

Record profits? Maybe. The made 12B in net income in 2000, 17B in 2008, and 11B in 2010. Make of that what you will (I looked up the numbers on finance.yahoo.com and http://www.ge.com/annual00/financial/index.html)

Windturbines are hightech products. They seem so easy, but they are not.

1.) the blades
- these are aerodynamic blades
- they are CFD and FEM-caculated
- they are physically tested
- validating caculations with measurements

The technology and engineering knowledge that goes into the blade design is a highly protected secret to each manufacturer.

2.) the power train
- varying loads, from varying directions
- multipiple stress for the main bearing(s)
- dynamical simulated powertrains
- gear boxes with weights from 20 to 70 metric tons
- nacelle masses up to 500 metric tons,
- rotor masses up to 100 metric tons
- flexible blades up to 60 meters and above
made of fiber and carbon composite material

3.) generator, operation & control
- computers and sensor networks measuring with high resolution on the grid side and adjusting the powergeneration to grid spikes and lows
and try to dampen torque spikes on the power train.

Response times within sub 5ms .. for big rotating inertiamass.

Grid complaince, grid safety, load reduction.

4.) hub heights 80 meters and above

5.) rated power from 1 Megawatt up to 6 Megawatts

Wind turbines are highly engineered products,
and if they are not .. they fail.

The higher the rated power of those turbines goes
the more engineering effort has to be taken.

Btw. on the engineering side the U.S.
are head to head with european researchers, and engineers

http://wind.nrel.gov/designcodes/
http://www.ge.com/

"A company inherently operates in a particular sector."

No. Just no.

Here is one example to disprove that quote. There are others.

http://www.ge.com/

Go to the webpage and review everything they are involved in.

Otherwise I don't think you're far off the mark.

Google is ridiculously more profitable than NBC Universal or CBS:

Google: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=GOOG&annual
NBC: http://www.ge.com/ar2007/mda_segop_summary.jsp
CBS: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=CBS&annual

NBC and CBS are far more than TV networks, so it doesn't directly address your point, but presumably, those companies integrated other aspects of the broadcasting business into their operations to save money, not to spend it.

That they provide more eyeballs at a lower price point is a huge aspect of the success that Google has had; I don't know, but I expect that being cheaper is part of those lower prices.

Uh, Goodwill is the correct term.

Has GP looked at GE's balance sheet?

GE claims $4.5 billion in "Licenses, Patents, and Trademarks". While the GP is correct that these values primarily arise as a function of acquisitions or sale of assets, the only time that corporate evaluations really matter is during acquisitions, sale of assets, and other forms of stock/ownership valuations.

Let me put it the way GE puts it (and GE is the *gold standard* when it comes to Goodwill, except for perhaps the Federal Reserve, who has a totally invented balance sheet.) There are 9 companies with triple A credit ratings, and GE's ability to manage accurately manage goodwill is one of the reasons it is a triple A rated company.

Upon closing an acquisition, we estimate the fair values of assets and liabilities acquired and consolidate the acquisition as quickly as possible. Given the time it takes to obtain pertinent information to finalize the acquired companyâ(TM)s balance sheet, then to adjust the acquired companyâ(TM)s accounting policies, procedures, books and records to our standards, it is often several quarters before we are able to finalize those initial fair value estimates. Accordingly, it is not uncommon for our initial estimates to be subsequently revised.
Emphasis added for the benefit of readers.

You *do* just stick those things on your balance sheet; the issue is being able to justify them. If I put my good name on a financial statement to a bank, the bank probably won't take me seriously, unless my name is something like "Warren Buffet". If my name is "GE", and I "give" that name to some business effort, it is a very serious transaction with serious financial consequences, and I can potentially use that to either buy or sell assets, as well as finance offers, and issue debt.

The credibility of the "good will", and the managers who evaluate the relevant values is what determines the financial values of those intangibles. They're only intangible in that they are intellectual concepts, and in many ways are just as "real" as stock or other corporate paper holdings.

That's sad.
[...]
Who in American industry is still doing basic research?

GE still is up at Niskayuna, NY.

The broadcasters didn't sue Sony in the Betamax case; the studios did. (The original suit is Universal, et. al. v Sony.) It was their product that was allegedly being infringed by taping. The broadcasters either didn't care, or quietly supported taping since it would ultimately expand their audience reach.

Of course, today NBC and Universal are both owned by General Electric, so their interests are now aligned in a way that was legally impossible in 1976. Now that we've abolished the "financial interest" rules, the sharp divisions between content and conduit in US television have dissolved.

How do someone a get a "+4, Informative" when the information being presented is wrong?

Those ten companies aren't really competing, they are controlled by a small group of individuals. Most board members sit on the boards of several companies.

Would you care to prove that? Say, by naming the board members of each company then pointing out each board a person sits on. Start with say NBC, or more correctly General Electric which owns NBC. Then name what boards other than Walt Disney, which owns ABC, Steve Jobs sits on. Now about CBS, owned by Viacom, here's Viacom's board of directors.. To make is easier here's Disney's board of directors. Here's GE's Board of Directors.

I bet you won't find many directors that sit on more than one media company's board of directors, never mind "several".

About the source, I'll just say that when you start with a desired conclusion, it isn't hard to come up with data to support it. Reason isn't interested in finding out if free markets are they best, they take that on faith. They are out to prove what they already believe.

Exactly what I expected, you rag on who did the study not on what faults, if any, the study had despite my having asked you not too do so. Even opposed scientists critique research and studies not the views of the opposing scientists.

http://www.ge.com/stories/en/10676.html

NBC is owned by GE and GE advertises it's products on NBC so it's exactly the same. 20th Century Fox's movies are shown on Fox television and Fox recently got in trouble for that OJ interview based on a book published by a News Corp (Fox News' parent company) publisher. You'll also see ads for 20th Century Fox movies in the NY Post (owned by News Corp) so it's not just a TV thing either.

This is not an uncommon practice in any other industry. Google has done nothing wrong and the GP is right to say the only thing odd about this is they felt the need to respond at all.

Mike

I don't understand this issue since CF bulbs are whiter than incandecent bulbs. Incandecent bulbs are orange-ish which that's why when you take a picture indoors using automatic white balance, the camera produces an orange tint. CF bulbs are slightly bluish, but not as bad as incandecent.

If you really want real white, try The GE Reveal Bulbs. My wife uses them in her art studio. (They are basically incadecent bulbs with a blue cast over them to cancel the orange)

They have a wonderful facility in Niskayuna, NY on River Road (GECRD, not power systems)

http://ge.com/research/

BBH

BASF Research
Batelle
BBC Research & Development
General Electric Global Research

Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft
Motorola Labs
Microsoft Research
HP Labs
IBM Research
Intel Research
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Philips Research
Corporate Research
The Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
Toshiba Research Europa
Toyota Central R&D Labs
Viewpoints Research Institute

http://ge.com/research/grc_3_1_1.html

New York State's Capital District . . .Mohawk River near Albany, NY . . .Boston, New York and Montreal are only a couple of hours away* . . . newly renovated Proctor's Theatre . . .Saratoga is famous . . .New York City.

Notice how cleverly they go on and on, for a full page, without even once mentioning (although Proctor's Theater is in it) that Niskayuna is a suburb of . . .Schenectady.

They did, however, port Zork to the Cray, so who wouldn't want to work there? (Don't ask me how I know. It's classified. In fact, you didn't even hear it from me)

*For sufficiently large values of "couple." Unless you've got an Enzo, the cops aren't looking, you get all the lights and have a tailwind.

KFG

... can be an interesting place to work. Very much depends what you would get to work on, though. I guess presure on results out is almost always there in industral labs. But still, an interesting problem to pursue for few years can grant you the illusion you seek.

http://ge.com/research/

http://ge.com/research/

http://ge.com/research/grc_3_1.html

http://ge.com/research/

http://ge.com/research/grc_3_1.html

people name products and methodologies for a reason.

And what is this reason? Did the "black belt" become the "black belt" by whipping the ass of everyone else there? No, the position is just there. Of course, once you're the "black belt" long enough and demonstrated skill at training people you can become a "master black belt" which breaks whatever tenuous martial arts analogy that they had going.

A refutation of them is not unimportant, nor is it meaningless.

Your refutation contained no information and was therefore unimportant and meaningless. Try harder.

Incidentially, I find that GE says more about Six Sigma here than this executive level magazine says here, though I guess if your job is selling subscriptions then you better learn to say as little as possible in every issue, which probably explains where all the management-speak comes from in the first place.

Anyone ever seen General Electric's one second theater? It's an advertisement aimed directly at DVR users. They're one second spots at the end of a regular GE comercial that use one frame per still image. You can only read the contents if viewed using a DVR going frame-by-frame. The contents are usually odd or funny enough to make them worth looking for. It may not be the answer to the DVR commercial skipping problem, but it's certainly creative thinking that doesn't infringe on anyone's rights. I think GE should be praised for the idea.

Does anyone really think GE is liberal? They must be if NBC is liberal because GE owns NBC. How about Disney? Disney owns ABC. And until January of this year Viacom owned CBS. Are all these companies liberal?

The ad ("Images") mentionned above that uses sub-second sequences to catch attention is at the bottom of
http://www.ge.com/en/company/companyinfo/advertisi ng/tele_ads.htm

"Because the field is undefined. What is a mathematician? What do they do after they graduate?

Actually, most of us don't go on to become professional mathematicians at all.

Most mathematics graduates go on to work in statistics, finance, accountancy, programming, actuarial work, teaching, business, etc. Only a few stay on for postgraduate mathematics and beyond, involving either pure or applied mathematics. I suppose the last group is what you'd really refer to as "mathematical mathematicians".

Employers actually really like mathematicians. Suppossedly it has something to do with our "problem solving" abilities, or mathematical way of looking at things. Jeff Immelt, the head of General Electric, is actually an applied mathematics graduate!

Personally I think mathematicians have some kind of mystique about them, like an alchemist. "A mathematics graduate! He/she must be smart". It's unjustified I assure you. It all balances out though. Telling people my degree is like telling them my parents died in a car accident. "What do you do? Mathematics? Oh!!" **awkward 'I'm sorry' type stare**.

Also, we are lucky to be in a country where being green is good for business. I can think of some companies that are making a pretty penny off cutting emissions and helping others to do so.

I know GE is a huge and dangerous conglomerate, but WTF do they have to do with Google? Ohhh, you meant to say 'Google Earth', my bad. Try spelling it out next time, so that someone more important than me doesn't get confused and sue you.

Yeah, I hate this world where there are one or two mega players with enough clout to define the market. Apparently Universal was part of the Vivendi idiocy and was recently sold to NBC (a Division of GE now called NBC Uni).

Anyway, I decided to look up Universal Studios to see if they had a beefier press release. Here is a slightly longer article on Reuters. It sounds like NBCUni and Microsoft are siting in a back room brewing up some sort of concoction that the rest of the world will regret. This efforts appears to be part of something called BASCAP (Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy).

I wish these people would just realize that the way to beat piracy is simply to establish channels for distributing the movies that are neither too costly nor too burdensome to the public. Instead, we have monopolies working in backrooms with monopolies making something that is both expensive and restrictive to the point that piracy will continue to prevail.

What is the ethical problem with executing all the people in jail for life terms? They are otherwise going to die in jail anyways.

Non sequitor. The zygote or morula is going to be destroyed at time T, whether the method of destruction is research or the incinerator, whereas you are considering killing now a person who would not otherwise die until some unknown time in the future.

A closer example would be, what is the ethical problem with using the bodies of condemned criminals for research after they are dead? (Punting the ethical issues surrounding state homicide for the moment.) Provided that the victim of execution agrees (since we generally recognize an ethical right of people to have their corpse disposed of in a matter that they approve of), I don't think there are any, and thanks to one such person we have the Visible Man project.

We might consider that the parents have a proprietary interest in the cells in question, and that disposal should be according to their wishes; but assuming that is addressed, if the cells are about to be destroyed anyway, research seems ethically superior to the trash can.

MYTH #2: "New, innovative companies won't start up overseas."

Really? What do you think these laid-off chip designers are gonna do when they get back to Chennai? Sell trinkets to tourists?

MYTH #3: "R&D jobs don't go overseas. Hell, they don't even leave the US east and west coast, for the most part."

REALITY:

• GE Corporate Research in Bangalore and Shanghai
• HP Opens New Research Center in Singapore
• HP Bangalore Research
• IBM India Research Center
• IBM China Research Center
• Microsoft Research Beijing

Per nasscom.org, "A recent study on the biotech market by business intelligence firm, Ernst & Young, has shown that India has the potential to become a leading hub of biotech projects. Indian companies have the capability to enter segments such as manufacturing biogenerics, contract research services, clinical trials and even areas such as bio-informatics."

MYTH #5: "Ultimately, what xenophobes need to realize is that writing shitty code doesn't make anyone "high-tech." You're no more entitled to an inflated salary than the auto workers who saw their work moved overseas - if someone with no education can do your job cheaper, you don't deserve your job."

"Accenture in India has also been moving into front office work such as doing clinical data management for its pharma clients. Accenture's pharma team here, which consists of doctors, dentists and biologists, analyses data from tests and helps its pharma client to gain `time-to-market' advantage. "Normally, for a BPO, back office activities are the target, but we are beginning to spot opportunities in front office activities as well," Cole said."

GE will try to keep its revenue up by downplaying the usefulness of LEDs, promoting its bulbs as a more long-lasting and dependable resource used for decades.

You win the award for Most Clueless Asshat for 4/16/2005.

Do you think lightbulbs sales really concern Jeff Immelt?

Yeah, GE has a reputation for relying on "legacy" technology and standing in the way of technical advances. We'll ignore the following products lines:
http://www.gehealthcare.com/usen/index.html
http://www.ge.com/en/product/business/aviation.htm
http://www.ge.com/en/product/business/transport.ht m
and the list goes on....

You, sir, are a retard. Did you think that GE's net income of $4.04 BILLION is composed mainly of lightbulb sales?

GE will try to keep its revenue up by downplaying the usefulness of LEDs, promoting its bulbs as a more long-lasting and dependable resource used for decades.

You win the award for Most Clueless Asshat for 4/16/2005.

Do you think lightbulbs sales really concern Jeff Immelt?

Yeah, GE has a reputation for relying on "legacy" technology and standing in the way of technical advances. We'll ignore the following products lines:
http://www.gehealthcare.com/usen/index.html
http://www.ge.com/en/product/business/aviation.htm
http://www.ge.com/en/product/business/transport.ht m
and the list goes on....

You, sir, are a retard. Did you think that GE's net income of $4.04 BILLION is composed mainly of lightbulb sales?

If they could show nothing but TV commercials and keep an audience that way, they would. But they can't - people get bored - so they put dollops of infantile fantasy, emotional pornography, and corporate disinformation masquerading as news to simply keep your attention between the commercials.

Exactly. Why can't people see that big companies like NBC--and even smaller ones like UPN--do this for what big companies do best: making money? Ad revenue is one of the few ways the networks keep themselves alive, besides any infusions from parent companies and TV-themed stores; that is why the spots are on in the first place.

In this case it's...

1. Air television network
2. Market it to others as way to get their point and product across (for a fee) (Note: 1 and 2 are interchangeable)
3. Sell ad space to those interested
4. Profit!(tm)

...and thus that second-last step is known to all.

GE? Who the hell is the consumer that says "to hell with that $200 stove. I'll take that $700 GE! Because, hell, it's GE! They bring good things to life!"

A quick check at the Home Depot web site shows me a GE built-in dishwasher right next to a Hotpoint dishwasher. The GE is $370 and the Hotpoint is $350. For an extra $20 you can bet I'll take GE over Hotpoint any day of the week! No, I won't buy the GE Profile Stainless Steel interior model that has more tricks up its sleeve than Harry Houdini for $950. That's a different beast altogether.

The brand value article in Business Week is addressing EXACTLY the choice I'm talking about. On comparable products most people are willing to pay a slight premium to buy a product from GE rather than a product with the same features from a lesser-known manufacturer.

The real value of the GE brand is compounded by the fact that they make so much stuff: medical equipment, jet engines, consumer electronics, and light bulbs. Will I pay 50 cents extra for a GE bulb over a no-name brand? Absolutely -- especially if the bulb is in a hard-to-reach place that involves a ladder.

Add up all the products for which people are willing to pay a little more for the GE brand and you end up with a brand that has enormous value -- which is what Business Week is discussing.

Noteable ommission from this list: GE.

Given the push towards Health IT GE has been responsible for, and their data management systems, it seems odd that they would not be included. GE caught onto the importance of technology to health care well ahead of the pack, and I wonder if this is setting the stage for multiple competing standards, rather than the intended streamlined, uniform approach.

But since you seem to be curious about who really profits from Israeli defense spending, I'll give you a hint: They are not Israelis at all. Want to profit from Israeli defense spending yourself? Those companies are hiring like crazy right now. A buddy of mine just got a kick-ass job at Raytheon.

Or did you think Israel was building fighter jets in a garage behind the Kenesset building?

This is good work, but what is so special about it?

Using image analysis, "computers" these days do:

- Automatisation of drug discovery screening tests
- Diagnosis of skin cancer
- Detection of early breast cancers
- All sorts of QA in assembly lines
- And much much more, these are just examples you can find googling a bit.

Why is this news? If you go to any computer vision, image analysis or pattern recognition conference, you'll find many similar applications.

And I'm also certian that the US didn't just complete the first non-government manned space flight and doesn't have billions of dollars going to develop private space flight.

Give me a break.

China is emerging as an ecenomic powerhouse, and it looks like it will continue down that path, provided their government doesn't screw up. However please don't pretend like all good things come from China. I gave just a small list of the US companies that produce advanced hardware, including what drives almost all the devices you listed. Your MP3 player may be built in China but it's usually using TI DSPs and AD opamps.

You know it's perfectly possible for China AND the US to be economic powers, and for both to benefit from trade with each other.

I also found it interesting that Sony-Ericsson released a similar plastic coating for the screen of their new phones, but isn't saying a word about how it's made or what other applications it has.

NBC is owned by GE, which in turn owns GE Energy. With the resent history of power outages on July 13 in Grece, I wonder how they back up against that?

SWITCHABLE NANOTUBE DIODES made by scientists at the research arm of General Electric combine the practical electrical properties ofcarbon nanotubes (ability to carry high currents; ability to emit light) with the flexibility of being changed over from a p-n type of diode (allowing current to flow in one direction only) to an n-p diode type (allowing current only in the opposite direction). Most solid state transistors are three-terminal devices: current comes in at one terminal (the source) and exits at a second terminal (the drain) if a third terminal (the gate) carries a certain voltage, which has the effect of electrostatically clearing out a realm for charge carriers to flow through. In the GE device, the "realm" is a single-walled carbon nanotube (NT), while the "gate" is actually two separate gates located beneath the NT. These split gates can electrostatically dope the two ends of the NT in such a way that current will flow in only one direction or only in the other depending on the gate voltages. If you count the source, drain, two gate electrodes, and another electrode attached to an underlying silicon substrate, the device overall has five terminals. Diodes are intrinsically simpler than transistors, but up till now more work has gone into developing NT transistors than for NT diodes. The GE researchers (contact Ji-Ung Lee, leeji@research.ge.com) expect their device to function as both a field effect transistor (FET) or as a light emitting diode (LED). Because of its ability to carry high currents, and because the company in question is GE, it might also find applications in power electronics, where huge currents and voltages are to be found. (Lee et al., Applied Physics Letters, 5 July 2004, cover story; text at www.aip.org/physnews/select)

PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE is a digest of physics news items arising from physics meetings, physics journals, newspapers and magazines, and other news sources. It is provided free of charge as a way of broadly disseminating information about physics and physicists. For that reason, you are free to post it, if you like, where others can read it, providing only that you credit AIP. Physics News Update appears approximately once a week.

Unfortunately, the link in the article is for subscribers only.

There's a news item at GE's site, but it only says about as much as the article linked in the original posting.

Went through the GE research site to see what all is being done.

This one is under the area 'Advanced Computing Technologies' : ColorXpress/VisualFX
This definitely doesn't seem to be complex. Am damn sure it could have been a 1 semester undergrad project

In addition to whatever else my sibling posters might say, Thomas Edison founded GE. You have a valid point, but next time please check your facts.

HOW do Defense/Military Contractors get MONEY in all of this? Please tell. Were not shipping weapons, the only thing that we could use that they produce would be some high grade parts and rocket engines.

While the whole thing is still pie in the sky, IF the funding is approved I would guess that a the likes of General Electric, Boeing and Honeywell would get a nice fat slice.

This is just a guess on my part, so feel free to correct me if it doesn't pan out like this ;-)

The GAU-8 was usually loaded with a mixture of DPU and lead, the DPU was to crack armor and the lead is cheaper. They have also outfitted it with HEAP (high explosive armor piercing) ammunition, which would get very expensive very rapidly, but is a pretty wild way to spend money anyway. 30mm HEAP weaponry is actually overkill given that the A-10 can already saw a tank in half with its primary armament.

A number of people have pointed to the cost of non-salary benefits like health insurance. For comparison, here is what Cognizant, an off-shore IT outsourcing company lists as benefits packages for American and Indian employees. There is a notable difference.

Here's what GE Global Research offers in benefit packages to American , Indian and Chinese employees. Again, you can see that there are significant savings in benefit costs.