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Auto Industry's Fastest Processor Is 128Mhz
afabbro writes "GM stated that the 2011 Buick Regal will have the auto industry's fastest processor: 128Mhz, and 3MB of flash. 'Three meg of flash memory and 128MHz clock speed doesn't sound like a lot in terms of computing power until you consider the environment these controllers have to live in. Our controllers are made to operate reliably up to 260 degrees (127C) and down to -40 degrees (-40C) for the life of the vehicle.'"
Other plants can be used to make ethanol, but it's not being done widely. When cellulosic ethanol is workable on a mass scale, then the value of ethanol production might change to something that's of a net benefit to society.
All agriculture not based on returning the shit to the fields is inherently harmful. It amounts basically to hydroponics in a dirt (not soil) medium. Feeding humans without maintaining the soil has already destroyed much of the planet's arable land to the point where there would be worldwide starvation without exports from the Americas or acres of land dedicated to greenhouses and hydroponics in the nations where the food is eaten. All of which, just like the so-called "Green Revolution" farming used by big agribusiness today, is based on oil; synthetic fertilizers, synthetic pesticides, all the plastic that it's all made of, and all the energy to run it around. Topsoil-based fuels will lead us directly to a future where only the rich can afford to eat real food, which will be produced on hillside farms in locations too remote to factory-farm.
Consequently, as you say, only cellulosic ethanol is of a benefit to society. The analyses of ethanol's net energy value don't even take damage to the soil into consideration.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"