However, no public source has published what is the radar cross section (RCS) of Global Hawk.
If Global Hawk's shape has been tuned for low RCS with a combination of designing the shape to be naturally low in RCS and the plane's skin uses radar-absorbent materials, then even that new Chinese SAM will have great difficulty trying to shoot it down, especially when you fly it at over 65,000 feet altitude.
Actually, Global Hawk has a built-in satellite communications antenna, which does allow for real-time monitoring and adjustment of flight route.
This makes it much more flexible than the old Teledyne Ryan Compass Cope RPV from the 1960's, which was designed for a fairly similar mission to Global Hawk but flew on a pre-programmed profile. Also, the nice thing about Global Hawk is that you don't need a dedicated launch aircraft like what the Compass Cope RPV's required, which saves a lot on operational costs.
What's interesting is that Global Hawk represents the fulfillment of the original goal of the old Teledyne Ryan Compass Cope project from the 1960's: a very high-altitude unmanned reconnaissance drone.
However, with access to GPS signals plus a real-time satellite link, Global Hawk can precisely controlled to fly over areas of military interest, unlike the Compass Cope drone, which was flown on a pre-programmed route.
Re:1.7 GHz is a lot like a 1.2GHz Athlon
on
What 1.7Ghz Is Like
·
· Score: 2
I think the problem is that even the current kernel for Linux (2.4.3) and the upcoming Windows XP are not going to take advantage of the longer pipelines and SSE2 instructions on the Pentium 4 out of the box just yet.
It's only a few high-end applications and high-end games that will use the power of the Pentium 4, and even those are very uncommon nowadays.
I think people are going to realize that when AMD goes to the Palomino Athlon core, there still will be no advantage to going to Pentium 4.
All the ranting has got to be most ridiculous b.s. I've read on Slashdot.
What people don't understand about Nintendo is that unlike Sega, Nintendo is a profitable company, thanks to the extreme success of the Pokémon franchise. After all, Pokémon breathed new life into the Game Boy, and in fact I've always said that the success of Pokémon helped pay for Game Boy Advance and GameCube development.
Besides, Nintendo's in-house programming teams vie with Sega for the best in-house game programming team in the world. The Mario and Zelda franchises demonstrate how great Nintendo's programmers are, and I'm sure they'll create superb games for GameCube.
Besides, now that Sega is committed to writing games for GameCube, expect a lot of great games for GameCube by this time next year.:-)
One thing people forget about the Global Hawk is the fact the cruising altitude is almost the same at the U-2: around 70,000 feet.
At that altitude, it is very difficult to shoot down unless you have a pretty big SAM missile; because the Global Hawk very likely has stealth characteristics thanks to its shape, the use of radar absorbent materials and use of engine exhaust cooling to reduce IR signature, it will also be hard to find on modern sensors, too.
What's interesting is that Global Hawk essentially fulfills the promise of the old Compass Cope project from the 1970's, when Boeing and Teledyne Ryan both built prototypes of a large reconnaissance drone capable of flying above 65,000 feet; Compass Cope was cancelled due to budgetary reasons.
I think for a company that deals in Linux to be successful, you need to be able to tag along with an already successful firm.
Red Hat Software lucked out because their distribution of Linux has become pretty much the de facto distribution, used by such big companies as Dell Computer, Compaq, IBM, and so on.
I think one thing that helps India is the southern tip of the Indian sub-continent is much closer to the Equator than any Chinese launch facility.
This means the Indian space agency can better use the assist of the Earth's rotation, so you don't need a fairly large launch rocket like the US, China and Russia has to do from their native launch sites. It's the reason why the European Space Agency built their launch pads in French Guiana--only 6 degrees north latitude from the Equator. It's also why Boeing headed the Sea Launch consortium that has a floating launch platform; the floating platform is at the Equator out at sea when the rocket is launched, so you don't need a big rocket to achieve geosynchronous transfer orbit.
If your computer supports 168-pin DIMM's, there's NO excuse to save money by not installing more system RAM in the computer and getting a modern, higher-capacity hard drive. Hard drives are dirt-cheap on a per-megabyte basis nowadays, and RAM is also extremely cheap even with the very recent slight rise in prices.
Regardless of operating system, installing more RAM and installing a fast ATA-66/100 7200 RPM hard drive makes a huge difference in performance, sometimes as much as 50 to 75 percent faster; this is due to substantially reduced need to use the hard drive as virtual memory and faster hard disk access.
One thing that is really killing Intel is their insistance on supporting that expensive RDRAM technology. Why pay US$140-$160 for 128 MB of PC800 RIMM when you only need to pay US$60-80 for 128 MB of PC2100 DDR-SDRAM DIMM? Or even less for PC-133 SDRAM DIMM?
In this is day and age most programs run well on a 233 or less, the most processor intense thing we do is watch DvD's ripped to DiVX and this can be done on 350 or 400. My point is don't bother with any of the high end stuff, very likely anything faster than 600 M processor on a 100 M bus will be fine for the forseeable future. Spend your money instead on a large fast hard drive, a good Video Card, decent sound card/speakers and tons of memory. You will probably save yourself enough money take take your Sigificant Other out to dinner and a movie.
AMEN.
It feels like I am shouting at a bunch of non-believers when I've been espousing that getting a faster hard drive and a lot more system RAM is substantially cheaper and offers performance increases as much as 50 to 75 percent. Once the Intel Celeron went to the on-die L2 cache design running at CPU clock speed, that made the CPU extremely viable for 90% of computer users out there.:)
A Celeron 400 MHz or faster is easily capable to decoding MPEG-2 video from a DVD completely in software. With a fast enough HD and enough RAM, the decoding actually goes pretty smoothly.
One of the reasons why I have invested time and money in Linux is because it has given new life to my old and obsolete hardware. In fact this is one of the selling points that Linux people often quote. Perhaps Linux is contributing to a lack of interest in new hardware?
Even in the Windows environment it's not really necessary to get the latest motherboard. A very easy way to promptly boost Windows performance is a combination of getting a system RAM upgrade and getting a 7200 RPM ATA-66/100 hard drive. With the price of SDRAM DIMM's going for US$40 per 128 MB and 40 GB ATA-66/100 hard drives going for under US$115, there's no excuse to upgrade, especially when you can get as much as 50% to 75% increase in performance.
Actually, it really depends on the vintage of the motherboard.
If you're using a motherboard that supports the earlier Pentium II's but is using the Intel 440LX chipset (which means it has AGP, ATA-33 IDE ports and 168-pin SDRAM DIMM support), the best solution is to get as much RAM and bigger hard drive you can afford. With the price of PC-133 SDRAM DIMM's going for US$40 per 128 MB and 40 GB hard drives selling just over US$100, there's totally NO excuse to upgrade to get what could be as much as 50-75% increase in performance without swapping out your motherboard.:-)
I think Black and White may work well even on a Celeron 466 MHz machine just as long as you have enough RAM (128 MB minimum!) and a decently fast AGP graphics card (e.g., Matrox G400 with 32 MB of video RAM).
It won't be extremely zipping along like it does on a 650 MHz or faster CPU but at least the program actually works at a reasonable speed.
If you're referring to Netscape 6.0x you're 100% correct.:-) Netscape really sucks d***** b**** due to its slowness on anything less than a Pentium II 233 MHz machine and also has trouble rendering many web pages, too.:-(
I believe that Mozilla 0.8 is a bit better, though.
Re:Still too early to judge Pentium 4
on
Pentium IV study
·
· Score: 2
SSE2 will become popular, because even AMD has licensed it. If you buy an Athlon now, you may accomplish more FPS in 3D games (amazingly enough, the P4 still wins clock-for-clock in Quake III framerates compared w/ the Athlon). If you get a P4 (I'd wait for the new socket version ones, though), you'll have SSE2 support and will most likely get a performance boost in FUTURE apps, when it'll actually press your hardware.
However, unless it's a high-end game, I don't see any real apps coming soon that will truly take advantage of SSE2 (well, maybe Adobe Illustrator and PhotoShop, but who knows when will fully SSE2-supported versions will be available).
Besides, remember that AMD plans to have the third-generation Athlon based on the Palomino core coming this fall. I'm sure AMD will make many improvements in order to keep up with the Pentium 4 in regards to integer and FPU speed.
Re:Still too early to judge Pentium 4
on
Pentium IV study
·
· Score: 2
The P4 is slower running current apps, but if you re-compile and optimize for the P4 it runs much better. Too bad it'll be years before there is enough software optimized for the P4 to make it worth buying, and by that time there will be other CPUs.
I do agree that for current operating systems and applications, they are not written to take advantage of the architecture of the Pentium 4 CPU.
Yet, remember what I said about the Pentium Pro from six years ago: refinements to the CPU core pioneered by the Pentium Pro led to much better improvements in 16-bit app speeds, starting with the Pentium II, then Celeron, then Pentium III. Remember when the Pentium II first came out operating systems such as Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2 recognized it as a Pentium Pro CPU.
I expect the second-generation Pentium 4's due this fall to be a bit faster as they will "tweak" the Pentium 4 CPU core for faster performance.
Re:I've been steering people clear of the IV
on
Pentium IV study
·
· Score: 2
I built my P4 system into a two-year old generic ATX case, which previously had a 100 MHz Pentium in it. The only thing I needed to change was the power supply (which you likely would need to do if you got an Athlon also, since it has such high power requirements).
If you're using an Intel-brand motheboard for the Pentium 4, sticking it in a regular ATX case ain't going to work.:(
The problem is that the Intel P4 boards require a special motherboard mount, and the Intel boards also use a new-style power supply connector, too. That's why they're not cheap.
Re:I've been steering people clear of the IV
on
Pentium IV study
·
· Score: 2
Actually, one big problem about Pentium 4 systems is the fact you need a completely NEW system case design and a new power supply with a totally new type of motherbord power connector--cheap it isn't!
Pentium III and Athlon systems can still get by with standard ATX cases, provided you have a 300 watt power supply and decent system case cooling.
It'll be a while before Pentium 4 systems become common.
Still too early to judge Pentium 4
on
Pentium IV study
·
· Score: 3
I still think it is still too early to pass any judgements on the Pentium 4 CPU.
The reason is simple: we are repeating history in terms of Intel CPU architecture development.
I think many of you remember the Pentium Pro CPU, which came out in 1995. While it was very fast for its day in terms of 32-bit applications, it was a bit poor for 16-bit applications. Yet, the P6 CPU core that the Pentium Pro pioneered became the basis after numerous refinements for the Pentium II/III and Celeron CPU's, which run very quickly with both 16-bit and 32-bit applications and was not matched until the AMD Athlon came out in 1999.
As it stands, the Pentium 4 CPU core design--which is brand new in many aspects--has only begun its development curve. I expect dramatic improvements in performance as this new core design is improved over the next few years.
If you want serious.MP3 encoding, you do it with something like WinAmp. I do know that a new version of WinAmp is in development that will be fully WinXP compatible.
Let's see how long before we see a WinXP compatible version of the Ogg Vorbis software, too.
I think the reason why Microsoft will support IEEE-1394 connections in Windows XP out of the box is the fact that IEEE-1394 connections has finally found some widespread use, notably in the field of connections to Mini DV format camcorders and high-resolution scanners. Also, we're starting to see high-speed CD-RW external drives connected through IEEE-1394 bus, which allows the CD-RW drive to run at full speed (e.g., at least 12X recording speed).
I think Microsoft may make USB 2.0 support available late this year, either by redirecting to a motherboard chipset software download site from either Intel, VIA Technologies or Acer Labs, or will provide the updated support through the Windows Update page.
I think you are forgetting two issues when dealing with China:
1. China by its historic cultural norms tend to be quite xenophobic. After all, the literal translation of the Chinese phrase for their own country means Middle Kingdom--which means they feel they are the center of the world. And their xenophobia has been enforced by the Mongol invasion, the divviing up of China by the European colonial powers, and the Japanese invasion of World War II. That's why they tend to deal with outsiders suspiciously.
2. China's massive government bureaucracy takes a while to respond to almost anything--especially diplomacy. After all, you are talking a government that needs to rule a population six times that of the USA population. Also, I personally think there is much behind-the-scenes infighting between the Chinese military and the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on how to resolve this mess. Remember, the Chinese want to hold the Summer Olympic Games in 2008, and this incident is NOT going to help things on the international front.
We already have the technology to grow these crops on a massive scale. With proper refinery design all these crops could be used to create bio-diesel fuel on a vast scale. In short, countries with large tracts of ariable farmland could become huge bio-diesel producers.
Tell that to anyone who's driven the diesel-powered BMW's in Europe.
The BMW 330d powered by a 3-liter L-6 turbocharged diesel engine is capable of keeping up with a BMW 330i fuelled by gasoline up to 140 mph. In short, today's diesel engines need not take a back seat to gasoline engines in terms of performance.
One thing about the BMW 330d: it can get up to 38 mpg, compared to 25 mpg max for the BMW 330i.
Slashdot Mirror
However, no public source has published what is the radar cross section (RCS) of Global Hawk.
If Global Hawk's shape has been tuned for low RCS with a combination of designing the shape to be naturally low in RCS and the plane's skin uses radar-absorbent materials, then even that new Chinese SAM will have great difficulty trying to shoot it down, especially when you fly it at over 65,000 feet altitude.
Actually, Global Hawk has a built-in satellite communications antenna, which does allow for real-time monitoring and adjustment of flight route.
This makes it much more flexible than the old Teledyne Ryan Compass Cope RPV from the 1960's, which was designed for a fairly similar mission to Global Hawk but flew on a pre-programmed profile. Also, the nice thing about Global Hawk is that you don't need a dedicated launch aircraft like what the Compass Cope RPV's required, which saves a lot on operational costs.
What's interesting is that Global Hawk represents the fulfillment of the original goal of the old Teledyne Ryan Compass Cope project from the 1960's: a very high-altitude unmanned reconnaissance drone.
However, with access to GPS signals plus a real-time satellite link, Global Hawk can precisely controlled to fly over areas of military interest, unlike the Compass Cope drone, which was flown on a pre-programmed route.
I think the problem is that even the current kernel for Linux (2.4.3) and the upcoming Windows XP are not going to take advantage of the longer pipelines and SSE2 instructions on the Pentium 4 out of the box just yet.
It's only a few high-end applications and high-end games that will use the power of the Pentium 4, and even those are very uncommon nowadays.
I think people are going to realize that when AMD goes to the Palomino Athlon core, there still will be no advantage to going to Pentium 4.
All the ranting has got to be most ridiculous b.s. I've read on Slashdot.
:-)
What people don't understand about Nintendo is that unlike Sega, Nintendo is a profitable company, thanks to the extreme success of the Pokémon franchise. After all, Pokémon breathed new life into the Game Boy, and in fact I've always said that the success of Pokémon helped pay for Game Boy Advance and GameCube development.
Besides, Nintendo's in-house programming teams vie with Sega for the best in-house game programming team in the world. The Mario and Zelda franchises demonstrate how great Nintendo's programmers are, and I'm sure they'll create superb games for GameCube.
Besides, now that Sega is committed to writing games for GameCube, expect a lot of great games for GameCube by this time next year.
One thing people forget about the Global Hawk is the fact the cruising altitude is almost the same at the U-2: around 70,000 feet.
At that altitude, it is very difficult to shoot down unless you have a pretty big SAM missile; because the Global Hawk very likely has stealth characteristics thanks to its shape, the use of radar absorbent materials and use of engine exhaust cooling to reduce IR signature, it will also be hard to find on modern sensors, too.
What's interesting is that Global Hawk essentially fulfills the promise of the old Compass Cope project from the 1970's, when Boeing and Teledyne Ryan both built prototypes of a large reconnaissance drone capable of flying above 65,000 feet; Compass Cope was cancelled due to budgetary reasons.
I think for a company that deals in Linux to be successful, you need to be able to tag along with an already successful firm.
Red Hat Software lucked out because their distribution of Linux has become pretty much the de facto distribution, used by such big companies as Dell Computer, Compaq, IBM, and so on.
I think one thing that helps India is the southern tip of the Indian sub-continent is much closer to the Equator than any Chinese launch facility.
This means the Indian space agency can better use the assist of the Earth's rotation, so you don't need a fairly large launch rocket like the US, China and Russia has to do from their native launch sites. It's the reason why the European Space Agency built their launch pads in French Guiana--only 6 degrees north latitude from the Equator. It's also why Boeing headed the Sea Launch consortium that has a floating launch platform; the floating platform is at the Equator out at sea when the rocket is launched, so you don't need a big rocket to achieve geosynchronous transfer orbit.
If your computer supports 168-pin DIMM's, there's NO excuse to save money by not installing more system RAM in the computer and getting a modern, higher-capacity hard drive. Hard drives are dirt-cheap on a per-megabyte basis nowadays, and RAM is also extremely cheap even with the very recent slight rise in prices.
Regardless of operating system, installing more RAM and installing a fast ATA-66/100 7200 RPM hard drive makes a huge difference in performance, sometimes as much as 50 to 75 percent faster; this is due to substantially reduced need to use the hard drive as virtual memory and faster hard disk access.
I agree! :-)
One thing that is really killing Intel is their insistance on supporting that expensive RDRAM technology. Why pay US$140-$160 for 128 MB of PC800 RIMM when you only need to pay US$60-80 for 128 MB of PC2100 DDR-SDRAM DIMM? Or even less for PC-133 SDRAM DIMM?
In this is day and age most programs run well on a 233 or less, the most processor intense thing we do is watch DvD's ripped to DiVX and this can be done on 350 or 400. My point is don't bother with any of the high end stuff, very likely anything faster than 600 M processor on a 100 M bus will be fine for the forseeable future. Spend your money instead on a large fast hard drive, a good Video Card, decent sound card/speakers and tons of memory. You will probably save yourself enough money take take your Sigificant Other out to dinner and a movie.
:)
AMEN.
It feels like I am shouting at a bunch of non-believers when I've been espousing that getting a faster hard drive and a lot more system RAM is substantially cheaper and offers performance increases as much as 50 to 75 percent. Once the Intel Celeron went to the on-die L2 cache design running at CPU clock speed, that made the CPU extremely viable for 90% of computer users out there.
A Celeron 400 MHz or faster is easily capable to decoding MPEG-2 video from a DVD completely in software. With a fast enough HD and enough RAM, the decoding actually goes pretty smoothly.
One of the reasons why I have invested time and money in Linux is because it has given new life to my old and obsolete hardware. In fact this is one of the selling points that Linux people often quote. Perhaps Linux is contributing to a lack of interest in new hardware?
Even in the Windows environment it's not really necessary to get the latest motherboard. A very easy way to promptly boost Windows performance is a combination of getting a system RAM upgrade and getting a 7200 RPM ATA-66/100 hard drive. With the price of SDRAM DIMM's going for US$40 per 128 MB and 40 GB ATA-66/100 hard drives going for under US$115, there's no excuse to upgrade, especially when you can get as much as 50% to 75% increase in performance.
Actually, it really depends on the vintage of the motherboard.
:-)
If you're using a motherboard that supports the earlier Pentium II's but is using the Intel 440LX chipset (which means it has AGP, ATA-33 IDE ports and 168-pin SDRAM DIMM support), the best solution is to get as much RAM and bigger hard drive you can afford. With the price of PC-133 SDRAM DIMM's going for US$40 per 128 MB and 40 GB hard drives selling just over US$100, there's totally NO excuse to upgrade to get what could be as much as 50-75% increase in performance without swapping out your motherboard.
I think Black and White may work well even on a Celeron 466 MHz machine just as long as you have enough RAM (128 MB minimum!) and a decently fast AGP graphics card (e.g., Matrox G400 with 32 MB of video RAM).
It won't be extremely zipping along like it does on a 650 MHz or faster CPU but at least the program actually works at a reasonable speed.
If you're referring to Netscape 6.0x you're 100% correct. :-) Netscape really sucks d***** b**** due to its slowness on anything less than a Pentium II 233 MHz machine and also has trouble rendering many web pages, too. :-(
I believe that Mozilla 0.8 is a bit better, though.
SSE2 will become popular, because even AMD has licensed it. If you buy an Athlon now, you may accomplish more FPS in 3D games (amazingly enough, the P4 still wins clock-for-clock in Quake III framerates compared w/ the Athlon). If you get a P4 (I'd wait for the new socket version ones, though), you'll have SSE2 support and will most likely get a performance boost in FUTURE apps, when it'll actually press your hardware.
However, unless it's a high-end game, I don't see any real apps coming soon that will truly take advantage of SSE2 (well, maybe Adobe Illustrator and PhotoShop, but who knows when will fully SSE2-supported versions will be available).
Besides, remember that AMD plans to have the third-generation Athlon based on the Palomino core coming this fall. I'm sure AMD will make many improvements in order to keep up with the Pentium 4 in regards to integer and FPU speed.
The P4 is slower running current apps, but if you re-compile and optimize for the P4 it runs much better. Too bad it'll be years before there is enough software optimized for the P4 to make it worth buying, and by that time there will be other CPUs.
I do agree that for current operating systems and applications, they are not written to take advantage of the architecture of the Pentium 4 CPU.
Yet, remember what I said about the Pentium Pro from six years ago: refinements to the CPU core pioneered by the Pentium Pro led to much better improvements in 16-bit app speeds, starting with the Pentium II, then Celeron, then Pentium III. Remember when the Pentium II first came out operating systems such as Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2 recognized it as a Pentium Pro CPU.
I expect the second-generation Pentium 4's due this fall to be a bit faster as they will "tweak" the Pentium 4 CPU core for faster performance.
I built my P4 system into a two-year old generic ATX case, which previously had a 100 MHz Pentium in it. The only thing I needed to change was the power supply (which you likely would need to do if you got an Athlon also, since it has such high power requirements).
:(
If you're using an Intel-brand motheboard for the Pentium 4, sticking it in a regular ATX case ain't going to work.
The problem is that the Intel P4 boards require a special motherboard mount, and the Intel boards also use a new-style power supply connector, too. That's why they're not cheap.
Actually, one big problem about Pentium 4 systems is the fact you need a completely NEW system case design and a new power supply with a totally new type of motherbord power connector--cheap it isn't!
Pentium III and Athlon systems can still get by with standard ATX cases, provided you have a 300 watt power supply and decent system case cooling.
It'll be a while before Pentium 4 systems become common.
I still think it is still too early to pass any judgements on the Pentium 4 CPU.
The reason is simple: we are repeating history in terms of Intel CPU architecture development.
I think many of you remember the Pentium Pro CPU, which came out in 1995. While it was very fast for its day in terms of 32-bit applications, it was a bit poor for 16-bit applications. Yet, the P6 CPU core that the Pentium Pro pioneered became the basis after numerous refinements for the Pentium II/III and Celeron CPU's, which run very quickly with both 16-bit and 32-bit applications and was not matched until the AMD Athlon came out in 1999.
As it stands, the Pentium 4 CPU core design--which is brand new in many aspects--has only begun its development curve. I expect dramatic improvements in performance as this new core design is improved over the next few years.
Steve,
:-)
.MP3 encoding, you do it with something like WinAmp. I do know that a new version of WinAmp is in development that will be fully WinXP compatible.
You are 100% correct.
If you want serious
Let's see how long before we see a WinXP compatible version of the Ogg Vorbis software, too.
I think the reason why Microsoft will support IEEE-1394 connections in Windows XP out of the box is the fact that IEEE-1394 connections has finally found some widespread use, notably in the field of connections to Mini DV format camcorders and high-resolution scanners. Also, we're starting to see high-speed CD-RW external drives connected through IEEE-1394 bus, which allows the CD-RW drive to run at full speed (e.g., at least 12X recording speed).
I think Microsoft may make USB 2.0 support available late this year, either by redirecting to a motherboard chipset software download site from either Intel, VIA Technologies or Acer Labs, or will provide the updated support through the Windows Update page.
Jon,
I think you are forgetting two issues when dealing with China:
1. China by its historic cultural norms tend to be quite xenophobic. After all, the literal translation of the Chinese phrase for their own country means Middle Kingdom--which means they feel they are the center of the world. And their xenophobia has been enforced by the Mongol invasion, the divviing up of China by the European colonial powers, and the Japanese invasion of World War II. That's why they tend to deal with outsiders suspiciously.
2. China's massive government bureaucracy takes a while to respond to almost anything--especially diplomacy. After all, you are talking a government that needs to rule a population six times that of the USA population. Also, I personally think there is much behind-the-scenes infighting between the Chinese military and the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on how to resolve this mess. Remember, the Chinese want to hold the Summer Olympic Games in 2008, and this incident is NOT going to help things on the international front.
You are forgetting that bio-diesel can come from many different sources.
Here are the following commercial crops that could be used for creating bio-diesel fuel:
Corn
Soybeans
Canola
Cottonseed
Sunflower
Wheat
Rice
Peanut
Jojoba bean
Coconut
Sugar beet
Sugar cane
We already have the technology to grow these crops on a massive scale. With proper refinery design all these crops could be used to create bio-diesel fuel on a vast scale. In short, countries with large tracts of ariable farmland could become huge bio-diesel producers.
Tell that to anyone who's driven the diesel-powered BMW's in Europe.
The BMW 330d powered by a 3-liter L-6 turbocharged diesel engine is capable of keeping up with a BMW 330i fuelled by gasoline up to 140 mph. In short, today's diesel engines need not take a back seat to gasoline engines in terms of performance.
One thing about the BMW 330d: it can get up to 38 mpg, compared to 25 mpg max for the BMW 330i.