According to some sources, the late Ben Rich (who headed Lockheed's "Skunk Works" for many years) admitted that the maximum altitude for the U-2 with the older J75 engines was around 73,000 feet, limited by the ability of the highly-modified J75 engine to operate at high altitude. With the modified F118 engine (essentially using the same modern engine core found on the
If I remember correctly, the U-2 some years ago swapped out the original engines for essentially modified B-2 bomber engines (the F-118), which cut the fuel consumption and allowed for longer flights at altitudes above 70,000 feet. I believe that with the J57 and J75 engines, the U-2 maxed out at around 73,000 feet; the F118 could probably take it to over 76,000 feet.
While it sounds like a good idea, the better solution for biodiesel long-term is oil-based algae.
Here's the reason why: scientists are working on using oil-laden algae that can grow in seawater. This means it doesn't compete for fresh water supplies that growing a lot of hemp plants would require--and getting fresh water is getting to be as critical an issue as finding crude oil. Growing hemp would make more sense for its fibers, which are useful in clothing, medium-duty ropes and as a base material for a strong structures that are almost as strong as carbon fiber but at way lower environmental cost in terms of producing it.
Re:Maybe we can see E10/E15 dead too?
on
Is E85 Dead Now?
·
· Score: 1
I think E10 will still be around, since it has replaced the unloved MTBE as a way to make gasoline to burn "cleaner."
Besides, all gasoline engines designed within the last 15 years are designed to accommodate up to 10% ethanol mix, more or less. Even a really advanced engine unveiled in the last few years like Hyundai's 1.6-liter "Gamma" engine with gasoline direct injection and BMW's new "N20B20" 2.0-liter turbocharged gasoline direct injection engine were designed with up to 10% ethanol mix in mind.
Funny you mention these three because the Tea Party movement warned about this earlier, and one Sarah Palin specifically cited this problem in her criticism of "crony capitalism" on a speech she made back in September 2011. The fact that Solyndra collapsed right at the time of her speech made her assertions even MORE potent.
In short, I'd like to see these changes to our financial system:
1. Require real liquidity backing for all investments--that includes hedge funds, derivatives, and so on. 2. Increase the minimum margin requirement rate for futures trading to 20%, with a 35 to 40% rate for strategic important items like petroleum products, certain foodstuffs, certain industrial metals and precious metals. 3. Reimpose the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act and give investment banks 18 months to separate out banking and investment operations. 4. Require that anyone who enters government service to put into a "blind and deaf" trust any holdings (stocks and bonds) of any private company held at the time they enter government service or require that the stock and/or bond holdings be sold off.
Implement these four changes and I think we'll bring stability back to the equities market in about 18-24 months.
The same applies for the Seattle, WA metroplex: Amazon.com, Boeing, Microsoft and Starbucks are doing quite well financially, and as such the unemployment rate in the Seattle area is not that bad.
Indeed, I see the following areas booming over the next decade:
San Francisco Bay Area Seattle, WA metroplex Minneapolis-St. Paul metroplex Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex Austin, TX The "Research Triangle" of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, NC
These areas are on the cutting edge of technology, biotechnology and increasingly "green" technology research.
What I find interesting is that one place that Linux has made big inroads is in "big iron" computing hardware, mostly because of the extremely low licensing costs. IBM spent a fortune porting Linux to run on their "big iron" machines and it has paid off big time, especially you don't have to deal with sometimes-frightening software license costs! (You're right: the license for Oracle per server can be quite daunting.)
In short, what Schmidt saw is the continued success of Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter, Zynga, and biotech companies. As a result, these companies literally held up the economy of the Bay Area, and probably prevented a major cratering of the housing market that continues to plague much of the rest of California. Small wonder why the Occupy movement in the Bay Area (in my opinion!) didn't take long become a MAJOR annoyance, and in the end the Occupy encampments in San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley were swept away.
In a slightly lesser fashion, the same is happening to the Seattle, WA metroplex, too. The continued success of Amazon.com, Boeing, Microsoft, and Starbucks has literally held up the economy of that area.
Also, with iOS, you only need to write the app for two resolutions: 1024x768 (for the iPad) and 960x640 (iPod touch and iPhone). And not having to deal with the unusual front end interfaces for Android like HTC Sense and Motorola Motoblur really saves a lot of programming time, too.
(By the way, I expect iOS to support a third resolution, 1280x960. This will probably be for the iPad due March 2012 at retail stores.)
In my humble opinion, I think much of the complaints about AT&T wireless service comes from the fact the method of cellphone tower installations in the USA (smaller number of high-powered towers) work poorly with GSM, because most of the world, cellphone tower installations are based on a large number of lower-powered cellphone towers, which is far better-suited for GSM. The US-style of cellphone tower installation works WAY better with CDMA, which was designed with this in mind; this is why iPhone 4/4S users on the Verizon network report a lot less dropouts on cellphone calls.
In effect, the Agency Model is illegal price fixing by doing a "de facto" price floor at an unreasonable level, a practice banned by US and European Union antitrust laws. I would not be surprised that as a settlement, the price of new e-books will have a price floor of around US$12 per e-book, not the US$15 to US$16 it is now.
Essentially, this bomb--the heaviest conventional bomb ever built--is a direct descent of the original "earthquake bomb" Barnes Wallis envisioned in 1940 than eventually became the famous Grand Slam bomb. Thanks to GPS guidance, it is much more than an "earthquake effect" bomb--it could probably destroy most underground bunkers with a direct hit.
Re:I propose we Occupy "Occupy"
on
Occupy Flash?
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· Score: 1
I've seen the "manifesto" of the Occupy movement and when they want at minimum European-style socialism (how's that working out with Europe about to financially implode) and at worst Communism (we know how well that worked out in the former Soviet Union under Stalin and China under Mao), I am NOT in favor of this movement.
In fact, the "Skyactiv" technologies are some of the most advanced for a conventional piston engine, especially since direct fuel injection is rare for lower-cost vehicles. I would get one if it weren't so expensive to get a 2012 Mazda3 with such an engine....
I've said on other place we need to do several things to get the economy going again. I suggest the following steps:
1. Government needs to be drastically streamlined to remove bureaucratic overlap, agency bloat and obsolete/unneeded regulations--such a change could easily cut the size of government 30% now, with 50% or more within 5-7 years.
2. The income tax system--which too benefits the rich because they can afford to "work the system"--should be drastically simplified so it has very low compliance costs and encourages more savings and investment in the USA for _everyone_, not just the politically well-connected. The no-loophole flat-rate tax plan proposed by Steve Forbes back in 1996 should be at minimum what our tax system should be like, for starters.
3. The financial system needs to substantially reigned in right now with the following steps:
a. Require real liquidity backing for all "new" style investments like hedge funds, derivatives, and so on, or ban these investments outright as financially too risky. b. Require a 20% minimum margin requirement to trade in commodities futures to slow down the "churn" of commodities speculation that can result in severe spikes and dips in commodities prices. c. Re-impose the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act to break up the investment banks and "firewall" bank assets from the ups and downs of the stock market. d. Ban certain types of high-speed computerized stock trades like flash trading. e. Look at doing a ten-year transition process to replace the Federal Reserve Note "fiat currency" with a new US dollar backed by a combination of gold, silver, platinum, palladium, copper and nickel--the metals commonly used for bullion blocks and coins used in monetary trading.
Do these three steps and not only will it reduce the power of corporations and Wall Street, but also way more real expansion, especially in the manufacturing sector.
And their solution? Just about outright Communism.
Sorry, not buying their solution, especially since as a small child I lived through what Communist sympathizers did to Hong Hong in 1967 during the height of the Cultural Revolution in nearby China. I think Eastern Europeans 35 and older who can remember Communist rule agrees with me, too.
I know their goal: socialism, if not outright Communism.
As one who saw what Communist sympathizers did to Hong Kong during the 1967 riots first hand as a small child, that's why I have great distaste for the Left. Indeed, anyone from Eastern Europe over 35 years old (and remembers what it was like under Communist rule) must abhor what is going on with this movement.
I myself use Chrome a lot more than Firefox because Chrome renders web pages very quickly and is by far the most HTML 5.0-compliant web browser out there. I also like the very clean interface, too.
Indeed, since I'm going to be getting a new desktop computer very soon running Windows 7 Home Premium (SP1), it's likely it will NOT have Firefox running on it--I find Firefox to cause weird issues with my computer whenever a new version arrives until I install all updates and reboot the computer.
But yet, Apple's very elegant interface design still makes it superior to Google's Android in many ways.
It will be VERY interesting to see what Google does with Android 4.0 ("Ice Cream Sandwich"), which is supposed to have a much-revamped interface and a far more elegant design of the interface. It may become the first version of Android to become a true competitor to Apple's iOS.
While Apple is obviously not known for "firsts" in product development, Jobs' obsessiveness in getting the product _right_ has paid off huge dividends.
Yes, Xerox PARC invented the graphical user interface and the mouse pointer, but it took Apple turn it into a computer that the average consumer can buy. While it was the Diamond Rio that pioneered the portable MP3 player, it was Apple that made it a mainstream product with the iPod and changed the music industry forever. While others like Nokia pioneered many things with "smart" cellphones, it was Apple that created an very elegant interface and with the App Store, totally changed everyone's perceptions of such phones. While there were several attempts to create tablet computers earlier, it was Apple that created the first truly viable tablet computer that was easy to use and easy to hold.
One nice thing about the iPhone is the fact the "baseline" installation has just about NO "crapware" installed--if you want to install extras you have to get it through the iTunes App Store. That's why I'm waiting to get the next-generation iPhone when that comes out.
That's why my Wi-Fi router is protected with a 12-character (alphanumeric) password under WPA2 that is really hard to figure out. The chances are not good that a hacker could crack that 12-character password in a couple of hundred years using today's laptop hardware.
Besides the Battle of Agincourt, which proved that armored knights on horseback was no match for large formation of well-train longbow archers, I think another battle nearly 100 years later--the Battle of Cerignola in southern Italy--proved that full-body armor of the time was useless against the then-new gunpowder firearm, the harquebus gun.
Slashdot Mirror
According to some sources, the late Ben Rich (who headed Lockheed's "Skunk Works" for many years) admitted that the maximum altitude for the U-2 with the older J75 engines was around 73,000 feet, limited by the ability of the highly-modified J75 engine to operate at high altitude. With the modified F118 engine (essentially using the same modern engine core found on the
If I remember correctly, the U-2 some years ago swapped out the original engines for essentially modified B-2 bomber engines (the F-118), which cut the fuel consumption and allowed for longer flights at altitudes above 70,000 feet. I believe that with the J57 and J75 engines, the U-2 maxed out at around 73,000 feet; the F118 could probably take it to over 76,000 feet.
Reason is simple: cost.
DVI connectors are complicated and expensive to make by 2012 standards, and most higher-resolution computer monitors now support HDMI instead.
While it sounds like a good idea, the better solution for biodiesel long-term is oil-based algae.
Here's the reason why: scientists are working on using oil-laden algae that can grow in seawater. This means it doesn't compete for fresh water supplies that growing a lot of hemp plants would require--and getting fresh water is getting to be as critical an issue as finding crude oil. Growing hemp would make more sense for its fibers, which are useful in clothing, medium-duty ropes and as a base material for a strong structures that are almost as strong as carbon fiber but at way lower environmental cost in terms of producing it.
I think E10 will still be around, since it has replaced the unloved MTBE as a way to make gasoline to burn "cleaner."
Besides, all gasoline engines designed within the last 15 years are designed to accommodate up to 10% ethanol mix, more or less. Even a really advanced engine unveiled in the last few years like Hyundai's 1.6-liter "Gamma" engine with gasoline direct injection and BMW's new "N20B20" 2.0-liter turbocharged gasoline direct injection engine were designed with up to 10% ethanol mix in mind.
Funny you mention these three because the Tea Party movement warned about this earlier, and one Sarah Palin specifically cited this problem in her criticism of "crony capitalism" on a speech she made back in September 2011. The fact that Solyndra collapsed right at the time of her speech made her assertions even MORE potent.
In short, I'd like to see these changes to our financial system:
1. Require real liquidity backing for all investments--that includes hedge funds, derivatives, and so on.
2. Increase the minimum margin requirement rate for futures trading to 20%, with a 35 to 40% rate for strategic important items like petroleum products, certain foodstuffs, certain industrial metals and precious metals.
3. Reimpose the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act and give investment banks 18 months to separate out banking and investment operations.
4. Require that anyone who enters government service to put into a "blind and deaf" trust any holdings (stocks and bonds) of any private company held at the time they enter government service or require that the stock and/or bond holdings be sold off.
Implement these four changes and I think we'll bring stability back to the equities market in about 18-24 months.
The same applies for the Seattle, WA metroplex: Amazon.com, Boeing, Microsoft and Starbucks are doing quite well financially, and as such the unemployment rate in the Seattle area is not that bad.
Indeed, I see the following areas booming over the next decade:
San Francisco Bay Area
Seattle, WA metroplex
Minneapolis-St. Paul metroplex
Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex
Austin, TX
The "Research Triangle" of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, NC
These areas are on the cutting edge of technology, biotechnology and increasingly "green" technology research.
What I find interesting is that one place that Linux has made big inroads is in "big iron" computing hardware, mostly because of the extremely low licensing costs. IBM spent a fortune porting Linux to run on their "big iron" machines and it has paid off big time, especially you don't have to deal with sometimes-frightening software license costs! (You're right: the license for Oracle per server can be quite daunting.)
In short, what Schmidt saw is the continued success of Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter, Zynga, and biotech companies. As a result, these companies literally held up the economy of the Bay Area, and probably prevented a major cratering of the housing market that continues to plague much of the rest of California. Small wonder why the Occupy movement in the Bay Area (in my opinion!) didn't take long become a MAJOR annoyance, and in the end the Occupy encampments in San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley were swept away.
In a slightly lesser fashion, the same is happening to the Seattle, WA metroplex, too. The continued success of Amazon.com, Boeing, Microsoft, and Starbucks has literally held up the economy of that area.
Also, with iOS, you only need to write the app for two resolutions: 1024x768 (for the iPad) and 960x640 (iPod touch and iPhone). And not having to deal with the unusual front end interfaces for Android like HTC Sense and Motorola Motoblur really saves a lot of programming time, too.
(By the way, I expect iOS to support a third resolution, 1280x960. This will probably be for the iPad due March 2012 at retail stores.)
In my humble opinion, I think much of the complaints about AT&T wireless service comes from the fact the method of cellphone tower installations in the USA (smaller number of high-powered towers) work poorly with GSM, because most of the world, cellphone tower installations are based on a large number of lower-powered cellphone towers, which is far better-suited for GSM. The US-style of cellphone tower installation works WAY better with CDMA, which was designed with this in mind; this is why iPhone 4/4S users on the Verizon network report a lot less dropouts on cellphone calls.
In effect, the Agency Model is illegal price fixing by doing a "de facto" price floor at an unreasonable level, a practice banned by US and European Union antitrust laws. I would not be surprised that as a settlement, the price of new e-books will have a price floor of around US$12 per e-book, not the US$15 to US$16 it is now.
Essentially, this bomb--the heaviest conventional bomb ever built--is a direct descent of the original "earthquake bomb" Barnes Wallis envisioned in 1940 than eventually became the famous Grand Slam bomb. Thanks to GPS guidance, it is much more than an "earthquake effect" bomb--it could probably destroy most underground bunkers with a direct hit.
I've seen the "manifesto" of the Occupy movement and when they want at minimum European-style socialism (how's that working out with Europe about to financially implode) and at worst Communism (we know how well that worked out in the former Soviet Union under Stalin and China under Mao), I am NOT in favor of this movement.
In fact, the "Skyactiv" technologies are some of the most advanced for a conventional piston engine, especially since direct fuel injection is rare for lower-cost vehicles. I would get one if it weren't so expensive to get a 2012 Mazda3 with such an engine....
I've said on other place we need to do several things to get the economy going again. I suggest the following steps:
1. Government needs to be drastically streamlined to remove bureaucratic overlap, agency bloat and obsolete/unneeded regulations--such a change could easily cut the size of government 30% now, with 50% or more within 5-7 years.
2. The income tax system--which too benefits the rich because they can afford to "work the system"--should be drastically simplified so it has very low compliance costs and encourages more savings and investment in the USA for _everyone_, not just the politically well-connected. The no-loophole flat-rate tax plan proposed by Steve Forbes back in 1996 should be at minimum what our tax system should be like, for starters.
3. The financial system needs to substantially reigned in right now with the following steps:
a. Require real liquidity backing for all "new" style investments like hedge funds, derivatives, and so on, or ban these investments outright as financially too risky.
b. Require a 20% minimum margin requirement to trade in commodities futures to slow down the "churn" of commodities speculation that can result in severe spikes and dips in commodities prices.
c. Re-impose the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act to break up the investment banks and "firewall" bank assets from the ups and downs of the stock market.
d. Ban certain types of high-speed computerized stock trades like flash trading.
e. Look at doing a ten-year transition process to replace the Federal Reserve Note "fiat currency" with a new US dollar backed by a combination of gold, silver, platinum, palladium, copper and nickel--the metals commonly used for bullion blocks and coins used in monetary trading.
Do these three steps and not only will it reduce the power of corporations and Wall Street, but also way more real expansion, especially in the manufacturing sector.
And their solution? Just about outright Communism.
Sorry, not buying their solution, especially since as a small child I lived through what Communist sympathizers did to Hong Hong in 1967 during the height of the Cultural Revolution in nearby China. I think Eastern Europeans 35 and older who can remember Communist rule agrees with me, too.
I know their goal: socialism, if not outright Communism.
As one who saw what Communist sympathizers did to Hong Kong during the 1967 riots first hand as a small child, that's why I have great distaste for the Left. Indeed, anyone from Eastern Europe over 35 years old (and remembers what it was like under Communist rule) must abhor what is going on with this movement.
I myself use Chrome a lot more than Firefox because Chrome renders web pages very quickly and is by far the most HTML 5.0-compliant web browser out there. I also like the very clean interface, too.
Indeed, since I'm going to be getting a new desktop computer very soon running Windows 7 Home Premium (SP1), it's likely it will NOT have Firefox running on it--I find Firefox to cause weird issues with my computer whenever a new version arrives until I install all updates and reboot the computer.
But yet, Apple's very elegant interface design still makes it superior to Google's Android in many ways.
It will be VERY interesting to see what Google does with Android 4.0 ("Ice Cream Sandwich"), which is supposed to have a much-revamped interface and a far more elegant design of the interface. It may become the first version of Android to become a true competitor to Apple's iOS.
While Apple is obviously not known for "firsts" in product development, Jobs' obsessiveness in getting the product _right_ has paid off huge dividends.
Yes, Xerox PARC invented the graphical user interface and the mouse pointer, but it took Apple turn it into a computer that the average consumer can buy.
While it was the Diamond Rio that pioneered the portable MP3 player, it was Apple that made it a mainstream product with the iPod and changed the music industry forever.
While others like Nokia pioneered many things with "smart" cellphones, it was Apple that created an very elegant interface and with the App Store, totally changed everyone's perceptions of such phones.
While there were several attempts to create tablet computers earlier, it was Apple that created the first truly viable tablet computer that was easy to use and easy to hold.
And possibly the next-generation of Motorola cellphones--they'll all be "pure" Android experiences.
I've read that Google may insist on very strict pre-installed software policy--and that includes the "skin"--on Android 4.0 ("Ice Cream Sandwich").
One nice thing about the iPhone is the fact the "baseline" installation has just about NO "crapware" installed--if you want to install extras you have to get it through the iTunes App Store. That's why I'm waiting to get the next-generation iPhone when that comes out.
That's why my Wi-Fi router is protected with a 12-character (alphanumeric) password under WPA2 that is really hard to figure out. The chances are not good that a hacker could crack that 12-character password in a couple of hundred years using today's laptop hardware.
Besides the Battle of Agincourt, which proved that armored knights on horseback was no match for large formation of well-train longbow archers, I think another battle nearly 100 years later--the Battle of Cerignola in southern Italy--proved that full-body armor of the time was useless against the then-new gunpowder firearm, the harquebus gun.