You're forgetting that NOx gases are quite toxic, and another issue--diesel particulates--can cause serious damage to the lungs akin to smoking too many cigarettes. That's why railroads in the USA are switching to newer locomotives with turbodiesel prime movers that produce way lower output of NOx gases and diesel particulates, and why European car manufacturers are pressing forward with Euro 6 emissions compliance for diesel engines well ahead of the 2014 date for mandated compliance.
If you've been to Europe, some cities have pretty serious air pollution problems due to the enormous increase in the use of diesel engines in automobiles without finding ways to cut NOx and diesel particulate output.
Ford--if they offer the turbodiesel engine in the new Fiesta for the US market--will likely not offer the ECOnetic model because by putting in very high gearing and removing a number of accessories we take for granted, the ECOnetic Fiesta could end up with sluggish acceleration and lack of air conditioning, both of which are no-no's for American drivers!
1) The Duratorq engine used on this model of the new Ford Fiesta doesn't come close to meeting the EPA Tier 2 Bin 5 emissions standard for internal combustion engines, which is necessary for 50-state sales of the vehicle.
2) Ford did a number of "tricks" to get that very high fuel economy number, notably using very high gearing, low-rolling resistance tires, and removing a number of accessories considered standard for a modern car. As such, you'll have to forgo air conditioning and put up with sluggish acceleration, both of which are unacceptable to American drivers!
If Ford does offer the Duratorq turbodiesel engine on the North American-market Fiesta, it will likely be a larger displacement unit (1.6 liters) with modern emission controls to make the engine meet EPA Tier 2 Bin 5 standard. It may also use the new Powershift six-speed dual-clutch transmission, which is starting to become available on European-market Ford Focus models. Sure, it won't get the extreme fuel economy of the ECOnetic Fiesta, but fuel economy approaching 50 mpg with the current EPA highway fuel economy test may be possible.
Up until circa 2002, DVD's almost had the same status as Laserdiscs because to get a decent player, you had to shell out at least US$250 for one. Then the Chinese company APEX starting selling a player under US$150, and that forced all the major Japanese manufacturers to start developing lower-cost players to compete.
With new, lower-cost chipsets now becoming available, the price of Blu-ray players will drop quite a bit within the next year, and that will really spur player sales, especially now that the price of HDTV sets with HDMI inputs are dropping rapidly, too.
I think for downloaded music, we may see a trend where we could see lower-cost downloads going to 256 or 320 kbps AAC format (remember, a lot of newer non-iPod portable music players now support AAC) for portable music players and higher-cost downloads going to FLAC or Apple Lossless formats for more demanding audiophiles.
I don't think we'll see advances in picture quality beyond 1080p for home use any time soon, mostly because 1080p is very sharp to start with for home use (go see a Pixar movie on Blu-ray format and see what I mean) and the fact going to a higher definition format beyond 1080p will require a huge leap forward in high-capacity storage medium.
However, with Comcast imposing a 250 GB per month limit and likely most other ISP's following this lead, this may put a kibosh on the idea of widespread downloaded movies.:-( ISP's around the world are realizing too much large-size multimedia format downloads will choke the network.
Besides, with a real Blu-ray disc you have a lot less compromises in regards to data compression, which means vastly better picture and sound quality.
With one good reason: the imposition of download caps from your Internet Service Provider (ISP).
ISP's around the world are starting to realize that too much downloading of big multimedia files will cause serious data bottlenecks, and as such we may see users limited to around 500 to 750 GB of data downloads per month.
With improving technology, Blu-ray players and discs will continue to drop, and players could drop under US$200 within a year or so.
In fact, Japan just about bankrupted itself building and maintaining all those conventional rail Shinkansen lines. Is it small wonder why there's still strong interest in maglev technology, which allows for trains to go 500 km/h with essentially no wear since the trainset doesn't touch the track itself?
I agree, and we may see another beta "drop" soon that will use a lot less resources because there will be a lot less testing code built into the browser code. I expect IE 8.0 when it's finally released to use more or less the same resources at IE 7.0, and only needs a dual-core CPU for faster performance.
I've read that here in the USA, we already have a form of widely-used, low-cost public longer-range transportation--it's called Southwest Airlines.:-)
But seriously, because the USA is such a large country, there are relatively few corridors where high-speed rail makes economic sense. Going to 500 km/h maglev systems may increase the number of corridors, but still not enough to cover the entire USA with high-speed rail.
While this sounds like a great idea in practice, the cost of maintaining the overhead wiring, steel rails and rolling stock for such a high-speed train will border on exorbitant.
Remember, above 300 km/h, there are serious engineering issues of physical wear from the contacts of the overhead wiring with the pantographs on the train and the steel wheels and steel rail. Unless the Chinese government spends the type of money needed to properly maintain these equipment, it could end up being a serious maintenance nightmare (I can imagine how much SNCF is spending to maintain the TGV system).
However, in the Netherlands they suffered their Katrina moment in the 1953 when a series of storms killed 1,800-plus people, forcing the Dutch government to go on an enormously expensive program (Deltaworks) building numerous water barriers to prevent that type of flooding--a program that took 30 years to complete.
Sounds like a good idea in theory, but we're still essentially talking about building a NEW residential city to support the remaining port and industrial infrastructure. It would be exorbitantly expensive to pull off, to say the least!
1) Where are you going to locate the NEW city? Expand Baton Rouge?
2) There is so much shipping terminal infrastructure located in New Orleans it would be prohibitively expensive to move it all. This is especially critical because a huge fraction of the grain output of the USA goes out through New Orleans.
A better solution is to completely rebuild the city along these lines:
1) Put in an extensive system of water barriers inside the city so the flooding don't spread over a wide area.
2) Install the type of super capacity water drainage sytem--essentially a network of gigantic underground water canals--of the type that the city of Tokyo installed some years ago.
I think people forget how political blogs first made their impact in the 2004 election.
It was a number of conservative blogs that got out information about the Swiftboat Vets for Truth, and these same blogs closely monitored the conservative message board site Free Republic, picked up the message suggesting that Texas Air National Guard memos were fake, did their own research, and within 24 hours effectively proved the memos were fakes. This episode doomed Senator Kerry's Presidential campaign and effectively ended the career of CBS news anchor Dan Rather.
However, you really want at minimum 256 kbps variable bit rate MP3 files for a commercial release, such as what Amazon did with their MP3 download store.
(I'd wish Amazon would offer your choice of 256 kbps VBR MP3, WMA or AAC file download format, since server storage space is so cheap nowadays. AAC format covers all the iPods and many newer portable music players out there, and WMA covers pretty much most non-Apple iPod portable music players.)
1) Faster access to external storage devices (though I wonder how it compares against eSATA or IEEE-1394 connections).
2) Faster transfer of digital video to computer from an HDTV digital camcorder. Mind you, since many HDTV digital camcorders have IEEE-1394 connectors, we may not see new HDTV camcorders sport USB 3.0 connections soon.
Personally, I think the broadband penetration number ("our rank has fallen to #22") is a bit of a red herring because the US is far less densely populated than most other countries and thus perfect broadband penetration is not feasible.
That's the biggest problem here in the USA--people forget that given the population density if western Europe, Japan and South Korea, there are enough customers per square hectare of area that telecoms can afford the exorbitant cost of wiring up everyone to ADSL, cable or fiber-optic broadband Internet access. Here in the USA, the large amount of rural land, sprawled-out surburbs and a lot of old telecom infrastructure wiring means means the cost to make hardwired broadband available to everyone becomes very expensive indeed. It's only within the past eight years that new technologies could create smaller "central switch offices" to extend the range of ADSL to more customers.
In the USA, the more likely long-term solution will likely be some form of WiMAX wireless access, which avoids the really expensive last mile hardwiring issue into the residence.
Actually, one HUGE issue that plagued Windows XP for quite some time was people trying to run it on machines with less than 512 MB of RAM. Once you broke through the 512 MB limit, Windows XP runs really well (on my now-retired machine with an AMD Athlon XP CPU with the 1.66 GHz CPU clock speed, with 1 GB of RAM the machine was quite fast under Windows XP Professional SP2).
I'm using an HP Pavilion A6400f with an Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2200 CPU, on-board G31 graphics, 3 GB of RAM and 500 GB Serial ATA-300 hard disk with no speed problems whatsoever under Windows Vista Home Premium edition (SP1).
Methinks the big problems are 1) you really do want a dual-core CPU to make it work and 2) 2 GB should be bare minimum for Windows Vista Home Premium Edition.
I think 20,000 RPM is ridiculous overkill for a desktop computer hard drive, especially with today's Serial ATA-300 interface. Wouldn't it be better with just a modest speed increase (from 7200 to 10,000 RPM) combined with a 32 MB on-drive memory cache and faster head seaks, which makes it much easier to keep down power consumption, heat generation and noise?
Remember, the USS Nautilus--while revolutionary in its use of a nuclear reactor--was not really that fast a submarine--I've read the top speed was only around 22 knots due to its older hull design. The USS Albacore with its highly streamlined hull could do 33+ knots underwater easily just on battery power! Is it small wonder why when the USS Skipjack--the first nuclear submarine to incorporate both a nuclear reactor with a hull design inspired by the Albacore--was such a revolution in submarine technology? I've read that Skipjack could maintain well above 33 knots speed underwater for very long periods of time, thanks to its nuclear powerplant.
Essentially, we're borrowing a lot of formerly classified research into lowering the resistance of things moving through water (the basic physics involved came from research done to make ships go faster and to reduce the resistance of a submarine running underwater; I'm almost guessing that they borrowed the research done by the revolutionary USS Albacore, a submarine that resulted in a quantum leap forward in underwater speed).
There was also one change that lowered times: nobody races in the lanes next to the pool walls. As such, this means lower turbulence in water for all those swimmers in the other lanes, resulting in much faster performances.
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You're forgetting that NOx gases are quite toxic, and another issue--diesel particulates--can cause serious damage to the lungs akin to smoking too many cigarettes. That's why railroads in the USA are switching to newer locomotives with turbodiesel prime movers that produce way lower output of NOx gases and diesel particulates, and why European car manufacturers are pressing forward with Euro 6 emissions compliance for diesel engines well ahead of the 2014 date for mandated compliance.
If you've been to Europe, some cities have pretty serious air pollution problems due to the enormous increase in the use of diesel engines in automobiles without finding ways to cut NOx and diesel particulate output.
Ford--if they offer the turbodiesel engine in the new Fiesta for the US market--will likely not offer the ECOnetic model because by putting in very high gearing and removing a number of accessories we take for granted, the ECOnetic Fiesta could end up with sluggish acceleration and lack of air conditioning, both of which are no-no's for American drivers!
1) The Duratorq engine used on this model of the new Ford Fiesta doesn't come close to meeting the EPA Tier 2 Bin 5 emissions standard for internal combustion engines, which is necessary for 50-state sales of the vehicle.
2) Ford did a number of "tricks" to get that very high fuel economy number, notably using very high gearing, low-rolling resistance tires, and removing a number of accessories considered standard for a modern car. As such, you'll have to forgo air conditioning and put up with sluggish acceleration, both of which are unacceptable to American drivers!
If Ford does offer the Duratorq turbodiesel engine on the North American-market Fiesta, it will likely be a larger displacement unit (1.6 liters) with modern emission controls to make the engine meet EPA Tier 2 Bin 5 standard. It may also use the new Powershift six-speed dual-clutch transmission, which is starting to become available on European-market Ford Focus models. Sure, it won't get the extreme fuel economy of the ECOnetic Fiesta, but fuel economy approaching 50 mpg with the current EPA highway fuel economy test may be possible.
I have to disagree with this.
Up until circa 2002, DVD's almost had the same status as Laserdiscs because to get a decent player, you had to shell out at least US$250 for one. Then the Chinese company APEX starting selling a player under US$150, and that forced all the major Japanese manufacturers to start developing lower-cost players to compete.
With new, lower-cost chipsets now becoming available, the price of Blu-ray players will drop quite a bit within the next year, and that will really spur player sales, especially now that the price of HDTV sets with HDMI inputs are dropping rapidly, too.
I think for downloaded music, we may see a trend where we could see lower-cost downloads going to 256 or 320 kbps AAC format (remember, a lot of newer non-iPod portable music players now support AAC) for portable music players and higher-cost downloads going to FLAC or Apple Lossless formats for more demanding audiophiles.
I don't think we'll see advances in picture quality beyond 1080p for home use any time soon, mostly because 1080p is very sharp to start with for home use (go see a Pixar movie on Blu-ray format and see what I mean) and the fact going to a higher definition format beyond 1080p will require a huge leap forward in high-capacity storage medium.
However, with Comcast imposing a 250 GB per month limit and likely most other ISP's following this lead, this may put a kibosh on the idea of widespread downloaded movies. :-( ISP's around the world are realizing too much large-size multimedia format downloads will choke the network.
Besides, with a real Blu-ray disc you have a lot less compromises in regards to data compression, which means vastly better picture and sound quality.
With one good reason: the imposition of download caps from your Internet Service Provider (ISP).
ISP's around the world are starting to realize that too much downloading of big multimedia files will cause serious data bottlenecks, and as such we may see users limited to around 500 to 750 GB of data downloads per month.
With improving technology, Blu-ray players and discs will continue to drop, and players could drop under US$200 within a year or so.
In fact, Japan just about bankrupted itself building and maintaining all those conventional rail Shinkansen lines. Is it small wonder why there's still strong interest in maglev technology, which allows for trains to go 500 km/h with essentially no wear since the trainset doesn't touch the track itself?
I agree, and we may see another beta "drop" soon that will use a lot less resources because there will be a lot less testing code built into the browser code. I expect IE 8.0 when it's finally released to use more or less the same resources at IE 7.0, and only needs a dual-core CPU for faster performance.
I've read that here in the USA, we already have a form of widely-used, low-cost public longer-range transportation--it's called Southwest Airlines. :-)
But seriously, because the USA is such a large country, there are relatively few corridors where high-speed rail makes economic sense. Going to 500 km/h maglev systems may increase the number of corridors, but still not enough to cover the entire USA with high-speed rail.
While this sounds like a great idea in practice, the cost of maintaining the overhead wiring, steel rails and rolling stock for such a high-speed train will border on exorbitant.
Remember, above 300 km/h, there are serious engineering issues of physical wear from the contacts of the overhead wiring with the pantographs on the train and the steel wheels and steel rail. Unless the Chinese government spends the type of money needed to properly maintain these equipment, it could end up being a serious maintenance nightmare (I can imagine how much SNCF is spending to maintain the TGV system).
However, in the Netherlands they suffered their Katrina moment in the 1953 when a series of storms killed 1,800-plus people, forcing the Dutch government to go on an enormously expensive program (Deltaworks) building numerous water barriers to prevent that type of flooding--a program that took 30 years to complete.
Sounds like a good idea in theory, but we're still essentially talking about building a NEW residential city to support the remaining port and industrial infrastructure. It would be exorbitantly expensive to pull off, to say the least!
Here's the problems with that idea:
1) Where are you going to locate the NEW city? Expand Baton Rouge?
2) There is so much shipping terminal infrastructure located in New Orleans it would be prohibitively expensive to move it all. This is especially critical because a huge fraction of the grain output of the USA goes out through New Orleans.
A better solution is to completely rebuild the city along these lines:
1) Put in an extensive system of water barriers inside the city so the flooding don't spread over a wide area.
2) Install the type of super capacity water drainage sytem--essentially a network of gigantic underground water canals--of the type that the city of Tokyo installed some years ago.
I think people forget how political blogs first made their impact in the 2004 election.
It was a number of conservative blogs that got out information about the Swiftboat Vets for Truth, and these same blogs closely monitored the conservative message board site Free Republic, picked up the message suggesting that Texas Air National Guard memos were fake, did their own research, and within 24 hours effectively proved the memos were fakes. This episode doomed Senator Kerry's Presidential campaign and effectively ended the career of CBS news anchor Dan Rather.
...except mp3s...
However, you really want at minimum 256 kbps variable bit rate MP3 files for a commercial release, such as what Amazon did with their MP3 download store.
(I'd wish Amazon would offer your choice of 256 kbps VBR MP3, WMA or AAC file download format, since server storage space is so cheap nowadays. AAC format covers all the iPods and many newer portable music players out there, and WMA covers pretty much most non-Apple iPod portable music players.)
I see two uses of USB 3.0 connections:
1) Faster access to external storage devices (though I wonder how it compares against eSATA or IEEE-1394 connections).
2) Faster transfer of digital video to computer from an HDTV digital camcorder. Mind you, since many HDTV digital camcorders have IEEE-1394 connectors, we may not see new HDTV camcorders sport USB 3.0 connections soon.
Personally, I think the broadband penetration number ("our rank has fallen to #22") is a bit of a red herring because the US is far less densely populated than most other countries and thus perfect broadband penetration is not feasible.
That's the biggest problem here in the USA--people forget that given the population density if western Europe, Japan and South Korea, there are enough customers per square hectare of area that telecoms can afford the exorbitant cost of wiring up everyone to ADSL, cable or fiber-optic broadband Internet access. Here in the USA, the large amount of rural land, sprawled-out surburbs and a lot of old telecom infrastructure wiring means means the cost to make hardwired broadband available to everyone becomes very expensive indeed. It's only within the past eight years that new technologies could create smaller "central switch offices" to extend the range of ADSL to more customers.
In the USA, the more likely long-term solution will likely be some form of WiMAX wireless access, which avoids the really expensive last mile hardwiring issue into the residence.
Actually, one HUGE issue that plagued Windows XP for quite some time was people trying to run it on machines with less than 512 MB of RAM. Once you broke through the 512 MB limit, Windows XP runs really well (on my now-retired machine with an AMD Athlon XP CPU with the 1.66 GHz CPU clock speed, with 1 GB of RAM the machine was quite fast under Windows XP Professional SP2).
I'm using an HP Pavilion A6400f with an Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2200 CPU, on-board G31 graphics, 3 GB of RAM and 500 GB Serial ATA-300 hard disk with no speed problems whatsoever under Windows Vista Home Premium edition (SP1).
Methinks the big problems are 1) you really do want a dual-core CPU to make it work and 2) 2 GB should be bare minimum for Windows Vista Home Premium Edition.
I think 20,000 RPM is ridiculous overkill for a desktop computer hard drive, especially with today's Serial ATA-300 interface. Wouldn't it be better with just a modest speed increase (from 7200 to 10,000 RPM) combined with a 32 MB on-drive memory cache and faster head seaks, which makes it much easier to keep down power consumption, heat generation and noise?
Remember, the USS Nautilus--while revolutionary in its use of a nuclear reactor--was not really that fast a submarine--I've read the top speed was only around 22 knots due to its older hull design. The USS Albacore with its highly streamlined hull could do 33+ knots underwater easily just on battery power! Is it small wonder why when the USS Skipjack--the first nuclear submarine to incorporate both a nuclear reactor with a hull design inspired by the Albacore--was such a revolution in submarine technology? I've read that Skipjack could maintain well above 33 knots speed underwater for very long periods of time, thanks to its nuclear powerplant.
Essentially, we're borrowing a lot of formerly classified research into lowering the resistance of things moving through water (the basic physics involved came from research done to make ships go faster and to reduce the resistance of a submarine running underwater; I'm almost guessing that they borrowed the research done by the revolutionary USS Albacore, a submarine that resulted in a quantum leap forward in underwater speed).
There was also one change that lowered times: nobody races in the lanes next to the pool walls. As such, this means lower turbulence in water for all those swimmers in the other lanes, resulting in much faster performances.