The most obvious improvement we'll see in the 2G iPhone will be HSDPA support, which makes it possible for broadband speed Internet downloads without needing to be near a Wi-Fi "hotspot." I believe many European telecom providers have started to roll out since 2006.
If you need to correct the known issues with the 3G nano download and install the 1.0.1 firmware for the player--the Cover Flow runs a lot smoother and the battery life indicator actually works correctly for a change. I also noticed that videos rarely freeze the player, unlike the original firmware.
The new 3G iPod nano is actually very nice, but do be aware of two things:
1) The case does smudge rather easily and I worry about the chrome back scratching easily, too. Hopefully, this problem goes away when the new protective cases for the 3G nano starts hitting stores in the next 30 days or so.
2) I high recommend updating the firmware on the player to Version 1.0.1. The new firmware fixes two problems: the slow operation of Cover Flow and the battery charge level display problem.
Another problem is that Microsoft makes so much money per year that 497 million could easily be paid off in one lump-sum payment. It's akin to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell fining the New England Patriots US$750,000 for that recent illegal videotaping scandal--a drop in the bucket in terms of impact.
The famous Tsar Bomba was more or less an exercise in ego because it required external installation (with all the aerodynamic drag problems) on the Tu-95 bomber and the flight crew barely survived the blast effects of that 50 MT explosion; if the bomb had been detonated at the full 100 MT yield it's been said the flight crew would not have survived the blast even though the bomb had a parachute retardation system.
Your comments is the reason why oil-laden algae is probably the best long-term solution for biofuel production.
With oil-laden algae, not only do you get diesel fuel and heating oil easily (and with further refining probably a larger range of motor fuels and lubricants), but also the "waste" from the initial processing could be processed into ethanol, animal feed and/or plant fertilizer. And unlike plant-based biofuels, oil-laden algae will not significantly interfere with food production.
That would be understandable if you're talking plants with no real value, but with improving technology to derive ethanol from plant cellulose, all that kudzu weed will suddenly become useful as a cellulose source of ethanol. In fact, all that plant waste from agricultural production will suddenly find new life as an ethanol source.
I wouldn't be surprised if BP is one of the first companies to set up production plants growing oil-laden algae on a massive scale, with the oil turned into a whole range of fuels and lubricants and the solid waste from the processing turned into ethanol, animal feed and/or plant fertilizer.
Impressive as it is with the jatropha plant producing 202 gallons per acre of biodiesel fuel, you still have the issue of setting aside land and having to set up an agricultural infrastructure on a massive scale to grow them.
I still appears that "growing" oil-laden algae is the best long-term solution, since algae grows extremely fast and has very high fuel density; best of all, oil-laden algae could be grown in seawater, nearly eliminating the enormous expense of water desalinization. The refining process of oil-laden algae not only gets you biodiesel fuel and heating oil, but also the solid waste from the processing could be processed further into ethanol, plant fertilizer and/or animal feed!:-) In fact, the oil from the algae could be run through a catalytic cracker and yield kerosene and possibly even gasoline.
1) Have you noticed that two of the most important astronomical observatory sites in the world--the top of Mauna Kea in Hawaii and the European Southern Observatory in Chile's Atacama Desert--are designed to have minimal interference from light pollution?
2) This is why over the next 20-25 years we'll see more and more space-based telescopes operating--no worries about light pollution in space, that's to be sure (well, unless the telescope is pointed just too close to the Sun).
3) I think the next place where we'll see ground-based telescopes operating is the around the Great Australian Bight, where the star viewing conditions are considered by many to be better than even the Atacama Desert.
By the way, that design of the propellers won't exactly work for Russian subs, either. You try an exact copy of the propeller and it could adversely affect the handling of the Russian Akula, Sierra and Oscar class submarines; in short, each submarine type requires its own unique propeller design. And this design definitely does not work with the type of ducted propellers that are starting to appear on the very latest submarine designs (The US Seawolf class submarine uses them, and I believe the new Virginia class submarine will use ducted propellers, too).
...I think the Russians figured out more or less the same propeller design about the same time the Americans did. People forget the Russians during the Soviet era had excellent scientists, and TsAGI (the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute) did a lot of pioneering work in aerodynamics and hydrodynamics, including work on ship and submarine propeller design.
By the way, that picture confirms what I saw several times on the History Channel, where they showed a Los Angeles class submarine underwater running with a multibladed propeller (you can see the propeller blades clearly in the video).
...when they see the much-rumored 6G iPod video with its big full-screen display that is actually quite readable. NBC would be amazingly obtuse to miss out on selling TV episodes as "showcase" pieces for this new iPod.
NBC needs to realize that if it weren't for the iTunes Music Store such shows like The Office would have been cancelled from NBC a LONG time ago.
The thing that finally made the AT&T time service over telephone lines obselete was the dramatic reduction in the cost of small clocks that allow you to pick up the 60 kHz WWVB time signal. In fact, you can get wristwatches around US$40 that can do that now (I have a Casio wrist watch that does this).
In fact, I think once WiMax technology matures that will be how most of rural USA will get broadband Internet access. Why bother with all the innumerable hassles of a hard-wired last mile hardwired DSL or cable modem connection when a small number of towers could cover a large swath of land with 3-6 mbps broadband access?
In fact, if you go to western Texas, wind turbines are going up almost as fast as weeds.:-)
But with developments in nanotechnology, we could see a drastic drop in the price of solar panels within the next ten years. A solar panel setup that costs US$30,000 now could cost as little as US$3,000, which would suddenly make home power generation very viable indeed. And with MIT and several private groups working on supercapacitor battery packs built from carbon nanotubes, that also makes it viable to store all that power generated in the daytime for use at night.
...I will never forget what happened in 1996 when we had three simultaneous astronomical events we could see with the naked eye on one night on the US West Coast: a full lunar eclipse, Comet Hyakutake, and a very bright Mars. That was a night you definitely wanted a good amateur telescope.
Apparently (so the story goes), the discs were originally designed to hold 60 minutes of music. But the VP of Sony decided this was unacceptable, since it would not be long enough to allow uninterrupted playing of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony without a disc change -- the piece as usually performed is a little less than 1:15, or about 74 minutes.
There's a real actual reason for this: Beethoven's 9th Symphony is very popular in Japan for many decades, and the fact a CD could hold a non-stop performance of this famous symphony made it very desirable for the initial Japanese market for this format.
I think once you reach 192 kbps data rate with VBR in either MP3 or AAC compression, it's very difficult to tell between the original and the encoded version unless you have high-end audio equipment that most audiophiles can't afford anyway. I've ripped Jean Michel Jarre's current album Téo & Téa at both 192 kbps and 256 kbps VBR high quality MP3 encoding and could not tell the difference on my 2G iPod nano played back with Etymotic Research ER-6i in-ear headphones.
I think this poster is more right than you think if you're talking liquid hydrogen. LH2 is extremely dangerous to handle, and a few gallons of LH2 igniting could literally rip a car to tiny pieces. That's why when the Challenger exploded in 1986 it went off with the force of an atomic artillery shell--the equivalent a couple of hundred tons of TNT. Small wonder why the preferred method to store hydrogen as fuel are in metal hydride fuel cells.
I think using a modified B83 nuclear bomb to detonate on a relatively small asteroid is kind of overkill. A better solution would probably be using a smaller nuclear device derived from the B61 bomb detonated in the 35-40 kT range. All we need to do is the change the trajectory of the asteroid in question, and detonating a relatively small nuclear bomb on the asteroid may change the trajectory just enough to miss Earth by fairly substantial margins.
In Sacramento County, California in the USA during the last major election, they went to mark-sense paper ballots where you fill out your selection in PEN. The markings on the ballot are large enough to be read by both electronic optical readers and hand counts in case a close election requires one. Mind you, the big downside was that the paper ballot ended up being a HUGE sheet of paper where you had to fill out both sides, though.
The Auburn-Foresthill Bridge near Auburn, California could probably be the LAST of the truss arch bridges ever built in California. Most new bridges I know of in my area are nowadays stressed-concrete bridges with lots of redundancy, important especially here in earthquake-prone California.
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The most obvious improvement we'll see in the 2G iPhone will be HSDPA support, which makes it possible for broadband speed Internet downloads without needing to be near a Wi-Fi "hotspot." I believe many European telecom providers have started to roll out since 2006.
16 MB/sec. is not too bad if your external hard drive is used primarily as a backup drive.
Which does remind me: how come I haven't seen tape backup drives for sale that run through the USB 2.0 port?
What you just displayed probably came from Japan, with lots of numerous variations.
If you need to correct the known issues with the 3G nano download and install the 1.0.1 firmware for the player--the Cover Flow runs a lot smoother and the battery life indicator actually works correctly for a change. I also noticed that videos rarely freeze the player, unlike the original firmware.
The new 3G iPod nano is actually very nice, but do be aware of two things:
1) The case does smudge rather easily and I worry about the chrome back scratching easily, too. Hopefully, this problem goes away when the new protective cases for the 3G nano starts hitting stores in the next 30 days or so.
2) I high recommend updating the firmware on the player to Version 1.0.1. The new firmware fixes two problems: the slow operation of Cover Flow and the battery charge level display problem.
Another problem is that Microsoft makes so much money per year that 497 million could easily be paid off in one lump-sum payment. It's akin to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell fining the New England Patriots US$750,000 for that recent illegal videotaping scandal--a drop in the bucket in terms of impact.
The famous Tsar Bomba was more or less an exercise in ego because it required external installation (with all the aerodynamic drag problems) on the Tu-95 bomber and the flight crew barely survived the blast effects of that 50 MT explosion; if the bomb had been detonated at the full 100 MT yield it's been said the flight crew would not have survived the blast even though the bomb had a parachute retardation system.
Your comments is the reason why oil-laden algae is probably the best long-term solution for biofuel production.
With oil-laden algae, not only do you get diesel fuel and heating oil easily (and with further refining probably a larger range of motor fuels and lubricants), but also the "waste" from the initial processing could be processed into ethanol, animal feed and/or plant fertilizer. And unlike plant-based biofuels, oil-laden algae will not significantly interfere with food production.
That would be understandable if you're talking plants with no real value, but with improving technology to derive ethanol from plant cellulose, all that kudzu weed will suddenly become useful as a cellulose source of ethanol. In fact, all that plant waste from agricultural production will suddenly find new life as an ethanol source.
I wouldn't be surprised if BP is one of the first companies to set up production plants growing oil-laden algae on a massive scale, with the oil turned into a whole range of fuels and lubricants and the solid waste from the processing turned into ethanol, animal feed and/or plant fertilizer.
Impressive as it is with the jatropha plant producing 202 gallons per acre of biodiesel fuel, you still have the issue of setting aside land and having to set up an agricultural infrastructure on a massive scale to grow them.
:-) In fact, the oil from the algae could be run through a catalytic cracker and yield kerosene and possibly even gasoline.
I still appears that "growing" oil-laden algae is the best long-term solution, since algae grows extremely fast and has very high fuel density; best of all, oil-laden algae could be grown in seawater, nearly eliminating the enormous expense of water desalinization. The refining process of oil-laden algae not only gets you biodiesel fuel and heating oil, but also the solid waste from the processing could be processed further into ethanol, plant fertilizer and/or animal feed!
1) Have you noticed that two of the most important astronomical observatory sites in the world--the top of Mauna Kea in Hawaii and the European Southern Observatory in Chile's Atacama Desert--are designed to have minimal interference from light pollution?
2) This is why over the next 20-25 years we'll see more and more space-based telescopes operating--no worries about light pollution in space, that's to be sure (well, unless the telescope is pointed just too close to the Sun).
3) I think the next place where we'll see ground-based telescopes operating is the around the Great Australian Bight, where the star viewing conditions are considered by many to be better than even the Atacama Desert.
By the way, that design of the propellers won't exactly work for Russian subs, either. You try an exact copy of the propeller and it could adversely affect the handling of the Russian Akula, Sierra and Oscar class submarines; in short, each submarine type requires its own unique propeller design. And this design definitely does not work with the type of ducted propellers that are starting to appear on the very latest submarine designs (The US Seawolf class submarine uses them, and I believe the new Virginia class submarine will use ducted propellers, too).
...I think the Russians figured out more or less the same propeller design about the same time the Americans did. People forget the Russians during the Soviet era had excellent scientists, and TsAGI (the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute) did a lot of pioneering work in aerodynamics and hydrodynamics, including work on ship and submarine propeller design.
By the way, that picture confirms what I saw several times on the History Channel, where they showed a Los Angeles class submarine underwater running with a multibladed propeller (you can see the propeller blades clearly in the video).
...when they see the much-rumored 6G iPod video with its big full-screen display that is actually quite readable. NBC would be amazingly obtuse to miss out on selling TV episodes as "showcase" pieces for this new iPod.
NBC needs to realize that if it weren't for the iTunes Music Store such shows like The Office would have been cancelled from NBC a LONG time ago.
The thing that finally made the AT&T time service over telephone lines obselete was the dramatic reduction in the cost of small clocks that allow you to pick up the 60 kHz WWVB time signal. In fact, you can get wristwatches around US$40 that can do that now (I have a Casio wrist watch that does this).
In fact, I think once WiMax technology matures that will be how most of rural USA will get broadband Internet access. Why bother with all the innumerable hassles of a hard-wired last mile hardwired DSL or cable modem connection when a small number of towers could cover a large swath of land with 3-6 mbps broadband access?
In fact, if you go to western Texas, wind turbines are going up almost as fast as weeds. :-)
But with developments in nanotechnology, we could see a drastic drop in the price of solar panels within the next ten years. A solar panel setup that costs US$30,000 now could cost as little as US$3,000, which would suddenly make home power generation very viable indeed. And with MIT and several private groups working on supercapacitor battery packs built from carbon nanotubes, that also makes it viable to store all that power generated in the daytime for use at night.
...I will never forget what happened in 1996 when we had three simultaneous astronomical events we could see with the naked eye on one night on the US West Coast: a full lunar eclipse, Comet Hyakutake, and a very bright Mars. That was a night you definitely wanted a good amateur telescope.
Apparently (so the story goes), the discs were originally designed to hold 60 minutes of music. But the VP of Sony decided this was unacceptable, since it would not be long enough to allow uninterrupted playing of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony without a disc change -- the piece as usually performed is a little less than 1:15, or about 74 minutes.
There's a real actual reason for this: Beethoven's 9th Symphony is very popular in Japan for many decades, and the fact a CD could hold a non-stop performance of this famous symphony made it very desirable for the initial Japanese market for this format.
I think once you reach 192 kbps data rate with VBR in either MP3 or AAC compression, it's very difficult to tell between the original and the encoded version unless you have high-end audio equipment that most audiophiles can't afford anyway. I've ripped Jean Michel Jarre's current album Téo & Téa at both 192 kbps and 256 kbps VBR high quality MP3 encoding and could not tell the difference on my 2G iPod nano played back with Etymotic Research ER-6i in-ear headphones.
I think this poster is more right than you think if you're talking liquid hydrogen. LH2 is extremely dangerous to handle, and a few gallons of LH2 igniting could literally rip a car to tiny pieces. That's why when the Challenger exploded in 1986 it went off with the force of an atomic artillery shell--the equivalent a couple of hundred tons of TNT. Small wonder why the preferred method to store hydrogen as fuel are in metal hydride fuel cells.
I think using a modified B83 nuclear bomb to detonate on a relatively small asteroid is kind of overkill. A better solution would probably be using a smaller nuclear device derived from the B61 bomb detonated in the 35-40 kT range. All we need to do is the change the trajectory of the asteroid in question, and detonating a relatively small nuclear bomb on the asteroid may change the trajectory just enough to miss Earth by fairly substantial margins.
In Sacramento County, California in the USA during the last major election, they went to mark-sense paper ballots where you fill out your selection in PEN. The markings on the ballot are large enough to be read by both electronic optical readers and hand counts in case a close election requires one. Mind you, the big downside was that the paper ballot ended up being a HUGE sheet of paper where you had to fill out both sides, though.
The Auburn-Foresthill Bridge near Auburn, California could probably be the LAST of the truss arch bridges ever built in California. Most new bridges I know of in my area are nowadays stressed-concrete bridges with lots of redundancy, important especially here in earthquake-prone California.