Category Archives: Technology

Carbon cloud over a green fuel

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Last year in Goldfield, Iowa, a refinery began pumping out a stream of ethanol, which supporters call the clean, renewable fuel of the future.

There’s just one problem: The plant is burning 300 tons of coal a day to turn corn into ethanol – the first US plant of its kind to use coal instead of cleaner natural gas.

If the biofuels industry is going to depend on coal, and these conversion plants release their CO2 to the air, it could undo the global warming benefits of using ethanol.

[Read](http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0323/p01s01-sten.html) (Christian Science Monitor)

Larger hybrids taking longer to sell

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The smaller Toyota Prius and Honda Civic gas-electric hybrids remain hits that are in short supply. But the luxury Lexus RX 400h SUV and Honda Accord sedan hybrids have been taking longer to sell than their conventional counterparts. The problem seems to be that the bigger, fancier hybrids often carry a higher price differential compared with their conventional versions than the differential for the smaller cars.

[Read](http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2006-03-20-hybrid-sales-usat_x.htm) (USA Today)

Bringing Botnets Out of the Shadows

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The Washington Post has an interesting article about [Shadowserver](http://www.shadowserver.org/news.php “Shadowserver home page”), a group of volunteers who battle large, remote-controlled herds of hacked personal PCs, also known as [botnets](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botnet “Wikipedia”).

[Read](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/21/AR2006032100279.html) (Washington Post)

Pirate radio interferes with Miami pilots

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Airline pilots departing from Miami International Airport are getting an earful of something unexpected: Hip-hop tunes from a pirate radio station that sometimes interfere with their communications with the control tower.

[Read](http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/03/19/pirate.radio.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest) (AP via CNN)

It sounds like he needs to move his station to a different frequency.

Yellow light for Wind Power

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Bats in some US regions may be killed in greater numbers than previously thought by wind farms.

Dead bats are just one of a growing list of concerns that threaten to tarnish wind power’s reputation as one of the nation’s most promising renewable energy sources. Concerns over the potential impact on migratory songbirds, aesthetic issues like the “shutter effect” of flickering turbine blade shadows, and “view shed” damage from turbines on scenic skylines are growing, observers say.

Read (Christian Science Monitor)

Demand For Analog Engineers is High

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Globalization and the rise of a tech economy worldwide often lead to images of Silicon Valley engineers and software developers being outsourced or offshored. But the analog engineer, long in high demand, is enjoying even more of a heyday as the world goes digital. They’re largely immune from offshoring.

Read (Siliconvalley.com)

The article states that many of the engineers at Linear bought their own workbench equipment. I can relate to that – As a Ham and a tinkerer, I’ve been putting together a workbench in the basement for years, and part of the fun is finding the old equipment at a great price and then making it work again.

Sony’s robot attains enlightenment with third eye

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Robots may not be able to do everything humans can, but the latest version of Sony’s humanoid robot has something many people might find useful: a third eye.

Read (Reuters) via the [Robotics Breaking News Blog](http://breakingnewsblog.com/robotics/archives/sonys_robot_focuses_with_third_eye/)

I’d like to have a third eye, but instead of having it in the middle of my forehead, I’d like to have it in the back of my head.

Protect our electronics against EMP attack

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An electronic magnetic pulse, EMP, is generated by a nuclear explosion, or by a smaller-scale “e-bomb.” If a terrorist or rogue nation detonated a nuclear bomb a few hundred miles above the United States, the resulting shock wave could damage or disrupt electronic components throughout the country. The consequences could be catastrophic. Our life-sustaining critical infrastructure such as communications networks, energy networks, and food and water distribution networks could all break down.

Fortunately, protecting electronics and critical infrastructure against an EMP is doable. It involves enclosing every electronic component with a metallic cage that blocks out electromagnetic waves.

Read (Christian Science Monitor)

Test Post #3 from OPML Editor

I can now post and edit.

I had to replace my xmlrpc.php with Cori Schlegel’s version. His version allowed me to create new posts, but I had to modify his version in order to edit posts.

To edit a post, the function mw_editPost needed the same correction as mw_newPost – the user name and password needed the extra spaces on the end trimmed off. I just trimmed the user name and password of every instance in xmlrpc.php