Eideard

If only the other manufacturers of diesel-powered vehicles had their act together as well as Audi, we’d be in a better situation here in the United States.

Diesel is cleaner, diesel is cheaper. We’d be saving money as families and as a nation. We’d lower our dependency on foreign oil – because there’s hardly anything easier and cheaper to produce than biodiesel. Yet, new biodiesel refineries are closing because of underutilization.

If you know anyone with a diesel-powered vehicle – who has tried biodiesel – they’ll tell you their critter ran better and cleaner with the veggie product than the stuff refined from petroleum.

Yet, almost every manufacturer who sells a diesel-powered car or small truck somewhere else in the world – is afraid to market it in the United States. Something else we can thank General Motors for – the crap diesel cars they sold decades ago ruined the market for the fearful.

Of course, like Toyota did with the hybrid, manufacturers like Audi [and Volkswagen] have the smarts and cojones to get the jump on everyone else and establish themselves as the source for clean, powerful, economical diesel-power ahead of all the others who could be doing the same.

Like Toyota, Honda, GM’s Opel, Ford – all candyass manufacturers with diesel cars and small pickups they could be selling here.

Will Jinx get to design the uniforms?

The Pentagon will create a Cyber Command to oversee the U.S. military’s efforts to protect its computer networks and operate in cyberspace, under an order signed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

The new headquarters, likely to be based at Fort Meade, Maryland, outside Washington, D.C., will be responsible for defending U.S. military systems but not other U.S. government or private networks, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said.

Asked if the command would be capable of offensive operations as well as protecting the Department of Defense, Whitman declined to answer directly.

“This command is going to focus on the protection and operation of DoD’s networks,” he said. “This command is going to do what is necessary to be able to do that…”

“The power to disrupt and destroy, once the sole province of nations, now also rests with small groups and individuals, from terrorist groups to organized crime to industrial spies to hacker activists, to teenage hackers,” he said…

The head of the Cyber Command would also be the director of the U.S. National Security Agency, which conducts electronic surveillance and communications interception and is also based at Fort Meade.

Can you imagine the security check to get into this gig? Almost anyone who applies to join the new Obama CyberWarrior Commando won’t be worth spit at the job unless they’ve already been working at hacking into someone’s military secrets.

Back into the garage, again…
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Boeing’s share price dropped by nearly 9 per cent in intraday trading yesterday after it postponed the initial test flight of its first new aircraft in more than ten years.

The company said that problems with the body of the revolutionary 787 Dreamliner had forced it to delay the test, which had been scheduled for this month.

Boeing said that it would be several weeks before it could announce a new test flight date or details on how far the delay would push back the delivery of the Dreamliner, which is the company’s first new aircraft since the 777 was developed more than a decade ago.

This marks the fifth time that the test flight has been postponed, damaging Boeing’s credibility when it is struggling with cancelled orders because of the economic downturn…

The aircraft was originally scheduled to make its first flight in summer 2007, with delivery to airlines by early last year, but the test has been delayed four times because of design or production problems.

With the economic downturn hitting business in the travel industry, airlines have cancelled their orders for 45 Dreamliners, although Boeing said this month that it had orders for more than 850 of the aircraft.

“Disappointing” is hardly the appropriate term.

When the world market is down to two firms competing at this size of passenger aircraft, delays give a giant boost to your competitor. In this case, the crew at Airbus. The 380 is rolling out the door.

It’s hard to believe that we’re approaching the two-year anniversary of the original iPhone. I don’t think it is hyperbole to say that the iPhone has completely transformed the mobile computing space. This is especially clear when evaluating mobile Wi-Fi usage data.

Today, Boingo Wireless released a data snapshot of mobile device access on its airport network of Wi-Fi hotspots. According to Boingo, airports are the number one venue for Wi-Fi access worldwide, so they make for a good data point when evaluating Wi-Fi usage.

For the past 24-months, Boingo has tracked its airport Wi-Fi data and the increase in mobile device uptake is astonishing. It’s also driven almost entirely by the iPhone and the iPod touch.

Since May 2007, mobile device usage has gone from accounting for 0.1% of Boingo’s airport Wi-Fi connections to 26.1%. In two years, the smartphone has gone from a non-entity to accounting for 1/4 of all of Boingo’s connections.

Boingo has also tracked what type of devices associate with Boingo operated airport Wi-Fi hotspots. In 2007, the first year the iPhone was available, the iPhone only accounted for 1% of all mobile devices. Windows CE (Windows Mobile), was the leader in 2007, with 66% of mobile device connections. In 2008, the iPhone accounted for 51.7% of all mobile devices, with the iPod touch coming in second with 42.4%. For the first five months of 2009, the iPhone has taken an astounding 89.2% of all mobile devices accessing Boingo’s airport hotspots. The iPod touch has dipped to 4.7%. I talked to Jeremy Pepper from Boingo PR and he said that they think the drop in the price of the iPhone is the reason iPod touch access figures have dipped, with the iPhone taking its place.

Although these figures are only from one Wi-Fi access source, the number of users that access Wi-Fi at the airport provides what I consider a good sample for data collection. In two years, not only has the mobile access space increased 261x, the iPhone OS accounts for nearly 94% of all mobile connections.

No wonder every other phone manufacturer is desperately trying to play catch-up!

Cripes. Even I’m surprised. I have to chuckle over all the naysayers and geek whiners who predicted this product was a guaranteed fail.

A teenage girl who claimed 56 stars were tattooed on her face while she slept has admitted she lied and was awake the whole time.

London’s Daily Telegraph reported Kimberley Vlaminck, who said she fell asleep after asking for only three stars, lied because her father was “furious”.

She initially insisted she dozed had off after asking the tattooist for just three small stars – then woke in horror to find her face was covered.

The Belgian teen blamed the Flemish-speaking tattooist for not being able to understand her French and English instructions and threatened to sue.

Har! I thought the original report was so unlikely I ignored the article and didn’t post about it. This makes sense – and counters her crappy excuses, willingness to blame others for her foolishness.

Thanks, Justin

Click on photo to enlarge

In a breakthrough that will help scientists unlock mysteries of the Sun and its impacts on Earth, an international team of scientists led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) has created the first-ever comprehensive computer model of sunspots. The resulting visuals capture both scientific detail and remarkable beauty.

The high-resolution simulations of sunspot pairs open the way for researchers to learn more about the vast mysterious dark patches on the Sun’s surface. Sunspots are the most striking manifestations of solar magnetism on the solar surface, and they are associated with massive ejections of charged plasma that can cause geomagnetic storms and disrupt communications and navigational systems. They also contribute to variations in overall solar output, which can affect weather on Earth and exert a subtle influence on climate patterns.

The research, by scientists at NCAR and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany, is being published this week in Science Express.

“This is the first time we have a model of an entire sunspot,” says lead author Matthias Rempel, a scientist at NCAR’s High Altitude Observatory. “If you want to understand all the drivers of Earth’s atmospheric system, you have to understand how sunspots emerge and evolve. Our simulations will advance research into the inner workings of the Sun as well as connections between solar output and Earth’s atmosphere.”

Check out the gallery and animations. Something truly special.

Click on photo to enlarge

We’re into monsoon season earlier than ever. The clouds in the background are fair weather, high altitude clouds. Out of frame, the lower, puffier, wetter clouds are starting to ballloon into the air as moist breezes from the south and west reach our mountains and are forced upwards into colder air.

Should have some scattered thunder showers by mid-afternoon.

And the Apache Plume is one of my favorite summer blooming bushes.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Statistics showed the decline in China’s economy has bottomed out, said an article posted on the website of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

A series of macro-control policies launched since the fourth quarter last year helped prevent the economy from slumping and China’s economy now showed positive changes with the positive factors accumulating, said the article by Guo Tongxin from the Department of Comprehensive Statistics.

The bottom of this round of economic downturn in China should be at the fourth quarter in 2008 and the first quarter this year, based on the year-on-year GDP changes, the article said.

GDP growth was 9 percent in the third quarter in 2008, then slumped to 6.8 percent in the fourth quarter and further down to 6.1 percent in the first quarter in 2009.

GDP in the second quarter this year was expected to be almost 8 percent judging from the current GDP growth and main economic indexes in April and May, the article said…

Despite these positive indices, China’s economy faced obstacles to maintaining a stable economic rebound because of recession in most parts of the world, sluggish demand for Chinese products, production overcapacity in some industries and possible inflation.

Leading indicators validate this analysis which – not so incidentally – matches my own about the U.S. economy though not as dynamic in this neck of the world prairie.

Now we just need to keep a bit of backbone in the Congressional jellyfish.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

European aviation giant Airbus is set to deliver the first A320 airplane assembled at its factory in China, in a symbolic event further marking the nation’s global rise.

The first plane to be made at plant in northern Tianjin, the only Airbus factory outside Europe, will be delivered to Dragon Aviation Leasing and will be flown by Sichuan Airlines, a regional Chinese air carrier…

The plane took its first test flight last month with the first Chinese test engineer trained by Airbus.

Ten middle-distance A319/320 aircraft will be delivered by the end of the year, before the factory starts to churn out up to four planes a month before the end of 2011…

The joint venture factory, about 120 kilometres (72 miles) southeast of Beijing, is 51 percent owned by Airbus, subsidiary of the European group EADS, and 49 percent by a Chinese aviation consortium.

At the inauguration Airbus chief-executive-officer Thomas Enders said the company’s “new house” would become “the jump off point for the future development of Airbus in China and in the region..”

The decision to build the China plant was based on strong growth estimates that expect the nation to buy up to 2,800 passenger and transport planes over the next 20 years…

Smart business decisions. The kind that require intelligent multilateral cooperation between nations.

Whining about a global economy will neither slow down growth nor make your nation and society a partner in the process.

It is already illegal to manually use a cell phone for texting or calling while driving in New Jersey. A state legislator has aimed at the next in-car distraction: GPS devices. Democratic Assemblyman Harvey Smith wants a ban on manually programming GPS devices while driving. You would need to pull over to input your destination, or have a voice-operated unit. Punishment otherwise would be a $100 fine.

Probably every single one of us has had to drive defensively around someone who was obviously not paying attention to their driving. At this point, the question in New Jersey is how many activities are they going to ban? And what makes a GPS unit worse than an MP3 player or those folks who drive with their knees while they eat?

Another Assemblyman, John Wisniewski, had proposed a blanket ban on distracted driving in 2006 but that was passed over in favor of the cell phone-specific ban. New Jersey also already has a law against careless driving, which carries a $100 fine and two points on your license. Smith’s proposed law would give New Jersey officers — Smith is an undersheriff — a specific behavior to target, but it all seems a bit scattershot in light of the copious distracting activities drivers engage in.

Next they’ll require you keep your GPS in the trunk – stop, park, open the trunk – then, you can use it.