October 2007 Archive of engeniusBLOG

Politicians are usually believed to be the most likely to cover up problems, lies, errors, illegal activities, breaches of The Constitution. Although the first fingers always point at Richard Nixon, it would be really hard to argue that there aren't a lot more cover ups going on today: domestic and international. Bad news, too, whether it is about the real circumstances in Iraq, or the state of the economy being created by a government that has let the US Dollar spiral down -- creating problems in other countries -- also needs to be hidden, or a story spun about the fact that a gullible public can/will buy.

In 2005, NASA (still believing that the "Aeronautics" in its name is relevant, although a lot of us believe this is an agency that is merely cover for what is essentially a division of the military) finished a survey of thousands of commercial pilots -- airlines and general aviation -- about safety in the skies of America. It has continued to decli...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

The personal computer is a remarkable piece of evolutionary engineering, isn’t it? The latest PC on my desk, clocking its Intel Core 2 Duo 6420 processor at over 2 GHz, fills my bill for fast Web surfing and Photoshop artwork manipulation, and even makes short work of small circuit simulations. Best of all, it set me back less than a kilobuck. By all commercial standards, a PC like mine is rather up to date and state-of-the-art.

Or is it?

Just like the 8088-equipped personal computers most folks cut their teeth on back in the 1980s, the Achilles Heel of this machine is its rotating machinery. The box is endowed with a 3.5-in. floppy disk (for office-to-basement Sneaker Net runs), a CD-ROM/DVD drive that sounds like a banshee at midnight when it revs up, and a Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 hard drive.

The Seagate drive, spinning at 7200 rpm, offers huge capacity, low head seek times, and splendidly fast transfer rates. I must admit I get an indescribable sort...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

Whooeee! I’d better dust off my old bell bottom jeans and see if those tie-dye t-shirts still fit because it looks like ecology’s back in fashion. At least that’s what one could assume if the huge response to my call for suggestions for environmentally-friendly holiday gifts in last month’s editorial (see Going Green, Giving Green) is any indicator. Many of the products seeking entry into this year’s Green Gift Guide are innovative, environmentally-friendly, and often downright sexy, but the real evidence that eco-consumerism has hit the mainstream lies in the handful of completely inappropriate toys, gadgets and other cheaply-made junk that’s trying to pass itself off as green. Yes folks, green has become the new Red White and Blue<...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

I used to cringe at the sympathetic, patronizing looks I got when Silicon Valley types found out I live in New Jersey...but now I’m the one who feels sorry for them. While both states have surprisingly similar economies, demographics, and traffic problems, I’ll gladly shovel snow for a couple of months to enjoy our 50% lower housing prices, the nation’s 2nd-best school system, and distinct absence of major earthquakes. Despite the country’s perceptions of our state as an appendage of New York City, known chiefly for its highways, oil refineries, diners, and mafia burial sites, the Garden State has always led the nation in technical and social innovation. I have lots of fun reminding my smug friends from the Valley that New Jersey was busy giving us television, the transistor, CMOS, LCDs, birth control pills, and lots more, while San José was still covered by orange orchards. I’m also proud to say that New Jersey is the home of an important social...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

As I write, wild fires are savaging Southern California and nearly one million people have been displaced from their homes. This should be a crisis for the whole country, but this evening the Federal government is standing back and is virtually saying that it is California's problem -- probably because little to nothing has changed at FEMA (except people) since the agency's tragic inability to respond following Hurricane Katrina. Bush is taking his compulsory press tour this coming Thursday, no doubt calling on logistics and facilities that could be much better used for helping his fellow citizens.

Nor, it seems, is our industry helping. According to the Intertech USA web site, the 8th Annual LEDs Conference, starting tomorrow, October 24, 2007, is continuing on. "Neither the San Diego Airport nor the Sheraton San Diego are being...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

When it comes to customer service, my Internet Service Provider is just next door to worthless. It has no concept of the meaning of the word service.

You see, in my neck of the Internet woods, a transition was recently completed away from Adelphia as an ISP (you know, the company that suffered top-level management fraud, shareholder wrath, grand jury probes, and an SEC investigation). The new service provider is TimeWarner Roadrunner.

Let the fun begin. TimeWarner Roadrunner commenced its service by trashing my personal Web pages (although I'm told they're backed up), bungling my ability to establish an FTP session with my site, and changing my password more than one time (without advising me). Over a three-month period while trying to resolve the problems, I've listened to streams of insipid music while waiting on hold for 45 minutes at a clip. When someone finally answers my c...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

One of my brothers was a Reader (in Mechanical and Production Engineering) at the University of Nottingham -- in the UK -- and it is good to see one of the other departments there (Electrical Engineering) at the hub of one of those projects that should make us all proud to be engineers.

Four universities have come together in a project with the acronym SCORE (Stove for Cooking, Refrigeration and Electricity supply). The researchers are from the University of Manchester, the University of Nottingham, Imperial College (London), Queen Mary College (University of London) and they have stretched their arms across the Atlantic to gain help from the Los Alamos National Laboratory and GP Acoustics (a division of GP Industries and manufacturers of KEF and Celestion audio products). Th...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

My experience with the Internet goes back to the mid-1980s, when transactions using FTP file transfers, Telnet sessions, and SMTP mail transfers were the rule. This was before the advent of the Web browser and today's ubiquitous commercial World Wide Web. Those days were characterized by a lot of file sharing. Folks swapped executables and source code regularly. The best things in TCP/IP life were free.

Fortunately, the spirit of open-source and free distribution is still very much alive and well on the Web, in spite of the preponderance of commercial sites, the eBay phenomenon, and the like. Just last week I discovered some free and open-source code engineering applications that confirmed the good old days are still here.

The first discovery is a Windows design entry and schematic capture program called TinyCAD. Coming from UK-based author Matt Pyne,  the TinyCAD application instal...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

I have often wondered whether some of the things I am told during my visits to semiconductor vendors are misleading by accident, or whether there isn't sometimes a more deliberate attempt to keep a sensitive part of the story quiet. As a journalist, I expect to hear news and forecasts of progress in technology, techniques, and results, but I don't expect to hear about a quantum (most apropos, as you will see) leap until very close to the unveiling of that special new thing.

When I read in these pages Lee Goldberg's report of his visit to Solar Power 2007, in Long Beach, I was struck by some of the stuff he didn't write about, central to the production of electricity from the sun's energy. Lee, rightly, recognizes the incredible commercial business that lies ahead for the industry, but it seems companies are trying to keep quiet about a few things that, presumably, they think th...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

I indulge in chocolate. Not much, mind you. Just a few ounces with lunch every day. My family stocks our larder with one-pound bars of the 72% cocoa stuff, buying it whenever we’re in Boston or New York near a Trader Joe's store.

With due respect to women in the audience (many of whom seem to wax wacky over the mere mention of the word chocolate), I enjoy good dark chocolate both for its taste and its purported health benefits. I don't think I make a big deal when eating it, though. Not too much ceremony. No sighing and protracted mmmm sounds.

It is good stuff, though, I admit. In addition to its taste and texture, chocolate is a source of essential nutrients, including calcium, zinc, iron, niacin, magnesium, and riboflavin. Cocoa butter in chocolate is also believed to be an antioxidant, like the procyanidins in red wine (which I also drink daily with meals). Cocoa also contains fats that are essentially neutral, so they d...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

Greetings from Long Beach California, home of the Queen Mary, some of the most attractively-camouflaged offshore oil rigs in the world, and the Solar Power 2007 conference. Beside the record crowd of over 11,000 hard-core solar types, this year’s event should be remembered as the last year that the Great Silicon Shortage of 2005 was the limiting factor in an industry facing a seemingly unlimited demand for its products. With silicon supplies about to ease, all players in the solar-electric market are going to be adjusting to some dramatically different economic realities that will re-shape the technology and the folks that make it.

It will be sometime in mid-2008, w...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

About to pay my barber, I dug into my pocket and pulled out my money clip. It was stuffed with a needlessly bulky collection of one-dollar bills. My barber said he could use singles, so he exchanged my haircut for a wad of bills, and I got a crisp $10 note in return as well.

While this bit of money laundering was going on, my barber quipped that our high-finance exchange was like Monopoly -- adding that the venerable Parker Brothers board game is now electronic. Players bank their stash using mag-stripe plastic cards, he said.

What's this? Monopoly has gone e-Monopoly? For a graying gamer like me, who would play Monopoly with traditional little wooden houses and hotels (even plastic ones) and lots of multi-colored paper Monopoly cash tucked under the Park Place and Boardwalk end of the board, this was nothing short of incredible.

Wincing to myself (those of you who regularly read my Editorials know I like antiques and old stuff), I was reminded how pervasive ...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

2007 September 29 -- Victoria, BC: Today, my family and I had tea with Al Gore. Not exactly at his table, but pretty close to it.

People in this neck of the woods love the outdoors, and all the wonders of nature that go with it. It's not unusual to see a bald eagle circle above you; a number of whale pods live year round in the pristine waters that surround Vancouver Island; and we recycle like you've never seen before. The Capital Regional District (CRD) is comprised of 13 municipalities in 3 electoral districts that are Greater Victoria plus a bit at the southern tip of the Island. Every second Tuesday your blue bin and blue bag (paper) are picked up curbside, and anything that is recyclable can be tossed in. So our community is a friendly audience for a man who is impassioned about climate change.

But he wouldn't have been here today sa...  -- Click Here to Read More >>