Energy Crisis Is Postponed

– As new gas rescues the world … Burning rock, or at least the natural gas trapped within. Natural Gas is Methane, CH4, the lowest from of hydrocarbon. One of the distinct advantages of natural gas is it does not contain the impurities that is dissolved in and carried by oil deposits. So natural gas burns cleaner, by definition. It still emits CO2 in about the same proportions, but it does not emit the other pollutants that are contained in oil, after refining. There is only so much that can be done to filter out the pollutants.

Remember, CO2 is not a pollutant, no matter what the Supreme Court has to say about it. Does your breath kill, well maybe it might offend others but not kill. And the offense is the ‘other’ things contains in your breath, because CO2 is odorless and tasteless.

Oil shale is rock containing deposits of oil and is pictured above  burning.

Firefox 3.6 Beta Next week

The Mozilla Firefox developers are planning to release the first beta of the upcoming web browser Firefox 3.6 next week (to be precise on October 14 which is also the release date for the beta of Firefox 3.5.4). Not that many Firefox users will take notice of these two beta version releases but those that do will notice performance improvements in Firefox 3.6 beta. The Mozilla team is not only concentrating on the usual options to increase the web browser’s performance (that is JavaScript mainly) but also performance of the web browser in general which would include loading times and responsiveness.

Over at Betanews they have tested the latest alpha release version of Firefox 3.6 and came to the conclusion that the new version increases performance by 22% compared to the latest official release version Firefox 3.5.3. This performance does not come near the performance of Webkit based browsers(google chrome) yet but it shows dedication to close the gap between the browsers.

It remains to be seen on the other hand if most users will notice the 22% performance increase in Firefox 3.6 Beta or if it is just more a figure without real values to everyday users. Performance is definitely not everything. The fastest web browser in the test, Google Chrome 3, does not pass the Acid 3 test which Opera 10 for example does.

I use google chrome 3.xxx on windows 7 RC, and it does have some issues with page rendering.

Nuclear Batteries

Remember the Apollo Missions? Mixed in along with the hoopla about sending men into space on huge, fire spewing rockets — There was some serious science done during the moon landing missions, little known is the batteries for the moon based experiments packages, Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package(ALSEP).

Consider the engineering problem presented — The lunar night lasts for about 15 days; a solar panel with a battery back-up system would also be a bulky item. Sophisticated chemical storage batteries were considered, but quickly rejected based on their low energy density. A problem that still plagues battery designers today.

The chosen power source for ALSEP – the only one deemed capable of performing the required task – was a radioisotope thermal generator (RTG). The NASA designation for the devices that powered ALSEP for missions 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17 was SNAP-27 (Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power model number 27).

SNAP-27 Characteristics

The SNAP-27 power supply weighed about 20 kilograms, was 46 cm long and 40.6 cm in diameter. It consisted of a central fuel capsule surrounded by concentric rings of thermocouples. Outside of the thermocouples was a set of fins to provide for heat rejection from the cold side of the thermocouple.

Each of the SNAP-27 devices produced approximately 75 W of electrical power at 30 VDC. The energy source for each device was a rod of plutonium-238 weighing approximately 2.5 kilograms and providing a thermal power of approximately 1250 W.

Above photo of Apollo-14 SNAP-27 deployed on the moon …

Plutonium-238 is a non-fissile isotope of plutonium that decays by alpha particle emission with essentially zero associated gamma emissions. This characteristic was very important for the ALSEP powering application, both because the instruments would have been negatively affected by interference from a gamma emitter and because the devices required close handling by lunar astronauts.

Even though the only radiation from Pu-238 is alpha particles which require little shielding, it is necessary to use thick gloves when handling a 2.5 kilogram rod of Pu-238. The surface temperature will reach about 500 degrees C because of the energy being released by radioactive decay. After ten years of continuous power output, a Pu-238 based RTG will still produce 92% of its initial power.

One measure of performance that is often used for chemical storage batteries is the amp-hour. A modern battery might have a capacity of 1.5 amp-hrs/kg. The SNAP-27 power supplies demonstrated the ability to provide more than 4380 amp-hrs/kg during the four years that their performance was monitored. Similar RTGs have produced 24,000 amp-hrs/kg during a 20 year operating life and are still going strong.

The purpose of this brief history lesson, Nuclear batteries are staging somewhat of a comeback.

Is it Time For A Change

OK, it’s a lie, the 100mpg carburetor isn’t real, nor is the 300 mpg electric car.

There needs to be a change, before people are suckered into the impossible … Chevy’s 230 mpg Volt and now Nissan’s Leaf at 367 mog are impossible to meet bogus data.

Just because a car is electric does not mean it does not take the same amount of energy to propel the car and it’s occupants. That cannot be changed, the energy used for motion is still required.

Gee whiz, 367 miles per gallon!

The car companies are using the Environmental Protection Agency’s draft methodology to figure out their fantastical mileage numbers. The hitch is that mpg estimates measure the efficiency of engines that run on petroleum. In an era of electric cars — when vehicles supposedly won’t be propelled by gasoline-powered internal-combustion engines — these estimates are nonsensical.

The extremely high mpg ratings do not mean that an engine would be consuming less energy but rather that the car would be electric, with some occasional use of gasoline. The propaganda makes it sound as if the total emissions generated by electric cars would be very small. However, how “green” a car really is depends on how the electricity is generated. That dirty little detail can vary tremendously depending on whether the energy source for the electricity is, say, coal, natural gas, nuclear power or something else.

The EPA disregards the fact that electricity is not totally clean energy. When an electric car is plugged into the wall to charge up, its power often comes from a plant burning coal. General Motors designed the Volt to have a meager 40-mile range on an electric charge because the Department of Transportation estimates that almost 80 percent of Americans drive fewer than 40 miles a day. The draft EPA mpg estimates count those first 40 miles as if they used no energy because the car would have been powered off of a wall socket, not by gasoline.

The fact that electricity is not free, does not use fossil fuels and is clean, is just bogus.

Who would ever accuse the government or the EPA for that matter, of perpetrating a hoax? Get used to it.

No Oil For America, Oil For Brazil

UPDATE:

Soros Hedge Fund Bought Petrobras Stake Worth $811 Million
By Jeb Blount and Miles Weiss

Aug. 15 (Bloomberg) — Billionaire investor George Soros bought an $811 million stake in Petroleo Brasileiro SA in the second quarter, making the Brazilian state-controlled oil company his investment fund’s largest holding.

As of June 30, the stake in Petrobras, as the Rio de Janeiro-based oil producer is known, made up 22 percent of the $3.68 billion of stocks and American depositary receipts held by Soros Fund Management LLC, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

One Campaign Promise Obama Kept: Shower His Friends with Money

END UPDATE:

Americans are right to wonder why Mr. Obama is underwriting in Brazil what he won’t allow at home.

Sarah Palin pummeled Team Obama over the news yesterday that they will fund Brazilian offshore oil development and research but deny US companies access to oil deposits off our shores.

The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil’s Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil’s planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.

The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a “preliminary commitment” letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. Ex-Im Bank says it has not decided whether the money will come in the form of a direct loan or loan guarantees. Either way, this corporate foreign aid may strike some readers as odd, given that the U.S. Treasury seems desperate for cash and Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the Americas.

From Sarah Palin’s Facebook page, via Free Republic:

YOUR TAX DOLLARS HARD AT WORK: FIRST CARS, NOW FOREIGN OIL.

Today’s Wall Street Journal contains some puzzling news for all Americans who are impacted by high energy prices and who share the goal of moving us toward energy independence.

For years, states rich with an abundance of oil and natural gas have been begging Washington, DC politicians for the right to develop their own natural resources on federal lands and off shore. Such development would mean good paying jobs here in the United States (with health benefits) and the resulting royalties and taxes would provide money for federal coffers that would potentially off-set the need for higher income taxes, reduce the federal debt and deficits, or even help fund a trillion dollar health care plan if one were so inclined to support such a plan.

So why is it that during these tough times, when we have great needs at home, the Obama White House is prepared to send more than two billion of your hard-earned tax dollars to Brazil so that the nation’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, can drill off shore and create jobs developing its own resources? That’s all Americans want; but such rational energy development has been continually thwarted by rabid environmentalists, faceless bureaucrats and a seemingly endless parade of lawsuits aimed at shutting down new energy projects.

I’ll speak for the talent I have personally witnessed on the oil fields in Alaska when I say no other country in the world has a stronger workforce than America, no other country in the world has better safety standards than America, and no other country in the world has stricter environmental standards than America. Come to Alaska to witness how oil and gas can be developed simultaneously with the preservation of our eco-system. America has the resources. We deserve the opportunity to develop our resources no less than the Brazilians. Millions of Americans know it is true: “Drill, baby, drill.” Alaska is proof you can drill and develop, and preserve nature, with its magnificent caribou herds passing by the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS), completely unaffected. One has to wonder if Obama is playing politics and perhaps refusing a “win” for some states just to play to the left with our money.

The new Gulf of Mexico lease sales tomorrow sound promising and perhaps will move some states in the right direction, but we all know that the extreme environmentalists who serve to block progress elsewhere, including in Alaska, continue to block opportunities. These environmentalists are putting our nation in peril and forcing us to rely on unstable and hostile foreign countries. Mr. Obama can stop the extreme tactics and exert proper government authority to encourage resource development and create jobs and health benefits in the U.S.; instead, he chooses to use American dollars in Brazil that will help to pay the salaries and benefits for Brazilians to drill for resources when the need and desire is great in America.

Buy American is a wonderful slogan, but you can’t say in one breath that you want to strengthen our economy and stimulate it, and then in another ship our much-needed dollars to a nation desperate to drill while depriving us of the same opportunity.

- Sarah Palin

Windows 7 RC Availability to Stop on Thursday

If you’ve been putting off downloading the release candidate for Windows 7, consider yourself warned. The media will no longer be available to download from Microsoft after 8/20, though you can still get keys and register the product.

Remember that to move from the release candidate to the final version requires a clean installation of the operating system, meaning backing up one’s data, reinstalling Windows 7, and then restoring the data and reinstalling any applications.

Flash Cookies

Security is getting top of the list for many these days. You should do all you can to protect yourself from these people and websites who want to ‘track your every move’. I use Firefox 3.5.2 so most of the following is angled that way.

Flash cookies placed by many of the most popular Web sites are being used to track site visitors, even going so far as to re-create http tracking cookies after they’re deleted by privacy-conscious surfers.

A new study released by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and other universities found that the Flash cookies, or local shared objects, are used on 54 of the top 100 Web sites, as ranked by Quantcast. The Flash cookies are stored in a different location than regular http cookies, and are not removed if you delete cookies from within your browser. Per the report, “even the ‘Private Browsing’ mode recently added to most browsers such as Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3 still allows Flash cookies to operate fully and track the user.”

Read more at pcworld.com …

Ever wondered why you are still tracked though you tried everything to prevent it?
BetterPrivacy is a Super Cookie Safeguard which protects from usually not deletable LSO’s. It blocks longterm tracking on Google, YouTube Ebay and many other domains.

Flash Cookies is something the the Obama administration wants to put on your computer to enable tracking of your Internet activity. They want to use it on Government websites.

The Adobe Flash Security Panel is here:

CCleaner deletes all flash cookies, but not the microphone and speaker ones. So you need to do all the above, just to be safe.

Do all the above …

Google Debuts New Caffeine Search Engine

Looks like Bing is heating things up in the search business, Bing now with about 30% of the search market, is making huge waves.

Google, owner of about two-thirds of the online search market, is betting that it has just the fix you need.  Amid concerns that its losing its edge over Microsoft’s popular new Bing search engine/algorithm, which will soon be powering second place competitor Yahoo’s search, Google has taken a step to silence its critics by unveiling a promising successor to its current search algorithm. Dubbed Caffeine, the caffeine new algorithm looks to give Google a much-needed jolt by delivering more results, and better results.

It’s beta, so you get what you get. But no doubt, Google is feeling the heat. I use Bing, have to admit, it does seem to return better hits on what I am looking for. Caffeine, still out on that. I think google search has been so cluttered up with advertising that it can’t move under the weight.

Bing

Caffeine

My Lightweight Linux Quest Continues

Lately I have been looking into ‘lightweight’ Linux distributions. The confining approach used by Ubuntu-Remix and Moblin just don’t weem to work for me. Too much time with UNIX I guess, but confining the user to a ‘task menu’ of applications, just doesn’t work.

A fast, fast-booting, implementation of GNOME aimed at netbooks and older hardware has emerged, and shows “a lot of promise.” LXDEhas already stacked up a heap of distribution partners. Here is a screenshot of the desktop:

The biggest partner, gOS which moved from the Enlightment Interface to LXDE. The LXDE project has recently released its lightweight Linux desktop for general use. Built into the latest gOS 3 Gadget distro, LXDE is touted as being fast, fast-booting, compatible with old computers, and designed so that “every component can be used without LXDE,” say the developers.

Testing:

So I have decided to try this one out and see what it can do. My hardware is old, and can use all the help it can get. The CPU is fine, 3.0 GHx PIV, but the graphics is sadly lacking, with not much hope for an upgrade. So you can say I am like an behind the times user. Yep I have a few quad cores, but for testing … From their site:

“Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment”, is an extremely fast, performing and energy saving desktop environment. It is maintained by an international community of developers and comes with a beautiful interface, multi-language support, standard keyboard short cuts and additional features like tabbed file browsing. LXDE uses less CPU and less RAM. It is especially designed for cloud computers with low hardware specifications like netbooks, mobile devices (e.g. MIDs) or older computers. LXDE can be installed with distributions like Ubuntu or Debian. It provides a fast desktop experience connecting easily with applications in the cloud. LXDE supports a wealth of programs, that can be installed with Linux systems locally. The source code of LXDE is licensed partly under the terms of the GPL and partly under the LGPL.

To add LXDE to your Jaunty Jackolope installation, just fire up the Synaptic Package manager and search LXDE, install at will, log out, select session LXDE and enjoy.

History:

The GTK+ 2-based LXDE (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment) first emerged in late 2006 when two Taiwanese Linux distributions adopted an early version. First came B2D Linux, which apparently no longer uses LXDE, and then came the Ubuntu-based PUD GNU/Linux, which does. Since then, the group, which appears to also be based in Taiwan, has been pretty quiet, but behind the scenes, they have been racking up bundling deals with a number of small Linux distributions that use all or parts of the LXDE code.

So will the gOS endorsement do the trick:

LXDE was catapulted into the spotlight in the latest gOS release, announced this week at LinuxWorld. gOS 3 Gadget swapped out Enlightenment E17 in favor of the LXDE desktop. It is not clear that the release will see commercial use, as LXDE is a young project that is not yet complete. However, gOS Founder David Liu said he believes the project has “a lot of promise,” describing it as a “scaled-down version of GNOME.”

Results:

I am impressed with LXDE, especially with google’s chrome browser. Fast! After a day of use, let’s hope the first impressions last.

Firefox 3.6 Is On The Horizon

Firefox 3.6: Beta 1 in September, Final Release in November 2009.

More here.