MIT has developed a new way to set up power plants with almost no carbon emissions. The power plant would center on the use of solid oxide fuel cells. These cells generate power from natural gas through the same oxidation reaction used in conventional power plants, but they achieve that oxidation through a chemical reaction, not by burning the gas. When combined with carbon-scrubbing smoke stacks, this method produces just as much energy as a regular natural gas plant, but with 90 percent fewer carbon emissions.  The only drawback for now is the price.  With a definite need to focus on cleaning up our carbon emissions, this is a great new innovation to the traditional process.  I really feel that this could be the future of power in America.

Broadcast in 3-D:

While FIFA made the unfortunate call yesterday to pass on TV replay capability for the upcoming World Cup, there will still be new broadcast technology unveiled this summer in South Africa. According to FIFA, up to 25 games from the competition will be filmed using Sony 3-D technology. There are no specific plans for broadcasting the 3-D games live, but it remains a possibility. And a compilation of footage will be turned into a feature-length film after the World Cup.  This to me sounds like an awesome new technology.  Being able to enhance the way we view and enjoy are sports in our own homes always sounds awesome, especially when all you will need to get is a pair of 3-D glasses.

How 3-D technolgy works.



 The couple that broke through security at President Obama’s first White House State dinner are also named in at least 16 different civil suits in Fauquier County, Virginia.  Sometimes the couple are the plaintiffs, sometimes they are the defendants.  They definitely are the type of people who want attention.  The couple are aspiring reality-TV stars who hoped to land roles in the forthcoming show, “The Real Housewives of D.C.,” by the Bravo cable network, The Washington Post reported.  To me this has an odd similarity to a month or two ago when another TV-star aspiring couple lost a weather balloon, and believed there son was on board.  They are also accused of using the stunt to get publicity.

FAA releases recordings of overshooting jet:

 Two pilots who overshot the Minneapolis, Minnesota airport flight recording’s were recently released.   The recordings were loaded with evidence of exactly what happened while they were overshooting, actually, they were not.  After reading the entire document all I understood was the confusion the air traffic controllers were in trying to contact the flight.  I still have no idea what was a big enough distraction for the pilots of Northwest Flight 188 to not notice that they have overshot their destination.  Did a flight attendant notice?  I’m sure someone had to have noticed on the plane.  It makes no sense to me why pilots were so distracted that they did not communicate with Air Traffic Control. I still feel that I don’t know something.  Something bigger had to have been going on.

Full Transcript here of the flight recordings.

Have you ever dreamed of a day where you could control your cell phone, TV, iPod, or any other electronic device just by the use of your mind? I know I have thought about it before. But for those of you thinking, “Brain Implants, No Way.” Scientists expect that consumers will quickly adapt to the idea. Scientists say that we will quickly fall in love with the idea that we can control all our gadgets without our keyboards, mice, or remote controls. If you are still concerned about implants though, 2020 is just a guess. There is still a lot of work to be done; analyzing brain activity is quite a difficult task. Progress is definitely being made though, Toyota recently demoed a wheel chair that is controlled by brain waves.

New Reactor Uses Sunlight to Turn Water and Carbon Dioxide Into Fuel:

Many people think of just using solar energy the traditional way, just to power things. When you think outside the box though, like the scientists at Sandia National Labs, you get some pretty new ways of thinking. Sandias’ scientists realized they could “reverse-combust” CO2 back into fuel. They are currently working on a machine that converts CO2 to carbon monoxide, and then syngas. The remarkable thing about this technology is that the entire process uses nothing but sunlight. When CO2 is our largest greenhouse gas concern, this technology could not come any sooner. The system would work to trap waste carbon from factories and power plants and return that energy to productive use, rather than releasing it into the air.

Google today unveiled more information about Chrome OS, a new operating system for netbooks.  The Chrome OS is all about speed, in fact, it would be easy to think that the main focus of the new OS is speed.  In a recent promise by Google, they said they want their OS to boot up in around 7 seconds, around the speed of a TV’s boot up time.  Also they plan on only using flash memory and web-based memory instead of the traditional hard drive.

Kryogeniks?

Three members of the hacker gang Kryogeniks were given a federal conspiracy charge Thursday after hijacking Comcast’s domain name in May last year.  Christopher Allen Lewis, 19, and James Robert Black Jr, 20, as the hackers “EBK” and “Defiant” redirected all of Comcast’s traffic to a simple page reading “KRYOGENIKS EBK and DEFIANT RoXed COMCAST sHouTz To VIRUS Warlock elul21 coll1er seven.”  A third man involved, Michael Paul Lebel, 28, was also charged although he was not mentioned in the defacement message.

Oprah see’s an end!

September 9, 2011, The “Oprah Winfrey Show” will cease to exist on NBC.  Rumors are, she is moving the show to her new network, the OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network).  Oprah who’s net worth, estimated by Forbes, is 2.3 billion dollars.  “I don’t make any decisions based on money either,” Winfrey said. “Thank God I don’t have to.”  If the rumor is true I feel she would be making a decision based on money.  Why else would you want to own your own network?  Today (11-20-09) Oprah said, “Here is the real reason: I love this show, this show is my life, and I love it enough to know when it’s time to say goodbye. It’s the perfect number, the exact right time.”  If that’s the real reason, then I only have respect for Oprah.

USS New York

The USS New York is the Navy’s newest warship.  It is a Platform Dock ship, which means it is meant to take Marines wherever they are needed in the world.  Along with the 700 Marines on the ship it also carries landing hovercraft, attack helicopters, tanks, amphibious vehicles, and V-22 Ospreys.  It truly is an amazing ship with an amazing hull.  The Navy used 7.5 tons of steel from the fallen World Trade Center towers to build the bow of this amazing warship.  Also another cool fact about this ship is that it is virtually stealth.  When looking at this ship on radar it looks like it is just a little sailboat but in reality it is a pure warship ready to wage war wherever it is asked.

After researching the USS New York I came across an article about all the ways to defend a Carrier.  I thought it was a very interesting article so I put part of the article on this post.  It was on Popular Mechanics.

1. Avoid Decoys

	Decoy: The first step in killing a carrier is to confuse the escorts that protect it. The cheapest way to do this—decoys. Covert teams in fishing trawlers, for example, can drop buoys that are programmed to emit delayed radio signals to misdirect a carrier group’s defensive ships and aircraft.
	E-2C Hawkeye: To defeat decoys, carrier-launched surveillance airplanes with high-power radar can confirm the presence of approaching enemy ships and aircraft. As they gather fresh data from the air, Hawkeyes also direct warplanes and surface ships.

	Antiradar Drone: Unmanned aircraft can blind a carrier’s escort ships. The Harpy, a drone that Israel sold to China in 2004, circles an area, seeking radar signatures, which it then targets with a kamikaze attack. Without radar, escorts can’t find and shoot down antiship missiles.
	Arleigh Burke Destroyer: Engineers are upgrading destroyer sensors to spot multiple threats, including small ones like drones. A phased-array radar, which can track 100 targets at once, operates in the S-Band frequency range, allowing optimal performance in any weather conditions. The objective: Find and destroy drones before they can strike.

	Diesel Submarine: These quiet, lethal menaces can evade detection, especially in shallow water, and fire Sizzler missiles (a NATO designation) that skim the waves at supersonic speeds. Iran operates Russian-made diesel subs; Pakistan has purchased French-made Scorpions. China is the biggest enthusiast: It built 14 diesel subs in 2006 alone.
	SH-60 Seahawk: Helicopters deploy sensors called sonobuoys to detect acoustic, sonar, thermal or magnetic signatures of submerged submarines. Instead of dipping a sonobuoy into the water, expendable modern versions are dropped from helicopters like the Seahawk. Remotely operated boats are also used to drag arrays in search of enemy subs.

	Su-30 Flanker: Russian-made airplanes have long been designed to attack carrier groups. The Su-30 can fire barrages of missiles to overwhelm an aircraft carrier’s defenses. In 2011 the Russians plan to export an upgraded version called the Super Flanker.
	F-35C Lightning II: When it comes to defending the airspace around a carrier, the F-35C is expected to carry the load for the Navy. The stealth airplane is made to kill foes before being seen. However, it is not an agile, cannon-equipped dogfighter like the F-18A Super Hornet, which it will replace in 2015.

	Antiship Ballistic Missile: By 2015 Chinese medium-range ASBMs may target carriers. Over-the-horizon radar could identify ships by bouncing signals off the ionosphere or by propagating signals over the ocean surface. Dong Feng 21 missiles are designed to use onboard radar to find carriers and close in at a high Mach speed.
	Aegis Cruiser: Ship-based ballistic-missile defenses have come a long way. Some Ticonderoga-class Aegis cruisers carry SM-2s that can shoot down inbound warheads in the final stages of flight. New SM-3s engage targets even earlier—in their midcourse stage.

After updating my system with all the new updates I finally got to experience…the greatest game ever.  I started by playing online, what is usually the only thing I do in the other Call of Duty games.  Needless to say, the online play was excellent.  The game play felt completely different, almost as if I was not even playing Call of Duty, but the new feel was a lot better and I like it much more.

Usually I do not find myself to interested in the campaigns, and I probably would have never even played much of it if Playstation Network was not experiencing technical difficulties.  The campaign is awesome though.  Although I have not completely finished it, from what I have seen so far, the campaign is awesome.

On another note, I think it is hilarious that around a million Xbox Live users are going to be banned from the service for players that have altered their Xbox’s and played pirated games.  I don’t understand how people think that they can get away with altering their systems and pirating games when they are trying to connect to the service that does not want them to alter their systems and pirate their games.

For the Fort Hood shooting I feel the security issue was with the leadership.  Fort Hood is an extremely big military installation and security is usually pretty tight just because of the presence of so many trained soldiers.  I do not feel that is where the security is falling behind though.  The security issue I feel was that no one higher up noticed that he was having issues.  I know from the early reports that he was showing no signs of distress and he was not complaining about his concerns of his assignment but someone should have been having conversations with him.  Leaders in the military should be talking to everyone in very high detail about how they feel about there assignment.

For the Orlando shooting situation I feel the security issue was with the building.  How could a man who has not been employed in the institution for more than 2 years just walk in, get to the eighth floor, and then break out his concealed weapon and begin killing people.  In a post 9/11 world he should have not gotten past those doors without being checked by security.  This tragedy should have been avoided.

Ultra HDTV Requirements:

• Ultra HDTV requires 300Mb/second transmissions using a compressed image at 24 FPS, while 60 FPS will require a new compression system to meet with realistic household fiber-optic connections.
• In addition, Ultra HDTV displays will require new electrode materials to power the 4x high-speed pixel requirements.
• Processing power is also a major requirement with Ultra HDTV. Current technology is unable to effectively process the Ultra HDTV signal. At 60 FPS, this signal requires processing power at 2400 GOPS.

I would plan to start looking for the technology between 2017 and 2025.  I am definitely excited and ready for it.