Recently in Technology Category

...and create a lack of human interaction and down time.

Before I even read the post about boredom and smart phones, I knew I was going to agree with the premise.

"Doug Gross writes that thanks to technology, there's been a recent sea change in how people today kill time. 'Those dog-eared magazines in your doctor's office are going unread. Your fellow customers in line at the deli counter are being ignored. And simply gazing around at one's surroundings? Forget about it.' "

Indeed.

How often have you looked around at others while you're walking down the street, waiting at the subway station, or standing at the checkout line and seen people with their heads bowed as if at prayer, gazing down at their smart phones and pecking away at its keyboard or browsing the web? I look around all the time and I see this phenomenon all the time. This is particularly so at social gatherings, be they with friends or at family events.

On more than one occasion at a family gathering of the WP Clan I've seen the teens and young adults pecking away at their phones. They're engaged with whatever is going on on their screens but aren't really in the here and now with everyone else. Whether it's due to boredom (likely) or the 'need' to be connected 24/7/365 (also likely), they're physically present but they aren't interacting with the people actually around them.

Call me a fuddy-duddy, but I have a phone that lets me make phone calls and to text. And while it does have the capability to surf the web, I don't use it (and don't want to pay for it). Texting comes in handy if I need to send or receive messages from the missus or my son that don't require an immediate response (usually reminders about appointments, things to pick up at the supermarket, etc) I won't spend hours at a time pecking away at the keypad to 'talk' to my family, friends, or acquaintances. If I need or want to do that I'll call them and talk to them or, a novel idea, visit them.

I have no problem with being bored on occasion. During the summer I'll go down to the town beach or the boat ramp and just watch people. It amazes me what I'll see there from time to time. Sometimes I take a walk and will think things over. (That helps me a lot at work when I get stuck on something - I'll go take a walk outside and mull things over. I've solved a lot of problems and come up with interesting ideas doing just that.)

However, with the constant stimulation provided by smart phones, tablets, and the like, that opportunity has disappeared for a lot of people. That's a shame.

This reminds me of something I heard a long time ago from a number of different sources that describes exactly what has been going on: Too many people are merely living on this world, not in it. Those in this world live in a state of constant amazement at what they experience.

I'd like to think I'm one of those living in it.

(H/T Instapundit)

I saw this video and thought it was kind of cool. It covers what is called a nutating disk engine, a new type of internal combustion engine.

It's a little reminiscent of a Wankel rotary engine, but produces power through a different cycle. Two things I thought that were really cool: it can use any kind of fuel and it can be supercharged by using a larger version of the engine (sans combustion and fuel injectors) to compress the air going into the engine.

The engine was developed to use with UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) like the Predator. It generates more power in a smaller package than the engines used in drones while also using less fuel to do so.

It's amazing that so small an extension that smooths the air flow on highway driving provides an additional mile per gallon for fuel rating. It's at the 35-second mark of this video.

It appears we've had a bit of a networking problem here at The Manse.

Deb's computer has stopped communicating with the outside world and I've been delving into the problem. What I thought would be a job that I could quickly wrap up has turned into a three hour nightmare. Her machine now communicates with our router, but not beyond that. I've checked cables, rebooted her machine and the router, uninstalled and reinstalled drivers, and a host of other things, but nothing works. The only thing I haven't tried has been another NIC because I don't happen to have one handy (her machine has an integrated NIC on the motherboard).

Isn't owning computers fun?

Update 8/10/12 and a Mea Culpa: I forgot to include the link to David's post!

David Starr comments about the good ol' B-61 H-bombs in the US nuclear arsenal and how the Pentagon plans on spending billions to refurbish and upgrade them.

The B-61 is an unguided gravity bomb whose design dates back to the early 1970's. It has a maximum yield of 340 kilotons, about 34 times that of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

As David writes:

Although it has never been used in action, some forty years in service ought to indicate that it is fairly satisfactory, and they are all built and paid for.

In Washington there is a move afoot to spend another $10 billion dollars on the B-61's. The Air Force wants to add a guidance system to improve accuracy. We really need that. These are nukes, with a total destruction radius measured in miles. Get the bomb with a mile or so of the aim point, and that target is vaporized. World War II mechanical bomb sights were good enough for that.

I can understand why the Pentagon might want to add precision guidance packages to these bombs. While David makes a good point that WWII-era bomb sights were good enough, the biggest problem is that the aircraft carrying them still has to fly over the target to drop the weapon. Turning the B-61 into a PGM (Precision Guidance Munition), the need to fly over the target is greatly reduced, if not eliminated, which in turn reduces the danger to the crew of the aircraft carrying it.

Another point to make about the B-61 maintenance and upgrade program was expressed in this comment I made to David's post:

Nuclear weapons, and in particular fusion warheads, aren't like other weapons systems. They age and require refurbishment, particularly the deuterium and/or tritium that is the 'H" in 'H-Bomb'. Both isotopes degrade with time and must be replaced, otherwise the it becomes less of a fusion bomb and more of a fission bomb. (The fission bomb actually initiates the fusion reaction that increases the bomb's yield by an order of magnitude or two...or three.)

The electronics in the bombs would also be upgraded, increasing the reliability of the PALs (Permissive Action Links) and the fuzing of the bomb.

In the long run, it's a cheap and long overdue upgrade.

Received via e-mail from a co-worker:

How many idioms that were quite common in the not-so-distant past have become obsolete or at least refer to obsolete technology? Quite a few. PC World magazine has compiled a short list of some that may still be used, but many of those using them have no idea to what they refer.

A couple of my favorites:

2. "Kodak moment"

Status: Endangered

You know it when you see it. Nope, I'm not talking about porn: I'm talking that picture-perfect moment you wish you could capture on film, the Kodak moment. But with Kodak filing for bankruptcy and shuttering services, it seems like we're going to need a new name for those photo-ready moments. Hey, I hear the name Polaroid is available...or maybe not.

11. "Drop a dime"

Status: Extinct

The phrase "drop a dime" has a couple of different meanings. It can be used as a way of saying "get in touch," but it also can be used to describe betraying someone, or turning them in to the cops. However you use the phrase, though, know this: It originated from a time when you had to drop a dime into a pay phone in order to make a phone call. If you don't know what a pay phone is, well, I can't talk to you.

There are plenty more in the article and commenters suggested a few of their own.

One of my favorites goes back to World War II, that being "The whole nine yards", referring the 27 feet (or nine yards) of belt-fed ammo used by Allied fighter aircraft machine guns. A pilot saying "I gave him the whole nine yards" meant he emptied his machine guns at his target until he was out of ammo.

Enough of that as I don't want to end up sounding like a broken record (#1 on the list). After all, the list is nothing to write home about (#10) and is definitely not front page news (#5).

I have to admit that when I read this, my first reaction was "It's about time!"

For quite some time now scientists studying lightning have been able to trigger strikes using pulses from medium power lasers aimed into the sky. (The lasers ionize the air, creating a low resistance path for lightning to follow.) This new means follows the old method of using rockets trailing wires to achieve the same effect.

Now Army engineers are using the concept to channel man-made lightning bolts to destroy targets.

The Laser-Induced Plasma Channel, or LIPC, is designed to take out targets that conduct electricity better than the air or ground that surrounds them. How did the scientists harness the seemingly random path made by lightning bolts, and how does a laser help? To understand how the technology works, it helps to get a brief background on physics.

--snip--

"If a laser beam is intense enough, its electro-magnetic field is strong enough to rip electrons off of air molecules, creating plasma," says [George]Fischer, [lead scientist on the project]. "This plasma is located along the path of the laser beam, so we can direct it wherever we want by moving a mirror."

"The plasma channel conducts electricity way better than un-ionized air, so if we set up the laser so that the filament comes near a high-voltage source, the electrical energy will travel down the filament," Fischer says.

A target, an enemy vehicle, or even some types of unexploded ordnance would be a better conductor than the ground it sits on. Since the voltage drop across the target would be the same as the voltage drop across the same distance of ground, current flows through the target. In the case of unexploded ordnance, it would detonate, explains Fischer.

Considering the efficiency of lasers converting electrical energy to light energy isn't all that great, using lasers to direct an electrical charge to a distant target would likely be far more efficient. The laser itself doesn't need to be large or powerful. It only needs enough power to generate a brief high-power pulse in order for the "lightning bolt" to hit its target.

One step closer to Star Trek.

Cap'n Teach uses the widespread power outages across the Middle Atlantic states as a teaching moment, giving us a little preview of what's in store for us year round if the Watermelon Environmentalists/Gaia-religionists/Warmists get their way: no power, no A/C, no refrigerators, no post-18th Century technology of any kind.

To say that people between the Carolinas and New Jersey are upset that power hasn't yet been restored would be an understatement. But then Mother Nature wreaked destruction over such a wide area that even with the help from out-of-state and out-of-country (Canada) work crews, it will take time to make all the repairs required to get the power back on. But this outage has given the people affected a lesson of what their lives will be like on a permanent basis should the aforementioned We-Gotta-Save-The-Earth wackos succeed in their efforts.

In regards to the widespread outages, more than a few people have suggested burying all of the power lines. While it makes sense in some circumstances, I doubt it's practical for all power lines. Most of the residential developments over the past 20 years or so have buried the low-voltage and medium-voltage utility lines, doing away with all of the overhead wires and cables. But burying other medium and high-voltage distribution lines or long-haul high-voltage lines may not be practical from a technological or financial point of view. However it never hurts to take a look at something like that.

Another possible solution: small self-contained nuclear power plants with between 50 and 100 Mwe generating capacity. More plants spread out over wide area might make the electrical grid less vulnerable to inclement weather, terrorist actions, or alien attack. I don't know if it would help against an EMP attack or massive solar flare, but it might. Call it something to think about.

I came across this rather cool NASA publication dealing with aerospace accidents and incidents, a 244 page (in PDF format) report on all kinds of aerospace accidents and their causes, covering everything from crashes of X-planes, rough landings of the Space Shuttle, and problems with "almost" loss-of-consciousness incidents with F22 Raptor, amongst a number of aircraft/spacecraft covered in the report.

The report shows that quite often it is not a single factor that causes these incidents, but a chain of errors that leads up to problems encountered.

The free download from NASA can be found here with three different formats available, E-Pub, Mobi, or PDF.

It's quite fascinating reading for those of you out there who are aviation and spaceflight fans.

It's bad enough many sharks are eating machines. Now humans have upgraded them, mounting lasers on their dorsal fins.



What's next, photon torpedo launchers?

We've all been reading about the so-called "Smart Grid", a system that allows utilities to have better information about and control over their systems. Smart grids are supposed to be more efficient and cost effective because the utilities will be able to tailor system operations to demand on a minute by minute basis. The biggest problem with implementing the communications needed in order to make smart grids possible.

Frankly, I always thought the utilities would use encrypted low power radio links (telemetry only), fiber optic networks, or even power line communications to link the control and telemetry systems back to the operations centers. I also thought they would use closed systems, meaning there would be no direct connection to public data networks (the Internet), keeping them separate for security purposes.

I was wrong.

It appears a number of utilities are looking to use the public cellular networks to provide communications for their smart grid systems.

This is an idea that leaves them open to being compromised by hackers. And while some may claim that encryption will help keep the systems secure, there is no such thing as a "secure" system if there is a publicly accessible portion to the network. Almost any encryption system can be cracked given enough time and effort, either through brute force decryption, the exploitation of overlooked system vulnerabilities, or through critical information obtained from someone inside the utility.

This is a bad idea, one that can lead to compromised electrical, water, and gas utility systems being brought down through cyber attacks by groups unfriendly to the US.

As I and other bloggers have noted, a number of subscribers to HBO can canceled their subscriptions due to HBO's blatant political pandering and support of misogynistic 'comedians'. Some have commented that they now use Netflix, Hulu, or a number of other online video providers rather than HBO.

For some time now I've been using Hulu to watch episodes of some of my favorite TV shows that I've missed for one reason or another and have considered signing up for Hulu Plus which gives access to movies, TV shows, and more. The WP Parents have been using Netflix with their Sony Media Player and have found it both convenient and cost effective. (It helps that our local cable MSO has reasonable download speeds which makes the use of these services attractive.)

I have a feeling I'll be using the online video services more often as cable/satellite TV becomes more expensive and less convenient (even with a DVR).

Now that the manufacture of 100W incandescent light bulbs has been banned in the US, with 75W, 60W, and 40W bulbs to follow, we must look at the history of the allegedly "better for the environment" replacements, primarily compact fluorescent lights (CFL) and LED lighting.

The scorecard for CFLs isn't all that great, with far too many of them failing to live up to the hype, specifically in regards to their service life. Claims of 10,000 hours have been made, but too many of them have shown to have far less than that, sometimes no better than the incandescent bulbs they're supposed to replace. That wouldn't be so bad if they didn't cost many times that of an equivalent the old fashioned Edison bulbs. Disposal is also an issue because the contain mercury, meaning you aren't supposed to throw dead CFLs into the trash. They have to be disposed of as hazardous waste. (Our town has an annual hazardous waste disposal day. Town residents can bring all kinds of waste that can't be thrown into the trash, like cleaning chemicals, unused pesticides, and of course fluorescent lights which include the older tube-style lamps and CFLs.

CFLs do use less electricity for the amount of light they produce as compared to incandescents, but the less than stellar service life for some CFLs doesn't justify the cost. (The extra money you pay for them is never returned in regards to the lower cost to run them.) Another issue with CFLs is that they don't reach full brightness for a minute or two after they are turned on. That's not exactly convenient.

LED lights are still in their infancy, but are getting better all the time. Claimed service life is 50,000 hours, but there have been too many of them that fail well before their time, in some cases only hours after being installed.

It isn't the LEDs in the lights that fail. In most cases the LEDs that make up the lights work just fine when the correct current is applied to them even after the lamp stops working. Instead, much like CFLs, the problem is in the power supply circuits that take the house current and convert it to a voltage and current that are required for the LEDs to operate properly. In some cases the power supplies were poorly designed and built (usually the case with cheap Chinese made LED bulbs). The most common failure mode for these supplies is poor solder joints on the components in the supply. As the article linked above explains, failed LED bulbs start working again after the bad solder joints are resoldered. It's a workmanship issue. Not all LED manufacturers have this problem. Probably one of the better made LED bulbs out there now is manufactured by Philips. They have minimized the number of solder joints and where wire would normally attach to the supply to connect the house AC or the LEDs, Philips uses connectors which greatly reduces this problem.

A second power supply issue is the use of components that aren't rated for the conditions they'll under which they'll be operating. So after operating for some period of time, they fail which turns your expensive LED lamp into nothing more than an ornament. (A more detailed and technical explanation about this topic an be found here.)

Another downside to LED lamps - their price. They cost a lot, with a (good) 60 watt equivalent priced at about $25. It would take a long time to recoup the cost of the bulbs from the savings achieved by reduced electricity usage.

And another downside to LEDs to consider is that as LEDs age with usage, the amount of light they produce decreases. For most people this won't be an issue. But for others it may cause problems.

Am I advocating the continued use of incandescent light bulbs and abandoning the use of other lighting technologies? No. But I am saying is that we should be aware of the advantages and disadvantages of each type of lighting before deciding whether or not to make the switch.

As you dozen or so regular readers know, the LCD monitor on the new Official Weekend Pundit Main Computer went on the blink 14 days ago. According to the fine folks at HP, I was supposed to receive the replacement monitor by yesterday. (I even have the e-mails with the expected delivery date stating the December 28.) Last night around 8PM I received an e-mail from HP stating my monitor was shipping today. That means it won't get here until January 5^th at the earliest.

Almost three weeks to ship a replacement monitor under warranty? I can order a new one from them and get it here in less a week by ground! HP has to do more work on its customer service, particularly in regards to warranties on new equipment.

Verizon has shed itself of many of its less profitable operations, specifically landlines, with sales to HawaiiTel, FairPoint, and Frontier. It appears Verizon did not let the money they received for those assets sit idle. The billions they got for the sale of of their more rural landline systems were put to good use, expanding their wireless and FiOS offerings.

With Verizon's recent purchase of additional wireless spectrum (to the tune of $3.6 billion) from a number of cable companies, they expect to be able to provide 4G LTE services to just about everyone in the US. The cable companies owned the wireless spectrum but hadn't done much with it. How better to provide such services than selling off the unused spectrum and then partnering with the buyer to bundle cable services (video, Internet, digital phone) with wireless services (phone, Internet, and video). The cable companies get to offer wireless services without having to put a dime into wireless infrastructure and Verizon gets to offer cable services, again without having to spend a dime on cable infrastructure. It's a win-win situation for cable and wireless.

But maybe not so much for some Verizon landline customers, particularly those also subscribing to DSL.

DSL has become the red-headed stepchild of Verizon, with little investment being put into it. Verizon DSL subscriptions have been declining as competitors like cable and fiber have been able to offer data speed many times that of DSL. DSL technology has been running out of steam, just about reaching its speed limit due to the limited bandwidth of the installed copper phone lines.

That doesn't mean the DSL is dead as a number of other telephone companies, mostly small independents and rural telcos will offer it for some time as it's "the only game in town." The WP In-Laws have FairPoint DSL, something that became available in their small rural town about a year and a half ago. Before that they were using Verizon Wireless Broadband. For them DSL provides a consistently better and faster connection. Cell site congestion would often slow the Verizon Wireless Broadband connection to speed barely better than the dial up connection they'd used before that. But who knows who long that will be true once Verizon starts offering 4G LTE services? At that point DSL might be seen as a less desirable service and customers will start dropping it in favor of the wireless service.

It will be interesting to see where all of this will take us and how long it will take before the remaining landline operations start feeling squeezed even more than they have been.

I had a little bit of a malfunction with the Official Weekend Pundit Main Computer yesterday (I lost connection to the network), but I think I've got it all squared away.

Speaking of getting things squared away, it appears Bogie's problem with the iHeartRadio app for her Android phone that was misbehaving after being upgraded has been resolved, or at least partially resolved as a newer version has been released that allows it to work again.

As Bogie writes:

Haven't used it but a couple of minutes (am listening to it now), so can't say it works as well as the old version did, but it is a huge leap forward over the version I couldn't get to load at all!

That's what happens when the software folks don't or can't test the new versions thoroughly. It's obvious they missed something that brought the app to a screeching halt. Whether it was conflict with another application or background routine is irrelevant. The fact that they didn't catch it means someone wasn't doing their job and the app was released before it was ready.

Was it the coders who wrote the app software who are to blame for the problem, or was it someone in a marketing position who pushed to 'get it out the door' even though it really wasn't ready?

Based upon my years of experience in engineering, I would have to guess it was the latter.

As time passes we get closer and closer to what has been called The Singularity. I call it getting closer to Star Trek.

The latest step towards that vision is something called biophotonic instrumentation . Now that we've named it, it's time to learn what it does.

At the moment when it's necessary to monitor a patient's heart rate, blood pressure, or blood glucose level a nurse or technician is required to attach a heart monitor, a blood pressure cuff, or to draw blood for testing. It's time consuming and requires a number of different pieces of equipment. But what if it were possible to monitor all of those parameters at the same time using nothing more than a laser beam and a camera?

Now it is.

When human skin is illuminated by a laser beam, the movement of blood under the skin manifests itself as vibrations at the skin's surface. These vibrations create a secondary optical speckle pattern that correlates to the blood flux, which depends on blood viscosity (related to glucose concentration), blood pulse pressure, and heart rate.

A few-milliwatt infrared (IR) laser at 1550 nm is used to illuminate the wrist of a patient at an oblique angle (see figure). The vertical-reflection speckle pattern is collected by an optical system that consists of a fast camera to record the reflected intensity pattern.

--snip--

Although the distance between the light source and the subject's skin was approximately 50 cm in the measurement setup, the researchers say they can also extract these biological parameters when the laser-skin distance is several-hundred meters. In addition, the parameters could be obtained not only from wrist-skin reflections, but also from chest and neck reflections.

The system could be located above the patient's bed or off to one side in one corner of a room, yet allow unobtrusive monitoring of the three medical parameters. That means less need to tether a patient to the monitoring equipment, greater comfort for the patient, and less effort for medical personnel.

There could also be certain security applications for this technology, such as monitoring passengers in an airport. A raised heart rate and blood pressure could trigger closer monitoring of some passengers as it's likely both parameters would be elevated in someone "up to no good." Of course it might also mean a passenger is a nervous flier. But it would be another covert tool for use by airport security personnel in screening passengers before boarding a flight.

It seems the work to commercialize the use of silicon in lithium-ion batteries is proceeding apace.

The folks a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have been working on a process to easily use silicon nanowires to greatly increase the capacity of Li-Ion batteries. LBNL has been testing batteries made with the silicon anodes for over a year now and found the new cells maintain their capacity after "many hundreds of charge-discharge cycles." The cells have approximately eight times the capacity of existing Li-Ion cells.

If this process holds up and is cost effective to implement, electric cars will become more of a reality as battery packs capable of giving cars extended driving range (400+ miles) will become available. It also means the physical size of battery packs used in hybrid electric cars, laptop computers, and a whole host of other devices using these batteries will shrink even as the capacity increases. Imagine a laptop, tablet, or smart phone that will give you a full 24 hours of use before its battery needs to be recharged.

It's been no secret that I have recently purchased a new computer to replace the old Official Weekend Pundit Main Computer, a 6-year old machine with an Athlon 64 CPU, 1GB of RAM, an ATI video card, and two 100GB hard drives. The old machine runs Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux. It also makes use of interesting and useful programs like Firefox and Thunderbird (both from Mozilla), Open Office, Lview (image editing) and Snaggit (image capture and editing), and a host of other utilities and fun stuff.

While the machine was never perfect, it did its job and did it pretty well.

The new machine has a multi-core 64-bit AMD CPU, 8GB of RAM, a 1.5TB hard drive, and an ATI video card. It runs Windows 7 Professional (64-bit) and I have plans to add Ubuntu Linux this weekend. I doubt anyone can argue against the fact that in so many ways it is better than the old machine.

It has been an interesting but carefully paced adventure, using Windows 7. So far there's little I find I dislike about it, and those things I have found less than optimal (in my opinion) are minor annoyances. It boots quickly, it runs quickly, as do all of the programs I have run so far. Some of that I have to attribute to the hardware, and some to the software. But I do have a major complaint, and not about the hardware or the operating system.

It's that damnable Microsoft Office 2010. To put it into simple terms, it SUCKS. (Yes, I know I've written about this before, but after struggling with Office 2010 at work, and now at home, I can't say enough bad things about it.)

First, I want to remind you that I am a techno-geek. I live, eat, and breathe electronics and optics. I have a pretty good handle on programming (usually used to test something we've designed to make sure it works the way it's supposed to), but I'm no code wizard. I use computers at work and home every day. I understand user interfaces to the n^th degree because the equipment my employer builds and sells lives or dies by the ease of use of the equipment I help design. If the user interface stinks it doesn't matter how good the piece of equipment it goes with performs. (I've seen and used too many of our competitors' equipment that have been well designed and perform well, but are difficult to use because the user interface requires the owner to open the user manual to figure out how to turn the darned thing on.) A poor user interface will cause more dissatisfaction with a product than buggy software or barely adequate hardware.

All of that being said, the user interface on Office 2010, and its predecessor Office 2007, is awful.

I don't care what the folks at Redmond, Washington say, the new interface has failed. It is not intuitive. It requires seasoned users to spend lots of time trying to figure out where Microsoft moved the features they've been using for years (this is a major indication the user interface design has failed).

Functions that used to take one or two clicks now take up to seven. It doesn't matter if the interface is customizable if it takes the user a long time to figure out how to do so. And like earlier versions of Office, it tries to do things for you even when you don't want it to. But with 2010 it's even more annoying, if that's possible. Undoing something it has 'fixed' for you is more difficult (the old Control Z or the Undo button doesn't always undo it whatever it is it did for you).

I get the impression that the folks at Microsoft spent a lot of time and money asking users what they liked and disliked about Office some time after Office 2003 was released. The problem is that I think they asked the wrong people. It seems to me the changes they made were more at the behest of power users, those few folks who will use the 90% of the Office features no one else does, assuming they even know they exist.

Another fail: the 'ribbons' that have replaced the long-used toolbars take up a lot more space on screen. I mean a lot more. I now have less usable working space on my screen than under Office 2003. This is supposed to help productivity?

I've been playing with the crippled version of Office 2010 that came installed on my new machine and it has merely confirmed what I've seen at work. I hate to say it, but whoever thought a redesign of the Office interface was a good idea should be FIRED. Whoever actually designed the new interface should be FIRED. Whoever it was that tried to sell this godawful UI to the public as "the greatest thing since sliced bread" should be FIRED.

I know if I had created a user interface for a piece of our equipment as awful and defective as the one on Microsoft Office 2010, I would have been FIRED, and I wouldn't have blamed the company for doing so. I would have fired me, too.

So until Microsoft fixes the piss poor user interface on Office, I'll stay with Open Office at home (and even if they do I'll still stay with Open Office). Unfortunately I won't have a choice at work.

It's another Tech Tuesday!

As the price of copper has been rising, researchers have been looking for a replacement that is less expensive but would have the conductivity of the copper it would replace.

For some applications, the use of fiber optics has replaced the copper wiring and coaxial cabling used by telephone and cable companies. Both use optical fiber rather than copper for new builds due to its higher bandwidth and lower cost.

But for things like carrying electricity something else is needed. Enter carbon nanotubes.

Researchers from Rice University have managed to produce a cable using carbon nanotubes for carrying electricity.

Enrique Barrera, a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Rice, said that highly conductive nanotube-based cables could be just as efficient as traditional metals at one-sixth of the weight. He added that such cables may initially find use in applications where weight is a critical consideration, such as in airplanes and automobiles. In the future, he said, it could replace traditional wiring in homes.

The university's release continued, "The cables developed in the study are spun from pristine nanotubes and can be tied together without losing their conductivity. To increase conductivity of the cables, the team doped them with iodine and the cables remained stable. The conductivity-to-weight ratio beats metals, including copper and silver, and is second only to the metal with the highest specific conductivity, sodium."

The mention of doping the carbon nanotubes with iodine reminded me of an article I read years ago about conducting polymers, specifically polyacetylene. When doped with iodine the polymer's conductivity increased dramatically. Such a polymer would have all kinds of uses, particularly where weight was a factor (like in aircraft, as mentioned above). If I recall correctly from the article Plastics That Conduct Electricity (Scientific American, February 1988, no link available), the polymer would be used for carrying control and other signals throughout the aircraft, but not power as its conductivity wasn't quite good enough for that purpose. But nothing came of it, at least in the aircraft industry, as optical fiber has supplanted it due to its light weight and virtually unlimited bandwidth.

But carbon nanotubes can carry the required power and do it with less weight. The raw material used to create the nanotubes is limitless, as carbon is one of the most abundant elements on earth, not far behind hydrogen. Depending upon the structure of the nanotube cable, they could carry more current for a given size. This means smaller gauge wiring to carry the same amount of power.

Is there anything carbon can't do?