mojave

In Mojave, the world's most exciting planes take flight

MOJAVE DESERT, Calif.--It's hard to imagine a more complete -- and impressive -- collection of aviation facilities and aircraft anywhere on the planet than the one in this vast, arid, wide-open wasteland northeast of Los Angeles.

Thanks to its endless amounts of dry, flat terrain, useless to most people, and the fact that there are only a few ways in -- vital for security -- the Mojave is, and has long been, the beating heart of the aviation world. It's here that Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier. And where Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne ushered in … Read more

Getting schooled with the Air Force's elite test pilots

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif.--He might be the most famous airman in the history of the U.S. Air Force, and he's a graduate of the Test Pilot School.

In 1947, Capt. Chuck Yeager became the first person to break the sound barrier, hitting Mach 1.0 in a Bell X-1 rocket plane 42,000 feet above this Mojave Desert outpost. And today, to commemorate the import of the event that ushered in the supersonic era, the aircraft hangs from the ceiling in the entryway of the Smithsonian's Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

Yeager … Read more

In the Mojave, an Army dress rehearsal for Afghan war

FORT IRWIN, Calif.--The shoulder-launched rocket-propelled grenade was aimed at several U.S. Army soldiers trying to work their way through the chaos of an Afghan insurgent attack. This was not looking like a good day for the members of the 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division.

Fortunately for those soldiers, the RPG wasn't real, and they weren't even in Afghanistan -- yet. They will be soon, though. But before deploying to the combat zone, the entire 4th Brigade from Fort Lewis, Wash., spent four weeks in the June heat of the Mojave Desert at the Army's National Training Center … Read more

DOE sets aside $2 billion for concentrated solar

The Department of Energy has offered conditional loan guarantees totaling $2 billion to two concentrated solar projects in California, Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced yesterday.

Both projects employ mirrored parabolic solar thermal troughs that reflect and concentrate solar energy to heat pipes containing heat transfer liquid, usually synthetic oil. That hot liquid is then used to generate steam and power a turbine generator that produces electricity.

Specifically, a $1.2 billion loan guarantee has been offered to the 250-megawatt Mojave Solar Project in San Bernardino County. Once fully operational, the farm is expected to generate enough electricity to power 53,… Read more

A Google a Day

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded:

Amazon.com offers a cheaper. ad-supported Kindle

Google launches a trivia page called A Google a Day

A U.S. Court of Appeals rules that the Winklevoss twins who sued Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg

must accept their settlement of $65 million and just be quiet already

Google plans to invest $168 million in a solar power plant in the Mojave Desert

New legislation may propose a sales tax on all online transactions

Sony introduces two new OLED monitors

Mojave Desert town to go almost fully solar

A small town on the outskirts of the Mojave Desert may soon get 85 percent of its power needs exclusively from solar energy.

The municipal solar power plant for Nipton, Calif., will be equipped with High Gain Solar arrays (HGS) from Skyline Solar, the company announced Thursday.

Skyline Solar's HGS arrays are designed to use less silicon to save manufacturing costs while still providing effective solar energy. To do that the company uses a reflective metal cradle made of sheet metal to concentrate sunlight onto monocrystalline silicon cells. The company claims that its concentrated solar arrays offers 10 … Read more

Microsoft tries to reclaim Windows' image

It's been about 18 hours since Microsoft started running its Bill Gates/Jerry Seinfeld ad and the negative comments continue to pour in.

But Microsoft's Brad Brooks looks at it this way: Even if people aren't talking kindly about the new Windows ad, at least people are talking about Windows.

"It's got a lot of people talking and that's exactly what we wanted," said Brooks, Microsoft's vice president of consumer marketing for Windows. For too long, he said, Microsoft has been silent. And as a result, the only dialogue has come from … Read more

EIC Squared: Microsoft's Mojave, Broadband wars and Dell's music ambitions

On this week's EIC Squared podcast ZDNet's Larry Dignan and I discuss Dell's ambitions to get into the crowded music player industry, Microsoft's interesting focus group with Vista and how the broadband wars are shaking out.

Dell might make another attempt at bringing a music player to market. With DRM unraveling, Dell doesn't need to beat iTunes, just offer a relatively cool and cost effective listening device that accesses multiple music services via Wi-Fi. Microsoft has a perception problem with it comes to Vista. That is well known, but it may not be because the … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 776: The Dark Knight kills the Godfather

The wisdom of the crowds turns out to be simple mob rule, as Dark Knight fans not only mod up their new favorite movie but start modding down The Godfather on IMDB. Also, we do a probably wildly inaccurate (but, we think, hilarious) T. Boone Pickens impression because plain old financial stories are just not interesting enough. Oh, and Scrabulous is now gone from Facebook. So, you know, get back to work. Listen now: Download today's podcast Episode 776

Yahoo says DRM issue overblown by media, but will offer refunds http://www.betanews.com/article/Yahoo_says_DRM_issue_overblown_by_media_but_will_offer_refunds/1217287551

Microsoft goes … Read more

Microsoft goes live with Mojave videos

So I told you about Microsoft's Mojave Experiment last week. Now it is your chance to weigh in on just how compelling the footage is.

After a few days with a teaser site, Microsoft has gone live with dozens of videos from its project, in which Vista skeptics were shown a new Microsoft operating system, code-named Mojave. After giving their take (almost all positive), the participants were told that it was actually Vista they were being shown.

In the initial video, Microsoft shows a collection of reactions from participants who were asked about their Vista impressions.

"I wouldn'… Read more