Free Republic

1970s: “The Flying Pulpit” The Williams X-Jet, created by Williams International, was a small, one-man, light-weight, Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL) aircraft powered by a modified Williams F107 turbofan aircraft engine designated WR-19-7 after some minor modifications. The vehicle was nicknamed "The Flying Pulpit", seemingly due to its shape. It was designed to be operated by / carry one person and dirigible by leaning in the direction of desired travel together with the modulation of its input power. It could move in any direction, accelerate rapidly, hover and rotate on its axis, stay aloft for up to 45 minutes...

"SCHWARZENEGGER FLEXES MUSCLE FOR MOSCOW, WHILE OBAMA IGNORES WARNINGS FROM RUSSIAN DISSIDENTS" International News Analysis Today June 29, 2010 By Toby Westerman SNIPPET: "California governor, and former film superhero, Arnold Schwarzenegger has pledged to lead a trade mission to Russia and assist "in any way possible" Russia's drive to develop its own high tech "Silicon Valley." U.S. president Barack Obama has also promised his backing in facilitating the flow of U.S. technology to Russia. The eager participation of Schwarzenegger and Obama in exporting U.S. technological capabilities came during Russian president Dmitry Medvedev's three day visit (June 22-24) to the United...

NOTE The following text is a quote: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-obama-and-president-medvedev-russia-us-russia-business-summit Home • Briefing Room • Speeches & Remarks The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release June 24, 2010 Remarks by President Obama and President Medvedev of Russia at the U.S.-Russia Business Summit U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Washington, D.C. 3:08 P.M. EDT PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, good afternoon, everybody. It is a pleasure to be here with my friend and partner, President Medvedev, and I want to thank him again for his leadership, especially his vision for an innovative Russia that’s modernizing its economy, including deeper economic ties between our...

Israel has thrived during the global collapse—thanks to an entrepreneurial culture built on compulsory military service. Dan Senor and Saul Singer on why U.S. companies should take notes. For all the press coverage of the Middle East, there is one side of Israel that gets scant attention: the country’s economy has the highest concentration of innovation and entrepreneurialism in the world today. For years, multinational technology companies and global investors have been beating a path to Israel. Even in 2008—a year of global economic turmoil—per capita venture investments in Israel were 2.5 times greater than in the United States, more...

California continues to employ far more technology workers, pay higher wages and attract more venture capital than any other state. But the overall U.S. tech sector is also growing at a surprisingly brisk clip - for now. That's the conclusion of a highly anticipated annual report by AeA, formerly the American Electronics Association, the country's largest technology trade association. Researchers relied on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, mostly from 2006. According to the 2007 "Cyberstates" report, to be published Tuesday, the U.S. tech industry employed 5.8 million people last year - up 2.6 percent from 2005. The...

In Pictures: Robot menagerie An ethical code to prevent humans abusing robots, and vice versa, is being drawn up by South Korea. The Robot Ethics Charter will cover standards for users and manufacturers and will be released later in 2007. It is being put together by a five member team of experts that includes futurists and a science fiction writer. The South Korean government has identified robotics as a key economic driver and is pumping millions of dollars into research. "The government plans to set ethical guidelines concerning the roles and functions of robots as robots are expected to...

PALO ALTO, Calif. — U.S. chip designers are still the best in the world, though how long they can hold that position as India and China continue to produce hordes of engineers in the next few years remains an open question, according to EDA CEOs participating in a Thursday (Feb. 2) panel discussion here. John Bourgoin, CEO of MIPS Technologies Inc., said U.S. chip designers are unquestionably still the best on the whole, though he added that the degree to which that is true varies by specific applications. But with China now graduating an estimated 700,000 engineers per year, Bourgoin...

Sunday, July 20, 2003 - SAN JOSE -- Peter Kerrigan encouraged friends to move to Silicon Valley throughout the 1980s and'90s, wooing them with tales of lucrative jobs in a burgeoning industry. But he lost his network engineering job at a major telecommunications company in August 2001 and remains unemployed. Now 43, the veteran programmer is urging his 18-year-old nephew to stay in suburban Chicago and is discouraging him from pursuing degrees in computer science or engineering. "I told him, 'Unless you're planning to do this as a path to technical sales, don't do it,' said Kerrigan, who lives in...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) -The volume of junk e-mail has reached a critical threshold that requires swift action to protect the Internet correspondence millions of people take for granted, regulators said today at the end of a three-day forum on ``spam.''</p> <p>Harrington said that was the impression left by the dozens of technology experts, government officials, industry executives and lawyers who flocked to Washington to discuss the problem of unwanted commercial e-mail and what to do about it.</p>

SCIENTISTS DEVELOP ATOMIC-SCALE MEMORY Caption: An atomic-scale memory chip, made by removing individual atoms from a silicon wafer, has been created by a team of scientists led by Franz Himpsel, professor of physics. The feat, reported in the journal Nanotechnology, represents a first crude step toward a practical atomic-scale memory where atoms of silicon would represent the binary 1s and 0s that computers use to store data. Photo by: courtesy Franz Himpsel Date: August 2002 MADISON - In 1959, physics icon Richard Feynman, in a characteristic back-of-the-envelope calculation, predicted that all the words written in the history of the world...