In Stephen Baxter's "Time" the people catching the asteroid were a "rogue" private company who cut through a bunch of red tape and simply launched a spacecraft without the huge amount of certification required. To try and stop future occurrences the US launched their own spaceship full of a newly formed Space Corps to intercept and stop them - which, in turn, required cutting through a bunch of red tape. The SF aspect of this is that a governmental organisation were able to keep up with commercial organisations.
As long as you take every word of the right bits as the true and unerring word of god - like transubstantiation, papal infallibility, that kind of thing. Just because they believe different un-proovable things doesn't make them any more rational! (Although I'll agree there is a certain style of US right-wing Christian which makes an Islamist suicide bomber look like a deep thinking philanthropic philosopher.)
Using CPUs is generally a simpler approach when building a distributed system like this. Yes, per individual computer GPUs can be more efficient, but you also need to look at the number of assisting nodes you're going to get, and this number may (I'm guessing) be higher if you let any old CPU join the party rather than fewer high-end GPUs.
Wrong - you mean all Mersenne Primes take the form 2^n-1, not that all numbers of the form 2^n-1 are prime. 11, for example, is prime but cannot be rationally expressed in the form 2^n-1.
If you could find new primes that easily then internet banking wouldn't be secure (well...as secure as it currently is, which is "enough for the insurance companies").
Agreed, although for textbooks you have the problem that they can become out of date pretty quickly. Old medical and legal texts in particular tend to get pulped very quickly as they're worse than useless.
When I was working for an academic chain bookseller we frequently supplied custom textbooks which were a collection of chapters from four or five main texts - saves the students a fortune because they only have to buy the one, and it's good for the bookshops because the books are only available locally, everyone wins.
This is pretty much the current model anyway. Authors rarely write an entire book unless they've been commissioned to do so and paid an advance, instead the normal model is to provide a publisher with a synopsis and a sample chapter or two. Self-published authors tend to write whole books up-front, but that's usually because it's a labour of love rather than a way of making a living - there's an awful lot of (generally awful) books out there written without the benefit of an editor or proof-reader and it shows.
I've got an old landline phone and a rubber cups modem - I assume I now need to buy a data plan even though it's not capable of carrying the data in the way that AT&T want it to?
Simple solution - they can change the contract if they want, but you can simply walk away from it at that point. Companies are (legally) allowed to be dicks if they want, they just risk losing money. You can either whine or stop giving them money, it's a fairly simple choice.
It's the oblivous error in the headline/summary. There's always at least one to get the comments going. Just ignore it, it's just the editors trolling.
Which is a reasonable assumption where your speed is low enough - approach orbital speeds and the gravitational field needs to be modelled as a sphere/point source, but at 150mph it's reasonable enough to treat gravity as a parallel force in one direction (depending on just how accurate you want to be, a-la Newtonian dynamics versus the relativistic version).
Nope, we could just fly it there. A C172, fully laden with fuel (or equivalent mass in batteries) weighs less than the Curiosity probe plus landing system, so we could just fly it there in a conventional rocket and release it into the atmosphere (possibly with a little entry shielding). You're taking this far too seriously;)
Yup. An iPhone also has more processing power than my washing machine, but the washing machine does a far better job of cleaning clothes. Also, try booting up an iPhone after it's been in space soak for a couple of years, it's going to need a huge update before it'll even let you phone somebody.
Did you check out Google's information on government/police/court requests for info and takedowns in the UK? Around 4,000 incidents in total, and over 2,000 of them were regarding AdWords. Not Youtube, or Blogger, or G+ or Google Pages, but AdWords. Looks like they're well aware of the problems, to the point of government agencies taking regular action over it. Thing is, this is the thing that makes them an enormous amount of money...
Agreed, roughly. Each user, I'm guessing, will have a unique ID somewhere? Matriculation number or similar? So set everyone up with an address like 9442377@abc.ac.uk and then give them all an option to set up an alias with a real name on a first come first served basis - they can either use the ID based address or find their own preferred john.h.smith43@abc.ac.uk alias, doing most of the work for you, and meaning you don't (hopefully) get lots of "why do I have to be john.smith2?" emails.
You can already start a proprietary fork, you just have to give the open source elements away. OK, yes, you can breach this if you want, but it doesn't stop people getting the open source elements, they're still out there, so you just look like a bit of a dick instead. (Not having a go, just playing along with your proposal)
Ah, I thought you'd got on the wrong side of the real-name policy. Weirdly, I'm the opposite - I don't generally have a problem with Google, I think they're having a decent stab at "no evil" considering the amount of data they hold, while I won't touch any of Facebook's stuff with a bargepole. It's a matter of a relatively ill-defined "trustiness" - even if Google hold more information on me, I still trust that they'll be reasonable unobtrusive and sensitive with it - yes, I know there are many incidents to the contrary, but I still trust them more than Facebook, which feels more like a strip-mining operation in comparison.
A lot of the engineering costs are down to two things, the fact that your Widget has to be launch-suitable (both surviving vibration etc, and also safe for the rest of the launch assembly) and the fact that if you get it wrong it's going to cost you another $10k/kg to try again. Do it in orbit, with orbital materials, and your automated solar system probe can be as slapdash as a high school hackaday project - so it doesn't work? Big deal, you spent $500 on it, not $3,000,000 - just try again.
You can simply deactivate your G+ account and leave the rest of your services intact, I did exactly that when the real name policy was introduced - it's an overly complicated and nerve-wracking experience however, get it wrong and you can lose a lot of data.
Slashdot Mirror
In Stephen Baxter's "Time" the people catching the asteroid were a "rogue" private company who cut through a bunch of red tape and simply launched a spacecraft without the huge amount of certification required. To try and stop future occurrences the US launched their own spaceship full of a newly formed Space Corps to intercept and stop them - which, in turn, required cutting through a bunch of red tape. The SF aspect of this is that a governmental organisation were able to keep up with commercial organisations.
You mean their theories have.....*puts on shades*....evolved?
As long as you take every word of the right bits as the true and unerring word of god - like transubstantiation, papal infallibility, that kind of thing. Just because they believe different un-proovable things doesn't make them any more rational! (Although I'll agree there is a certain style of US right-wing Christian which makes an Islamist suicide bomber look like a deep thinking philanthropic philosopher.)
In the Soviet Orthodox Church noodly appendage touches you?
Using CPUs is generally a simpler approach when building a distributed system like this. Yes, per individual computer GPUs can be more efficient, but you also need to look at the number of assisting nodes you're going to get, and this number may (I'm guessing) be higher if you let any old CPU join the party rather than fewer high-end GPUs.
Wrong - you mean all Mersenne Primes take the form 2^n-1, not that all numbers of the form 2^n-1 are prime. 11, for example, is prime but cannot be rationally expressed in the form 2^n-1.
If you could find new primes that easily then internet banking wouldn't be secure (well...as secure as it currently is, which is "enough for the insurance companies").
Agreed, although for textbooks you have the problem that they can become out of date pretty quickly. Old medical and legal texts in particular tend to get pulped very quickly as they're worse than useless.
When I was working for an academic chain bookseller we frequently supplied custom textbooks which were a collection of chapters from four or five main texts - saves the students a fortune because they only have to buy the one, and it's good for the bookshops because the books are only available locally, everyone wins.
This is pretty much the current model anyway. Authors rarely write an entire book unless they've been commissioned to do so and paid an advance, instead the normal model is to provide a publisher with a synopsis and a sample chapter or two. Self-published authors tend to write whole books up-front, but that's usually because it's a labour of love rather than a way of making a living - there's an awful lot of (generally awful) books out there written without the benefit of an editor or proof-reader and it shows.
Bazinga.
I've got an old landline phone and a rubber cups modem - I assume I now need to buy a data plan even though it's not capable of carrying the data in the way that AT&T want it to?
Simple solution - they can change the contract if they want, but you can simply walk away from it at that point. Companies are (legally) allowed to be dicks if they want, they just risk losing money. You can either whine or stop giving them money, it's a fairly simple choice.
You can keep your number when changing handset and/or provider, even on an unregistered PAYG handset. In the UK, at least.
It's the oblivous error in the headline/summary. There's always at least one to get the comments going. Just ignore it, it's just the editors trolling.
Which is a reasonable assumption where your speed is low enough - approach orbital speeds and the gravitational field needs to be modelled as a sphere/point source, but at 150mph it's reasonable enough to treat gravity as a parallel force in one direction (depending on just how accurate you want to be, a-la Newtonian dynamics versus the relativistic version).
Nope, we could just fly it there. A C172, fully laden with fuel (or equivalent mass in batteries) weighs less than the Curiosity probe plus landing system, so we could just fly it there in a conventional rocket and release it into the atmosphere (possibly with a little entry shielding). You're taking this far too seriously ;)
Depends on whether you want to run Angry Birds in space or Angry Birds In Space (in space).
Yup. An iPhone also has more processing power than my washing machine, but the washing machine does a far better job of cleaning clothes. Also, try booting up an iPhone after it's been in space soak for a couple of years, it's going to need a huge update before it'll even let you phone somebody.
Did you check out Google's information on government/police/court requests for info and takedowns in the UK? Around 4,000 incidents in total, and over 2,000 of them were regarding AdWords. Not Youtube, or Blogger, or G+ or Google Pages, but AdWords. Looks like they're well aware of the problems, to the point of government agencies taking regular action over it. Thing is, this is the thing that makes them an enormous amount of money...
Full breakdowns by country here
Agreed, roughly. Each user, I'm guessing, will have a unique ID somewhere? Matriculation number or similar? So set everyone up with an address like 9442377@abc.ac.uk and then give them all an option to set up an alias with a real name on a first come first served basis - they can either use the ID based address or find their own preferred john.h.smith43@abc.ac.uk alias, doing most of the work for you, and meaning you don't (hopefully) get lots of "why do I have to be john.smith2?" emails.
"The beatings will continue until morale improves!"
You can already start a proprietary fork, you just have to give the open source elements away. OK, yes, you can breach this if you want, but it doesn't stop people getting the open source elements, they're still out there, so you just look like a bit of a dick instead. (Not having a go, just playing along with your proposal)
What about very small bombs designed to propel one piece of shrapnel down a tube?
Ah, I thought you'd got on the wrong side of the real-name policy. Weirdly, I'm the opposite - I don't generally have a problem with Google, I think they're having a decent stab at "no evil" considering the amount of data they hold, while I won't touch any of Facebook's stuff with a bargepole. It's a matter of a relatively ill-defined "trustiness" - even if Google hold more information on me, I still trust that they'll be reasonable unobtrusive and sensitive with it - yes, I know there are many incidents to the contrary, but I still trust them more than Facebook, which feels more like a strip-mining operation in comparison.
A lot of the engineering costs are down to two things, the fact that your Widget has to be launch-suitable (both surviving vibration etc, and also safe for the rest of the launch assembly) and the fact that if you get it wrong it's going to cost you another $10k/kg to try again. Do it in orbit, with orbital materials, and your automated solar system probe can be as slapdash as a high school hackaday project - so it doesn't work? Big deal, you spent $500 on it, not $3,000,000 - just try again.
You can simply deactivate your G+ account and leave the rest of your services intact, I did exactly that when the real name policy was introduced - it's an overly complicated and nerve-wracking experience however, get it wrong and you can lose a lot of data.