Notice how the "capsule" is nicely affixed to the top of a "missle".
A couple of questions, and a point:
Where would you want to affix the "capsule" to a missile. It seems to me that the top has been established as the appropriate position. If you have a design to allow the suspension of the capsule underneath the missile, I would suggest you get that patented as soon as possible.;)
What else would you expect them to affix a capsule to the top of. A catapult? Would you be happier if they had called it a rocket, or a launch vehicle?
Placing quotes around something only makes you look like a "sarcastic bastard", and doesn't really help to make your point.
Aside from a boost to Chinese national pride, the point of duplicating Soviet space achievements of the '70's and '80's escapes me. Will they eventually send four men to the moon?"
The point is that they don't have their own manned launch vehicle. If they want to have any sort of manned space program, they need to start somewhere, and why not with a proven design. You have to realize that given their current standing in the world it would probably be hard for them to rent out time on the space shuttle, which is the only other currently viable option for getting your ass into space. Unless you count in the gondola of a high altitude baloon.
Lets not overlook the health issues. A whole population filing through touching the same surface again and again... can you say 'spreading germs as fast as the plague'?
Let's not be a paranoid jackass. I don't want to make it any worse for the clean freaks, but you touch the same doorknob as other people when coming in and out of the bathroom. So regardless of whether or not you wash your hands you are touching a spot where someone, who may not have washed their hands, just touched. Or how about something even more mundane. When you buy your groceries, how do you pay. Well if you are like 99.9% of us, at one point in your life you've used cash. Guess what... That nice new $20 bill in your pocket has probably already been touched by 50 people, and at least one of them probably had a cold. Oh you say that you use your credit card, then who's pen did you sign with? So you used your own pen, did you touch the receipt? How healthy did the cashire look?
I guess my point is that unless you live in a bubble, or in a shack in Montana, you are likely to be exposed to someone elses germs/virii/bodily fluids. Get over it. In fact, if you weren't, then your immune system becomes lazy, and you are likely to get sick from something really silly like the common cold.
oss only pretends to be in free community; control of projects is far from democratic (or other insert-free-ruling-system-here)... in fact, it's very much despotic.
I don't think there is any pretending going on. I know of no OSS that are true free in the way you imply. OSS is free in that you are free to take the code, and do whatever you want with it, so long as you follow the terms of the license. I am free to not accept any changes that you want to make to my version of the software. The mechanism that I setup to control changes to my version of the software is completly up to me. Whether that system is a beneavolent dictatorship, democracy, or a commity does not effect the Liberty, which is the true free in Free Software, inheirent in OSS.
I think that it probably important to let them know that even though the source is now available, not just anybody will be allowed to access the "official" version. You are still the gatekeeper, and what gets done to the code goes through first.
starving children aplenty, uneducated masses, and violence over religious differences, and they're messing with redhat to watch The Matrix. Way to utilize those funds!
Well if it bothers you so much why don't you sell your computer, and donate the funds to end world hunger. I see two really good outcomes from this.
You get to feel good about doing something to fix the problem, rather than just point at others and asking them why they aren't fixing it.
We don't have to read you retarded comments any more.
On the flip side, why should I pay higher Insurance rates for your heart attack?
OK, but what's to say you're not the one harboring the genetic predisposition for a heart attack. What are you going to do with your crushing medical bills after you have that heart attack? Especially since you are uninsured because your insurance company dropped you when they found out about your predisposition. Or even worse, imagine how loudly you will be whining about not being able to get proper health care because you can't afford the bills.
I personaly would rather pay marginally higher premiums if it would mean that fewer people would be left without medical care. Why? Because even though I am healthy, and don't really need the safety net of insurance, there is the very real possibility that my situation would change and I will be able to experience things from the other side of the fence.
Other than expense, why not just use some sort of shared storage appliance. The admin can be allowed to mount the appliance rw, while the webserver can be given read only access? I think EMC has products that do this.
5. Remove unnecessary links. We don't need to link to CNN's home page every time we write the letters "CNN." Just link to the article or issue at hand.
I would beg to differ on this one. It is only polite to link to the site to which you are refering. It's kind of the same as in written works, it is considered appropriate to provide full citations when referencing other's work. Plus that is the nature of the web. The more highly interconnected it is the better
What I want to know is... What the hell happened all of the desktop cases? It's getting hard to find a good looking case that is made to sit on it's side. I would like to include a pc as part of my home audio equipment, but I don't want to shell out a metric shitload of money for a decent case. This is probably the best looking one I have found so far, but the cheapest I can find it for is $225. I know I could just use a standard rack mounted case, but I wan't something that will match my other components.
The general public won't have access to it for quite a while, if ever.
I would beg to differ. There are only so many cheap satellites you can throw up there, and what not before that industry plateaus(sp?), i'd say maybe 10 years after the first one goes up. After that happens they will start looking at other uses for this. At that point it will most likely become a people mover.
Yes, because if somebody snaps the line at the base, then we have the horrible result of...
nothing at all happening. The line just hangs there, and it has to be reattached. Anybody heading up the line continues with no problem. No effect whatsoever.
Yeah if it leaves the structure in a stable state, but if you happend to break the structure in the middle, then it's not going to be stable. At that point you have a structure many miles high crashing into the ground.
I would agree. I'd be willing to take the ride naked while getting raped by a pack of wild gorilla's, but that still keep it from being a pain in the ass to secure an area that is in effect several hundred or thousand miles tall (How far is it too geostationary orbit?) and probably 100 miles in diameter.
This is the type of thing that would have to be so heavily guarded that it would be a serious pain in the ass to use. There would most likely have to be some sort of wide radius no fly zone around it, as well as a very invasive search for anyone wanting to ride up. Very soon the reasons for not doing this will no longer be technical, but rather political and organizational.
Seriously, the way some people write about the Itanium, you would think nobody had every created a 64-bits processor before.
You do have a point, Itanium is not the first 64 bit processor out there, but I think that the reason that people make a lot of noise is that Itanium is the first 64 bit processor that has a chance of capturing the majority of the PC market. Yes almost everybody has been to 64 bits a long time ago, but none of them have the sheer marketshare that Intel does.
No, I think his point is that the bribes are not legal or illegal, but that offering a bribe in the first place is pointless because the politician simply does not have the power to do what you want him to do.
I think you might be surprised about how much power politicians actually have. This may not be explicit power, but more in the "I scratch your back, you scratch my back" sense. A few dollars spread around here and there can go a long way to greasing the wheels of the beuracracy(sp?). This is espescially so when it comes to making a phone call to Joe over in department x to expedite application y on the behalf of a corporation who happens to contribute money to your election campaign.
...People will bribe governments so long as governments have the power do something for them.
True but would you rather the bribes that polititican take be legal, as they are now, in the form of "Soft Money"? Or would you rather the that the dishonest people in government really act like crooks and be forced to solicit and accept illegal bribes? I would much rather see that we call it what it is (a bribe) and treat it that way, then wave our arms and declare that the real problem is elsewhere.
Yes I understand that this is not to the point of the original argument, that government is to big and must be reduced, but change will most likely be incremental and not all at once. Let's take our victories where we can.
Was it just me or does the notion of a "Centralized file server" NOT sound like distributed computing to you?
Not being in possesion of any moderator points I am forced to respond to your comment....
If you were to have read the caption on the image, you would see that it says Logically: a centralized file server, but then it goes on to say Physically distributed among clients.
To do this, the system has to be insulated from any human error or interference. This means an elevated track. Hopefully (and ideally) a cheap, light, and simple elevated track. But it just can't be on the road. The ideal is that tracks are very cheap, so it's viable to create a fairly dense network of tracks, and most destinations will be within easy walking distance of a station.
What you are talking about works really well when the population centers are fairly dense, like Chicago. However in an area like Kansas City it is essential for these vehicles to partially coexist with regular surface traffic. The reason for this is that it is nearly impossible to build stations everywhere they would be needed in a city like KC which is fairly large in population, but not particularly dense. This would necessistate the building of regional stations or on ramps where the cars would move from mixed traffic to an exclusively mass transit traffic. This is because it is simply not possible to build stations within easy walking distance to everybody.
On your other point, mixed flow of transit vehicles (of any kind) and autos is bad because it's much SLOWER than a dedicated right-of-way. The idea of taking the cars off the track into normal traffic seems pretty inefficient to me, for that reason. Of course, if you're way out in the sticks, no traffic, but then also no critical mass to support the transit system.
Unfortunately you don't have to be way out in this sticks to be too sparse to support mass transit. I live in the Kansas City metropolitan area. The area is most likely well over 2 million people when you count both sides of the state line and most of the major suburbs which are situated in 6 different counties. The problem here is that the sprawl has already taken place, and that there aren't really that many "urban" areas. For this reason it isn't reasonable to expect to be able to support mass transit like it is used in larger cities. The number of stops and stations required to support the area is just not reasonable. For that reason, a dual purpose mass transit module would be very usefull. You would use the main arterial lines to get you near your destination, but then you can go off line to take you the extra 2-3 miles to your final destination.
You are probably saying to yourself 'So what'. The point is that you will get the mass transit system in place, and be able to service the entire area. This then goes a long way to help congestion. As people become more accustomed to using the mass transit they will congregate around the arterial lines and that will give you the urban center that many cities like KC lack.
I find it interesting that we keep proposing (and implementing) systems that are really quite "space age" whatever that means, but the actual face of the world doesn't seem to change that much. This is such a fascinating idea, and one that I think has quite a bit of merrit. The only problem that I see is that of mixing this and regular traffic. I don't want to be trapped inside one of these little boxes toodling allong at a leisurly 25mph and have some jackass with his suv and cellphone run over me doing 50. I know the solution described in the article runs on a special track, but for a mass transit solution to work and gain wide use in anything but the largest cities, it has to share the infrastructure with regualr vehicles, otherwise it is often prohibitively expensive.
I know that mass transit works, but it works best in very dense population centers, because it is limited to specific routes. What if only one of your destination endpoints is near a mass transit station. Then you either have to walk or drive to the terminal. That works durring summer, or if you live in a warm dry climate, but right now I have to think twice about walking across the parkinglot to get my car it is so cold outside. I guess my point is that mass transportation needs to be nearly door to door or it will not gain wide acceptance.
Slashdot Mirror
Notice how the "capsule" is nicely affixed to the top of a "missle".
A couple of questions, and a point:
Aside from a boost to Chinese national pride, the point of duplicating Soviet space achievements of the '70's and '80's escapes me. Will they eventually send four men to the moon?"
The point is that they don't have their own manned launch vehicle. If they want to have any sort of manned space program, they need to start somewhere, and why not with a proven design. You have to realize that given their current standing in the world it would probably be hard for them to rent out time on the space shuttle, which is the only other currently viable option for getting your ass into space. Unless you count in the gondola of a high altitude baloon.
Lets not overlook the health issues. A whole population filing through touching the same surface again and again... can you say 'spreading germs as fast as the plague'?
Let's not be a paranoid jackass. I don't want to make it any worse for the clean freaks, but you touch the same doorknob as other people when coming in and out of the bathroom. So regardless of whether or not you wash your hands you are touching a spot where someone, who may not have washed their hands, just touched. Or how about something even more mundane. When you buy your groceries, how do you pay. Well if you are like 99.9% of us, at one point in your life you've used cash. Guess what... That nice new $20 bill in your pocket has probably already been touched by 50 people, and at least one of them probably had a cold. Oh you say that you use your credit card, then who's pen did you sign with? So you used your own pen, did you touch the receipt? How healthy did the cashire look?
I guess my point is that unless you live in a bubble, or in a shack in Montana, you are likely to be exposed to someone elses germs/virii/bodily fluids. Get over it. In fact, if you weren't, then your immune system becomes lazy, and you are likely to get sick from something really silly like the common cold.
oss only pretends to be in free community; control of projects is far from democratic (or other insert-free-ruling-system-here) ... in fact, it's very much despotic.
I don't think there is any pretending going on. I know of no OSS that are true free in the way you imply. OSS is free in that you are free to take the code, and do whatever you want with it, so long as you follow the terms of the license. I am free to not accept any changes that you want to make to my version of the software. The mechanism that I setup to control changes to my version of the software is completly up to me. Whether that system is a beneavolent dictatorship, democracy, or a commity does not effect the Liberty, which is the true free in Free Software, inheirent in OSS.
I think that it probably important to let them know that even though the source is now available, not just anybody will be allowed to access the "official" version. You are still the gatekeeper, and what gets done to the code goes through first.
starving children aplenty, uneducated masses, and violence over religious differences, and they're messing with redhat to watch The Matrix. Way to utilize those funds!
Well if it bothers you so much why don't you sell your computer, and donate the funds to end world hunger. I see two really good outcomes from this.
On the flip side, why should I pay higher Insurance rates for your heart attack?
OK, but what's to say you're not the one harboring the genetic predisposition for a heart attack. What are you going to do with your crushing medical bills after you have that heart attack? Especially since you are uninsured because your insurance company dropped you when they found out about your predisposition. Or even worse, imagine how loudly you will be whining about not being able to get proper health care because you can't afford the bills.
I personaly would rather pay marginally higher premiums if it would mean that fewer people would be left without medical care. Why? Because even though I am healthy, and don't really need the safety net of insurance, there is the very real possibility that my situation would change and I will be able to experience things from the other side of the fence.
Other than expense, why not just use some sort of shared storage appliance. The admin can be allowed to mount the appliance rw, while the webserver can be given read only access? I think EMC has products that do this.
Amanda Pays, she was pretty hot.
LOL. This comment was moderated up as insightful.
Wow. That's much better. Why doesn't everybody take the time to do that?
;)
5. Remove unnecessary links. We don't need to link to CNN's home page every time we write the letters "CNN." Just link to the article or issue at hand.
I would beg to differ on this one. It is only polite to link to the site to which you are refering. It's kind of the same as in written works, it is considered appropriate to provide full citations when referencing other's work. Plus that is the nature of the web. The more highly interconnected it is the better
What I want to know is... What the hell happened all of the desktop cases? It's getting hard to find a good looking case that is made to sit on it's side. I would like to include a pc as part of my home audio equipment, but I don't want to shell out a metric shitload of money for a decent case. This is probably the best looking one I have found so far, but the cheapest I can find it for is $225. I know I could just use a standard rack mounted case, but I wan't something that will match my other components.
The general public won't have access to it for quite a while, if ever.
I would beg to differ. There are only so many cheap satellites you can throw up there, and what not before that industry plateaus(sp?), i'd say maybe 10 years after the first one goes up. After that happens they will start looking at other uses for this. At that point it will most likely become a people mover.
No but if one or two or three manage to get a ride up there they might be able to do some damage.
Yes, because if somebody snaps the line at the base, then we have the horrible result of...
nothing at all happening. The line just hangs there, and it has to be reattached. Anybody heading up the line continues with no problem. No effect whatsoever.
Yeah if it leaves the structure in a stable state, but if you happend to break the structure in the middle, then it's not going to be stable. At that point you have a structure many miles high crashing into the ground.
I would agree. I'd be willing to take the ride naked while getting raped by a pack of wild gorilla's, but that still keep it from being a pain in the ass to secure an area that is in effect several hundred or thousand miles tall (How far is it too geostationary orbit?) and probably 100 miles in diameter.
This is the type of thing that would have to be so heavily guarded that it would be a serious pain in the ass to use. There would most likely have to be some sort of wide radius no fly zone around it, as well as a very invasive search for anyone wanting to ride up. Very soon the reasons for not doing this will no longer be technical, but rather political and organizational.
Seriously, the way some people write about the Itanium, you would think nobody had every created a 64-bits processor before.
You do have a point, Itanium is not the first 64 bit processor out there, but I think that the reason that people make a lot of noise is that Itanium is the first 64 bit processor that has a chance of capturing the majority of the PC market. Yes almost everybody has been to 64 bits a long time ago, but none of them have the sheer marketshare that Intel does.
No, I think his point is that the bribes are not legal or illegal, but that offering a bribe in the first place is pointless because the politician simply does not have the power to do what you want him to do.
I think you might be surprised about how much power politicians actually have. This may not be explicit power, but more in the "I scratch your back, you scratch my back" sense. A few dollars spread around here and there can go a long way to greasing the wheels of the beuracracy(sp?). This is espescially so when it comes to making a phone call to Joe over in department x to expedite application y on the behalf of a corporation who happens to contribute money to your election campaign.
True but would you rather the bribes that polititican take be legal, as they are now, in the form of "Soft Money"? Or would you rather the that the dishonest people in government really act like crooks and be forced to solicit and accept illegal bribes? I would much rather see that we call it what it is (a bribe) and treat it that way, then wave our arms and declare that the real problem is elsewhere.
Yes I understand that this is not to the point of the original argument, that government is to big and must be reduced, but change will most likely be incremental and not all at once. Let's take our victories where we can.
ok....this is OT and all, but shouldn't it be "When I want your opinion I'll beat it into you"??
If you had read my sig you would know how I feel about your comments.
;)
Just kidding.
I will take your suggestions under advisement.
http://www.computerworld.com/computerworld/records /images/story/Farsite.gif
Was it just me or does the notion of a "Centralized file server" NOT sound like distributed computing to you?
Not being in possesion of any moderator points I am forced to respond to your comment....
If you were to have read the caption on the image, you would see that it says Logically: a centralized file server, but then it goes on to say Physically distributed among clients.
To do this, the system has to be insulated from any human error or interference. This means an elevated track. Hopefully (and ideally) a cheap, light, and simple elevated track. But it just can't be on the road. The ideal is that tracks are very cheap, so it's viable to create a fairly dense network of tracks, and most destinations will be within easy walking distance of a station.
What you are talking about works really well when the population centers are fairly dense, like Chicago. However in an area like Kansas City it is essential for these vehicles to partially coexist with regular surface traffic. The reason for this is that it is nearly impossible to build stations everywhere they would be needed in a city like KC which is fairly large in population, but not particularly dense. This would necessistate the building of regional stations or on ramps where the cars would move from mixed traffic to an exclusively mass transit traffic. This is because it is simply not possible to build stations within easy walking distance to everybody.
On your other point, mixed flow of transit vehicles (of any kind) and autos is bad because it's much SLOWER than a dedicated right-of-way. The idea of taking the cars off the track into normal traffic seems pretty inefficient to me, for that reason. Of course, if you're way out in the sticks, no traffic, but then also no critical mass to support the transit system.
Unfortunately you don't have to be way out in this sticks to be too sparse to support mass transit. I live in the Kansas City metropolitan area. The area is most likely well over 2 million people when you count both sides of the state line and most of the major suburbs which are situated in 6 different counties. The problem here is that the sprawl has already taken place, and that there aren't really that many "urban" areas. For this reason it isn't reasonable to expect to be able to support mass transit like it is used in larger cities. The number of stops and stations required to support the area is just not reasonable. For that reason, a dual purpose mass transit module would be very usefull. You would use the main arterial lines to get you near your destination, but then you can go off line to take you the extra 2-3 miles to your final destination.
You are probably saying to yourself 'So what'. The point is that you will get the mass transit system in place, and be able to service the entire area. This then goes a long way to help congestion. As people become more accustomed to using the mass transit they will congregate around the arterial lines and that will give you the urban center that many cities like KC lack.
I find it interesting that we keep proposing (and implementing) systems that are really quite "space age" whatever that means, but the actual face of the world doesn't seem to change that much. This is such a fascinating idea, and one that I think has quite a bit of merrit. The only problem that I see is that of mixing this and regular traffic. I don't want to be trapped inside one of these little boxes toodling allong at a leisurly 25mph and have some jackass with his suv and cellphone run over me doing 50. I know the solution described in the article runs on a special track, but for a mass transit solution to work and gain wide use in anything but the largest cities, it has to share the infrastructure with regualr vehicles, otherwise it is often prohibitively expensive.
I know that mass transit works, but it works best in very dense population centers, because it is limited to specific routes. What if only one of your destination endpoints is near a mass transit station. Then you either have to walk or drive to the terminal. That works durring summer, or if you live in a warm dry climate, but right now I have to think twice about walking across the parkinglot to get my car it is so cold outside. I guess my point is that mass transportation needs to be nearly door to door or it will not gain wide acceptance.