The shuttle has a payload capacity of 20 tons. So, even if we peg today's Saturn 5 at 500 million per copy, it has a 120 LEO capacity - 6 times the payload for about the same price. Sounds like a better deal to me.
Again, your own figures make my point about it being total bullshit, even in today's inflated dollars. The Apollo stacks' "few tons of payload capability" was for LUNAR ORBIT and RETURN - not LEO. Saturn 5's LEO payload capability was 120 tons, with no modifications. That's 6x the shuttle's 20-ton payload capacity.
In other words, 1/6 the price per pound, in constant dollars. 1/6. If it weren't for the shuttle, there would be a permanent moonbase, and people would already be walking on Mars.
Geist provides a list of 30 things that can be done to address the issues
I don't even need to read it to know #1 is move to the US lol
Or just host fair use/parody/etc on servers in the US, outside the jurisdiction of Canadian courts. If it works for the White Aryan Nation whack-a-moles (who moved their servers from Canada to the US to escape Canadian laws about propagating hate literature), it can work for everyone else...
then you'd love the one I put in the kitchen at work. People were in the habit of leaving a mess and plugging the sink, so someone put up a sign: "No biological particles in the sink."
I put up another sign: "In Soviet Russia, biological particles sink YOU!"
" think the major problem is that everyone has massively underestimated the cost and technical complexity of building reliable launch systems."
No, they underestimated the cost and technical complexity of building RE-USABLE launch systems.
The Saturn 5 was a lot cheaper, and could lift 5x into LEO as much as the current shuttle, and that's w/o any SRBs. re-engineer it, add a few SRBs, and you get something that can lift 10x as much, for half the price, in constant dollars.
"NASA does not have the funding it had during the apollo era, so they are doing the best they can on low budgets"
The whole manned space program from mercury to apollo cost $25 billion.
Each Saturn 5 cost $100 million.
Contrast that with the "reusable" space shuttle that has to be pretty much rebuilt from the ground up after every mision - $500 million dollars a flight.
Add to that that the Saturn 5 has 5x the payload capacity (125,000 kg into LEO) of the shuttle (25,000 kg) and this doesn't add the posibbility of increasing the Saturn 5 payload capacity with SRBs, to between 250,000kg and 350,000 kg)... even taking into account inflation, the shuttle is what has been bleeding NASA. A modified Saturn 5 would need a lot fewer missions to assemble shit in orbit, like the ISS.
They've already done versions where the observe can "observe" (in this case, an optical detector) the result, but the decision to observe or not is only made AFTER the photon has already passed through the slit. When the observer is activated, the individual photons difract; otherwise, no "interference patterns".
People choose to interpret this as a "collapse of the wave function" rather than the obvious - that cause and effect are only what they appear to be because of the way we experience time. Get rid of that assumption, and there is no need for voodoo junk science like "collapsing wave functions".
I thought Sun paid 8 million, minus the stock they resold (which they sold at a much higher price than its' current penny-stock mark-to-market valuation), so it worked out to effectively only a couple of million - anyone got any figures on the stock sale price?
Considering what Sun has done wrt OpenOffice and Java, I'd cut them some slack.
Microsoft, on the gripping hand... and RBC-BayStar, both are probably praying that the corporate veil holds, because business clients don't like it when suppliers are caught being crooks.
"they can sue the SCO executive and its lawyers for breach of fiduciary duty because SCO did not do enough due diligence before starting the lawsuit."
Justice won't be served unless they go to jail. Having to give back a portion of their ill-gotten gains is not punishment. If you steal $50 million, and have to give back half, then theft is profit and the fine is just a cost of doing business.
Ask Microsoft - they've been operating that way for decades.
The problem is that SCO doesn't have enough money to "make Novell whole." If the bk judge can claw back money from thse fraud artists at BFS, from the corporate officers who fed like pigs at the trough, from the PIPE Fairy, etc., THAT would be justice.
My money is on IBM to pierce the corporate veil vis. Microsoft.
"So it's back to Utah they go. I'm sure SCO's lawyers can't wait to see Judge Kimball again, after all the horrible things SCO's CEO Darl McBride said about Judge Kimball to the press."
"This means that SCO (and its investors) will actually have to atone for their ridiculous claims and the resources they have caused supporters of Unix and OSS to squander. Finally, they can pay back the world what they owe"
Do you really believe that? They're not "paying back" Jack Shit. They don't have any money of their own - all they have left is Novell's money. Chapter 7. End of story.
"Had SCO chosen an opponent with shallower pockets, the system would probably have failed."
The system HAS failed.
Pump-and-dump for McBride and his cronies, FUD-fest for Microsoft, and Novells' money being illegally converted to fund all this. Justice? Only when McBride is in an orange jump-suit, and rats on those behind the "corporate veil".
"And particles must be able to interfere with themselves because we can get the interference pattern with double slit-experiment even if we shoot only one electron at a time."
think for 2 seconds - if time isn't linear, then we don't need the fiction of particles interfering with themselves. They can interfere with each other just fine. It makes a lot more sense than having particles MAYBE interfere with each other, depending on whether there is an observer or not.
Its time to put the idea of a "superposition of states" to rest.
Particles only "interfere with themselves" when there is an observer in the double-slit experiment in a single-photon-at-a-time situation.
Which proves that they don't "interfere with themselves" at all - or, in reality, with each other.
The whole "wave thing" is bogus - they're not waves, they're not even "wavicles" - they're particles. Remove the "unidirectional arrow of time" and there is no need for the bullshit of a "quantum supposition of states" - the particle has only one quantum state. Observing it changes that state, and a full description of st "state" includes its past as well as its future. Sure, it messes up cause and effect, but such a concept as "cause and effect" being linear isn't all that valid to begin with. Think of it - even in the macro world we can "deduce" causes just from the information of the effect. So, if time isn't unidirectional, why shouldn't information from an action go in both directions? It would have to, and it explains everything a lot better than the "hocus pocus" of "collapsing wave functions". Much more leaner and cleaner than a "superposition of states" and an "infinite worlds" universe that implies.
... unless observing that information changes it, same as observing the event changes it? Isn't that what we're actually "seeing" in this case? Think about it. If there is no observer, information CAN be transmitted back. If there is an observer, the act of observing, of necessity, causes the information to be changed, same as sticking a cold thermometer in a warm glass of water cools down the water.
On the two-slit experiment level, if there is no observer, information is transmitted all along the "path" of the single photon, right to the source, and it successfully interferes with other photons from past and future emissions. However, add an observer, and the back-propagation of the information is interfered with (the observer has "sucked" the information out by observing it - "Tom's Law of Conservation of Information", causing the photons to not interact, since they no longer have the necessary info.
The observation of an event may not in fact "create it" if our interpretation/understanding of time is wrong. For example, if instead of a "collapsing wave function", we posit that effects can back-propagate to (and change) their causes, same as causes propagate forward and have "effects", we don't need any "collapsing wave function" to "become our reality". This also gets rid of the necessity of the multiverse, and the "many-branches", as well as giving us an objective reality, as opposed to the current "consensual reality".
Its a lot simpler than assuming that time, unlike every other dimension, is linear and unidirectional, like an arrow. Even arrows aren't.
Actually, you're wrong. The act of observing something, even AFTER the event, changes the whole chain of events.
Look at the two-slit experiments. No observer after the photon passes through the slit - interference patterns, even when only one photon at a time is in the box. Observer - no interference patterns. In other words, the act of observing changes not just the outcome, but the causality.
Slashdot Mirror
NASA pegs each shuttle flights' launch cost at 450 million
The shuttle has a payload capacity of 20 tons. So, even if we peg today's Saturn 5 at 500 million per copy, it has a 120 LEO capacity - 6 times the payload for about the same price. Sounds like a better deal to me.
" Second, the marginal cost of a Shuttle flight (I.E. adding a flight to the manifest) is under $100/million a flight. "
More bullshit. NASA's own web site says it costs $450 million per launch. That doesn't include any apportionment of fixed costs, etc.
The shuttle was a mistake. Without it, we'd already be on Mars.
Again, your own figures make my point about it being total bullshit, even in today's inflated dollars. The Apollo stacks' "few tons of payload capability" was for LUNAR ORBIT and RETURN - not LEO. Saturn 5's LEO payload capability was 120 tons, with no modifications. That's 6x the shuttle's 20-ton payload capacity.
In other words, 1/6 the price per pound, in constant dollars. 1/6. If it weren't for the shuttle, there would be a permanent moonbase, and people would already be walking on Mars.
Or just host fair use/parody/etc on servers in the US, outside the jurisdiction of Canadian courts. If it works for the White Aryan Nation whack-a-moles (who moved their servers from Canada to the US to escape Canadian laws about propagating hate literature), it can work for everyone else ...
then you'd love the one I put in the kitchen at work. People were in the habit of leaving a mess and plugging the sink, so someone put up a sign: "No biological particles in the sink."
I put up another sign: "In Soviet Russia, biological particles sink YOU!"
Yes, I work with russians ...
" think the major problem is that everyone has massively underestimated the cost and technical complexity of building reliable launch systems."
No, they underestimated the cost and technical complexity of building RE-USABLE launch systems.
The Saturn 5 was a lot cheaper, and could lift 5x into LEO as much as the current shuttle, and that's w/o any SRBs. re-engineer it, add a few SRBs, and you get something that can lift 10x as much, for half the price, in constant dollars.
"NASA does not have the funding it had during the apollo era, so they are doing the best they can on low budgets"
The whole manned space program from mercury to apollo cost $25 billion.
Each Saturn 5 cost $100 million.
Contrast that with the "reusable" space shuttle that has to be pretty much rebuilt from the ground up after every mision - $500 million dollars a flight.
Add to that that the Saturn 5 has 5x the payload capacity (125,000 kg into LEO) of the shuttle (25,000 kg) and this doesn't add the posibbility of increasing the Saturn 5 payload capacity with SRBs, to between 250,000kg and 350,000 kg)... even taking into account inflation, the shuttle is what has been bleeding NASA. A modified Saturn 5 would need a lot fewer missions to assemble shit in orbit, like the ISS.
Our silicon-bsed overlords can bite my carbon-based ass! Oh wait - they're too fatigued, and crack up under even microscopic stress.
Seriously, this may have implications for the non-existence of silicon-based life. After all, silicon-based "dna" might be more liable to failure.
They've already done versions where the observe can "observe" (in this case, an optical detector) the result, but the decision to observe or not is only made AFTER the photon has already passed through the slit. When the observer is activated, the individual photons difract; otherwise, no "interference patterns".
People choose to interpret this as a "collapse of the wave function" rather than the obvious - that cause and effect are only what they appear to be because of the way we experience time. Get rid of that assumption, and there is no need for voodoo junk science like "collapsing wave functions".
"In Korea, exploding cellphones are only for old people."
In the rest of the world, they're also great stocking stuffers for ex-wives, guys who beat on women, and Darl McBride.
"Otherwise your new Vista computer would be a brick."
I thought Sun paid 8 million, minus the stock they resold (which they sold at a much higher price than its' current penny-stock mark-to-market valuation), so it worked out to effectively only a couple of million - anyone got any figures on the stock sale price?
Considering what Sun has done wrt OpenOffice and Java, I'd cut them some slack.
Microsoft, on the gripping hand ... and RBC-BayStar, both are probably praying that the corporate veil holds, because business clients don't like it when suppliers are caught being crooks.
"they can sue the SCO executive and its lawyers for breach of fiduciary duty because SCO did not do enough due diligence before starting the lawsuit."
Justice won't be served unless they go to jail. Having to give back a portion of their ill-gotten gains is not punishment. If you steal $50 million, and have to give back half, then theft is profit and the fine is just a cost of doing business.
Ask Microsoft - they've been operating that way for decades.
The problem is that SCO doesn't have enough money to "make Novell whole." If the bk judge can claw back money from thse fraud artists at BFS, from the corporate officers who fed like pigs at the trough, from the PIPE Fairy, etc., THAT would be justice.
My money is on IBM to pierce the corporate veil vis. Microsoft.
"So it's back to Utah they go. I'm sure SCO's lawyers can't wait to see Judge Kimball again, after all the horrible things SCO's CEO Darl McBride said about Judge Kimball to the press."
More like lyin' lyons - the fake steve jobs, or pretenderle (Ron Enderle), or the MogTroll.
"This means that SCO (and its investors) will actually have to atone for their ridiculous claims and the resources they have caused supporters of Unix and OSS to squander. Finally, they can pay back the world what they owe"
Do you really believe that? They're not "paying back" Jack Shit. They don't have any money of their own - all they have left is Novell's money. Chapter 7. End of story.
"Had SCO chosen an opponent with shallower pockets, the system would probably have failed."
The system HAS failed.
Pump-and-dump for McBride and his cronies, FUD-fest for Microsoft, and Novells' money being illegally converted to fund all this. Justice? Only when McBride is in an orange jump-suit, and rats on those behind the "corporate veil".
"The system works..... it works slowly, it costs huge amounts of money, but it does work......"
Three simple reasons to say "the system" does NOT work:
Justice my arse! If the software industry worked as slowly as justice, and as expensively, we'd be using a $5,000 abacus instead of a computer.
Think of it - there's still all the BS appeals. Justice isn't looking all that appealing now, is it, unless you, like justice, are blind AND slow.
""Dating"... doesn't that mean telling how old an object, like a fossil or something, is? Carbon dating, etc?"
I for one welcome dating our carbon-based overlords.
"In Soviet Russia the state dates YOU!
That would probably be an improvement for most slashdotters, where you're more likely to be *ahem* "dating yourself ..."
"And particles must be able to interfere with themselves because we can get the interference pattern with double slit-experiment even if we shoot only one electron at a time."
think for 2 seconds - if time isn't linear, then we don't need the fiction of particles interfering with themselves. They can interfere with each other just fine. It makes a lot more sense than having particles MAYBE interfere with each other, depending on whether there is an observer or not.
Its time to put the idea of a "superposition of states" to rest.
Particles only "interfere with themselves" when there is an observer in the double-slit experiment in a single-photon-at-a-time situation.
Which proves that they don't "interfere with themselves" at all - or, in reality, with each other.
The whole "wave thing" is bogus - they're not waves, they're not even "wavicles" - they're particles. Remove the "unidirectional arrow of time" and there is no need for the bullshit of a "quantum supposition of states" - the particle has only one quantum state. Observing it changes that state, and a full description of st "state" includes its past as well as its future. Sure, it messes up cause and effect, but such a concept as "cause and effect" being linear isn't all that valid to begin with. Think of it - even in the macro world we can "deduce" causes just from the information of the effect. So, if time isn't unidirectional, why shouldn't information from an action go in both directions? It would have to, and it explains everything a lot better than the "hocus pocus" of "collapsing wave functions". Much more leaner and cleaner than a "superposition of states" and an "infinite worlds" universe that implies.
Occam's razor works wonders.
... unless observing that information changes it, same as observing the event changes it? Isn't that what we're actually "seeing" in this case? Think about it. If there is no observer, information CAN be transmitted back. If there is an observer, the act of observing, of necessity, causes the information to be changed, same as sticking a cold thermometer in a warm glass of water cools down the water.
On the two-slit experiment level, if there is no observer, information is transmitted all along the "path" of the single photon, right to the source, and it successfully interferes with other photons from past and future emissions. However, add an observer, and the back-propagation of the information is interfered with (the observer has "sucked" the information out by observing it - "Tom's Law of Conservation of Information", causing the photons to not interact, since they no longer have the necessary info.
The observation of an event may not in fact "create it" if our interpretation/understanding of time is wrong. For example, if instead of a "collapsing wave function", we posit that effects can back-propagate to (and change) their causes, same as causes propagate forward and have "effects", we don't need any "collapsing wave function" to "become our reality". This also gets rid of the necessity of the multiverse, and the "many-branches", as well as giving us an objective reality, as opposed to the current "consensual reality".
Its a lot simpler than assuming that time, unlike every other dimension, is linear and unidirectional, like an arrow. Even arrows aren't.
Actually, you're wrong. The act of observing something, even AFTER the event, changes the whole chain of events.
Look at the two-slit experiments. No observer after the photon passes through the slit - interference patterns, even when only one photon at a time is in the box. Observer - no interference patterns. In other words, the act of observing changes not just the outcome, but the causality.