a quick background (why the senate voted to ban doing business with Russia)
A quickest background would be like this: US Senate found that the ban banned USA from manned access to space. No wonder it got cancelled. Russia is currently the only country with a practically working space program, and it has the upper hand by definition - until the STS is fixed, or until China revs up its own manned spaceflight. My bet would be on China.
Sun had a better reason 10 years ago to move the CPU from the client computer into the server than they have it now. Today a CPU is practically free. You can get an ARM or StrongARM CPU today for nothing:
IC MPU SA-110 166MHZ 144-TQFP : $18.43 in qty. 1000
Add some RAM, and you can have a box that is better at local processing than a remote server would ever be, since the server has to multitask and your CPU doesn't. Other posters already mentioned that any client appliance still has to have a screen and a keyboard, and those are more important in total price than a CPU. Chances are, you have to have this sort of CPU anyway just because your screen and keyboard and USB and whatever else you have locally, all require it.
Besides, there is this "ownership" issue. People like to own things. People like to be independent. Would you like to buy a house without a kitchen? You'll have to eat at a restaurant every day. I'd hate that. Would you like to rent your clothes, or use a pay phone, or to keep your things ONLY at a rental warehouse? This would be universally displeasing not just because it's inconvenient, but also because humans want to be in control of their lives, not to be tied to some "service" that is the only game in town.
Why doesn't this [Bush] administration pay Americans to build these Soyuz like crafts instead of simply buying?
If only you were involved in hiring of techies, as I am, you'd know the answer already. United States does not produce [enough of] good engineers. You can't hire anyone competent, or nearly competent. And one out of a hundred who knows his trade wants $200K/yr and benefits and stock, and your firstborn too if he is hungry.
So you can't hire fools because they are useless, and you can't hire that rare skilled guy because he will bankrupt you. So what do you do? Good question. Many businesses just hire a few mediocre performers and hope for the best.
Even (1) is probably a violation of something because the Altera synthesis tools, and their output, are likely licensed only to be used for Altera FPGAs. The customer does not buy the tool, he only buys a license.
This does make sense because investment in R&D of the tools is extreme. But Altera had to do it because otherwise its FPGAs would be useless. However Altera does not want to support freeloaders who use the tools to program something else.
Because of that, in your case #1 the reverse engineering of the mask interconnects would be legal, however generation of a bitstream for it (or any other configuration data) using Altera tools would be illegal.
My friend is currently experimenting on a cheap version of this with a manual shutoff switch (hey, it's cheap!) and has gone from 24MPG to 27MPG in a recent model Nissan Maxima (3.0L V6 model).
Your friend could also sell the Nissan, buy a hybrid, and enjoy 50+ MPG without any experiments.
She says there was no music on her computer, and the CD recorder is broken, etc. etc. But nobody wanted to investigate even that. It is really strange that RIAA accused her without having any proof whatsoever, except maybe the IP address.
But anyone can set any IP address he likes, manually, as long as the other computer is off (which was mostly the case). Depends on the type of the network, probably. And if she had a WiFi router, unsecured...
Then why do Microsoft and Google get constant flak for copying old things and changing the presentation a bit and sticking their name on it?
Because they say that this thing is new and shiny, when it is not.
Plenty of companies sell old, familiar stuff - sugar, water, lumber, grain - none of that needs to be innovative, and I'd rather prefer that it is not. There is nothing wrong in providing more of the same, with a few little things tweaked here and there - as long as you are honest about that.
Your statement acts as if there are two types of people, those who understand computers, and those who understand people, as if the two are mutually exclusive.
No, they are not mutually exclusive. However the best managers come from one end of this spectrum, and the best techies come from another. That only reflects where most of their talent is.
Lets just lease out tons of laptops and spend XX amount of dollars to have our team of IT security nerds fix them when something goes wrong, instead of properly training our management staff how to handle a computer system properly.
Manager: "You got that right!":-)
It may indeed be easier to have trained IT people to take care of computers, instead of retraining older people who don't know computers, don't like computers, and have no desire to even learn. Besides, as I said it's managers who give orders, and it's part of human nature to have servants perform mundane tasks that the noble won't debase himself with doing.
Keeping a working computer environment absent of viruses, trojans, and worms is not a rocket science.
No, but it requires some effort, some discipline, and some skills too. I know many managers who don't understand computers at all, outside of browsing teh Intarweb and using MS Lookout. Most of management is not related to computers at all - like finances, or civil engineering... People are totally clueless, and when you tell them this and that, trying to educate, they wave you away saying that they are too busy, and they have IT to take care of it all.
No, successful management of people has nothing to do with successful management of machines. Business management is all about people, resources, deadlines, contracts, politics, rumors, promises, successes, stories, rewards, etc. Computer management is all about bits and bytes, CAT5, interrupt levels, BIOS, applications, viruses, security practices, procedures, training. These two things have nothing in common. As matter of fact, they require completely opposite personalities - an extravert for business management and an introvert for dealing with computers.
Surely the US doesnt have enough stealth bombers to take out every missle site in a given country either?
True; and this plan is not designed against countries with more than a handful of missiles. This plan is written against a country that has only one or two "sites" that may or may not have contained the missiles, after the neutrons settle. Such an attack can be easily done using bombers. Even cruise missiles are not reliable enough.
Nuclear weapons affect the whole world, and if such weapons are used then -all- other countries on the planet will be quite displeased, to say the least. In other words, "Use The Bomb and commit financial harakiri."
how would this civilization manage to get to the other categories?
It can't, just like a civilization of one-legged jumpers without hands (and without telekinetic abilities) can't get anywhere at all. You have to have some prerequisites. And I don't say that humans have them all.
There is no need to talk to grandparents because too many classical russian books are set in Czarist times, 18th or 19th century. For example, the "War and Peace" is set around 1812. Those books are a required reading for students.
It will be visible to the warhead above regardless of whether it absorbs RF or not. Any ground pattern that does not autocorrelate using a given pair of offsets must be the target. The same software will work both cases.
it's very likely that the aircraft was only clipped in one of the wings by a SAM or artillary fire.
SAM warheads don't hit the target "head on". Instead they explode near the target, and then the schrapnel downs the airplane. This approach was used as early as World War II. The F-117 could be mostly intact, with the only exception of one little hole where it mattered.
I can think of least one very simple way to find a stealth aircraft with a radar-guided warhead. It was described in many sci-fi (or fantasy) books. Program the rocket to climb high, point its antenna down and then see where the reflections from the ground disappear. Since the rocket and the target both move, the ground reflections average out quickly, giving you a smooth "white" background and a moving "black" spot. Even though the ground reflections are not uniform (forest / lake / city) these irregularities move with rocket's own vector, and can be easily cancelled out.
But there are many other ways. You know, for example, that there is a radio relay technology that sends microwave signals over the horizon by scattering them off of just atmospheric irregularities? It's only a matter of power.
To do better than that you need to make the airplane transparent to whatever frequency you are using.
It's a free market - someone offers a service, someone offers the money - deal. What's wrong with that? Russia definitely can control who boards its spacecraft, and it owns a good deal of ISS share(s), and besides, none of that is done over standing objections of other partners.
I'm sure NASA is welcome to send a tourist or two on one of its shuttles... not that any are expected now, not any time soon at least, from what I read these days. It might even be that the Shuttles will never fly again. The STS program depends on thousands of highly skilled people to prepare the vehicles, and if those people are not working on a Shuttle they eventually forget how the job is to be done, drawings are lost, work instructions misunderstood, people die, retire or just quit. It's hard for anyone to wait a whole year for one launch, but that's what the current schedule looks like. And without those technicians the Shuttle can't take off. We are witnessing a rapid decay of the whole STS program, with recent flight not just failing to stop the process but actually accelerating it.
Actually, the "economic troubles" occurred about 10 years ago, and are long forgotten (in Russia, but apparently not on/.) The end of troubles, however, does not mean that the government has some infinite cash to burn.
With regard to the "national pride and a desire to explore", I doubt very much that russian people, on average, have any more of that than american people, also on average. But the important distinction here is that the leaders of Russia want to explore, while the leaders of USA are far more interested in something else. The opinion of general public, in any country, rarely matters, especially on such a complex subject.
Movies are not often made to serve as math textbooks:
400e9 / 1e6 = 400e3 stars with planets;
400e3 / 1e6 = 0.4 planets with life;
0.4 / 1e6 = 0.0000004 planets with civilization(s).
So it's 0.00004% of one civilization, and not "millions" as you cite. You need to gather 2,500,000 of "our galaxies" to get to one civilization, and you already have one, so go and get another 2.5 million of galaxies if you need aliens.
Slashdot Mirror
A quickest background would be like this: US Senate found that the ban banned USA from manned access to space. No wonder it got cancelled. Russia is currently the only country with a practically working space program, and it has the upper hand by definition - until the STS is fixed, or until China revs up its own manned spaceflight. My bet would be on China.
IC MPU SA-110 166MHZ 144-TQFP : $18.43 in qty. 1000
Add some RAM, and you can have a box that is better at local processing than a remote server would ever be, since the server has to multitask and your CPU doesn't. Other posters already mentioned that any client appliance still has to have a screen and a keyboard, and those are more important in total price than a CPU. Chances are, you have to have this sort of CPU anyway just because your screen and keyboard and USB and whatever else you have locally, all require it.
Besides, there is this "ownership" issue. People like to own things. People like to be independent. Would you like to buy a house without a kitchen? You'll have to eat at a restaurant every day. I'd hate that. Would you like to rent your clothes, or use a pay phone, or to keep your things ONLY at a rental warehouse? This would be universally displeasing not just because it's inconvenient, but also because humans want to be in control of their lives, not to be tied to some "service" that is the only game in town.
NASA would need to spend not just money but lives of test pilots as well. This is something it absolutely can't afford.
With all those Cold Warriors in power, tirelessly giving the fowl to the world on a daily basis? You must be joking.
If only you were involved in hiring of techies, as I am, you'd know the answer already. United States does not produce [enough of] good engineers. You can't hire anyone competent, or nearly competent. And one out of a hundred who knows his trade wants $200K/yr and benefits and stock, and your firstborn too if he is hungry.
So you can't hire fools because they are useless, and you can't hire that rare skilled guy because he will bankrupt you. So what do you do? Good question. Many businesses just hire a few mediocre performers and hope for the best.
This does make sense because investment in R&D of the tools is extreme. But Altera had to do it because otherwise its FPGAs would be useless. However Altera does not want to support freeloaders who use the tools to program something else.
Because of that, in your case #1 the reverse engineering of the mask interconnects would be legal, however generation of a bitstream for it (or any other configuration data) using Altera tools would be illegal.
Being pedantic, you need a complement, not a negation.
Try to say "I should get less than some people", it is logically equivalent but somehow much harder to pronounce :-)
Your friend could also sell the Nissan, buy a hybrid, and enjoy 50+ MPG without any experiments.
But anyone can set any IP address he likes, manually, as long as the other computer is off (which was mostly the case). Depends on the type of the network, probably. And if she had a WiFi router, unsecured...
Because they say that this thing is new and shiny, when it is not.
Plenty of companies sell old, familiar stuff - sugar, water, lumber, grain - none of that needs to be innovative, and I'd rather prefer that it is not. There is nothing wrong in providing more of the same, with a few little things tweaked here and there - as long as you are honest about that.
No, they are not mutually exclusive. However the best managers come from one end of this spectrum, and the best techies come from another. That only reflects where most of their talent is.
Lets just lease out tons of laptops and spend XX amount of dollars to have our team of IT security nerds fix them when something goes wrong, instead of properly training our management staff how to handle a computer system properly.
Manager: "You got that right!" :-)
It may indeed be easier to have trained IT people to take care of computers, instead of retraining older people who don't know computers, don't like computers, and have no desire to even learn. Besides, as I said it's managers who give orders, and it's part of human nature to have servants perform mundane tasks that the noble won't debase himself with doing.
Keeping a working computer environment absent of viruses, trojans, and worms is not a rocket science.
No, but it requires some effort, some discipline, and some skills too. I know many managers who don't understand computers at all, outside of browsing teh Intarweb and using MS Lookout. Most of management is not related to computers at all - like finances, or civil engineering... People are totally clueless, and when you tell them this and that, trying to educate, they wave you away saying that they are too busy, and they have IT to take care of it all.
No, successful management of people has nothing to do with successful management of machines. Business management is all about people, resources, deadlines, contracts, politics, rumors, promises, successes, stories, rewards, etc. Computer management is all about bits and bytes, CAT5, interrupt levels, BIOS, applications, viruses, security practices, procedures, training. These two things have nothing in common. As matter of fact, they require completely opposite personalities - an extravert for business management and an introvert for dealing with computers.
Laptops are usually given to managers. You will have hard time to convince them to punish or fire themselves.
True; and this plan is not designed against countries with more than a handful of missiles. This plan is written against a country that has only one or two "sites" that may or may not have contained the missiles, after the neutrons settle. Such an attack can be easily done using bombers. Even cruise missiles are not reliable enough.
Nuclear weapons affect the whole world, and if such weapons are used then -all- other countries on the planet will be quite displeased, to say the least. In other words, "Use The Bomb and commit financial harakiri."
It can't, just like a civilization of one-legged jumpers without hands (and without telekinetic abilities) can't get anywhere at all. You have to have some prerequisites. And I don't say that humans have them all.
There is no need to talk to grandparents because too many classical russian books are set in Czarist times, 18th or 19th century. For example, the "War and Peace" is set around 1812. Those books are a required reading for students.
Hardware correlators do exist, and they are nicely synthesizable in an FPGA. Even university students do it.
shooting for "white" instead of "black"
The abs() function might be of use :-)
It will be visible to the warhead above regardless of whether it absorbs RF or not. Any ground pattern that does not autocorrelate using a given pair of offsets must be the target. The same software will work both cases.
SAM warheads don't hit the target "head on". Instead they explode near the target, and then the schrapnel downs the airplane. This approach was used as early as World War II. The F-117 could be mostly intact, with the only exception of one little hole where it mattered.
But there are many other ways. You know, for example, that there is a radio relay technology that sends microwave signals over the horizon by scattering them off of just atmospheric irregularities? It's only a matter of power.
To do better than that you need to make the airplane transparent to whatever frequency you are using.
I'm sure NASA is welcome to send a tourist or two on one of its shuttles... not that any are expected now, not any time soon at least, from what I read these days. It might even be that the Shuttles will never fly again. The STS program depends on thousands of highly skilled people to prepare the vehicles, and if those people are not working on a Shuttle they eventually forget how the job is to be done, drawings are lost, work instructions misunderstood, people die, retire or just quit. It's hard for anyone to wait a whole year for one launch, but that's what the current schedule looks like. And without those technicians the Shuttle can't take off. We are witnessing a rapid decay of the whole STS program, with recent flight not just failing to stop the process but actually accelerating it.
With regard to the "national pride and a desire to explore", I doubt very much that russian people, on average, have any more of that than american people, also on average. But the important distinction here is that the leaders of Russia want to explore, while the leaders of USA are far more interested in something else. The opinion of general public, in any country, rarely matters, especially on such a complex subject.
400e9 / 1e6 = 400e3 stars with planets;
400e3 / 1e6 = 0.4 planets with life;
0.4 / 1e6 = 0.0000004 planets with civilization(s).
So it's 0.00004% of one civilization, and not "millions" as you cite. You need to gather 2,500,000 of "our galaxies" to get to one civilization, and you already have one, so go and get another 2.5 million of galaxies if you need aliens.