If you read between the lines, the point he was making in the blurb is precisely what you were saying: Capabilities Change.
In this particular case he was noting that comments are difficult to make on cards. They are simple on disks. I.E. When a new technology allows you to do something better USE IT.
(I feel like I'm discussing a religious passage here or something.)
Sure, cake, watch the movie, clean the screen, check for sound, and put the beat down on anyone talking through the movie.
I underestimated the power of watching the same movie 100 times. At least it was Imax. If the main focus was getting stale, I would peer around the screen and find where the shadow for the helicopter was, or find some rude graphiti at the edge of the shot.
My fellow operators would keep statistics about annoying attributes in film. The movie "Wildfire" the narrator blurts out "Fire" 143 times in 35 minutes. And the scenes they show of the Sky Crane are staged. We would also pick out the shots in Everest that were really shot in Nepal versus the ones they were re-shot in Colarado. (If the lighting is good, and the people in the shot don't look like death warmed over, they were probably in Colarado. Especially since they wore same outfits all the time in the Colarado shots.)
No matter how "huge" and IT project is, it is still made up of individual pieces that must be developed and maintained individually. Each of those pieces needs a team to develop it.
OSS merely takes care of a lot of the core functions for you. Instead of having to go out and implement a Kernel, you can use a ready made one. Instead of having to implement a network file system, you can employ one of the myriad that are available. Your project sits atop these other peices, but the same fundimental forces go into it's development.
Take Video game development. Very few games use their own graphics engine. But even though the engine is already done, you still need to write the software the runs on top of the engine (i.e. your game.)
Trained rats would be an improvement over modern IT managers. They will at least cease doing something that causes them to have their testicles electricuted.
It warms my heart to see MBA's are getting real training. I hope some day to have to revise my targets of derision, and (gasp) perhaps raise my level of esteem of them above household vermin.
Well, I suppose you are going to complain next about having to understand binary.
Modern computers have their quirks. In 30 years my kids are going to be asking me why I keep referring to "disk space" and "RAM." Then I'll have to explain that back when I programmed, you had two types of memory, the high-speed stuff the computer would work in, RAM. RAM was expensive, finite, and would lose it's contents when the computer rebooted. We also had "disks" that while they were slower, they stored a lot more infomation, were cheaper, and were non-volitile.
Laugh. But you too are going to sound like and old fart one day. And the respect you show or don't show for those that came before you is going to be what you instill in those that come after you.
Not only does everyone need to read this book, it needs to be kept on the shelf right next to their reference material.
It's a book that requires a mature mindset to appreciate properly. (Kind of like object oriented programming.) It only makes sense after you yourself have hit the very walls the book describes.
Shanon's theorum states that information is measured by it's surprise, what you weren't expecting. This book is one non-intuitive (at least to the layman) observation after another. But they are all true. And they all make sense once you are in the feild.
It's that "you would have had to have been there" they makes the book such a difficult read to the layman and the newb. It's also what makes it so damn interesting to the veteren. You know you are ready for the book when every chapter you feel relief that you aren't the only person in the world who has gone through that.
As a matter of fact the laws of physics DO say the trip takes a certain number of days.
It doesn't matter how fast your rocket is. The planet is going to be exactly where the planet is going to be. It takes a finite amount of time to traverse the millions of miles between them, and by that time the planet has moved considerably.
Now when you say "burn even more to match orbits", you are talking about and order of magnetude more.
Now someone, at some point, has got to heave this beast into Earth orbit. The larger the spacecraft, the more launches required to get the peices aloft, the more complicated the assembly in space. Even using the cheapest expendible rockets, and assuming nothing goes wrong, we are talking about a price tag in the trillions of dollars.
Doubling the fuel means doubling the weight that has to hoisted to orbit, means doubling the price.
I hate to be the one waving dollar signs here, but yes Virginia these things do cost money.
As far as not getting people like me, did you think for a minute that I don't sit up at night fiddling around with calculations? That I don't dream of some day looking down at the Earth and saying "So Long Suckers"?
There are so many problems on Earth that need to be solved before we can think about space travel. Because no matter how far we go, we still only have one place to come back to.
I would rather have a cure for world hunger, or an end to our dependence on fossil fuel long before I want a bunch of fighter jocks to fly to Mars and bring back rocks.
The problem isn't the "average" teacher. The problem is teachers come in 2 flavors: Older than dirt or fresh out of school. Most of the people that enter the teaching profession leave it by year 3. That means every year you have a set of bright new faces that don't have a clue what they are doing.
Nah. All you end up with is someones "REALLY GREAT" idea every flipping administration. Think about every time some new "Education Technique" rippled through your school. For me, it was every other year. About the only thing I learned consistently was that I was going to be learning another way in a year's time.
(I'm still bitter because in my Senior Year they decided to try "Intensive Scheduling" where you take the course for double periods but only half the year. When the AP test rolled around I was either halfway through the course, or hadn't seen the material in 12 weeks.)
Site number three is almost humerous, and I quote:
Conventional chemical rockets (currently used for the space shuttle) will be used to launch Mars-bound spacecraft into LEO. The propulsion system that will most likely be used by the Mars transit vehicles once in LEO will be Nuclear Thermal Propulsion. Developed to near-flight status in the 1960s, for any given velocity change, a nuclear thermal rocket (NTR) uses about half as much propellant as a chemical engine.
Well no. The NTP engine was NOT developed to near-flight status. It was never physically constructed, let alone tested. The operation of this device violates most nuclear test ban treaties, and operating one withing the Van Allen belt would eventually contaminate the Earth's surface with nuclear material. (Whether that is elementary at this point in light of previous atmospheric tests and Chernobyl I leave as an exercise for later.)
Even with this wonderous (but never actually built) form of propulsion, you merely cut down the amount of fuel. It still takes 6 months to get there because any faster or slower and you are increasing the distance to be traversed. Indeed the one study still has the same travel times I was talking about EVEN WITH THE NUCLEAR ENGINE.
Dear god, did you actually READ this material, or did you hope that merely siting several sites was going to give you creds?
There is a damn good reason it hasn't been done up until now: It's damn near impossible.
I said a 3 year trip. That includes 6 months out, 6 months back, and 18 months loiter time. (What do I just pull these numbers out of my ass or something?) Depending on the way the orbits line up, 6 months of fudge room.
Now, considering what a challenge it is to get material into Earth orbit, with an industrial base and a ready supply of factories and refined material, I am highly doubtful you would have much luck trying to scratch build that infrastructure on an alien planet, with materials you are carrying with you.
Do you realize how much energy is required to refine raw materials? And then how much energy would be required to launch said products back into space? And manufacturing equipment you plan on bringing with you is going to be heavy. And it's going to need it's own power supply. (And if you plan on relying on solar, you had better plan on being on Mars for a while.)
Yes, the do convert CO2 (and water vapor) to O2 and sugar. But they need oxygen to fuel the process.
And assuming that you can just take off on Tuesday and be on Mars six months later, it's going to take you at least as long to get back. That's 12 months.
And orbital mechanics aren't that simple. The Earth and Mars are on 2 different orbits. Once per year, the Earth is closer to Mars. Months later, Earth is on the opposite side of the Sun from Mars. Thats the distance from the Earth to Mars (Varies) PLUS 93,000,000 miles.
You wind up parked on Mars because you are waiting for the Earth to catch up to you.
Oh, and your 40 minute delay is more like 70 minutes when you arrive at Mars. And you are going to be sharing a very narrow bandwidth with the Ship's telemitry. Email would work, certainly photo attachments, but you are out of luck if you want to see a video of something.
Oh yes, your only movie collection is what you bring with you. Which, by the way, is more cargo.
Remeber, when you throw around numbers like "only a ton", that is a ton per astronaut. And that doesn't include packing material. If you have a 10 person crew, that is 10 tons of material. Each kilogram of cargo required several more kilograms of fuel to push it to it's destination, and several kilograms to slow it back down to orbital speed.
Sure, half of that will be used up on the inbound leg, but then you have to boost the other half OUT of mars orbit and back to earth. That's more fuel, which for the first part of the trip is just cargo needing even more fuel for the first leg to push it.
We are talking about a set of complex equations where painting on the interior can make the spacecraft 5 tons heavier.
You bring up an excellent point. I for one can't figure out why the DOD can piss away 100 million on plane tickets while NASA is looking to ebay for spare parts.
Frankly who on Earth are we defending ourselves against with Nuclear Weapons? Sure there is deterrent, but I think having enough weapons in our inventory to obliterate the civilized world 8 or 9 times is enough at this point. A missile delivery system that can drop 7 warheads on 7 different targets in 45 minutes seems like it'll due for the time being. And about the only foe our fighter craft face in the sky seems to be mechanical failure.
We spend to much money developing weapon systems. We don't spend nearly enough developing the troops to actually use them. Nor do we spend enough educating the millions of kids that might some day be called to replace them.
We just aren't spending money where it does any good. It really doesn't matter if we are technologically superior. It's training that makes the difference in the battlefield. It's education and experience that makes a difference in the marketplace. Sure it ain't glamorous, but these things are cheap at twice the price.
I kinda like the idea. Though at that point you would have to indenture the graduates to the feds, because defense contractors would be picking them off like flies.
To get to Mars is going to require a radically new technology. We either have to speed up the spacecraft considerably, figure out a way to safely put the crew on ice for the trip, or figure out how to recycle almost every scrap of organic material the crew is going to use.
A 3 year trip is a lot of food, and a hell of a lot of packaging material. In flight-replitishment with remote probes is going to be very tricky. (Think hitting a bullet with a bullet.)
It's also going to require a very unique set of individuals who can stay confined with others and not go completely nuts.
I though the whole point of running up massive deficits was precisely to kill off these sorts of discussions. Well, maybe as they pertain to universal health care and education...
The 486 SX from Intel was a 486 DX with the FPU unit laser etched out. When you would buy the 487 "co processor" it was actually a 486 DX that would short out the original crippled chip.
So yes. Companies do spend a lot of time and effort making crippled products that cost them more to produce than the premium version. And they have been doing it for years.
The medium may die, but the signal can live on through copies.
The industry had better be careful about being too thorough in it's control. We do have a ton of anti-trust regulations on the books. And assuming we manage to boot Shrubya out, we may actually get to use them.
Slashdot Mirror
I should know. I've written extensions for it.
In this particular case he was noting that comments are difficult to make on cards. They are simple on disks. I.E. When a new technology allows you to do something better USE IT.
(I feel like I'm discussing a religious passage here or something.)
Sure, cake, watch the movie, clean the screen, check for sound, and put the beat down on anyone talking through the movie.
I underestimated the power of watching the same movie 100 times. At least it was Imax. If the main focus was getting stale, I would peer around the screen and find where the shadow for the helicopter was, or find some rude graphiti at the edge of the shot.
My fellow operators would keep statistics about annoying attributes in film. The movie "Wildfire" the narrator blurts out "Fire" 143 times in 35 minutes. And the scenes they show of the Sky Crane are staged. We would also pick out the shots in Everest that were really shot in Nepal versus the ones they were re-shot in Colarado. (If the lighting is good, and the people in the shot don't look like death warmed over, they were probably in Colarado. Especially since they wore same outfits all the time in the Colarado shots.)
No matter how "huge" and IT project is, it is still made up of individual pieces that must be developed and maintained individually. Each of those pieces needs a team to develop it.
OSS merely takes care of a lot of the core functions for you. Instead of having to go out and implement a Kernel, you can use a ready made one. Instead of having to implement a network file system, you can employ one of the myriad that are available. Your project sits atop these other peices, but the same fundimental forces go into it's development.
Take Video game development. Very few games use their own graphics engine. But even though the engine is already done, you still need to write the software the runs on top of the engine (i.e. your game.)
It warms my heart to see MBA's are getting real training. I hope some day to have to revise my targets of derision, and (gasp) perhaps raise my level of esteem of them above household vermin.
Modern computers have their quirks. In 30 years my kids are going to be asking me why I keep referring to "disk space" and "RAM." Then I'll have to explain that back when I programmed, you had two types of memory, the high-speed stuff the computer would work in, RAM. RAM was expensive, finite, and would lose it's contents when the computer rebooted. We also had "disks" that while they were slower, they stored a lot more infomation, were cheaper, and were non-volitile.
Laugh. But you too are going to sound like and old fart one day. And the respect you show or don't show for those that came before you is going to be what you instill in those that come after you.
It's a book that requires a mature mindset to appreciate properly. (Kind of like object oriented programming.) It only makes sense after you yourself have hit the very walls the book describes.
Shanon's theorum states that information is measured by it's surprise, what you weren't expecting. This book is one non-intuitive (at least to the layman) observation after another. But they are all true. And they all make sense once you are in the feild.
It's that "you would have had to have been there" they makes the book such a difficult read to the layman and the newb. It's also what makes it so damn interesting to the veteren. You know you are ready for the book when every chapter you feel relief that you aren't the only person in the world who has gone through that.
Like I care, I do most of my work in scripting languages. (IncrTCL if anyone cares.)
It doesn't matter how fast your rocket is. The planet is going to be exactly where the planet is going to be. It takes a finite amount of time to traverse the millions of miles between them, and by that time the planet has moved considerably.
Now when you say "burn even more to match orbits", you are talking about and order of magnetude more.
Now someone, at some point, has got to heave this beast into Earth orbit. The larger the spacecraft, the more launches required to get the peices aloft, the more complicated the assembly in space. Even using the cheapest expendible rockets, and assuming nothing goes wrong, we are talking about a price tag in the trillions of dollars.
Doubling the fuel means doubling the weight that has to hoisted to orbit, means doubling the price. I hate to be the one waving dollar signs here, but yes Virginia these things do cost money.
As far as not getting people like me, did you think for a minute that I don't sit up at night fiddling around with calculations? That I don't dream of some day looking down at the Earth and saying "So Long Suckers"?
There are so many problems on Earth that need to be solved before we can think about space travel. Because no matter how far we go, we still only have one place to come back to.
I would rather have a cure for world hunger, or an end to our dependence on fossil fuel long before I want a bunch of fighter jocks to fly to Mars and bring back rocks.
The problem isn't the "average" teacher. The problem is teachers come in 2 flavors: Older than dirt or fresh out of school. Most of the people that enter the teaching profession leave it by year 3. That means every year you have a set of bright new faces that don't have a clue what they are doing.
(I'm still bitter because in my Senior Year they decided to try "Intensive Scheduling" where you take the course for double periods but only half the year. When the AP test rolled around I was either halfway through the course, or hadn't seen the material in 12 weeks.)
Methane is a LOUSY rocket fuel.
Site number three is almost humerous, and I quote:
Conventional chemical rockets (currently used for the space shuttle) will be used to launch Mars-bound spacecraft into LEO. The propulsion system that will most likely be used by the Mars transit vehicles once in LEO will be Nuclear Thermal Propulsion. Developed to near-flight status in the 1960s, for any given velocity change, a nuclear thermal rocket (NTR) uses about half as much propellant as a chemical engine.
Well no. The NTP engine was NOT developed to near-flight status. It was never physically constructed, let alone tested. The operation of this device violates most nuclear test ban treaties, and operating one withing the Van Allen belt would eventually contaminate the Earth's surface with nuclear material. (Whether that is elementary at this point in light of previous atmospheric tests and Chernobyl I leave as an exercise for later.)
Even with this wonderous (but never actually built) form of propulsion, you merely cut down the amount of fuel. It still takes 6 months to get there because any faster or slower and you are increasing the distance to be traversed. Indeed the one study still has the same travel times I was talking about EVEN WITH THE NUCLEAR ENGINE.
Dear god, did you actually READ this material, or did you hope that merely siting several sites was going to give you creds?
There is a damn good reason it hasn't been done up until now: It's damn near impossible.
Or rather Ommmmmm...
Now, considering what a challenge it is to get material into Earth orbit, with an industrial base and a ready supply of factories and refined material, I am highly doubtful you would have much luck trying to scratch build that infrastructure on an alien planet, with materials you are carrying with you.
Do you realize how much energy is required to refine raw materials? And then how much energy would be required to launch said products back into space? And manufacturing equipment you plan on bringing with you is going to be heavy. And it's going to need it's own power supply. (And if you plan on relying on solar, you had better plan on being on Mars for a while.)
Yes, the do convert CO2 (and water vapor) to O2 and sugar. But they need oxygen to fuel the process.
And assuming that you can just take off on Tuesday and be on Mars six months later, it's going to take you at least as long to get back. That's 12 months.
And orbital mechanics aren't that simple. The Earth and Mars are on 2 different orbits. Once per year, the Earth is closer to Mars. Months later, Earth is on the opposite side of the Sun from Mars. Thats the distance from the Earth to Mars (Varies) PLUS 93,000,000 miles.
You wind up parked on Mars because you are waiting for the Earth to catch up to you.
Oh, and your 40 minute delay is more like 70 minutes when you arrive at Mars. And you are going to be sharing a very narrow bandwidth with the Ship's telemitry. Email would work, certainly photo attachments, but you are out of luck if you want to see a video of something.
Oh yes, your only movie collection is what you bring with you. Which, by the way, is more cargo.
Sure, half of that will be used up on the inbound leg, but then you have to boost the other half OUT of mars orbit and back to earth. That's more fuel, which for the first part of the trip is just cargo needing even more fuel for the first leg to push it.
We are talking about a set of complex equations where painting on the interior can make the spacecraft 5 tons heavier.
(Direct IP on an ancient EDU network.)
Frankly who on Earth are we defending ourselves against with Nuclear Weapons? Sure there is deterrent, but I think having enough weapons in our inventory to obliterate the civilized world 8 or 9 times is enough at this point. A missile delivery system that can drop 7 warheads on 7 different targets in 45 minutes seems like it'll due for the time being. And about the only foe our fighter craft face in the sky seems to be mechanical failure.
We spend to much money developing weapon systems. We don't spend nearly enough developing the troops to actually use them. Nor do we spend enough educating the millions of kids that might some day be called to replace them.
We just aren't spending money where it does any good. It really doesn't matter if we are technologically superior. It's training that makes the difference in the battlefield. It's education and experience that makes a difference in the marketplace. Sure it ain't glamorous, but these things are cheap at twice the price.
I kinda like the idea. Though at that point you would have to indenture the graduates to the feds, because defense contractors would be picking them off like flies.
A 3 year trip is a lot of food, and a hell of a lot of packaging material. In flight-replitishment with remote probes is going to be very tricky. (Think hitting a bullet with a bullet.)
It's also going to require a very unique set of individuals who can stay confined with others and not go completely nuts.
I though the whole point of running up massive deficits was precisely to kill off these sorts of discussions. Well, maybe as they pertain to universal health care and education...
Imagine this, I come back from an afternoon of golf to find my 8 year old watching porno movies, after "borrowing" my account to watch a disney flick.
So yes. Companies do spend a lot of time and effort making crippled products that cost them more to produce than the premium version. And they have been doing it for years.
The industry had better be careful about being too thorough in it's control. We do have a ton of anti-trust regulations on the books. And assuming we manage to boot Shrubya out, we may actually get to use them.