Missiles are probably smart enough not to use omnidirectional antennas (simply only "looking" up is a big help). Also they have inertial positioning as backup, which will do in a pinch.
The cruise missiles can of course use ground imagery together with map data.
PS. the difference with the XBOX is that it's still just running Windows games. You don't have to persuade developers to develop specifically for your system, all they need to do is be able to handle HDTV output and controller input. It wouldn't needlessly split up user bases for Steam and cause them to compete with itself (like the XBOX did for Microsoft). Whether their customer buys and plays a steam game on a normal windows or on a locked down windows doesn't matter to them... that they might be able to get more customers by offering a Windows PC with the foolproof usability of a console would matter to them.
The problem is that the usage model for a Windows 7 PC is still far too complex for living room use for most people. They want to press a single button, get launched into a clean dashboard, they don't want to worry about updates/AV/anything, they don't want an app/game they get to be able to affect the stability of the system or the operation of any other part etc. etc.
Windows doesn't do that and Windows in general can't do that... Windows running on a specific hardware configuration, with the original manufacturer handling administration and the with the user isolated from the underlying OS. That could work, that's where I hope Valve is going with Big Picture Mode.
Imagine if you could buy a compact PC with a controller which came preinstalled with two windows installs, one normal one and one locked down one which can only run a Steam Dashboard. The locked down windows would be remote administrated and have an automatic repair function inside the bios to make sure that ignoring hardware failure it would always run reliably. The people who just want an easy to use gaming machine and HTPC for their living room would only ever need to boot into that mode and never be confronted with all of the complexity of a general desktop OS.
Microsoft can't discriminate between OEMs for pricing (anti-trust laws) and all the necessary mechanisms to lock down Windows are already present in the OS... as for crippling it, I don't really see how they could do that (apart from crippling windows for gaming altogether).
Lets not forget the opportunity cost of the lost focus on Windows. PC gaming keeps Windows in the home, maintaining the health of the bread and butter business.
There is clear political tension within Microsoft between the XBOX division on one side (allied with the business division, which just wants their schedules to be unaffected by the consumer side) and the consumer Windows division on the other... they have literally said they will not bring out games on the PC because every sale is a lost XBOX sale, they browbeat quintessential PC developers to bring out games later on the PC (Mass Effect) or even not at all (Alan Wake). The Windows Home Server Vail failure can also be attributed to this "XBOX is all we need in people's home" mentality. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if personnel reassignment away from the windows division helped cause the original Vista disaster.
Microsoft is serving up the next generation of PC users to Apple on a silver platter, thanks to the XBOX.
Of course this is party by design, Microsoft could easily have pushed for more standardization of UI/display/control... but they kind of stopped caring about the consumer experience ojn windows after they launched the xbox, they only care about business users now really. Which has cost them untold amounts of money and made Apple very happy.
Valve is finally waking up to the power it has though... so we are getting Steam Big Picture mode to handle exactly what you want, correct display on TVs and consistent controller operation. The PC is slowly getting there. Now all they need are boxes which come with lock downed windows and steam preinstalled, which it boots into when you press the start button on the controller and which can only run games, without being able to be fucked up by end users... and then we will have a true next gen console.
Except capital is not being invested now is it, at least not domestically... but I forget, we should "all" get poorer so we can get richer, austerity ahoy.
If the reduction in the median value of labour caused by automation starts outpacing the reduction in prices from automation the median standard of living starts dropping. Only with continued economic growth can you keep automation from reducing the median standard of living in a free market... the Luddites may have been wrong, but they are becoming right... because Malthus is finally becoming right.
We are entering the age of never ending supply shocks, so we can safely forget about economic growth keeping up with automation. So the majority will get poorer, and the rich will own a greater percentage of national assets. Neo feudalism ahoy.
Wikipedia has a link to Siemens which claims otherwise...
"The most economic solution for long-distance bulk power transmission, due to lower losses, is transmission with High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC). A basic rule of thumb: for every 1,000 kilometres the DC line losses are less than 3% (e.g. for 5,000 MW at a voltage of 800 kV)."
With that you could get energy from the equator to Santa Claus without losing half the power (26% loss over 10000 Kilometre). Within the United States the losses would be negligible.
The problem with nuclear power is that there is a lot of uncertainty. Solar thermal is too close for comfort, it's in the same order of magnitude now in cost/Watt and a few advances can easily tip the scale. Solar thermal can also be deployed a hell of a lot faster. No matter how much you liberalise the market and ease the regulations, no one is going to invest in nuclear where you can only start making money back after a couple of decades with that hanging over their heads... not unless government shoulders some of the risk.
Personally if I was the US government though I'd just throw a couple of 100 billion at solar thermal, buy out the patents and fill some deserts with solar thermal plants and build a HVDC network to distribute the electricity... even if it's more expensive than nuclear it will be online faster, and the odds are good that during building the costs will drop.
Nuclear is slow, messy, unnecessary and would set a terrible example to the rest of the world (nuclear power is always a proliferation risk).
Huh? HVDC does do 1000s of kilometres, these lines are in operation. Now geopolitically this isn't an option for a lot of the world (the EU for instance would need solar thermal power plants in Africa... and Africa is a shithole). The US however has plenty of deserts with plenty of sundays per year to be able to supply itself at very high uptimes even with limited storage (say one or two days).
If it had the will the US could be energy independent in a couple of decades... but the powers that be don't want that, no country is allowed any sort of independence any more. It would set a bad example and might prevent the rise of our neofeudalist overlords.
They have to go back to Saudi Arabia at some point, it's not a decision which will stay private... they won't live in a culture where making a choice outside of the societal norm is tolerated, they are hardly empowered.
A LVM span only has a single underlying filesystem, if you lose a drive you're fucked.
You'd need a union filesystem to be able to take out any number of drives and still be left with a functioning array (minus some files). None of the union filesystem supports automatic duplication though.
It's on the fly data duplication with a union filesystem... which has completely different failure modes than RAID (also much lower throughput but for a media server striping isn't necessary). Greyhole is the only comparable system on *nix, and it's very rough still.
The current government budget isn't caused by pet programs, it's caused by stimulus and TARP, before that the increase was a couple of percent from the 60s and 70s.
A technical analysis concerning patent infringement without a single patent number...
He saw some things first in H.264 and also in VP8, simply for seeing it first in H.264 he assumes the techniques are validly patented... a silly assumption.
Long before the last 3 decades of living on debt Americans could support a very high median level of living... they did it with a very small trade deficit, about the same level of workforce participation, a nearly equal government budget to GDP ratio and with FAR less productivity. What has changed fundamentally that it's impossible now?
Dark Shikari did not actually research the patents and prior art on the technology he claims is patented. Now honestly to do that thoroughly is probably weeks of work, so I wouldn't expect him to... but I would expect him to be a bit more careful with his words.
Slashdot Mirror
Development might be N billion dollars away, the true question is ... how many billion dollars would deployment be away for retrofitting the grid?
Missiles are probably smart enough not to use omnidirectional antennas (simply only "looking" up is a big help). Also they have inertial positioning as backup, which will do in a pinch.
The cruise missiles can of course use ground imagery together with map data.
PS. the difference with the XBOX is that it's still just running Windows games. You don't have to persuade developers to develop specifically for your system, all they need to do is be able to handle HDTV output and controller input. It wouldn't needlessly split up user bases for Steam and cause them to compete with itself (like the XBOX did for Microsoft). Whether their customer buys and plays a steam game on a normal windows or on a locked down windows doesn't matter to them ... that they might be able to get more customers by offering a Windows PC with the foolproof usability of a console would matter to them.
The problem is that the usage model for a Windows 7 PC is still far too complex for living room use for most people. They want to press a single button, get launched into a clean dashboard, they don't want to worry about updates/AV/anything, they don't want an app/game they get to be able to affect the stability of the system or the operation of any other part etc. etc.
Windows doesn't do that and Windows in general can't do that ... Windows running on a specific hardware configuration, with the original manufacturer handling administration and the with the user isolated from the underlying OS. That could work, that's where I hope Valve is going with Big Picture Mode.
Imagine if you could buy a compact PC with a controller which came preinstalled with two windows installs, one normal one and one locked down one which can only run a Steam Dashboard. The locked down windows would be remote administrated and have an automatic repair function inside the bios to make sure that ignoring hardware failure it would always run reliably. The people who just want an easy to use gaming machine and HTPC for their living room would only ever need to boot into that mode and never be confronted with all of the complexity of a general desktop OS.
My recommendation ... don't buy ME2 for more than a dollar, it can get worse.
Microsoft can't discriminate between OEMs for pricing (anti-trust laws) and all the necessary mechanisms to lock down Windows are already present in the OS ... as for crippling it, I don't really see how they could do that (apart from crippling windows for gaming altogether).
Lets not forget the opportunity cost of the lost focus on Windows. PC gaming keeps Windows in the home, maintaining the health of the bread and butter business.
There is clear political tension within Microsoft between the XBOX division on one side (allied with the business division, which just wants their schedules to be unaffected by the consumer side) and the consumer Windows division on the other ... they have literally said they will not bring out games on the PC because every sale is a lost XBOX sale, they browbeat quintessential PC developers to bring out games later on the PC (Mass Effect) or even not at all (Alan Wake). The Windows Home Server Vail failure can also be attributed to this "XBOX is all we need in people's home" mentality. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if personnel reassignment away from the windows division helped cause the original Vista disaster.
Microsoft is serving up the next generation of PC users to Apple on a silver platter, thanks to the XBOX.
Of course this is party by design, Microsoft could easily have pushed for more standardization of UI/display/control ... but they kind of stopped caring about the consumer experience ojn windows after they launched the xbox, they only care about business users now really. Which has cost them untold amounts of money and made Apple very happy.
Valve is finally waking up to the power it has though ... so we are getting Steam Big Picture mode to handle exactly what you want, correct display on TVs and consistent controller operation. The PC is slowly getting there. Now all they need are boxes which come with lock downed windows and steam preinstalled, which it boots into when you press the start button on the controller and which can only run games, without being able to be fucked up by end users ... and then we will have a true next gen console.
Except capital is not being invested now is it, at least not domestically ... but I forget, we should "all" get poorer so we can get richer, austerity ahoy.
If the reduction in the median value of labour caused by automation starts outpacing the reduction in prices from automation the median standard of living starts dropping. Only with continued economic growth can you keep automation from reducing the median standard of living in a free market ... the Luddites may have been wrong, but they are becoming right ... because Malthus is finally becoming right.
We are entering the age of never ending supply shocks, so we can safely forget about economic growth keeping up with automation. So the majority will get poorer, and the rich will own a greater percentage of national assets. Neo feudalism ahoy.
A coolant loop will conduct far more Watt for a given temperature gradient than the crust, the problem is the scale.
Extending the storage from hours to days is not cheap but not impossibly expensive either.
Wikipedia has a link to Siemens which claims otherwise ...
"The most economic solution for long-distance bulk power transmission, due to lower losses, is transmission with High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC). A basic rule of thumb: for every 1,000 kilometres the DC line losses are less than 3% (e.g. for 5,000 MW at a voltage of 800 kV)."
With that you could get energy from the equator to Santa Claus without losing half the power (26% loss over 10000 Kilometre). Within the United States the losses would be negligible.
The problem with nuclear power is that there is a lot of uncertainty. Solar thermal is too close for comfort, it's in the same order of magnitude now in cost/Watt and a few advances can easily tip the scale. Solar thermal can also be deployed a hell of a lot faster. No matter how much you liberalise the market and ease the regulations, no one is going to invest in nuclear where you can only start making money back after a couple of decades with that hanging over their heads ... not unless government shoulders some of the risk.
Personally if I was the US government though I'd just throw a couple of 100 billion at solar thermal, buy out the patents and fill some deserts with solar thermal plants and build a HVDC network to distribute the electricity ... even if it's more expensive than nuclear it will be online faster, and the odds are good that during building the costs will drop.
Nuclear is slow, messy, unnecessary and would set a terrible example to the rest of the world (nuclear power is always a proliferation risk).
Huh? HVDC does do 1000s of kilometres, these lines are in operation. Now geopolitically this isn't an option for a lot of the world (the EU for instance would need solar thermal power plants in Africa ... and Africa is a shithole). The US however has plenty of deserts with plenty of sundays per year to be able to supply itself at very high uptimes even with limited storage (say one or two days).
If it had the will the US could be energy independent in a couple of decades ... but the powers that be don't want that, no country is allowed any sort of independence any more. It would set a bad example and might prevent the rise of our neofeudalist overlords.
They can only go into a group 3 days after a man starts it?
They have to go back to Saudi Arabia at some point, it's not a decision which will stay private ... they won't live in a culture where making a choice outside of the societal norm is tolerated, they are hardly empowered.
Drive extender gracefully degrades, any single drive contains a subset of the complete data and can be read individually.
Drives used with LVM mirror can not, and the array will catastrophically degrade if any two drives carrying a pair of mirrored extents get corrupted.
A LVM span only has a single underlying filesystem, if you lose a drive you're fucked.
You'd need a union filesystem to be able to take out any number of drives and still be left with a functioning array (minus some files). None of the union filesystem supports automatic duplication though.
It's on the fly data duplication with a union filesystem ... which has completely different failure modes than RAID (also much lower throughput but for a media server striping isn't necessary). Greyhole is the only comparable system on *nix, and it's very rough still.
2010-30 = 1945? How do you figure that?
The current government budget isn't caused by pet programs, it's caused by stimulus and TARP, before that the increase was a couple of percent from the 60s and 70s.
A technical analysis concerning patent infringement without a single patent number ...
He saw some things first in H.264 and also in VP8, simply for seeing it first in H.264 he assumes the techniques are validly patented ... a silly assumption.
Money is just a means to a cause.
Long before the last 3 decades of living on debt Americans could support a very high median level of living ... they did it with a very small trade deficit, about the same level of workforce participation, a nearly equal government budget to GDP ratio and with FAR less productivity. What has changed fundamentally that it's impossible now?
You could increase taxes.
Dark Shikari did not actually research the patents and prior art on the technology he claims is patented. Now honestly to do that thoroughly is probably weeks of work, so I wouldn't expect him to ... but I would expect him to be a bit more careful with his words.