I think it's interesting that you take credit FROM apple by calling their success 'luck', but then explain their 'luck' with their skills. Very interesting dissonance there.
"The only reason Bob is rich is because he's lucky. If he hadn't built his business and invested his money, he'd be just like us."
>>People on Mac are insulted with popups that ask for money when they run into what should be common features.
As a mac user, I am confused by this. The only pop-ups I get asking for money come from (non-apple) shareware, and I usually either pay for the programs or stop using them.
As someone already mentioned, you also have the option of the Mac Mini if you don't need a monitor. They are also WELL under $1000. It sounds like you have a very specific set of requirements that you think you need and are not budging on, and those put you outside the market for most Apple computers. Frankly I'm surprised that, given your stringent requirements, you haven't even touched on the OS issue. IMO, the OS is the biggest driving factor in my purchases, second is speed/capacity, and last is form/durability.
I drive a MacBook Pro right now. I've owned a mini and an iBook in the past. I'd say that for my needs (extensive travel to austere locations, particular set of software that I use, low weight), the iBook suited my needs best. I will not say, however, that the lifebooks or Vaios are bad computers or bad values. It's just a different market.
>>Apple has much lower sales penetration in Europe
What do you base this on? The last time I was in France, even my non-techie friend commented a few times on how many Macs were around. Everyone we went- planes, trains, cafes, hotels- you saw Macs. I can't remember seeing more than one or two non-mac laptops (I can't remember the brand right now).
Ferraris are a good value for the money if you want speed and looks. The Mac Pro is a good value for the money if you want those features.
Your argument basically boils down to, "Apple doesn't make a be-all, end-all, completely configurable, open-ended, CHEAP system, and I don't like them." I just don't see the point in arguments like, "I don't like Subaru because I don't need all-wheel drive." Why say you don't like something when it's not even something that's in your market? The Mac Pro and a dell tower are two very different products aimed at very different markets. You wouldn't compare sports cars to SUVs- you would say that one of them suited your needs or not.
You basically just told us that the Mac Pro does not fit your needs. Thank you for that update. I'm sure you'll be interested to know that I don't need a new stereo and therefore I don't like Sony.
I'm not trying to be an asshole here, it's just that I get tired of people saying that they don't like something or that something lacks value just because they aren't in the market for it. I hear it about Linux, windows, apple, electric cars, etc. etc. You get my drift.
>>They play on bigotry, class envy, fear, and hatred.... >>We don't celebrate the leaders and achievers in school because it hurts other people's feelings.
It's interesting that when it comes to math and science, we do care about people's feelings, yet when it comes to politics and celebrities, anything goes.
"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."
What good are soldiers who can be stopped by a simple bullet?
What good are bridges that can be taken down with a few pounds of explosive?
What good are airplanes that can taken down with a rocket?
What good is trying if someone can just spoil things?
Electronic devices have unique weaknesses just like other kinds of hardware (and wetware). I think a good rebuttal to your question would be that the benefits of electronic equipment far, far outweigh the remote chances of some kind of catastrophic EMP (not going to even harp about how military electronics are usually EMP-resistant).
The push towards more automated battlefield systems has its rationale in two areas: -Automation is a force multiplier, allowing fewer people and resources to do more -Automation often takes the place of strenuous or dangerous work, thus protecting lives (this is a corollary to the first point)
In today's battlefield, an enemy posessing the capability to produce EMP strong enough to take out our equipment would likely be endangering their own forces; today's battlefield is very different from wars past in that the forces are knit in a quilt of skirmishes rather than a line. EMP would be a nondicriminating destructive force for everyone involved, and at that point our problems would be greater than fried RAM.
I can't tell if you're being serious or not. Your post is either +5 funny or -2 Flamebait.
This design will do nothing to further the aims of 'terrists'. Obtaining the raw materials is such a great hurdle in itself that the actual plans for this bomb are of secondary importance. I knew fairly specific information about this type of bomb when I was 10. I read about it in my encyclopedia, which I believe was a 1967 edition.
If this seems like dangerous or obscure knowledge to you, then you really have place discussing it.
These plans are about as useful as a map to the moon- They are so useless without an extensive infrastructure that they are practically worthless.
-that describes the use of bolts and concrete to join armor plate to the ship's structure. If you ever get a chance to see one of these battleships in person, you need to take it. I don't recall what class the U.S.S. Missouri belonged to, but the armor was incredible. The pilot house was nestled deep, deep, deep within the bridge and was a monolithic 3-foot thick steel chamber. The superstructure supporting this enormous weight extended many decks below. It is hard to wrap my mind around a ship that big built with that much steel. And to think of what could sink it. I am an Air Force guy- I'm used to fast and light.
Interesting idea with the water stream- what wavelength are you drilling with? Does the water cause any divergence/dispersion issues?
"The mixture is poured into a blackened casing to form ingots 4.2 meters wide in the rough shape of a cylinder. Five times over three weeks, the ingots are pressed, reheated and re-pressed under 15,000 tons applied by a machine that rotates them gradually, making the floor tremble as it works.
The heavy forging is needed to make the steel uniformly strong by aligning the crystal lattices of atoms that make up the metal, known as the grain. In a casting, they would be jumbled."
Also, e.b.w. does not need to be done in a vacuum; in the case of such a deep weld seam like this, the seam would likely be full of ionized gas no matter what. Even if you did, the outer vacuum vessel wouldn't need to be larger than the reactor vessel- you could use a caission system.
It is also not clear if welding is even required for this casting. They said cylindrical forgins are being made, but they did not specify that the end caps were separate. I envision a monolithic forging similar in shape to a pressure chamber like this (made of steel, of course):
Your original argument against fission placed emphasis on what is basically pollution. You don't want the nuclear material out and about. And that is understandable.
But I think if you balanced the amount of energy and materials it would take to carry through with your plan vs. just building a few more nuclear reactors, the reactors would come ahead in environmental impact. If you want everyone to start using efficient appliances and heat pumps, what do you expect them to do with all the old stuff?
We are upgrading our system (appliances, reactors, transmission lines) on an attrition basis, a method which has historically been the most manageable and reliable way of moving forward.
>>Old and obsolete often means tried and true. When I'm betting my life, I like the idea of tried and true.
I'd like to add on to your thought here with another one that is closely related (and some younger people might not have the experience yet to understand, no offense intended).
While older might mean that the kinks have been worked out, it also means- and this might be more important- that the problems are known and have well-known workarounds or solutions. The 1911, for example, may have some feed problems and some stovepiping, but there are well-documented and TRAINABLE solutions to these problems. We've had enough time to figure out not only how to make the 1911 a fine weapon, but how to drill clearing and loading problems while under fire.
I know that we're talking about guns here, but this applies to many other older devices. The F-16 is getting up in years these days, and there are tons of tricks to keep them running that the earliest users were unaware of. The new F-22 will go through the same growing pains until it is a mature weapons platform.
My build is too small to effectively handle a 1911, but I can respect it for what it is.
There is a huge difference between a rocket/mortar and a supersonic missile. Part of the reason that the device doesn't have a combat record is that our ships and bases don't have missiles shot at them often. You can't derive useful results from 1 or 2 data points.
And, as I point out in the post above, the C-RAM is quite effective at shooting down mortars and rockets. I've seen and heard it happen in person many times.
The Japanese phalanx that you mention shot down the A-6 at the command of the gun operator- a human. For crying out loud, it says that right in the wiki article.
And as I said in the other post- You can be forgiven for having a shallow knowledge of esoteric combat machines, but please don't authoritatively post snippets from wikipedia like it means something. Using random crap from wiki should be the new celebrated/. meme. Oh, it is.
These things WERE designed to handle multiple targets. The system combines radar tracking of incoming projectiles as well as outgoing bullets and can determine if a target it neutralized or not. It can engage many targets at once by firing, locking on to another target, firing, and then rescanning the first target to determine if it was 'killed'. This all happens faster than the gun can move, and targets are prioritized before the servos even start spinning.
I suppose you also believe that an F-16 can empty its cannon in under a few seconds, too, right? Do you really think this thing just spews bullets in a steady stream? Or that it cannot be loaded via belt from larger magazines? Or that it can't be reloaded during a fight? Or that the gun systems aren't arranged on a grid with ~40% overlap of coverage to ensure a killed target?
There are no long, continued attacks with mortars and rockets. The first mortar you shoot gives away your position down to the meter. You will be dead soon. That is how the game is played, and I've seen it played first-hand many times. There is not a long, protracted battle, but many single people being killed after their first mortar launch.
The rounds do not need to be explosive. Even wikipedia will tell you that. The rounds are explosive over land so that they will self-destruct if they do not hit a target. The gun will not fire below a certain angle, making your fears quite unfounded. The range of these bullets is many miles without the explosive charge; with the charge, the fragments disperse over the ground without ill effect. I've had mortars killed DIRECTLY OVER MY HEAD and nothing bad happened to anyone. You are underestimating just what high explosives do to small hollow metal objects.
>>the US has used it before apparently
Maybe you didn't gather it from my original post, but I didn't pull this idea from some Digg article. I have experience with this machine. It has probably personally saved my ass several times. The only times it did not shoot down mortars was during takeoff/landing of nearby aircraft that would have flown into the field of fire. This is a machine that made me feel safe in a place with daily mortar attacks. This thing would be a HUGE psychological deterrent to the attackers, but an even bigger asset to the Israelis- you simply cannot understand the difference in the way I slept knowing those things were outside my room vs. the first time I went there when they hadn't been plugged in yet. I appreciate your comments but you are way out of your league here.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's interesting that you take credit FROM apple by calling their success 'luck', but then explain their 'luck' with their skills. Very interesting dissonance there.
"The only reason Bob is rich is because he's lucky. If he hadn't built his business and invested his money, he'd be just like us."
See? Oh well.
-b
>>People on Mac are insulted with popups that ask for money when they run into what should be common features.
As a mac user, I am confused by this. The only pop-ups I get asking for money come from (non-apple) shareware, and I usually either pay for the programs or stop using them.
Please explain.
-b
As someone already mentioned, you also have the option of the Mac Mini if you don't need a monitor. They are also WELL under $1000. It sounds like you have a very specific set of requirements that you think you need and are not budging on, and those put you outside the market for most Apple computers. Frankly I'm surprised that, given your stringent requirements, you haven't even touched on the OS issue. IMO, the OS is the biggest driving factor in my purchases, second is speed/capacity, and last is form/durability.
I drive a MacBook Pro right now. I've owned a mini and an iBook in the past. I'd say that for my needs (extensive travel to austere locations, particular set of software that I use, low weight), the iBook suited my needs best. I will not say, however, that the lifebooks or Vaios are bad computers or bad values. It's just a different market.
-b
>>Apple has much lower sales penetration in Europe
What do you base this on? The last time I was in France, even my non-techie friend commented a few times on how many Macs were around. Everyone we went- planes, trains, cafes, hotels- you saw Macs. I can't remember seeing more than one or two non-mac laptops (I can't remember the brand right now).
-b
Ferraris are a good value for the money if you want speed and looks. The Mac Pro is a good value for the money if you want those features.
Your argument basically boils down to, "Apple doesn't make a be-all, end-all, completely configurable, open-ended, CHEAP system, and I don't like them."
I just don't see the point in arguments like, "I don't like Subaru because I don't need all-wheel drive." Why say you don't like something when it's not even something that's in your market? The Mac Pro and a dell tower are two very different products aimed at very different markets. You wouldn't compare sports cars to SUVs- you would say that one of them suited your needs or not.
You basically just told us that the Mac Pro does not fit your needs. Thank you for that update. I'm sure you'll be interested to know that I don't need a new stereo and therefore I don't like Sony.
I'm not trying to be an asshole here, it's just that I get tired of people saying that they don't like something or that something lacks value just because they aren't in the market for it. I hear it about Linux, windows, apple, electric cars, etc. etc. You get my drift.
Sorry for the rant.
-b
So when is the Bat Mitzvah?
-b
>>They play on bigotry, class envy, fear, and hatred. ...
>>We don't celebrate the leaders and achievers in school because it hurts other people's feelings.
It's interesting that when it comes to math and science, we do care about people's feelings, yet when it comes to politics and celebrities, anything goes.
-b
That was a very good poem.
-b
You were close-
"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."
-Justice Potter Stewart
More info here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it
-b
>>But what happens when one of these things goes off the reservation and kills innocents? Or a UAV collides with an airliner.
It's a good thing that NEVER happens with trusty humans at the wheel...
A duck can take down an airplane. Let's not get too wound up about rogue UAVs being the coming apocalypse quite yet.
-b
What good are soldiers who can be stopped by a simple bullet?
What good are bridges that can be taken down with a few pounds of explosive?
What good are airplanes that can taken down with a rocket?
What good is trying if someone can just spoil things?
Electronic devices have unique weaknesses just like other kinds of hardware (and wetware). I think a good rebuttal to your question would be that the benefits of electronic equipment far, far outweigh the remote chances of some kind of catastrophic EMP (not going to even harp about how military electronics are usually EMP-resistant).
The push towards more automated battlefield systems has its rationale in two areas:
-Automation is a force multiplier, allowing fewer people and resources to do more
-Automation often takes the place of strenuous or dangerous work, thus protecting lives (this is a corollary to the first point)
In today's battlefield, an enemy posessing the capability to produce EMP strong enough to take out our equipment would likely be endangering their own forces; today's battlefield is very different from wars past in that the forces are knit in a quilt of skirmishes rather than a line. EMP would be a nondicriminating destructive force for everyone involved, and at that point our problems would be greater than fried RAM.
-b
I can't tell if you're being serious or not. Your post is either +5 funny or -2 Flamebait.
This design will do nothing to further the aims of 'terrists'. Obtaining the raw materials is such a great hurdle in itself that the actual plans for this bomb are of secondary importance. I knew fairly specific information about this type of bomb when I was 10. I read about it in my encyclopedia, which I believe was a 1967 edition.
If this seems like dangerous or obscure knowledge to you, then you really have place discussing it.
These plans are about as useful as a map to the moon- They are so useless without an extensive infrastructure that they are practically worthless.
-b
Don't worry about it.
-The Government
A cult is an unpopular religion.
A religion is a popular cult.
-b
The best I can figure is that they used arc welds for the battleships.
I did find this neat website-
http://www.battleship.org/html/Articles/IowaClass/Armor.htm
-that describes the use of bolts and concrete to join armor plate to the ship's structure. If you ever get a chance to see one of these battleships in person, you need to take it. I don't recall what class the U.S.S. Missouri belonged to, but the armor was incredible. The pilot house was nestled deep, deep, deep within the bridge and was a monolithic 3-foot thick steel chamber. The superstructure supporting this enormous weight extended many decks below. It is hard to wrap my mind around a ship that big built with that much steel. And to think of what could sink it. I am an Air Force guy- I'm used to fast and light.
Interesting idea with the water stream- what wavelength are you drilling with? Does the water cause any divergence/dispersion issues?
-b
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm
No need to get so confrontational.
-b
The article says:
"The mixture is poured into a blackened casing to form ingots 4.2 meters wide in the rough shape of a cylinder. Five times over three weeks, the ingots are pressed, reheated and re-pressed under 15,000 tons applied by a machine that rotates them gradually, making the floor tremble as it works.
The heavy forging is needed to make the steel uniformly strong by aligning the crystal lattices of atoms that make up the metal, known as the grain. In a casting, they would be jumbled."
So what we have here is a hybrid of sorts, no?
-b
>>If it's all one piece, it can't be easily heat-treated to relieve the stresses of forging the thing.
It is technically a forging, and it is stress-relieved and annealed at the factory over a period of weeks. All the juicy details are in the article.
-b
Or:
Explosion welding-
http://www.asminternational.org/MSTemplate.cfm?Section=News_Releases2&Site=SMST&template=/PressRelease/PressReleaseDisplay.cfm&PressReleaseID=1220&News=1
Also, e.b.w. does not need to be done in a vacuum; in the case of such a deep weld seam like this, the seam would likely be full of ionized gas no matter what. Even if you did, the outer vacuum vessel wouldn't need to be larger than the reactor vessel- you could use a caission system.
It is also not clear if welding is even required for this casting. They said cylindrical forgins are being made, but they did not specify that the end caps were separate. I envision a monolithic forging similar in shape to a pressure chamber like this (made of steel, of course):
http://www.herbsandmore.org/hyperbaric-oxygen-treatment.jpg
-b
Your original argument against fission placed emphasis on what is basically pollution. You don't want the nuclear material out and about. And that is understandable.
But I think if you balanced the amount of energy and materials it would take to carry through with your plan vs. just building a few more nuclear reactors, the reactors would come ahead in environmental impact. If you want everyone to start using efficient appliances and heat pumps, what do you expect them to do with all the old stuff?
We are upgrading our system (appliances, reactors, transmission lines) on an attrition basis, a method which has historically been the most manageable and reliable way of moving forward.
-b
>>uses an assembly of pressurized tubes
I've always said that nuclear reactors shouldn't be connected to the internet, but they never learn.
-b
>>bull wandering into the Ross Sea or Pacific Ocean to jump the bones of a minke whale
Well, the funny thing about this is that they actually used WHALE sperm to inseminate the COW.
Paints a different picture now, doesn't it?
-b
>>Old and obsolete often means tried and true. When I'm betting my life, I like the idea of tried and true.
I'd like to add on to your thought here with another one that is closely related (and some younger people might not have the experience yet to understand, no offense intended).
While older might mean that the kinks have been worked out, it also means- and this might be more important- that the problems are known and have well-known workarounds or solutions. The 1911, for example, may have some feed problems and some stovepiping, but there are well-documented and TRAINABLE solutions to these problems. We've had enough time to figure out not only how to make the 1911 a fine weapon, but how to drill clearing and loading problems while under fire.
I know that we're talking about guns here, but this applies to many other older devices. The F-16 is getting up in years these days, and there are tons of tricks to keep them running that the earliest users were unaware of. The new F-22 will go through the same growing pains until it is a mature weapons platform.
My build is too small to effectively handle a 1911, but I can respect it for what it is.
-b
I'm just going to post my earlier response to a similar post:
/. meme. Oh, it is.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=485450&cid=22736014
There is a huge difference between a rocket/mortar and a supersonic missile. Part of the reason that the device doesn't have a combat record is that our ships and bases don't have missiles shot at them often. You can't derive useful results from 1 or 2 data points.
And, as I point out in the post above, the C-RAM is quite effective at shooting down mortars and rockets. I've seen and heard it happen in person many times.
The Japanese phalanx that you mention shot down the A-6 at the command of the gun operator- a human. For crying out loud, it says that right in the wiki article.
And as I said in the other post- You can be forgiven for having a shallow knowledge of esoteric combat machines, but please don't authoritatively post snippets from wikipedia like it means something. Using random crap from wiki should be the new celebrated
-b
These things WERE designed to handle multiple targets. The system combines radar tracking of incoming projectiles as well as outgoing bullets and can determine if a target it neutralized or not. It can engage many targets at once by firing, locking on to another target, firing, and then rescanning the first target to determine if it was 'killed'. This all happens faster than the gun can move, and targets are prioritized before the servos even start spinning.
I suppose you also believe that an F-16 can empty its cannon in under a few seconds, too, right? Do you really think this thing just spews bullets in a steady stream? Or that it cannot be loaded via belt from larger magazines? Or that it can't be reloaded during a fight? Or that the gun systems aren't arranged on a grid with ~40% overlap of coverage to ensure a killed target?
There are no long, continued attacks with mortars and rockets. The first mortar you shoot gives away your position down to the meter. You will be dead soon. That is how the game is played, and I've seen it played first-hand many times. There is not a long, protracted battle, but many single people being killed after their first mortar launch.
The rounds do not need to be explosive. Even wikipedia will tell you that. The rounds are explosive over land so that they will self-destruct if they do not hit a target. The gun will not fire below a certain angle, making your fears quite unfounded. The range of these bullets is many miles without the explosive charge; with the charge, the fragments disperse over the ground without ill effect. I've had mortars killed DIRECTLY OVER MY HEAD and nothing bad happened to anyone. You are underestimating just what high explosives do to small hollow metal objects.
>>the US has used it before apparently
Maybe you didn't gather it from my original post, but I didn't pull this idea from some Digg article. I have experience with this machine. It has probably personally saved my ass several times. The only times it did not shoot down mortars was during takeoff/landing of nearby aircraft that would have flown into the field of fire. This is a machine that made me feel safe in a place with daily mortar attacks. This thing would be a HUGE psychological deterrent to the attackers, but an even bigger asset to the Israelis- you simply cannot understand the difference in the way I slept knowing those things were outside my room vs. the first time I went there when they hadn't been plugged in yet. I appreciate your comments but you are way out of your league here.
-b