Most of the scientists involved in NASA projects do not work for NASA, they are affiliated with colleges and universities. They publish their papers through the normal academic channels. NASA does not review or control the publication of these papers.
NASA managers like it when a project results in large numbers of published papers. They view it as a rough "figure of merit" for the science produced by a project.
You don't read about the vast majority of the scientific results because they are too difficult for the layman or non-specialist to understand. Besides, how many people would want to read "Comparison of scintillation, spread F and electrostatic probe observations of electron density irregularities".
With the Internet rapidly changing into an integral part of our society, we should consider regulating ISPs as common carriers, esp. DSL and cable modem ISPs, who have little or no competition. A common carrier can't refuse or terminate service at will. They must have a legally valid reason, such as not paying your bill. They can't terminate you because you have controversial views or are a pain in the ass to deal with.
The NSA has their own chip fabrication facility at Fort Meade.
The Summer 2000 issue of American Heritage of Invention & Technology has a fascinating article on the specialized code breaking machines that were built and used during World War II.
I would split them into two types, classic supercomputers like Cray vector systems, and massively parallel collections of microprocessor modules with high-speed interconnects.
The problem with anything based on a microprocessor is the pathetic main memory bandwidth. If your program blows out the cache, the performance goes to hell.
A vector supercomputer is designed to have massive memory bandwidth, enough to keep the vector processing units operating at high efficiency. No cache or VM to slow things down. An engineer once told me that a Cray was a multimillion dollar memory system with a CPU bolted on the side.
See the STREAM benchmark web page for some measurements of sustained memory bandwidth. This separates the real computers from the toys.
General purpose computers get their butt kicked in price and performance by custom silicon, assuming the task is well-defined and not too complicated. These get used a lot in signal processing and decoders for error correction codes.
A paper (PDF format) on its predecessor, GRAPE-5, can be found here. It has more technical detail but it doesn't describe the architecture of the specialized processors. It won the 1999 Gordon Bell price/performance prize.
Example (a real virus): If a surgeon found out he had AIDS but didn't quit his job and later infected a patient during surgery, I think we'd all agree that he'd be liable for the patient's sickness.
You think wrong. Unless the surgeon is having unprotected sex with the patient, the risk of transmission is small.
Take a look at the CDC's recommendations for preventing the transmission of HIV by health care workers. They recommend a review by a panel of experts and informed consent from the patient, not a blanket ban.
I would rather be operated on by a HIV positive, expert surgeon than a HIV negative, mediocre surgeon.
I believe there is a patent pool involved. Licensing the patents is tied to playing by their rules about macrovision etc. Plus they control the DVD trademark. You can't use it without their permission.
Why not? You can't dig a hole in Siberia without hitting one of the buggers. Plus, the eco-nazis can't complain that the ivory trade will result in the extinction of the mammoth.
The Internet is more than just a packet switched network. The idea that made it possible is the catenet (concatenated networks). See IEN 48, The Catenet Model for Internetworking, Vint Cerf, 1978. The catenet model made it possible to build an Internet out of many incompatible and proprietary networks. Like the Borg, the catenet model could assimilate other networks, without discarding their hardware or software.
ELF/VLF communication is electromagnetic, not acoustic. The data rates are very slow, think characters per minute, and the transmitters and antennae are huge.
Actually it's a question of national security. They don't want spies communicating over amateur radio. It sounds a bit silly today but there are still many countries that keep a close watch on amateur radio activity. Some limit it to officially authorized club stations where it can be supervised. Amateur radio in the USA was shut down during World War II.
Not a problem with a good servo system and the appropriate hydraulic and/or electrical equipment. My office mate used to run an Intelsat data/voice link based on the USNS Vanguard. There are Inmarsat systems today that are much smaller and cheaper.
In many areas, high density housing is blocked by zoning ordinances. It is considered to be bad for property values and attracts lower income residents. My county wants a more "upscale" image and is restricting new construction of apartment complexes.
I remember the web back in the early 90s when it was first opened up, and their was *gasp* informative content readily available.
Oh yes, the "old days". snicker...
Everything went to crap after they started selling pre-assembled computers with bundled software. Instead of real men, real women, and small, furry creatures from Alpha Centauri, who could use a soldering iron, wire-wrap gun and write device drivers, we got the nameless hordes of appliance operators whose primary qualification to own a computer was Daddy's credit card.
There have been switches that switched packets, not circuits, for over 25 years, before IP or the OSI networking model even existed. They were called switches, not routers.
While I respect the amount of work that has been put into Wine, I have to wonder why they are doing it. The Win32 API is a continually evolving and complex target. As IBM found out, Microsoft is hostile towards anyone who tries to emulate Windows. If you release a perfect emulation today, Microsoft will add or change something tomorrow.
Telstra started to make a major issue of this, including petitioning the FCC and then filing a lawsuit against the FCC, after the FCC threatened Telstra and other international phone companies with unilateral reductions in the international settlement rates applied to international telephone calls.
Australia may be getting screwed on the cost of IP links, but the USA is getting screwed by many countries on international telephone calls. Many countries charge high rates to terminate international phone calls, much higher than their actual costs. While rates in the USA have dropped over the years, rates in most countries have not followed suit. This has resulted in the USA subsidizing the telephone systems of many countries, the outflow was $5.4 billion in 1996. I wonder what the actual telecommunications balance of trade is between Australia and the USA is when both voice and IP are considered.
It's pretty scary how many people won't buy the clearly superior Athlon because it's not an Intel...
It isn't clearly superior to many people.
Where I work, almost all of the new PCs are 440BX Pentium III systems. They are fast and reliable. Maybe they aren't as fast as an Athlon in Quake, who cares? As a CPU, the Athlon is OK. The problem is with the chipsets and motherboards.
Does anyone have any information on the design of the gyroscopes? They are crystal spheres, spinning in a vacuum. How do they spin them up, keep them from floating into the side of the enclosure, measure the rotation rate and direction of the rotational axis?
Sure, you and I think, "Why bother trying to decode these if they are one-use keys?" But remember, this is the US 'intelligence' community that have no accountability for their budgets.
Sometimes the people sending the messages screw up and make mistakes, such as distributing a pad more than once or using a defective random number generator. The NSA cracked a large number of KGB/GRU messages (see VENONA) when the Soviets ran low on one time pads and issued duplicate one time pads. The rumor is that the person responsible for this disaster was shot.
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Most of the scientists involved in NASA projects do not work for NASA, they are affiliated with colleges and universities. They publish their papers through the normal academic channels. NASA does not review or control the publication of these papers.
NASA managers like it when a project results in large numbers of published papers. They view it as a rough "figure of merit" for the science produced by a project.
You don't read about the vast majority of the scientific results because they are too difficult for the layman or non-specialist to understand. Besides, how many people would want to read "Comparison of scintillation, spread F and electrostatic probe observations of electron density irregularities".
With the Internet rapidly changing into an integral part of our society, we should consider regulating ISPs as common carriers, esp. DSL and cable modem ISPs, who have little or no competition. A common carrier can't refuse or terminate service at will. They must have a legally valid reason, such as not paying your bill. They can't terminate you because you have controversial views or are a pain in the ass to deal with.
The Summer 2000 issue of American Heritage of Invention & Technology has a fascinating article on the specialized code breaking machines that were built and used during World War II.
The problem with anything based on a microprocessor is the pathetic main memory bandwidth. If your program blows out the cache, the performance goes to hell.
A vector supercomputer is designed to have massive memory bandwidth, enough to keep the vector processing units operating at high efficiency. No cache or VM to slow things down. An engineer once told me that a Cray was a multimillion dollar memory system with a CPU bolted on the side.
See the STREAM benchmark web page for some measurements of sustained memory bandwidth. This separates the real computers from the toys.
General purpose computers get their butt kicked in price and performance by custom silicon, assuming the task is well-defined and not too complicated. These get used a lot in signal processing and decoders for error correction codes.
A paper (PDF format) on its predecessor, GRAPE-5, can be found here. It has more technical detail but it doesn't describe the architecture of the specialized processors. It won the 1999 Gordon Bell price/performance prize.
You think wrong. Unless the surgeon is having unprotected sex with the patient, the risk of transmission is small.
Take a look at the CDC's recommendations for preventing the transmission of HIV by health care workers. They recommend a review by a panel of experts and informed consent from the patient, not a blanket ban.
I would rather be operated on by a HIV positive, expert surgeon than a HIV negative, mediocre surgeon.
I believe there is a patent pool involved. Licensing the patents is tied to playing by their rules about macrovision etc. Plus they control the DVD trademark. You can't use it without their permission.
Why not? You can't dig a hole in Siberia without hitting one of the buggers. Plus, the eco-nazis can't complain that the ivory trade will result in the extinction of the mammoth.
The Internet is more than just a packet switched network. The idea that made it possible is the catenet (concatenated networks). See IEN 48, The Catenet Model for Internetworking, Vint Cerf, 1978. The catenet model made it possible to build an Internet out of many incompatible and proprietary networks. Like the Borg, the catenet model could assimilate other networks, without discarding their hardware or software.
It's sad to lose somebody like him. He co-authored the first good books on data communication networks.
ELF/VLF communication is electromagnetic, not acoustic. The data rates are very slow, think characters per minute, and the transmitters and antennae are huge.
Actually it's a question of national security. They don't want spies communicating over amateur radio. It sounds a bit silly today but there are still many countries that keep a close watch on amateur radio activity. Some limit it to officially authorized club stations where it can be supervised. Amateur radio in the USA was shut down during World War II.
Not a problem with a good servo system and the appropriate hydraulic and/or electrical equipment. My office mate used to run an Intelsat data/voice link based on the USNS Vanguard. There are Inmarsat systems today that are much smaller and cheaper.
In many areas, high density housing is blocked by zoning ordinances. It is considered to be bad for property values and attracts lower income residents. My county wants a more "upscale" image and is restricting new construction of apartment complexes.
Oh yes, the "old days". snicker...
Everything went to crap after they started selling pre-assembled computers with bundled software. Instead of real men, real women, and small, furry creatures from Alpha Centauri, who could use a soldering iron, wire-wrap gun and write device drivers, we got the nameless hordes of appliance operators whose primary qualification to own a computer was Daddy's credit card.
Assemblers are for wimps with poor memories.
There have been switches that switched packets, not circuits, for over 25 years, before IP or the OSI networking model even existed. They were called switches, not routers.
While I respect the amount of work that has been put into Wine, I have to wonder why they are doing it. The Win32 API is a continually evolving and complex target. As IBM found out, Microsoft is hostile towards anyone who tries to emulate Windows. If you release a perfect emulation today, Microsoft will add or change something tomorrow.
Telstra started to make a major issue of this, including petitioning the FCC and then filing a lawsuit against the FCC, after the FCC threatened Telstra and other international phone companies with unilateral reductions in the international settlement rates applied to international telephone calls.
Oh my God, it's Ed Anger posting on slashdot!
Australia may be getting screwed on the cost of IP links, but the USA is getting screwed by many countries on international telephone calls. Many countries charge high rates to terminate international phone calls, much higher than their actual costs. While rates in the USA have dropped over the years, rates in most countries have not followed suit. This has resulted in the USA subsidizing the telephone systems of many countries, the outflow was $5.4 billion in 1996. I wonder what the actual telecommunications balance of trade is between Australia and the USA is when both voice and IP are considered.
It isn't clearly superior to many people.
Where I work, almost all of the new PCs are 440BX Pentium III systems. They are fast and reliable. Maybe they aren't as fast as an Athlon in Quake, who cares? As a CPU, the Athlon is OK. The problem is with the chipsets and motherboards.
The Stanford web site appears to be broken.
Sometimes the people sending the messages screw up and make mistakes, such as distributing a pad more than once or using a defective random number generator. The NSA cracked a large number of KGB/GRU messages (see VENONA) when the Soviets ran low on one time pads and issued duplicate one time pads. The rumor is that the person responsible for this disaster was shot.