Space and Orbital mechanics fascinate me. They are, in essence, just Maths and Physics. There's nothing _overly_ difficult... in theory. Except that, of course, it is really really difficult.
I have great admiration for the minds that are able to come up with solutions to seemingly impossible problems, and fixing them using these simple tools of Maths and Physics. I know I would probably have thrown in the towel, pointed the instruments at the sun, and gotten whatever readings they may have given during their long spiral downwards. Who knows, there might be some data worth using...
But these guys... they salvaged it! They worked it all out and calculated that using a small manoeuvring thruster, they could achieve orbital insertion. And then went and actually did it.
This is Kerbal Space Program in real life. It's brilliant.
One wonders if one would get the go ahead to perform the same experiment substituting "Japanese Whale Scientist" for "Mink Whale"... how many would we need to cull in order to put an end to such ridiculous idea and an end to hunting and killing these amazing animals?
And, unlike them, the fruits of our hunting won't make it onto any dinner plates...
Probably not millions. But many livelihoods will be destroyed as there are many many people who a dependant on the banana crops.
But my point is still valid - recent history (only about 150 years ago) shows us that millions _did_ die because of reliance on a single species of a crop. And the cause of that _was_ the reliance on a single species. Yet we still rely in single species (or a small number of species) in just about everything we grow commercially.
History has so many lessons to teach. We have common phrases about in our language. Yet, still, we fail to learn.
Reliance on one type of a crop led to the Great Irish Famine, killing millions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... As already mentioned in the article, in the 1950s this happened already with bananas. A quick Google search will yield many more examples.
And when will they do to resolve this? Odd-on they'll just find another single type of banana to grow everywhere...
In The Fountains of Paradise, Arthur. C. Clarke wrote about the use of a diamond filament for building the space elevator. The main character, Dr. Morgan, carried around with him a retractable rope made of this filament. He uses it at one point to climb down a cliff face, and it's so thin it can be barely seen...
Most (all?) airlines don't allow a device that can broadcast, so that means that Bluetooth earphones shouldn't be used on an aeroplane (not that that actually stops people - I see plenty of people using them).
As for 3.5mm jacks, it would be easy enough for someone to bring out a lightning->3.5mm adapter, I'm sure. If be surprised if apple themselves don't do it, or they'd lose sales in their Beats range.
As for apple specific headphones, plenty of manufactures bring them out already, but also bring out versions for other phones (typically android). These would be headphones with microphones and start/stop controls, where apple and everyone-else use slightly different methods, naturally.
I agree, though, that there _is_ such a thing as too thin. I can't understand why manufacturers want to get thinner. Can't they actually listen to their customers... ah, I forgot, they're apple -- they tell customers what they want. Silly me.
A desktop computer screen that's on 24 hours a day??!
My work computer screens are turned on for 8 hours a day. My phone screen would be on for almost that amount too (most of the evening while "watching" tv). I'd venture that in an average week my phone screen would be turned on for longer than any computer screen I use. Perhaps with the exception of my TV screen, which is OLED...
iPhone user: Did you see my new iPhone - it has an OLED screen! Android user: Yeah, they're cool. Great quality. All my phones over the last 6 years have had OLED screens. iPhone user: But how? Apple only just invented it...
The developers here changed from Scrum to ATDD (Acceptance Test-Driven Development). Throughput it up, quality is up, morale is up...
They also ran a couple of tests, with one group solving problems using Scrum and another using ATDD. ATDD won every time (although in some cases just barely).
It was brilliant, don't get be wrong. Some very intelligent people came up with it. It was almost perfect.
But that small little thing about a letter not being allowed to encrypt to itself was enough to get a start on breaking it. If nothing else, it could be used to prove that the plaintext didn't match the cyphertext, so we can immediately ignore all of these keys...
So no matter how brilliant a system is, if someone who doesn't understand something demands a change, that will likely be the cause (or part of the cause) of its failure.
Well, if they stay in the EU, and the EU decide to come up with a complete different set of conflicting laws, they may be obliged to change their laws to match that of the EU. By leaving the EU, any protection the EU can give to its citizens goes away. And the EU are very big on personal privacy.
By leaving the EU, UK citizen would likely be worse off.
Unfortunately for them, they probably don't think that way - saving the pound* is probably more important to most of them. *sigh*
* Many will say that the pound is one of the oldest currencies, and it does, in various incarnations, date back hundreds of years. However, the current pound only dates back to the 1971, when decimalisation came into effect. It's a different pound to the old £sd pound, imho.
When I was studying IT Security and encryption, one of the things that came up a lot was that you should always assume the process of the encryption is known [as well as some of the text of the message]. Typically it's because the encryption process is a standard (AES, for example). Security through obscurity doesn't exist. And it's far easier to keep a key secret than an algorithm (or source code).
So if the UK are trying to ensure that a backdoor exists in any encryption method created, then EVERYONE IS GOING TO KNOW ABOUT IT! It will be impossible to keep the existence of a backdoor secret. They may have a 12 month sentence for anyone who leaks this information, but you have to assume that it will be leaked, and you have to assume that everyone (who wants to) will know how it works.
This, then, leads to the problem of how to implement such a backdoor in such a way that only one group can use it but everyone else can't -- simply, impossible.
This reminds me of one of the major flaws of Enigma (that a character can't be encoded as itself) that was insisted upon by people who didn't really understand encryption - a flaw that was, in a large part, responsible to helping to break the Enigma codes.
Is this why search seems to be getting worse? It seems that with Google it tries (badly) to interpret your search terms and then returns pages it thinks you might be looking for, instead of pages that contain all those words. Its getting harder to actually find stuff these days...
As part of the competition, they needed to specify who their target market is and they are limited to 1000 square feet
no matter what they choose, so the house will be on the small side for a family.
(or ~93 square metres)
What size family do you have? My home is 108 square metres, and it's a 3 bedroom house with 3 bathrooms, a huge kitchen, and a large living room. How much space do you actually need?!
I'm all for removing stuff that isn't used much. It leads to larger binaries. Anything to reduce the size and complexity is a Good Thing.
I've never used voice search in Chrome, so for me it's not a big deal. However, since Google already have all that code written, there's no reason for them to just put it all into a plugin and stick it into the Chrome Store. Then those who want it can still have it.
The server tech isn't going to go away, as it's used for Voice Search on Android (which I do use frequently), so it shouldn't be a big deal for them to have it as a plugin.
Slashdot Mirror
Space and Orbital mechanics fascinate me. They are, in essence, just Maths and Physics. There's nothing _overly_ difficult... in theory. Except that, of course, it is really really difficult.
I have great admiration for the minds that are able to come up with solutions to seemingly impossible problems, and fixing them using these simple tools of Maths and Physics. I know I would probably have thrown in the towel, pointed the instruments at the sun, and gotten whatever readings they may have given during their long spiral downwards. Who knows, there might be some data worth using...
But these guys... they salvaged it! They worked it all out and calculated that using a small manoeuvring thruster, they could achieve orbital insertion. And then went and actually did it.
This is Kerbal Space Program in real life. It's brilliant.
One wonders if one would get the go ahead to perform the same experiment substituting "Japanese Whale Scientist" for "Mink Whale"... how many would we need to cull in order to put an end to such ridiculous idea and an end to hunting and killing these amazing animals?
And, unlike them, the fruits of our hunting won't make it onto any dinner plates...
Yes. This was previously stated in another article.
Probably not millions. But many livelihoods will be destroyed as there are many many people who a dependant on the banana crops.
But my point is still valid - recent history (only about 150 years ago) shows us that millions _did_ die because of reliance on a single species of a crop. And the cause of that _was_ the reliance on a single species. Yet we still rely in single species (or a small number of species) in just about everything we grow commercially.
Will they, then, be solely responsible when the next blight comes along to destroy that crop, I wonder?
History has so many lessons to teach. We have common phrases about in our language. Yet, still, we fail to learn.
Reliance on one type of a crop led to the Great Irish Famine, killing millions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
As already mentioned in the article, in the 1950s this happened already with bananas.
A quick Google search will yield many more examples.
And when will they do to resolve this? Odd-on they'll just find another single type of banana to grow everywhere...
*sigh*
IIRC, there was a hook attached to it so you didn't need to tie it off anywhere, and you held onto the box that it was coiled up in...
So I'm a tourist that get's lost, or my GPS decides to bring me down one of these streets. Next thing I'm getting a letter?!
Like, what?!
Annoyingly, in a post I typed previous to this one, I put Fountains... bloody fingers.
And The Foundations of Paradise, Arthur. C. Clarke.
In The Fountains of Paradise, Arthur. C. Clarke wrote about the use of a diamond filament for building the space elevator. The main character, Dr. Morgan, carried around with him a retractable rope made of this filament. He uses it at one point to climb down a cliff face, and it's so thin it can be barely seen...
Kudos, Arthur...
Most (all?) airlines don't allow a device that can broadcast, so that means that Bluetooth earphones shouldn't be used on an aeroplane (not that that actually stops people - I see plenty of people using them).
As for 3.5mm jacks, it would be easy enough for someone to bring out a lightning->3.5mm adapter, I'm sure. If be surprised if apple themselves don't do it, or they'd lose sales in their Beats range.
As for apple specific headphones, plenty of manufactures bring them out already, but also bring out versions for other phones (typically android). These would be headphones with microphones and start/stop controls, where apple and everyone-else use slightly different methods, naturally.
I agree, though, that there _is_ such a thing as too thin. I can't understand why manufacturers want to get thinner. Can't they actually listen to their customers... ah, I forgot, they're apple -- they tell customers what they want. Silly me.
Fine grain sandpaper will sort that out for you... *snigger*
A desktop computer screen that's on 24 hours a day??!
My work computer screens are turned on for 8 hours a day. My phone screen would be on for almost that amount too (most of the evening while "watching" tv). I'd venture that in an average week my phone screen would be turned on for longer than any computer screen I use. Perhaps with the exception of my TV screen, which is OLED...
Yep. I can see the conversations now:
iPhone user: Did you see my new iPhone - it has an OLED screen!
Android user: Yeah, they're cool. Great quality. All my phones over the last 6 years have had OLED screens.
iPhone user: But how? Apple only just invented it...
No sprints.
The developers here changed from Scrum to ATDD (Acceptance Test-Driven Development). Throughput it up, quality is up, morale is up...
They also ran a couple of tests, with one group solving problems using Scrum and another using ATDD. ATDD won every time (although in some cases just barely).
Just sayin'
It was brilliant, don't get be wrong. Some very intelligent people came up with it. It was almost perfect.
But that small little thing about a letter not being allowed to encrypt to itself was enough to get a start on breaking it. If nothing else, it could be used to prove that the plaintext didn't match the cyphertext, so we can immediately ignore all of these keys...
So no matter how brilliant a system is, if someone who doesn't understand something demands a change, that will likely be the cause (or part of the cause) of its failure.
Only if they are in the UK. Everyone other country can find and tell everyone about the backdoors as they are not bound by UK law.
Well, if they stay in the EU, and the EU decide to come up with a complete different set of conflicting laws, they may be obliged to change their laws to match that of the EU.
By leaving the EU, any protection the EU can give to its citizens goes away. And the EU are very big on personal privacy.
By leaving the EU, UK citizen would likely be worse off.
Unfortunately for them, they probably don't think that way - saving the pound* is probably more important to most of them. *sigh*
* Many will say that the pound is one of the oldest currencies, and it does, in various incarnations, date back hundreds of years. However, the current pound only dates back to the 1971, when decimalisation came into effect. It's a different pound to the old £sd pound, imho.
When I was studying IT Security and encryption, one of the things that came up a lot was that you should always assume the process of the encryption is known [as well as some of the text of the message]. Typically it's because the encryption process is a standard (AES, for example). Security through obscurity doesn't exist. And it's far easier to keep a key secret than an algorithm (or source code).
So if the UK are trying to ensure that a backdoor exists in any encryption method created, then EVERYONE IS GOING TO KNOW ABOUT IT! It will be impossible to keep the existence of a backdoor secret. They may have a 12 month sentence for anyone who leaks this information, but you have to assume that it will be leaked, and you have to assume that everyone (who wants to) will know how it works.
This, then, leads to the problem of how to implement such a backdoor in such a way that only one group can use it but everyone else can't -- simply, impossible.
This reminds me of one of the major flaws of Enigma (that a character can't be encoded as itself) that was insisted upon by people who didn't really understand encryption - a flaw that was, in a large part, responsible to helping to break the Enigma codes.
Is this why search seems to be getting worse? It seems that with Google it tries (badly) to interpret your search terms and then returns pages it thinks you might be looking for, instead of pages that contain all those words. Its getting harder to actually find stuff these days...
As part of the competition, they needed to specify who their target market is and they are limited to 1000 square feet
no matter what they choose, so the house will be on the small side for a family.
(or ~93 square metres)
What size family do you have? My home is 108 square metres, and it's a 3 bedroom house with 3 bathrooms, a huge kitchen, and a large living room. How much space do you actually need?!
(108 square metres = ~1162.5 sq. ft.)
It looks nice, but can I have mine with a separate kitchen and living room, please?
I'm all for removing stuff that isn't used much. It leads to larger binaries. Anything to reduce the size and complexity is a Good Thing.
I've never used voice search in Chrome, so for me it's not a big deal. However, since Google already have all that code written, there's no reason for them to just put it all into a plugin and stick it into the Chrome Store. Then those who want it can still have it.
The server tech isn't going to go away, as it's used for Voice Search on Android (which I do use frequently), so it shouldn't be a big deal for them to have it as a plugin.