well, it seems that in the same vein. I tried to submit this earlier, but I presume that this article is the reason that it was rejected.:D
I found this while I was reading NASA Watch (a slashdot like site with space as it's main focus). It seems that they are Ebay auctioning off a trip to the International Space Station. Last I checked it was at $19 mil and hadn't quite met the reserve. Sounds like a market to me...
an overgrown newsgroup. Or a benevolent (now that's mind boggling) Slashdot.
The primary problem with anything like this is going to be the fact that just like in Usenet, people - valuable, vital people - will move on due to lost interest, changes in their lives, and the fact that anything like this started over the net tends to die off pretty quickly.
There are exceptions notably some software projects (What I can't imagine;)), but more often than not ideas get thrown around online pretty quick and easily...and then nothing comes of them.
...is the use of orbital lasers for antiaircraft work (unless I just missed it). Reason being that if you can force an enemy airforce below 30k ft (9k m) you have an immense advantage in an airwar. (Below 30k feet the laser's beam tends to have too much in the way of atmospheric problems).
Another thing that startled me is that they are talking about using HF (hydrogen flouride) lasers. While definitely cheaper than DF (deuterium flouride), their atmospheric propogation sucks raw eggs.
Additionally, no mention of solid state lasers like the oneLawrence Livermore National Labs is developing for HELSTF is made. FEL's are, but they're slower going work than the SSL's seem to be.
the nights of the summer of 1995. It was *FUN*. Simple and immensely playable.
The next summer, I had a gf I was living with...had better things to do. lol.
Then came Warcraft 2...Red Alert (summer 1997, ah, yes...that was crazy in the computer labs til too damn early in the morning...) Then Total Annihilation taht fall...and then Starcraft.
A prinkling of Diablo in there too.
Wow. Time flies...All started with netrek: Go Team NMSU. Desroyer captian Ranma here! Woo!
You would be surprised. Read the website. John has been working on this systematically for some time and based on communicating with him, he's not afraid to ask questions of the people that know. He and his crew are smart and motivated.
My personal bet is that he will be perfectly able to make an orbital shot by the end of the decade if not sooner.
Good luck, John, but I don't think you'll need it. Some of us are gonna see if we can race ya to that.;)
Just such a horrible thought! Making NASA accountable for what it spends!
After all look at the blazing fiscal successes of the International Space Station and it being able to come in under budget!!!
Or the success of the X-33...
Or X-34...
Or the X-30...
Or how about how the shuttle and how much it brought down launch costs just like they said it would...
Maybe there is a theme here, huh?
Perhaps when NASA learns some fiscal responsibility then we'll get our mission to Mars from them. And it's quite possible the wonderous big budgets of Apollo aren't EVER coming back.
In the mean time, it might actually be others who get there first. And, no, I don't mean other nations. John Carmack (yes, that John Carmack) is working on his one rocket company:here and Jeff Greasona nd crew are working on their own stuff here.
I might just wanna give them some competition myself...;)
B5 had me waaaaay wrapped up until the end of the shadow war. *THAT* so pissed me off with its ridiculous anticlimax ending I couldn't watch the end of the series.
Then there was Crusade...*flinch*
Then there was Legend of the Rangers...and, umm, bleh. Talk about introducing continuity errors!
Now. Luke Perry? ummmm...
Like I said...looking like the Brain Eater got him.
Cray has been working on this for some time at the higher end. At least Tera, they were for a long time. Their MTA does exactly that, but with 128 cpu equivalents and in GaAs too.
It would be interesting to see if they end up rolling some of their MTA technology into the follow-on to their next vector machine. Hardware threading with vector processing might be interesting...even if not for the desktop.:D
IDK. I have to wonder after the dotbombs went bust whether or not it was the opposite...the dotcoms being the predators and the venture capitalists the unsuspecting prey...but that might just be the view from the outside...
That was imaged back quite a while ago by a caltech team.
I found papers about it at Jean Schnieder's webpage, but not a listing...
Re:Monsanto akin to evil corporations from the mov
on
Monsanto and PCBs
·
· Score: 1
There was a plus side, I thought, for the terminator technology. If its sterility genes are dominant, it can't pass on GM traits to other species of plant. *THAT* is one thing taht a great many activists are worried about.
I don't support the idea of an ID chip. THAT gives me the heebee geebees in a big way!
However, how many people wouldn't mind having some
personal uplinks or implanted chips in general? I'll ahve to say, yeah, I'd go for that. One frivolous use would be to read Usenet on the way to work on the BART. One not so frivilous use would be to be able to notified in a manner that is nonobvious to anyone else of information. No annoying cell phone call in the middle of a movie. Exchange info a lot faster, etc.:)
Day trading goes on unapparently. heh. heh.
The important thing, above and beyond all else, is that I have control over said implants. No backdoors for anyone - feds included!
What ought to be noted is that theoretical physics is in a state of flux. The current methods and theories are showing cracks. For that reason, several competing theories are coming about.
One of the primary things to think on, though, is not whether or not current theory ought to be completely discarded, but rather the theory just needs some small adjustments. *grinz* Even those 'minor' adjustments are often hotly debated.
Even then, the one phycist friend of mine at FERMI said that theory only advances as the older generation dies off...;)
How amusing. I submitted this earlier and got it rejected. oh well.
This link I was using has a nice story attached. Also for more general info about extra solar planets try Jean Schneider's here or its mirror here.
I'm getting funky time outs all over the place, so its hard to tell whether or not things are up. Unless you guys have gotten so good at slashdotting a site that you do it BEFORE a site has been posted.;)
I don't think we'd be keeping it as a method of deterence against any country. Merely, as another poster pointed out, a tool for research.
Besides, IIRC, we've been VERY vocal that we'd retaliate against any use of Weapons of Mass Destruction (nukes, chem or bio weapons) with nukes. It has been doctrine since the Gulf War, again, iirc.
I would strongly suggest looking up the book of _A Higher Form of Killing_ (iirc, by Harris and Paxman). It's a sobering book. I found it in our high school library in Los Alamos. I'd be curious to see if it is still there...
The Alternative?
on
Globalization
·
· Score: 0, Troll
I thought at first I'd skip the Katz article: I'm not exactly a fan of his, but...I broke down and read, primarily for the readership's reaction. Hmmm. Interesting.
How many of you guys have actually thought what it means if we steer away from globalization? Let's say we disentangle. What happens next?
The US says "Screw you guys, I'm going home." Europe decides that untangling itself is a good idea. etc, etc.
That would mean that the world gets poorer, not richer. The sweat shps close: but nothing takes their place. The poor get even poorer. And so do the rich. Or even more so, the rich get even richer.
An example: the US funds a massive amount of money into alternative energy sources as a way to pull out of the Middle East. The revenue that would have continued to flow into the ME dries up. An equal investment in robotics is funded: have machines do what the "sweat shops" in Africa do for clothing. Those close. Develop cheap and very good recycling technologies: the need for a great deal of third world resources goes away. Toss in cheap asteroid mining and that ought to clean the rest up. (very sfnal, yes, but...)
What happens? We see the Have Nots no longer needed. Therefore ignored. Therefore without the capital, they can't make the investments to develop their own systems and then things get poorer...and then...
Seems a lot like damned if you do, damned if you don't.
FYI, this will be updated after supercomputing, but
this is the list of the fastest computers in the world.
The Pittsburgh's super'puter will rank up there with LANL's new one (also a Compaq based one). Pittsburgh's will be the fastest SC for nonclassified work.
I'm not sure whether or not it'll dethrone LLNL's ASCI White or not. It does knock seaborg @ NERSC from the fastest unclassified SC spot though.
Why does Congress resent paying for NASA? Pretty good question. Think about it though.
The short answer is that NASA happens to be demonstrating that it's rather incompetant. Flamebait? Karma killer? Perhaps, but think about it.
Shuttle? Years delayed and expensive as h*ll to operate. Space station? Ditto.
X Vehicles? Let's take a look there!
X-33 was cancelled for starting to run down that same route, and they picked the winning Lockmart proposal because it was full of nifty tech, not based on the stated goals of the X program (much cheaper access to orbit using SSTO technologies).
X-34 was killed because MSFC wanted to incorporate THEIR engine instead of the original one (*GASP* it was delayed and overbudget...)
X-30? The National Aerospace Plane fell the way of the X-33, but back in the early 90's.
Manned spacflight at NASA has been an embarassment for some time for its screwups.
On the bright side, look at the unmanned probes recently. Sehr gut! Pathfinder, Global Surveyor, DS-1, Lunar Prospector, etc, etc...
BUT...when NASA f*cks up like say with the Mars 98 missions: English to metric unit conversion problems crash one probe into Mars. WTF!?! These are supposed to be the best and brightest and make THAT stupid a mistake! The royal screwups in the lander mission are...ummm...amazing.
Good and bad, Goldin did get one thing right in that he said that for NASA to be trusted any time soon with the budget to go to Mars manned style they'd have to fix - budgetwise - the ISS program. It didn't happen.
On sci.space.policy, Gary Hudson, of Rotary Rocket and more fame, made the following remark when someone suggested that he be nominated to take over NASA. ..and politically, that's about as likely as slashdot deciding that they're going to run IIS.
In short, NASA is a wreck.
Now. Why do you think Congress resents spending money on NASA? Money isn't the main problem here...
To some extent you're right, but as you noted also, it happens already. After all I have had plenty of Starcraft games where one player on my side dissented , went off and fought without being a part of the plan.
Part of the idea to fix this would be to make it a massively online game, where people who work well together would do so. Having a commando unit that actually fought intelligently and independtly could be immensely useful. Think Tanya with a human controlling her.
The other part is that the RTS player would still crank out normal RTS style units that are AI run instead of being run by a person.
To some extent this is happening already, but the out and out RTS hasn't blended yet with the others, especially not with speciallized clients.
Here is something that I have been saying to friends for some time but haven't seen come about.
Mix the generas!
Think about it. You could have Joe RTS playing his game, making marines, orcs, cataphracts, krogoths, whatever, and commanding his armies like he likes best. Then also you have Jane FPS running along as a sniper or commando in the same game just that everything appears 3d first person. Then Bob flightsim could even join in. Or Nicole Harpoon. or...
Different clients, different engines all interpretting the same data.
Potentially P2P could be used to eleviate problems with needing a massive pipe and uberservers.
Make it a massively online game with a persistant world.
Slashdot Mirror
well, it seems that in the same vein. I tried to submit this earlier, but I presume that this article is the reason that it was rejected. :D
I found this while I was reading NASA Watch (a slashdot like site with space as it's main focus). It seems that they are Ebay auctioning off a trip to the International Space Station. Last I checked it was at $19 mil and hadn't quite met the reserve. Sounds like a market to me...
an overgrown newsgroup. Or a benevolent (now that's mind boggling) Slashdot.
;)), but more often than not ideas get thrown around online pretty quick and easily...and then nothing comes of them.
The primary problem with anything like this is going to be the fact that just like in Usenet, people - valuable, vital people - will move on due to lost interest, changes in their lives, and the fact that anything like this started over the net tends to die off pretty quickly.
There are exceptions notably some software projects (What I can't imagine
...is the use of orbital lasers for antiaircraft work (unless I just missed it). Reason being that if you can force an enemy airforce below 30k ft (9k m) you have an immense advantage in an airwar. (Below 30k feet the laser's beam tends to have too much in the way of atmospheric problems).
Another thing that startled me is that they are talking about using HF (hydrogen flouride) lasers. While definitely cheaper than DF (deuterium flouride), their atmospheric propogation sucks raw eggs.
Additionally, no mention of solid state lasers like the one Lawrence Livermore National Labs is developing for HELSTF is made. FEL's are, but they're slower going work than the SSL's seem to be.
the nights of the summer of 1995. It was *FUN*. Simple and immensely playable.
The next summer, I had a gf I was living with...had better things to do. lol.
Then came Warcraft 2...Red Alert (summer 1997, ah, yes...that was crazy in the computer labs til too damn early in the morning...) Then Total Annihilation taht fall...and then Starcraft.
A prinkling of Diablo in there too.
Wow. Time flies...All started with netrek: Go Team NMSU. Desroyer captian Ranma here! Woo!
Read the webpage.
They build a little and test a little.
They have had failures and will do so in the future. It's a part of building *ANYTHING*. Doubly so for something that's a bit difficult.
Their model is more like the early aircraft builders than NASA...and that's a compliment!
You would be surprised. Read the website. John has been working on this systematically for some time and based on communicating with him, he's not afraid to ask questions of the people that know. He and his crew are smart and motivated.
;)
My personal bet is that he will be perfectly able to make an orbital shot by the end of the decade if not sooner.
Good luck, John, but I don't think you'll need it. Some of us are gonna see if we can race ya to that.
...yelling and screaming at the computer because their dragons are going waaay too slow and getting even less relaxed because of it? ;)
Just such a horrible thought! Making NASA accountable for what it spends!
After all look at the blazing fiscal successes of the International Space Station and it being able to come in under budget!!!
Or the success of the X-33...
Or X-34...
Or the X-30...
Or how about how the shuttle and how much it brought down launch costs just like they said it would...
Maybe there is a theme here, huh?
Perhaps when NASA learns some fiscal responsibility then we'll get our mission to Mars from them. And it's quite possible the wonderous big budgets of Apollo aren't EVER coming back.
In the mean time, it might actually be others who get there first. And, no, I don't mean other nations. John Carmack (yes, that John Carmack) is working on his one rocket company:here and Jeff Greasona nd crew are working on their own stuff here.
I might just wanna give them some competition myself...;)
...is looking overrated.
B5 had me waaaaay wrapped up until the end of the shadow war. *THAT* so pissed me off with its ridiculous anticlimax ending I couldn't watch the end of the series.
Then there was Crusade...*flinch*
Then there was Legend of the Rangers...and, umm, bleh. Talk about introducing continuity errors!
Now. Luke Perry? ummmm...
Like I said...looking like the Brain Eater got him.
Cray has been working on this for some time at the higher end. At least Tera, they were for a long time. Their MTA does exactly that, but with 128 cpu equivalents and in GaAs too.
It would be interesting to see if they end up rolling some of their MTA technology into the follow-on to their next vector machine. Hardware threading with vector processing might be interesting...even if not for the desktop. :D
IDK. I have to wonder after the dotbombs went bust whether or not it was the opposite...the dotcoms being the predators and the venture capitalists the unsuspecting prey...but that might just be the view from the outside...
I would think that perhaps a nice set of uberservers running something like Babelfish's code might work as well, if not better than, mediaglyphs...
There would be a bit of lag, but nothing insurmountable if properly planned, I would think.
Just a thought...
What ever happene dto Gliese 229?
That was imaged back quite a while ago by a caltech team.
I found papers about it at Jean Schnieder's webpage, but not a listing...
There was a plus side, I thought, for the terminator technology. If its sterility genes are dominant, it can't pass on GM traits to other species of plant. *THAT* is one thing taht a great many activists are worried about.
Food for thought there...
I don't support the idea of an ID chip. THAT gives me the heebee geebees in a big way!
However, how many people wouldn't mind having some personal uplinks or implanted chips in general? I'll ahve to say, yeah, I'd go for that. One frivolous use would be to read Usenet on the way to work on the BART. One not so frivilous use would be to be able to notified in a manner that is nonobvious to anyone else of information. No annoying cell phone call in the middle of a movie. Exchange info a lot faster, etc. :)
Day trading goes on unapparently. heh. heh.
The important thing, above and beyond all else, is that I have control over said implants. No backdoors for anyone - feds included!
Damn, if I won't need one HELL of a firewall. ;)
So I'm safe if I get it put into my left hand then? ;)
What ought to be noted is that theoretical physics is in a state of flux. The current methods and theories are showing cracks. For that reason, several competing theories are coming about.
One of the primary things to think on, though, is not whether or not current theory ought to be completely discarded, but rather the theory just needs some small adjustments. *grinz* Even those 'minor' adjustments are often hotly debated.
Even then, the one phycist friend of mine at FERMI said that theory only advances as the older generation dies off...;)
How amusing. I submitted this earlier and got it rejected. oh well.
This link I was using has a nice story attached. Also for more general info about extra solar planets try Jean Schneider's here or its mirror here.
I'm getting funky time outs all over the place, so its hard to tell whether or not things are up. Unless you guys have gotten so good at slashdotting a site that you do it BEFORE a site has been posted. ;)
I don't think we'd be keeping it as a method of deterence against any country. Merely, as another poster pointed out, a tool for research.
Besides, IIRC, we've been VERY vocal that we'd retaliate against any use of Weapons of Mass Destruction (nukes, chem or bio weapons) with nukes. It has been doctrine since the Gulf War, again, iirc.
I would strongly suggest looking up the book of _A Higher Form of Killing_ (iirc, by Harris and Paxman). It's a sobering book. I found it in our high school library in Los Alamos. I'd be curious to see if it is still there...
I thought at first I'd skip the Katz article: I'm not exactly a fan of his, but...I broke down and read, primarily for the readership's reaction. Hmmm. Interesting.
How many of you guys have actually thought what it means if we steer away from globalization? Let's say we disentangle. What happens next?
The US says "Screw you guys, I'm going home." Europe decides that untangling itself is a good idea. etc, etc.
That would mean that the world gets poorer, not richer. The sweat shps close: but nothing takes their place. The poor get even poorer. And so do the rich. Or even more so, the rich get even richer.
An example: the US funds a massive amount of money into alternative energy sources as a way to pull out of the Middle East. The revenue that would have continued to flow into the ME dries up. An equal investment in robotics is funded: have machines do what the "sweat shops" in Africa do for clothing. Those close. Develop cheap and very good recycling technologies: the need for a great deal of third world resources goes away. Toss in cheap asteroid mining and that ought to clean the rest up. (very sfnal, yes, but...)
What happens? We see the Have Nots no longer needed. Therefore ignored. Therefore without the capital, they can't make the investments to develop their own systems and then things get poorer...and then...
Seems a lot like damned if you do, damned if you don't.
FYI, this will be updated after supercomputing, but this is the list of the fastest computers in the world.
The Pittsburgh's super'puter will rank up there with LANL's new one (also a Compaq based one). Pittsburgh's will be the fastest SC for nonclassified work.
I'm not sure whether or not it'll dethrone LLNL's ASCI White or not. It does knock seaborg @ NERSC from the fastest unclassified SC spot though.
Why does Congress resent paying for NASA? Pretty good question. Think about it though.
The short answer is that NASA happens to be demonstrating that it's rather incompetant. Flamebait? Karma killer? Perhaps, but think about it.
Shuttle? Years delayed and expensive as h*ll to operate. Space station? Ditto.
X Vehicles? Let's take a look there!
X-33 was cancelled for starting to run down that same route, and they picked the winning Lockmart proposal because it was full of nifty tech, not based on the stated goals of the X program (much cheaper access to orbit using SSTO technologies).
X-34 was killed because MSFC wanted to incorporate THEIR engine instead of the original one (*GASP* it was delayed and overbudget...)
X-30? The National Aerospace Plane fell the way of the X-33, but back in the early 90's.
Manned spacflight at NASA has been an embarassment for some time for its screwups.
On the bright side, look at the unmanned probes recently. Sehr gut! Pathfinder, Global Surveyor, DS-1, Lunar Prospector, etc, etc...
BUT...when NASA f*cks up like say with the Mars 98 missions: English to metric unit conversion problems crash one probe into Mars. WTF!?! These are supposed to be the best and brightest and make THAT stupid a mistake! The royal screwups in the lander mission are ...ummm...amazing.
Good and bad, Goldin did get one thing right in that he said that for NASA to be trusted any time soon with the budget to go to Mars manned style they'd have to fix - budgetwise - the ISS program. It didn't happen.
On sci.space.policy, Gary Hudson, of Rotary Rocket and more fame, made the following remark when someone suggested that he be nominated to take over NASA. . .and politically, that's about as likely as slashdot deciding that they're going to run IIS.
In short, NASA is a wreck.
Now. Why do you think Congress resents spending money on NASA? Money isn't the main problem here...
To some extent you're right, but as you noted also, it happens already. After all I have had plenty of Starcraft games where one player on my side dissented , went off and fought without being a part of the plan.
Part of the idea to fix this would be to make it a massively online game, where people who work well together would do so. Having a commando unit that actually fought intelligently and independtly could be immensely useful. Think Tanya with a human controlling her.
The other part is that the RTS player would still crank out normal RTS style units that are AI run instead of being run by a person.
To some extent this is happening already, but the out and out RTS hasn't blended yet with the others, especially not with speciallized clients.
Here is something that I have been saying to friends for some time but haven't seen come about.
Mix the generas!
Think about it. You could have Joe RTS playing his game, making marines, orcs, cataphracts, krogoths, whatever, and commanding his armies like he likes best. Then also you have Jane FPS running along as a sniper or commando in the same game just that everything appears 3d first person. Then Bob flightsim could even join in. Or Nicole Harpoon. or...
Different clients, different engines all interpretting the same data.
Potentially P2P could be used to eleviate problems with needing a massive pipe and uberservers.
Make it a massively online game with a persistant world.
Mix well and you get an awesome game!
Just imaao, of course.