The information on their website says the time step is 30 minutes and that their box is 3.75 degrees longitude by 2.25 degrees latitude (or visa versa: BIG, in any event).
Therefore, how do they expect this to work -- additionally absent any outside changes in the environment?
What I mean is, how do they know if they did a good job? Perhaps if the results are all very close to the current day climate, I'd buy that they got it right, but if they have a reasonable distribution of results, how do you decide? I mean, we've been clear-cutting the hell out of forests left and right for years: do they somehow takes this into account? Heck, how do they present the geographic information about the Earth: this bit has forest, this bit is desert. I would think that this would make quite a bit of difference in results (changes in albedo, for instance).
I certainly wish them luck, but they're not getting my PC for that long without something more detailed , informationwise.
Dumbass. Remember, this is a *business* expense: you are researching, uhm, alternative motivational methodologies or something.
Examining the pseudo-probabal technology frameworks of a strong competitor (after all, you're not supposed to underestimate the power of the dark side of the Force).
Maybe you could pawn if off as researching the likelihood of 'alternative labor methodologies': you know, rather than hiring out coding to foreign countries, you could just clone coders from this country.
The possibilities are endless. Remember, you know the CEO of your company is counting all his liquid lunches as time worked.
It is in *no* way inaccessible to these businesses: as long as they don't make modifications, they are free to use it as much as they want in pretty much whatever manner they want -- say, if the government develops some swoopty file compression routines or whatever, Microsoft could use that software to package up every version of Windows from here to eternity, and then enclose on the disk the software to decompress it.
What the GPL prevents is Microsoft changing something stupid in the software to willfully break compatibility, then reselling the software using their monopoly powers as something like Microsoft SuperDuperZip.
The GPL does not prevent you from using software that you get, it prevents you from making changes and then keep those changes from the public.
Real thieves who care could always buy a GPS simulator from someone like Stel (uhm, Stanford Electronics, I believe). They're about $300k or so, but they provide very accurate simulations of constellations, etc. -- just feed them a time of day and a starting location, and they provide the actual RF that you would see if you had an antenna in that location at that time: you in fact use them by plugging them into the antenna port on things like Rockwell-Collin's PLGR (Precision Lightweight GPS Receiver).
They're neat, they allow for repeat testability (any time can be April 02 1306 at GMT -7 at coordinates XYZ), and you can use them when getting a GPS feed inside is hard, as it frequently is. I've found that even being under a metal awning will kill a GPS signal.
Oh yes they do use GPS. They (Tomahawk) also use what is known as a DSMAC ( Digital Scene Matching Area Corellator), but definitely GPS is in use.
Note however, that the update rate of GPS is low, so that as speed increases, you need something else -- missiles have inertial guidance packages that use the GPS data to periodically "sync" their estimated location (from the speed/altitude/acceleration data of the inertial guidance unit) with the GPS data.
As you've noted, if accuracy is key (and most of the time it is -- but not for Tomahawk, which is subsonic (read: easier to guide with GPS) and carries a *big* warhead)), then you need something for terminal guidance: lasers, IR, millimeter wave, ladar, whatever.
Do you think it's not coming? However, the Navy is very sensitive about putting icky chemicals on their ships: they are very worried about fires and such. A number of changes were made to potential BMD weapons for Navy ships for this very reason.
Note, however, that besides Phalanx, the Navy has RAM (Rolling Airframe Missile) and ESSM (Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile) for cruise missile defense.
My understanding is that it will be part of their move away from MIPS to IA-64 (Itanium):
I believe that IRIX is so tied up in the MIPS architecture that a stable/usable port
would be impossible (especially for things like sprocs -- their proprietary
threading-type model).
Also, why not move to Linux if you're no longer using a processor like MIPS?
You'll get all the development stuff for free, you will be buzzword-compliant,
and the additions you'll want to add (like massive pre-emptiblity -- I believe
there is already a Linux patch for this) could get major testing in the real world.
Hell, your patches might even get written for you.
Besides, SGI is not in the software business: they build high-end computing boxes
where you need a number of at least reasonable powerful CPUs coordinating their
tasks tightly (at least that's what we use our various 8-way boxes for: simulations
with a 1kHZ frame rate).
Also, I think you'd have to worry about what would happen after vaporization: I mean, in the atmosphere, once something's vaporized, it'll fall to the ground as a new flavor of dirt, but in space wouldn't this just lead to gajillions of superfast droplets as the target recondensed?
Wow, what an unconvential argument. Never heard that one before.
Listen, most people wouldn't know good design if it bit them in the ass. Ask people if they think the design of a Ford Explorer is good. Probably you'll just get a shrug, "Yeah, I guess." Maybe someone a bit more knowledgable will give you somewhat more detail. So don't go with the "laypeople will be horrified" bit. It's obviously not true for other industries -- why would it be true for software?
Of course, probably most cars *are* pretty well designed. Why? Because it's EASIER to find faults, AND there is legal liability if you screw it up. The second is obviously not true in the software industry, and of course design is HARDER in the software industry if you are trying for any kind of interaction with other systems: i.e., you have to live with whatever design faults are in the stuff you have to talk to, there from the last software fad.
Therefore, you're left with the fact that good design only happens: a) when it is possible, b) when it is mandated, and/or c) when the programmer/designer (usually the same person) WANTS it to be that way.
I always try hard in code that I write to do the proper thing, but employer's don't care about design, by and large: hell, most of them don't even care about maintainability -- they want a working executable yesterday.
Sure, some developers are lazy, and some don't make the push for a clean design when they could probably get one. But until the public starts *demanding* reliable software, don't expect any of this to change.
Remember, all pressure has to come from the customer -- the best designed, coded, debugged, and maintained software I see is the embedded code in missiles: it HAS work, and well, or else. There are design documents, requirements documents, official documentation of bugs, simulations, etc., all to make sure that things will work correctly when they must. This means no six month product cycles, though -- time is what is required for all good products, including software.
And look at that "Operating Profit as a % of sales" for last year: 35%! To me, that's bordering on obscene.
To compare with another industry that people accuse of gouging, look at the defense contractor Raytheon. They don't appear to have a nice number laid out in their annual report (or at least not one I can find easily), but if "Operating Income" is synonymous with profit (dunno), then for 2000:
$1.625 billion on $16.895 billion in net sales:
9.61% operating profit: i.e., Roche was 3.64 times as profitable.
So here's a word from an angry consumer: *fuck* you for charging what the market can "bear", as protected by Congress against laws allowing re-importation, etc.
There was an article in the Washington Post's Outlook section (not a hard news section, granted) that had some reporting about how disingenous the drug companies are about development costs versus how much they spend marketing. I guess there was a study in the 60s (?) on the same idea, with the conclusion that drug companies gouged, but too many Congressmen are owned by Pfizer, etc. for anything to ever happen.
Er, howabout the fact that if it *had* happened in
a free software product, then the Russian or American teams could most likely have hunted the bug down themselves and fixed it, or even had help from the author(s). It therefore would have been less of this conspiracy-of-silence type situation, which everyone loves.
Very few free software people have any illusions about there being bugs in their stuff, and so the response would have been more of an "Oh shit, do you have a patch?" and less of a "Nope, can't happen." scenario. It's more Microsoft's response (and their continual attitude that their products are fault-free) than the fact that the bug was there that irritates.
1) Er, exotic and high tech? In what capacity? Hello, it's shit in a can! Maybe it's been sealed in glass first, maybe not. Probably it's perceived as high tech, but that's a problem of perception, not actuality. Yeah, it's radioactive shit in a can, but isn't that better than radioactive shit coming out a smoke stack and carpeting the environment? The only real waste product from a nuclear plant is heat: thus cooling towers and ponds.
2) Nuclear storage could have been/could be less of a storage w/ breeder reactors: Carter stopped this. People say: 'Argh, they make plutonium'. Yes, they do. You can burn that. Also, we pretty much know where the plants are (hint: it's where we're doing the breeding): i.e., where the potential for terrorism is.
Also, the nuclear industry was promised a permanent storage facility in like *1980*: I think Scientific American had an article about this some years back. But still the fighting over Yucca Mountain continues. I agree that some of the lengthy debate there had made good sense, but I don't think it makes sense to have waste continually building up on pads at the plant sites. It's a 'close your eyes and hope it goes away problem' for essentially every politician in the country.
So the nuclear industry can't burn/recycle their waste, and they're not allowed to get rid of it either. And yet, NO DEATH HAS EVER BEEN DIRECTLY ATTRIBUTED TO THE COMMERCIAL NUCLEAR POWER INDUSTRY. Of course, the government ignores the regulations it imposes on the commercial industry, witness Hanford, but note that number: 0. How many coal miners die every year?
'Course, despite the tense rhetoric there, I don't have any solid proof of this, so maybe I'm wrong. But ya gotta admit, it can't be a lot.
3) As far as the trusting leaders thing goes: you trust them to run fossil-plants in a reasonable manner, you trust them to keep our nuclear arsenal safe in a reasonable manner, etc. Why is the commercial nuclear industry under such almighty fierce scrutiny? RTGs have been used for years: have you ever seen videos of the tests they put those things thru? We should be so fortunate as to have things that are tested that well in common use. I expect the over-engineering on a nuclear booster (*especially* given Challenger) would be as high.
4) Again, booga! We might have a wreck. Do you smoke? Higher risk of death there than with this. Drive a car? Eat fatty foods? Have unprotected sex? Cross streets against the light? Swallow without the requisite number of chews? You could say the catastrophic results outweigh the minimal risks, but I see no evidence that everyone on the Right Coast would get cancer if the thing *did* crash. So chance of big problem ---- that big: chance of something really bad happening even if it crash: ---- even smaller. Amazing things that could result from having massive amazing boosters: quite a lot. Just think of the cool stuff that could go up if we had a proven, reliable booster: maybe the space station in a couple of launches instead of scads, etc.
Ah, it doesn't matter. All you need is one fearful pussy somewhere in the approval heirarchy, and you know there is one.
Almost all the points in the essay are good. However, my over-riding thought remains: So. What.?
Most of the points deal with how our understanding is limited, how genes don't fully determine out heritage, etc.
That will not stop insurance companies!
I understood most of the scientific truths before this, and I think most of the other Slashdot readers do as well, but none of this reflects the reality of what is and will continue to be the political/economic reality in this country and around the world: namely, that those who benefit by the ability to either:
Use genes as a scapegoat to increase profitability.
Use genes as a scapegoat for enacting laws that benefit their budget/worldview/buzzword-of-the-week
Who knows what else.
will continue to bend and distort these truths to their own ends.
Sure, maybe arguments like these will become more common knowledge, and thus aid in the fight against those who practice these discriminations, but you all must see the way that people are willing to give up their responsibility to be informed, especially in matters deemed scientific.
I guess I just have no faith that this essay isn't orthogonal to the world we live in.
C first. Yeah, yeah, assembly: I think it is more valuable to teach something closer to a paradigm students can cope with before you go that low. Show them the C, then use -S to show them assembly as you teach it to them. Use Motorola assembly: I learned 6800, 68HC11, 6805 (? I think) and there's
68000 or 68040 as well. Show them MIPs assembly and let them use SPIM. After using C, the students will have more appreciation for seeing translations of their code. Stay away from x86 assembly, or just use a tiny subset: shit, how many instruction weirdnesses does x86 assembly have anyway? Stack-based floating point? Eewww! No one uses x86 for embedded or real-time work, anyway.
Have them re-write some of their C stuff in assembly. Look at compiler-generated code w/ various optimizations to really make the idea of optimizations like loop unrolling sink in. Make them write an OS in assembly (hell, I did it) to teach them about hard stuff.
Also, C plays nice with pretty much every other language, and you can get compilers, debuggers, editors with nice syntax support, stuff like lint, and all kinds of crud as support. Everyone knows C: you can ask your grandma for help with your code. In addition to support, multi-language programming is much easier w/ C and other stuff (Ada or Fortran, not so much Perl from what I've seen): Ada has pragmas, and Fortran just does the Right Thing.
Then damage them irrevocably with C++. Don't get me wrong, I like C++ in many ways, but mother of God, that's one big ass language. Some of the problems you can run into with virtual functions and templates and similar things are just plain *hard*. You will learn to DESIGN programs first with C++ if you want to avoid killing yourself later.
Also, if you're actually going to teach C++, and not just C w/ classes, you need to use the STL. Hell, I'm just getting deep into that now (on my own time: we never used it when I was in school) with the 'STL Tutorial and Reference Guide (2nd Edition)', while reading Bjarne's 'The C++ Programming Language' at the same time, and it
could almost give you nightmares. So not first, but you *need* to know C++.
From what I've seen, Eiffel is cleaner, and might be good as a teaching language, but I'd prefer to teach straight from what students will eventually use.
Next, you teach them Perl. The syntax will make them cry, but you can slap them hard and then them
home to work on it. Once they've learned to use hashes and are beaten with 'use strict' and 'perl -w', they will understand the power of higher level languages. Dunno Python, but the idea of a white-spaced conscious language sends shivers up my spine. My God, how will vim find the beginning of a block? Pretty-printing embedded in a language? Shudder.
Java is not for use in the kind of work I do: we do real-time simulations and low-level systems work. I've read a little bit from an old copy of the Tiger book, and maybe in the world of commercial applications it would be useful, but for bespoke work like happens here (we're a hardware company), it's useless. Hell, we have to squeeze speed out of our systems anyway we can.
You can do this w/ SGI's native compiler. They have a tool called SpeedShop. Using a command like
ssrun -ideal foo
(or something like that: books @ work) and then
using another tool with a command like:
prof -feedback_somethin foo.ideal.m1234
where the foo.ideal.m1234 is a file created as the process (w/ pid 1234) ran, you get some feeback file called foo.fdb.
Then, you recompile your app using a switch where you give it the name of the feedback file. Voila!
Unfortunately, I only have tried it with a toy executable, and performance actually decreased slight over using -Ofast=ip32_12k and other options. I dunno if gcc has something similar. I certainly don't remember seeing it in any of the documentation.
Well, I haven't thought this through completely, so it may sound a little reactionary, but here goes:
a) Judging from the little I've heard, apparently none of the ticket-holders knew they were being monitored. Probably this is completely legal: I don't believe it is required that you be notified when you are under observation (like there's no notification in stores, for example). Therefore no one knew that their picture was being taken and (more importantly) compared against others: there was no opportunity to avoid the game (yeah right!) if you objected.
b) At what point do we just give the hell up on any Constitutional right to privacy? I realize that the Constitution only applies to government, but think about it: there is almost no place now where you are not monitored. Your employer can monitor you, any store you visit can monitor you, and many public places are beginning to monitor you as well. We just say -- hey, stay out of public/private/all places -- but is that the solution we are looking for?
"Hey, bub, you can be private in those few square feet that you personally inhabit, and no where else"? Maybe that's what we're coming too, as the technology to monitor public/private places becomes more available and more enticing (it's safer!), but is that what we want? Isn't that 90% of the way to Big Brother?
Definitely it is not good to stomp all over property laws, but seeing as how we're now using taxpayer money to finance private stadiums (like Tampa?), at what point does a person's right not to be under constant scrutiny come into play? Are we waiting for TV broadcasts made up entirely out of surveillance footage: "Drunken Losers at Super Bowl XXXV! Tonight on Fox!"
Ah, whatever: I know the answer, and so do all of you.
"Drunken Losers @ LinuxWorld! Tonight on CBS after Survivor!"
As someone who works in the defense industry,
let me just say that weapons systems are *hard*.
You do not have the luxury of going "dang, a bug"
when your missile just decided to blow up
friendlies by mistake
Now, I work entirely on missiles, which have a
fairly small operational scope (kill *that*),
and I know how many hours (read, YEARS) missiles
spend in development, how much testing is done,
how many simulation runs are made, and the idea
of trying to build algorithms that try and decide
whether a *human* *being* should DIE is not
something I would relish or encourage.
IFF sytems break, they are destroyed in combat,
and maybe they are jammed. Allied systems aren't
compatible, or a wire gets loose, or whatever.
In my very not humble opinion, only PEOPLE get
to decide when people die. Remember, KISS,
and AI fire systems are most definitely not simple.
I used to check the page counts on our HPs at ASU when I would change the toner. Some of the LaserJet 4Si's have printed 1.7 MILLION pages. Figuring that a ream (500 sheets) is about 2in high, I think you're looking at a stack of paper 1.28 MILES high.
When people ask me for printer recommendations, I always tell them to look for old HPs -- if they can get them.
Slashdot Mirror
The information on their website says the time step is 30 minutes and that their box is 3.75 degrees longitude by 2.25 degrees latitude (or visa versa: BIG, in any event).
Therefore, how do they expect this to work -- additionally absent any outside changes in the environment?
What I mean is, how do they know if they did a good job? Perhaps if the results are all very close to the current day climate, I'd buy that they got it right, but if they have a reasonable distribution of results, how do you decide? I mean, we've been clear-cutting the hell out of forests left and right for years: do they somehow takes this into account? Heck, how do they present the geographic information about the Earth: this bit has forest, this bit is desert. I would think that this would make quite a bit of difference in results (changes in albedo, for instance).
I certainly wish them luck, but they're not getting my PC for that long without something more detailed , informationwise.
Dumbass. Remember, this is a *business* expense: you are researching, uhm, alternative motivational methodologies or something.
Examining the pseudo-probabal technology frameworks of a strong competitor (after all, you're not supposed to underestimate the power of the dark side of the Force).
Maybe you could pawn if off as researching the likelihood of 'alternative labor methodologies': you know, rather than hiring out coding to foreign countries, you could just clone coders from this country.
The possibilities are endless. Remember, you know the CEO of your company is counting all his liquid lunches as time worked.
No.
It is in *no* way inaccessible to these businesses: as long as they don't make modifications, they are free to use it as much as they want in pretty much whatever manner they want -- say, if the government develops some swoopty file compression routines or whatever, Microsoft could use that software to package up every version of Windows from here to eternity, and then enclose on the disk the software to decompress it.
What the GPL prevents is Microsoft changing something stupid in the software to willfully break compatibility, then reselling the software using their monopoly powers as something like Microsoft SuperDuperZip.
The GPL does not prevent you from using software that you get, it prevents you from making changes and then keep those changes from the public.
Real thieves who care could always buy a GPS simulator from someone like Stel (uhm, Stanford Electronics, I believe). They're about $300k or so, but they provide very accurate simulations of constellations, etc. -- just feed them a time of day and a starting location, and they provide the actual RF that you would see if you had an antenna in that location at that time: you in fact use them by plugging them into the antenna port on things like Rockwell-Collin's PLGR (Precision Lightweight GPS Receiver).
They're neat, they allow for repeat testability (any time can be April 02 1306 at GMT -7 at coordinates XYZ), and you can use them when getting a GPS feed inside is hard, as it frequently is. I've found that even being under a metal awning will kill a GPS signal.
Oh yes they do use GPS. They (Tomahawk) also use what is known as a DSMAC ( Digital Scene Matching Area Corellator), but definitely GPS is in use.
Note however, that the update rate of GPS is low, so that as speed increases, you need something else -- missiles have inertial guidance packages that use the GPS data to periodically "sync" their estimated location (from the speed/altitude/acceleration data of the inertial guidance unit) with the GPS data.
As you've noted, if accuracy is key (and most of the time it is -- but not for Tomahawk, which is subsonic (read: easier to guide with GPS) and carries a *big* warhead)), then you need something for terminal guidance: lasers, IR, millimeter wave, ladar, whatever.
Do you think it's not coming? However, the Navy is very sensitive about putting icky chemicals on their ships: they are very worried about fires and such. A number of changes were made to potential BMD weapons for Navy ships for this very reason.
Note, however, that besides Phalanx, the Navy has RAM (Rolling Airframe Missile) and ESSM (Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile) for cruise missile defense.
No: I imagine a lot of stuff from people like me (coders), would be '=' '->', Alt-Tab, Ctl-Alt-Right-Arrow, '(', '{', etc.
For plain English, like you'd see in a newspaper, the counts are probably right, but horribly wrong for actual computer use (by programmers at least).
My understanding is that it will be part of their move away from MIPS to IA-64 (Itanium):
I believe that IRIX is so tied up in the MIPS architecture that a stable/usable port
would be impossible (especially for things like sprocs -- their proprietary
threading-type model).
Also, why not move to Linux if you're no longer using a processor like MIPS?
You'll get all the development stuff for free, you will be buzzword-compliant,
and the additions you'll want to add (like massive pre-emptiblity -- I believe
there is already a Linux patch for this) could get major testing in the real world.
Hell, your patches might even get written for you.
Besides, SGI is not in the software business: they build high-end computing boxes
where you need a number of at least reasonable powerful CPUs coordinating their
tasks tightly (at least that's what we use our various 8-way boxes for: simulations
with a 1kHZ frame rate).
Also, I think you'd have to worry about what would happen after vaporization: I mean, in the atmosphere, once something's vaporized, it'll fall to the ground as a new flavor of dirt, but in space wouldn't this just lead to gajillions of superfast droplets as the target recondensed?
Because they are way far away (in deployment time).
Because they don't work way far away (in distance: ~hundreds of miles or even fewer for more tactical stuff like this one: ABL is like 100 miles)
Because it's better to have multiple layers of defense (especially against weapons of mass destruction: ABL is boost phase, EKV is midcourse).
etc., etc., etc.
Err, ABL == AirBorne Laser (or similar) and EKV == Exo-atmospheric Kill Vehicle
Wow, what an unconvential argument. Never heard that one before.
Listen, most people wouldn't know good design if it bit them in the ass. Ask people if they think the design of a Ford Explorer is good. Probably you'll just get a shrug, "Yeah, I guess." Maybe someone a bit more knowledgable will give you somewhat more detail. So don't go with the "laypeople will be horrified" bit. It's obviously not true for other industries -- why would it be true for software?
Of course, probably most cars *are* pretty well designed. Why? Because it's EASIER to find faults, AND there is legal liability if you screw it up. The second is obviously not true in the software industry, and of course design is HARDER in the software industry if you are trying for any kind of interaction with other systems: i.e., you have to live with whatever design faults are in the stuff you have to talk to, there from the last software fad.
Therefore, you're left with the fact that good design only happens: a) when it is possible, b) when it is mandated, and/or c) when the programmer/designer (usually the same person) WANTS it to be that way.
I always try hard in code that I write to do the proper thing, but employer's don't care about design, by and large: hell, most of them don't even care about maintainability -- they want a working executable yesterday.
Sure, some developers are lazy, and some don't make the push for a clean design when they could probably get one. But until the public starts *demanding* reliable software, don't expect any of this to change.
Remember, all pressure has to come from the customer -- the best designed, coded, debugged, and maintained software I see is the embedded code in missiles: it HAS work, and well, or else. There are design documents, requirements documents, official documentation of bugs, simulations, etc., all to make sure that things will work correctly when they must. This means no six month product cycles, though -- time is what is required for all good products, including software.
And look at that "Operating Profit as a % of sales" for last year: 35%! To me, that's bordering on obscene.
To compare with another industry that people accuse of gouging, look at the defense contractor Raytheon. They don't appear to have a nice number laid out in their annual report (or at least not one I can find easily), but if "Operating Income" is synonymous with profit (dunno), then for 2000:
$1.625 billion on $16.895 billion in net sales:
9.61% operating profit: i.e., Roche was 3.64 times as profitable.
So here's a word from an angry consumer: *fuck* you for charging what the market can "bear", as protected by Congress against laws allowing re-importation, etc.
There was an article in the Washington Post's Outlook section (not a hard news section, granted) that had some reporting about how disingenous the drug companies are about development costs versus how much they spend marketing. I guess there was a study in the 60s (?) on the same idea, with the conclusion that drug companies gouged, but too many Congressmen are owned by Pfizer, etc. for anything to ever happen.
Not that I'm bitter.
Er, howabout the fact that if it *had* happened in a free software product, then the Russian or American teams could most likely have hunted the bug down themselves and fixed it, or even had help from the author(s). It therefore would have been less of this conspiracy-of-silence type situation, which everyone loves.
Very few free software people have any illusions about there being bugs in their stuff, and so the response would have been more of an "Oh shit, do you have a patch?" and less of a "Nope, can't happen." scenario. It's more Microsoft's response (and their continual attitude that their products are fault-free) than the fact that the bug was there that irritates.
The new Tomahawk (Tactical Tomahawk) uses a 300MHz PowerPC 603.
FYI and all that.
1) Er, exotic and high tech? In what capacity? Hello, it's shit in a can! Maybe it's been sealed in glass first, maybe not. Probably it's perceived as high tech, but that's a problem of perception, not actuality. Yeah, it's radioactive shit in a can, but isn't that better than radioactive shit coming out a smoke stack and carpeting the environment? The only real waste product from a nuclear plant is heat: thus cooling towers and ponds.
2) Nuclear storage could have been/could be less of a storage w/ breeder reactors: Carter stopped this. People say: 'Argh, they make plutonium'. Yes, they do. You can burn that. Also, we pretty much know where the plants are (hint: it's where we're doing the breeding): i.e., where the potential for terrorism is.
Also, the nuclear industry was promised a permanent storage facility in like *1980*: I think Scientific American had an article about this some years back. But still the fighting over Yucca Mountain continues. I agree that some of the lengthy debate there had made good sense, but I don't think it makes sense to have waste continually building up on pads at the plant sites. It's a 'close your eyes and hope it goes away problem' for essentially every politician in the country.
So the nuclear industry can't burn/recycle their waste, and they're not allowed to get rid of it either. And yet, NO DEATH HAS EVER BEEN DIRECTLY ATTRIBUTED TO THE COMMERCIAL NUCLEAR POWER INDUSTRY. Of course, the government ignores the regulations it imposes on the commercial industry, witness Hanford, but note that number: 0. How many coal miners die every year?
'Course, despite the tense rhetoric there, I don't have any solid proof of this, so maybe I'm wrong. But ya gotta admit, it can't be a lot.
3) As far as the trusting leaders thing goes: you trust them to run fossil-plants in a reasonable manner, you trust them to keep our nuclear arsenal safe in a reasonable manner, etc. Why is the commercial nuclear industry under such almighty fierce scrutiny? RTGs have been used for years: have you ever seen videos of the tests they put those things thru? We should be so fortunate as to have things that are tested that well in common use. I expect the over-engineering on a nuclear booster (*especially* given Challenger) would be as high.
4) Again, booga! We might have a wreck. Do you smoke? Higher risk of death there than with this. Drive a car? Eat fatty foods? Have unprotected sex? Cross streets against the light? Swallow without the requisite number of chews? You could say the catastrophic results outweigh the minimal risks, but I see no evidence that everyone on the Right Coast would get cancer if the thing *did* crash. So chance of big problem ---- that big: chance of something really bad happening even if it crash: ---- even smaller. Amazing things that could result from having massive amazing boosters: quite a lot. Just think of the cool stuff that could go up if we had a proven, reliable booster: maybe the space station in a couple of launches instead of scads, etc.
Ah, it doesn't matter. All you need is one fearful pussy somewhere in the approval heirarchy, and you know there is one.
Almost all the points in the essay are good. However, my over-riding thought remains: So. What.?
Most of the points deal with how our understanding is limited, how genes don't fully determine out heritage, etc.
That will not stop insurance companies!
I understood most of the scientific truths before this, and I think most of the other Slashdot readers do as well, but none of this reflects the reality of what is and will continue to be the political/economic reality in this country and around the world: namely, that those who benefit by the ability to either:
- Use genes as a scapegoat to increase profitability.
- Use genes as a scapegoat for enacting laws that benefit their budget/worldview/buzzword-of-the-week
- Who knows what else.
will continue to bend and distort these truths to their own ends.Sure, maybe arguments like these will become more common knowledge, and thus aid in the fight against those who practice these discriminations, but you all must see the way that people are willing to give up their responsibility to be informed, especially in matters deemed scientific.
I guess I just have no faith that this essay isn't orthogonal to the world we live in.
At least in AZ, speeding and almost all other minor traffic offenses are *civil*, not criminal: i.e., not misdemeanors.
Toot my own horn here. Toot toot.
C first. Yeah, yeah, assembly: I think it is more valuable to teach something closer to a paradigm students can cope with before you go that low. Show them the C, then use -S to show them assembly as you teach it to them. Use Motorola assembly: I learned 6800, 68HC11, 6805 (? I think) and there's 68000 or 68040 as well. Show them MIPs assembly and let them use SPIM. After using C, the students will have more appreciation for seeing translations of their code. Stay away from x86 assembly, or just use a tiny subset: shit, how many instruction weirdnesses does x86 assembly have anyway? Stack-based floating point? Eewww! No one uses x86 for embedded or real-time work, anyway.
Have them re-write some of their C stuff in assembly. Look at compiler-generated code w/ various optimizations to really make the idea of optimizations like loop unrolling sink in. Make them write an OS in assembly (hell, I did it) to teach them about hard stuff.
Also, C plays nice with pretty much every other language, and you can get compilers, debuggers, editors with nice syntax support, stuff like lint, and all kinds of crud as support. Everyone knows C: you can ask your grandma for help with your code. In addition to support, multi-language programming is much easier w/ C and other stuff (Ada or Fortran, not so much Perl from what I've seen): Ada has pragmas, and Fortran just does the Right Thing.
Then damage them irrevocably with C++. Don't get me wrong, I like C++ in many ways, but mother of God, that's one big ass language. Some of the problems you can run into with virtual functions and templates and similar things are just plain *hard*. You will learn to DESIGN programs first with C++ if you want to avoid killing yourself later.
Also, if you're actually going to teach C++, and not just C w/ classes, you need to use the STL. Hell, I'm just getting deep into that now (on my own time: we never used it when I was in school) with the 'STL Tutorial and Reference Guide (2nd Edition)', while reading Bjarne's 'The C++ Programming Language' at the same time, and it could almost give you nightmares. So not first, but you *need* to know C++.
From what I've seen, Eiffel is cleaner, and might be good as a teaching language, but I'd prefer to teach straight from what students will eventually use.
Next, you teach them Perl. The syntax will make them cry, but you can slap them hard and then them home to work on it. Once they've learned to use hashes and are beaten with 'use strict' and 'perl -w', they will understand the power of higher level languages. Dunno Python, but the idea of a white-spaced conscious language sends shivers up my spine. My God, how will vim find the beginning of a block? Pretty-printing embedded in a language? Shudder.
Java is not for use in the kind of work I do: we do real-time simulations and low-level systems work. I've read a little bit from an old copy of the Tiger book, and maybe in the world of commercial applications it would be useful, but for bespoke work like happens here (we're a hardware company), it's useless. Hell, we have to squeeze speed out of our systems anyway we can.
You can do this w/ SGI's native compiler. They have a tool called SpeedShop. Using a command like
ssrun -ideal foo
(or something like that: books @ work) and then using another tool with a command like:
prof -feedback_somethin foo.ideal.m1234
where the foo.ideal.m1234 is a file created as the process (w/ pid 1234) ran, you get some feeback file called foo.fdb.
Then, you recompile your app using a switch where you give it the name of the feedback file. Voila! Unfortunately, I only have tried it with a toy executable, and performance actually decreased slight over using -Ofast=ip32_12k and other options. I dunno if gcc has something similar. I certainly don't remember seeing it in any of the documentation.
Well, I haven't thought this through completely, so it may sound a little reactionary, but here goes:
a) Judging from the little I've heard, apparently none of the ticket-holders knew they were being monitored. Probably this is completely legal: I don't believe it is required that you be notified when you are under observation (like there's no notification in stores, for example). Therefore no one knew that their picture was being taken and (more importantly) compared against others: there was no opportunity to avoid the game (yeah right!) if you objected.
b) At what point do we just give the hell up on any Constitutional right to privacy? I realize that the Constitution only applies to government, but think about it: there is almost no place now where you are not monitored. Your employer can monitor you, any store you visit can monitor you, and many public places are beginning to monitor you as well. We just say -- hey, stay out of public/private/all places -- but is that the solution we are looking for?
"Hey, bub, you can be private in those few square feet that you personally inhabit, and no where else"? Maybe that's what we're coming too, as the technology to monitor public/private places becomes more available and more enticing (it's safer!), but is that what we want? Isn't that 90% of the way to Big Brother?
Definitely it is not good to stomp all over property laws, but seeing as how we're now using taxpayer money to finance private stadiums (like Tampa?), at what point does a person's right not to be under constant scrutiny come into play? Are we waiting for TV broadcasts made up entirely out of surveillance footage: "Drunken Losers at Super Bowl XXXV! Tonight on Fox!"
Ah, whatever: I know the answer, and so do all of you.
"Drunken Losers @ LinuxWorld! Tonight on CBS after Survivor!"
As someone who works in the defense industry,
let me just say that weapons systems are *hard*.
You do not have the luxury of going "dang, a bug"
when your missile just decided to blow up
friendlies by mistake
Now, I work entirely on missiles, which have a
fairly small operational scope (kill *that*),
and I know how many hours (read, YEARS) missiles
spend in development, how much testing is done,
how many simulation runs are made, and the idea
of trying to build algorithms that try and decide
whether a *human* *being* should DIE is not
something I would relish or encourage.
IFF sytems break, they are destroyed in combat,
and maybe they are jammed. Allied systems aren't
compatible, or a wire gets loose, or whatever.
In my very not humble opinion, only PEOPLE get
to decide when people die. Remember, KISS,
and AI fire systems are most definitely not simple.
I used to check the page counts on our HPs at ASU when I would change the toner. Some of the LaserJet 4Si's have printed 1.7 MILLION pages. Figuring that a ream (500 sheets) is about 2in high, I think you're looking at a stack of paper 1.28 MILES high.
When people ask me for printer recommendations, I always tell them to look for old HPs -- if they can get them.