Personally, having worked in that industry (tape backup software) for 10 years, and seeing several really good products killed in mergers, if it were MY job to take care of a company's data protection, I would design each and every server (service, corporate application) so that it could be re-installed like an appliance - completely automated, either via scripted install, or images, with redundant standby boxes. (servers are best done by scripted installs). I would ensure that absolutely no persistent user data lives on the same volume as the system volume. I would make sure that all persistent data is raided, replicated, distributed, and quintuply-redundantly shipped all over the network, so that even if a building were exploded, all of the data would be secure and recoverable.
Desktops? User has two choices - keep data on a fileserver, or pray.
Any software that requires a complicated manual re-install coupled with an OS reinstall, in order to access data, is simply engineered wrong. That's how software was written in the 1980's. It's no longer possible for an enterprise to operate safely under stupid vendor constraints like that. In short: the need to back up an entire server OS and applications, in order to protect special data on that server, is a result of poorly designed software, or a poorly designed system.
Any other method of backup/recovery is just plain retarded. Tapes are for archiving.
Having been an employee there back in the original merger that brought the IBM guy in to open up the big Orlando call-center, the decision to go with that particular "crappy tool" was 100% political. We had a tool that worked. Our customers were more than satisfied. It was a steady downhill slide after that, but the other side of the merger had the pull with the big software distributors, so THEY were the ones that had the big revenue numbers, and they were the ones that won the technology battle. So what they called a merger, was actually a marketplace execution.
Unfortunately - the arguments IN FAVOR of the remote-controlled drones (and other, related technologies) are stronger (at least in the eyes of the folks who are making these decisions - and in our country, when it comes down to it, the people who make these decisions are the voters).
These technologies are coming. There are enormous sums of money being invested in the development of them. We can whine and complain - we can lobby against them, (to our detriment, because if we don't use them, the other side will, sooner or later) - but we can't stop it. And as the technology advances, things will start coming about that we can't even imagine today.
Peace activists HAVE been successful at getting treaties, to limit use of nuclear weapons, militarization of space, chemical weapons, lasers for blinding, maiming weapons, torture, propaganda, etc. There are abuses, there have been areas where the treaties are ignored, or dropped because they're "outdated" - but I think there needs to be some checks on these kinds of technologies, some international treaties dictating things like failsafes, overrides, or tamper-proof recording devices (so that if they are abused, they record evidence that can't be covered up), or things like that.
It's also a nice notion to maybe tie the right to vote to national military service - but unfortunately, the one crucial missing piece of technology we haven't yet developed is how to keep well-connected people from sleazing their way out of their civic duties.
The statistic arguing that bicycle helmets make cyclists, in the aggregate, riskier riders - is the same as saying that any given individual rider, when given a bicycle helmet - will be a riskier rider.
This ignores the fact that - some riders are going to be safe and prudent riders, helmet or no. It also ignores the fact that helmets rolled out to younger riders first, in the late 1980's, and younger riders, in the aggregate, are more aggressive, riskier riders (and drivers - car insurance statistics prove this). It also isolates helmets as the only variable - and ignores the possibility that rolling out helmets, along with a bicycle-safety training course, might lead to safer riding behavior, AND better outcomes from accidents.
So, as we deploy drones, I would hope that it's not just an issue of hardware, but that training goes alongside it; for safe, prudent, and considerate operation of said equipment. (of course, there's no real incentive out there for this, because there's no inherent mechanism that would drive it, other than the occasional well-publicized civilian massacre, that gets covered-up or glossed over or subsumed by the latest Lindsay Lohan story in the media)
Military sniping is usually done in teams of two - a spotter and a sniper. (mainly because the sniper's field of view is constrained by the scope).
A single robot could perform these two tasks; additional sensors could spot anyone approaching from behind or the sides, or from the air. The robot can reliably record all the data from the op, to confirm kills, etc. A robot could also be engineered to a form-factor (size and/or shape) that is more stealthy than a pair of humans, or more mobile for certain types of terrain (trees, cliffs, underwater; rivers/lakes). I know, the software is nowhere near this yet - but we're only scratching the surface of what is possible.
And the point of this is; it's only a matter of time before humans are replaced on the battlefield. As a measure of effectiveness of doing the job: killing the enemy, capturing territory and resources. What technology can't do effectively: provide security and civilized cohesiveness. We're seeing this in Iraq - already, where our strategy was to replace quantity of soldiers with technology.
The result? World's fastest, and least bloody invasion. Really, a miracle, compared to every other comparable invasion in human history. (except maybe Poland, Czeckoslovakia, and a few others where the invasion was more political than military). The invasion went well, the USA captured lots of territory in record time. But with insufficient troops to secure that territory, we have the absolute clusterfuck you see today. Planes can't solve it. Artillery can't solve it. Tanks can't solve it. Not if your goal is to protect civilians.
How could robots possibly solve this problem? Crank tens of thousands of them out of factories in Indonesia and China for $200 a piece (bill the US taxpayer $200,000 a piece) - then ship them to Iraq, then post them at every streetcorner in Iraq, to do what? Just sit there and shoot anything that moves? That wont work until we develop a sensor that can read a person's mind to determine if they're an insurgent, or an innocent civilian.
And you know what? The guy who stands to take a chunk of that $199,800 mark-up doesn't care. The innocent civilians who get shot, will be called "insurgents" on FoxNews. The manufacturer's stock price will shoot up. Americans will keep gassing up their H2, and drive alone to work, and they'll continue to not give a shit. Welcome to the future.
Paying your local Mafia Don "protection" money was about keeping dangerous people out of society too. When you paid your protection, they didn't come around and mess up your home or business. Maybe I should open up one of these "prisons". . .
The economy "exploded" because Reagan borrowed a bunch of money and pumped it into defense spending. This got him re-elected because he was "tough on ruskies" - just like Bush43's profilgate "tough on terrorists" spending got him (barely) (sort of) re-elected in 2004. It's standard rightwing politics. Play to the jingoistic base.
While the borrowing gave us a nice short-term economic boost, we had to raise interest rates to prevent inflation, which caused the S&L collapses, which caused a bit of an economic recession, which is similar to the hangover we're seeing now under Bush43 - only now, we're over-committed in Iraq, so we can't STOP borrowing, and if we raise interest rates any more, we'll be really screwed. They're speculating about a rate CUT - so say hello to massive inflation (which is what Hitler had to contend with when he tried to pull the same shit back in the late 30's).
But this would vary depending on the kind of paper you feed into the printer.
Some papers are manufactured with some pretty nasty chemicals. (Dioxins).
And in the cutting process, if a certain amount of dioxin-laden paper-dust is created, that is released into the air by the printer - that may not be shown in the manufacturer's test. (and indeed; would NOT be the manufacturer's fault. Not if *I* was on the jury!).
Well - as far as Active Directory and enterprise management tools go - there were compelling reasons to upgrade to 2003. XP? Not so much. (though - I prefer XP to 2K - I *do* reflexively set the theme back to Classic when I encounter a new XP system though)>
I'm working with a project that's trying to port some software from XP to Vista - Microsoft's driver model changed drastically as most folks are well aware; one of the downsides; devices now report themselves using localized strings, where they did not previously.
I predict a lot of very expensive work ahead for vendors trying to port any hardware-intensive software from XP to Vista, particularly if it's going to have to support multiple languages. (because you'll now need a bi-lingual developer to re-code the device-tree scanning and parsing code - for each language. Microsoft developer support's still scratching their heads here. . . )
Right, and this is why Porsche put the transaxle in front of the rear axle (with the engine behind). (and in the 928/944, used the same rear-transaxle layout, even with a front engine - for better weight distribution). The center of mass is biased to the rear (which gives Porsche its awful reputation for tail spins), but mainly, straddles the rear axle. (and they reversed this arrangement with the 914, which is what made it probably the best-handling production Porsche there ever was).
In the 1960's, Heavy Lift was the name of the game. Because at that time, it was clear that "the high frontier" was going to determine who had military dominance as a superpower. Doesn't matter if Saturn V was overkill for a compact warhead like the W-88 (or even 50 of them). Military planners were worried about things like, permanently manned space stations from which surveillance and nuclear weapons could be deployed. Nuclear weapons from an ICBM give about 90 minutes warning. Nuclear weapons dropped from orbit, about 15 minutes. A ground-based ICBM force can be taken out with a pre-emptive strike. It's not flexible in bad weather (or wasn't in the 1960's). There was a huge reliance on supplemental strike from bombers.
Heavy-lift gave a nation a theoretical capability to place a massive first-strike force in-orbit, with a much finer hair-trigger for massive engagement than was possible by other means.
International treaties notwithstanding.
The Heavy-Lift capability was demonstrated - but wasn't actually used for that purpose. Until the Soviets failed experiment with Polyus in the late 1980's.
Your hypothetical situation resembles an actual situation - and it strikes me that this LED device would also have another very desirable (for abusive law enforcement) side-effect: rendering bystanders' cameras less effective. . .
I don't think it's pragmatic to use the word "coward" when discussing warfare in an age of ballistic missiles, stealth aircraft, and chemical, nuclear, or biological weapons. Really.
Yes - the mortar guy's going to shoot and run, as a counter-counter measure to counterbattery techniques. Yes, they're already successfully employing these tactics, on a daily basis, in Gaza, Lebanon, and in Baghdad (now that they're getting away with shelling the Green Zone). This counter-countermeasure is cost-competitive with counterbattery techniques, because to employ counterbattery techniques, you have to A) have a counterbattery crew standing by, and B) they need to be able to react quickly and accurately enough to hit the attacker and C) they need to miss the surrounding civilians. (oops - should have thought of that before we got into this war, I guess). Since the cost of randomly blowing up civilians for the defender is too high (politically) - hit-and-run works.
The truck-mounted laser is yet another countermeasure against light artillery.
I'm merely proposing an additional counter-countermeasure, one that is probably very cost-competitive to the truck-mounted laser. Chaff won't linger in the air very long, so these 10 (or however many are needed) shots have to follow eachother very closely. Maybe so closely, it requires more than one mortar (which greatly reduces their accuracy). So that's an added "cost" to the counter-countermeasure. Combine the truck-mounted-laser with other counterbattery techniques, as well as UAV surveillance, and you may actually put a noticeable dent into the enemy's shelling activities.
On the other hand, maybe we should have invaded with half a million or more troops, and secured all the ammo sites at the start of the war, so the insurgents wouldn't have gotten their hands on these weapons. That's what Petraeus (and Powell) recommended, and the Bush crew shot down.
The moral of the story?: A $50 Million truck-mounted-laser is no substitute for common sense. (though, I still think it's neat-o!)
. . . or we could just spin-up these huge-ass gyroscopes, and then drop them from orbit, and they can be picked up and connected to generators, then when they spin down, we can shoot them back up into space to be spun back up!
They're not. The space program was a political maneuver in direct response to the Soviet "threat."
Well, that was the mindset of the politicians who were conned into supporting and funding the programs at the time. But not of many of the fine people who did the engineering that got us there.
Yeah - sometimes I'm afraid that we, as a nation, peaked sometime back in 1973, and are gradually sliding backwards into "Banana Republic" status. A Banana Republic with nukes. But if our politicians can be conned into something as idiotic and brainless as the Iraq war, then there's hope for something as brilliant and visionary as SPS. (I'm just not convinced that once we build it, we can keep it running before the next set of whack jobs either de-funds it, or lets it get blown up).
I saw Dr. O'Neill give a presentation on this in 1976 at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago (I was 9). Damn, when I think of what I thought of the Space Shuttle then, and what I think now - what a disappointment!!!
Honestly - I don't know if the idea is feasible. Maybe it's technically possible, but I don't think human beings can operate and maintain such an infrastructure without individual interest trumping group interest.
Any one of a zillion things could prevent it (individual-interest-wise): - incomplete funding (this is what killed the ISS, yes, look up, see that light flying across the sky? It's dead). - inability to agree on proper technical direction (engineering pissing contest - this is what killed the Shuttle). - space junk (inability to police industrial/military space activity such that we can keep space safe for large power stations to exist without getting clobbered by debris). - whack-jobs (inability to police religious fundamentalist groups, like "Free Market Fundamentalists" who will sabotage the project because it offends their faith).
This is a passive/aggressive response to your subconscious feelings towards such individuals. Deep down, you do not respect them, and do not deem them worthy of name-rememberence.
First one is intercepted halfway to the laser truck, explodes, deploys chaff on detonation. Second one is intercepted halfway between previous interception, and laser truck, because truck's radar was impaired by chaff, second one explodes, deploys chaff on detonation, closer to truck.
Lather, rinse, repeat, until the radar's range is too short to give the computer enough time to find an intercept solution.
Cost to attacker: 9, $500 chaff shells, + 1 $2000 HE shell. Cost to defender: $50 Million laser + whatever else the attacker decides to shell with impunity next.
Given the hardware advances of the past 30 years - you'd think that wouldn't be too much to ask.
Personally - if he said he wanted to break out his own distro, customize the kernel, optimize the whole experience for "responsive GUI" - I think he'd have a good thing going.
However; I'm betting that the trade-offs he'd have to make for functionality we all take for granted now (network connectivity, indexing, virus/spyware scanning, software firewall, bleh bleh bleh) would make such a system a very different beast than what we're used to now.
Functional? Who knows.
Some of the other threads here also make some good points about video drivers. There's only so much we can do here until the video card manufacturers also put this "responsive GUI" item on their priority list. (yeah - both nvidia and ATI provide drivers that are way better than the default OS drivers in terms of performance - but they still leave me with the impression of; have we really come anywhere since 1994?)
And before you say "well business will cut corners"; the LAST THING an airline wants is a crash and therefore they will do the very best to keep the ATC up and running better then ever.
No - they'll just lobby Congress for a privacy law that protects them from having to report crashes. QED.
Then ATC will become the pilot's job, and they can just shut down all the towers and replace them with an automated system of red-yellow-green lights at the end of the runway (and they'll bill the government for maintenance of this system).
We can always be amazed with the "better than nothing" argument.
JK Rowling has her hundreds of millions of fans and hundreds of millions of dollars. She has earned her place in literary history, for good or for ill. I think that any criticism of literary merit is more than appropriate and acceptable. Yes - the books are fun, and yes, I enjoyed them. At the same time, they leave a lot to be desired, and I would much rather my kids spend their time reading something more substantial. On the other hand, we spend a lot of good family time together enjoying these books, and that's worthwhile too.
What pisses me off, is that she got paid in advance for most of these stories. And I really do think she was capable of much better. She hinted at it. She got her money, and fulfilled her contractual obligation. I'm pretty sure that this is the last we will hear from Ms. Rowling. Good riddance to her; and thanks for bringing into the limelight, a new market for books for pre-teens and young teens, which has attracted a lot of good talent.
When I look at the books my kids are asked to read for their classes in school, and when I think of the books *I* was asked to read; (and the books my parents read for their English classes), I only hope that this is laying the groundwork for a writer with some quality to come in later, and write in a similar genre (that might not have otherwise been attempted out of fear of commercial failure - Rowling did not pioneer it; her publishing company did.)
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Personally, having worked in that industry (tape backup software) for 10 years, and seeing several really good products killed in mergers, if it were MY job to take care of a company's data protection, I would design each and every server (service, corporate application) so that it could be re-installed like an appliance - completely automated, either via scripted install, or images, with redundant standby boxes. (servers are best done by scripted installs). I would ensure that absolutely no persistent user data lives on the same volume as the system volume. I would make sure that all persistent data is raided, replicated, distributed, and quintuply-redundantly shipped all over the network, so that even if a building were exploded, all of the data would be secure and recoverable.
Desktops? User has two choices - keep data on a fileserver, or pray.
Any software that requires a complicated manual re-install coupled with an OS reinstall, in order to access data, is simply engineered wrong. That's how software was written in the 1980's. It's no longer possible for an enterprise to operate safely under stupid vendor constraints like that. In short: the need to back up an entire server OS and applications, in order to protect special data on that server, is a result of poorly designed software, or a poorly designed system.
Any other method of backup/recovery is just plain retarded. Tapes are for archiving.
Having been an employee there back in the original merger that brought the IBM guy in to open up the big Orlando call-center, the decision to go with that particular "crappy tool" was 100% political. We had a tool that worked. Our customers were more than satisfied. It was a steady downhill slide after that, but the other side of the merger had the pull with the big software distributors, so THEY were the ones that had the big revenue numbers, and they were the ones that won the technology battle. So what they called a merger, was actually a marketplace execution.
Very well said, very strong arguments.
Unfortunately - the arguments IN FAVOR of the remote-controlled drones (and other, related technologies) are stronger (at least in the eyes of the folks who are making these decisions - and in our country, when it comes down to it, the people who make these decisions are the voters).
These technologies are coming. There are enormous sums of money being invested in the development of them. We can whine and complain - we can lobby against them, (to our detriment, because if we don't use them, the other side will, sooner or later) - but we can't stop it. And as the technology advances, things will start coming about that we can't even imagine today.
Peace activists HAVE been successful at getting treaties, to limit use of nuclear weapons, militarization of space, chemical weapons, lasers for blinding, maiming weapons, torture, propaganda, etc. There are abuses, there have been areas where the treaties are ignored, or dropped because they're "outdated" - but I think there needs to be some checks on these kinds of technologies, some international treaties dictating things like failsafes, overrides, or tamper-proof recording devices (so that if they are abused, they record evidence that can't be covered up), or things like that.
It's also a nice notion to maybe tie the right to vote to national military service - but unfortunately, the one crucial missing piece of technology we haven't yet developed is how to keep well-connected people from sleazing their way out of their civic duties.
Yeah - basically, that argument says that;
The statistic arguing that bicycle helmets make cyclists, in the aggregate, riskier riders - is the same as saying that any given individual rider, when given a bicycle helmet - will be a riskier rider.
This ignores the fact that - some riders are going to be safe and prudent riders, helmet or no. It also ignores the fact that helmets rolled out to younger riders first, in the late 1980's, and younger riders, in the aggregate, are more aggressive, riskier riders (and drivers - car insurance statistics prove this). It also isolates helmets as the only variable - and ignores the possibility that rolling out helmets, along with a bicycle-safety training course, might lead to safer riding behavior, AND better outcomes from accidents.
So, as we deploy drones, I would hope that it's not just an issue of hardware, but that training goes alongside it; for safe, prudent, and considerate operation of said equipment. (of course, there's no real incentive out there for this, because there's no inherent mechanism that would drive it, other than the occasional well-publicized civilian massacre, that gets covered-up or glossed over or subsumed by the latest Lindsay Lohan story in the media)
Military sniping is usually done in teams of two - a spotter and a sniper. (mainly because the sniper's field of view is constrained by the scope).
A single robot could perform these two tasks; additional sensors could spot anyone approaching from behind or the sides, or from the air. The robot can reliably record all the data from the op, to confirm kills, etc. A robot could also be engineered to a form-factor (size and/or shape) that is more stealthy than a pair of humans, or more mobile for certain types of terrain (trees, cliffs, underwater; rivers/lakes). I know, the software is nowhere near this yet - but we're only scratching the surface of what is possible.
And the point of this is; it's only a matter of time before humans are replaced on the battlefield. As a measure of effectiveness of doing the job: killing the enemy, capturing territory and resources. What technology can't do effectively: provide security and civilized cohesiveness. We're seeing this in Iraq - already, where our strategy was to replace quantity of soldiers with technology.
The result? World's fastest, and least bloody invasion. Really, a miracle, compared to every other comparable invasion in human history. (except maybe Poland, Czeckoslovakia, and a few others where the invasion was more political than military). The invasion went well, the USA captured lots of territory in record time. But with insufficient troops to secure that territory, we have the absolute clusterfuck you see today. Planes can't solve it. Artillery can't solve it. Tanks can't solve it. Not if your goal is to protect civilians.
How could robots possibly solve this problem? Crank tens of thousands of them out of factories in Indonesia and China for $200 a piece (bill the US taxpayer $200,000 a piece) - then ship them to Iraq, then post them at every streetcorner in Iraq, to do what? Just sit there and shoot anything that moves? That wont work until we develop a sensor that can read a person's mind to determine if they're an insurgent, or an innocent civilian.
And you know what? The guy who stands to take a chunk of that $199,800 mark-up doesn't care. The innocent civilians who get shot, will be called "insurgents" on FoxNews. The manufacturer's stock price will shoot up. Americans will keep gassing up their H2, and drive alone to work, and they'll continue to not give a shit. Welcome to the future.
LOLJIHADIS?
What do you think the reaction would be if a large percentage of the prisoners captured in Iraq were ass-raped?
Bush elected dictator-for-life?
hm.
Paying your local Mafia Don "protection" money was about keeping dangerous people out of society too. When you paid your protection, they didn't come around and mess up your home or business. Maybe I should open up one of these "prisons". . .
*sigh*
not really true at all.
The economy "exploded" because Reagan borrowed a bunch of money and pumped it into defense spending. This got him re-elected because he was "tough on ruskies" - just like Bush43's profilgate "tough on terrorists" spending got him (barely) (sort of) re-elected in 2004. It's standard rightwing politics. Play to the jingoistic base.
While the borrowing gave us a nice short-term economic boost, we had to raise interest rates to prevent inflation, which caused the S&L collapses, which caused a bit of an economic recession, which is similar to the hangover we're seeing now under Bush43 - only now, we're over-committed in Iraq, so we can't STOP borrowing, and if we raise interest rates any more, we'll be really screwed. They're speculating about a rate CUT - so say hello to massive inflation (which is what Hitler had to contend with when he tried to pull the same shit back in the late 30's).
But this would vary depending on the kind of paper you feed into the printer.
Some papers are manufactured with some pretty nasty chemicals. (Dioxins).
And in the cutting process, if a certain amount of dioxin-laden paper-dust is created, that is released into the air by the printer - that may not be shown in the manufacturer's test. (and indeed; would NOT be the manufacturer's fault. Not if *I* was on the jury!).
Well - as far as Active Directory and enterprise management tools go - there were compelling reasons to upgrade to 2003. XP? Not so much. (though - I prefer XP to 2K - I *do* reflexively set the theme back to Classic when I encounter a new XP system though)>
I'm working with a project that's trying to port some software from XP to Vista - Microsoft's driver model changed drastically as most folks are well aware; one of the downsides; devices now report themselves using localized strings, where they did not previously.
I predict a lot of very expensive work ahead for vendors trying to port any hardware-intensive software from XP to Vista, particularly if it's going to have to support multiple languages. (because you'll now need a bi-lingual developer to re-code the device-tree scanning and parsing code - for each language. Microsoft developer support's still scratching their heads here. . . )
Right, and this is why Porsche put the transaxle in front of the rear axle (with the engine behind). (and in the 928/944, used the same rear-transaxle layout, even with a front engine - for better weight distribution). The center of mass is biased to the rear (which gives Porsche its awful reputation for tail spins), but mainly, straddles the rear axle. (and they reversed this arrangement with the 914, which is what made it probably the best-handling production Porsche there ever was).
In the 1960's, Heavy Lift was the name of the game. Because at that time, it was clear that "the high frontier" was going to determine who had military dominance as a superpower. Doesn't matter if Saturn V was overkill for a compact warhead like the W-88 (or even 50 of them). Military planners were worried about things like, permanently manned space stations from which surveillance and nuclear weapons could be deployed. Nuclear weapons from an ICBM give about 90 minutes warning. Nuclear weapons dropped from orbit, about 15 minutes. A ground-based ICBM force can be taken out with a pre-emptive strike. It's not flexible in bad weather (or wasn't in the 1960's). There was a huge reliance on supplemental strike from bombers.
Heavy-lift gave a nation a theoretical capability to place a massive first-strike force in-orbit, with a much finer hair-trigger for massive engagement than was possible by other means.
International treaties notwithstanding.
The Heavy-Lift capability was demonstrated - but wasn't actually used for that purpose. Until the Soviets failed experiment with Polyus in the late 1980's.
Your hypothetical situation resembles an actual situation - and it strikes me that this LED device would also have another very desirable (for abusive law enforcement) side-effect: rendering bystanders' cameras less effective. . .
I don't think it's pragmatic to use the word "coward" when discussing warfare in an age of ballistic missiles, stealth aircraft, and chemical, nuclear, or biological weapons. Really.
Yes - the mortar guy's going to shoot and run, as a counter-counter measure to counterbattery techniques. Yes, they're already successfully employing these tactics, on a daily basis, in Gaza, Lebanon, and in Baghdad (now that they're getting away with shelling the Green Zone). This counter-countermeasure is cost-competitive with counterbattery techniques, because to employ counterbattery techniques, you have to A) have a counterbattery crew standing by, and B) they need to be able to react quickly and accurately enough to hit the attacker and C) they need to miss the surrounding civilians. (oops - should have thought of that before we got into this war, I guess). Since the cost of randomly blowing up civilians for the defender is too high (politically) - hit-and-run works.
The truck-mounted laser is yet another countermeasure against light artillery.
I'm merely proposing an additional counter-countermeasure, one that is probably very cost-competitive to the truck-mounted laser. Chaff won't linger in the air very long, so these 10 (or however many are needed) shots have to follow eachother very closely. Maybe so closely, it requires more than one mortar (which greatly reduces their accuracy). So that's an added "cost" to the counter-countermeasure. Combine the truck-mounted-laser with other counterbattery techniques, as well as UAV surveillance, and you may actually put a noticeable dent into the enemy's shelling activities.
On the other hand, maybe we should have invaded with half a million or more troops, and secured all the ammo sites at the start of the war, so the insurgents wouldn't have gotten their hands on these weapons. That's what Petraeus (and Powell) recommended, and the Bush crew shot down.
The moral of the story?:
A $50 Million truck-mounted-laser is no substitute for common sense.
(though, I still think it's neat-o!)
. . . or we could just spin-up these huge-ass gyroscopes, and then drop them from orbit, and they can be picked up and connected to generators, then when they spin down, we can shoot them back up into space to be spun back up!
They're not. The space program was a political maneuver in direct response to the Soviet "threat."
Well, that was the mindset of the politicians who were conned into supporting and funding the programs at the time. But not of many of the fine people who did the engineering that got us there.
Yeah - sometimes I'm afraid that we, as a nation, peaked sometime back in 1973, and are gradually sliding backwards into "Banana Republic" status. A Banana Republic with nukes. But if our politicians can be conned into something as idiotic and brainless as the Iraq war, then there's hope for something as brilliant and visionary as SPS. (I'm just not convinced that once we build it, we can keep it running before the next set of whack jobs either de-funds it, or lets it get blown up).
I saw Dr. O'Neill give a presentation on this in 1976 at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago (I was 9). Damn, when I think of what I thought of the Space Shuttle then, and what I think now - what a disappointment!!!
Honestly - I don't know if the idea is feasible.
Maybe it's technically possible, but I don't think human beings can operate and maintain such an infrastructure without individual interest trumping group interest.
Any one of a zillion things could prevent it (individual-interest-wise):
- incomplete funding (this is what killed the ISS, yes, look up, see that light flying across the sky? It's dead).
- inability to agree on proper technical direction (engineering pissing contest - this is what killed the Shuttle).
- space junk (inability to police industrial/military space activity such that we can keep space safe for large power stations to exist without getting clobbered by debris).
- whack-jobs (inability to police religious fundamentalist groups, like "Free Market Fundamentalists" who will sabotage the project because it offends their faith).
etc.
in short, I'm very down on my fellow man today.
This is a passive/aggressive response to your subconscious feelings towards such individuals. Deep down, you do not respect them, and do not deem them worthy of name-rememberence.
Pack a load of 10 shells, 9 chaff, 1 HE.
First one is intercepted halfway to the laser truck, explodes, deploys chaff on detonation.
Second one is intercepted halfway between previous interception, and laser truck, because truck's radar was impaired by chaff, second one explodes, deploys chaff on detonation, closer to truck.
Lather, rinse, repeat, until the radar's range is too short to give the computer enough time to find an intercept solution.
Cost to attacker: 9, $500 chaff shells, + 1 $2000 HE shell.
Cost to defender: $50 Million laser + whatever else the attacker decides to shell with impunity next.
All this guy is asking for is a snappy desktop.
Given the hardware advances of the past 30 years - you'd think that wouldn't be too much to ask.
Personally - if he said he wanted to break out his own distro, customize the kernel, optimize the whole experience for "responsive GUI" - I think he'd have a good thing going.
However; I'm betting that the trade-offs he'd have to make for functionality we all take for granted now (network connectivity, indexing, virus/spyware scanning, software firewall, bleh bleh bleh) would make such a system a very different beast than what we're used to now.
Functional? Who knows.
Some of the other threads here also make some good points about video drivers. There's only so much we can do here until the video card manufacturers also put this "responsive GUI" item on their priority list. (yeah - both nvidia and ATI provide drivers that are way better than the default OS drivers in terms of performance - but they still leave me with the impression of; have we really come anywhere since 1994?)
Damn, are YOU sheltered.
The AVERAGE computer user is thinking "What's a Directory?".
And before you say "well business will cut corners"; the LAST THING an airline wants is a crash and therefore they will do the very best to keep the ATC up and running better then ever.
No - they'll just lobby Congress for a privacy law that protects them from having to report crashes.
QED.
Then ATC will become the pilot's job, and they can just shut down all the towers and replace them with an automated system of red-yellow-green lights at the end of the runway (and they'll bill the government for maintenance of this system).
Yes -
Yay! kids are reading.
We can always be amazed with the "better than nothing" argument.
JK Rowling has her hundreds of millions of fans and hundreds of millions of dollars. She has earned her place in literary history, for good or for ill. I think that any criticism of literary merit is more than appropriate and acceptable. Yes - the books are fun, and yes, I enjoyed them. At the same time, they leave a lot to be desired, and I would much rather my kids spend their time reading something more substantial. On the other hand, we spend a lot of good family time together enjoying these books, and that's worthwhile too.
What pisses me off, is that she got paid in advance for most of these stories. And I really do think she was capable of much better. She hinted at it. She got her money, and fulfilled her contractual obligation. I'm pretty sure that this is the last we will hear from Ms. Rowling. Good riddance to her; and thanks for bringing into the limelight, a new market for books for pre-teens and young teens, which has attracted a lot of good talent.
When I look at the books my kids are asked to read for their classes in school, and when I think of the books *I* was asked to read; (and the books my parents read for their English classes), I only hope that this is laying the groundwork for a writer with some quality to come in later, and write in a similar genre (that might not have otherwise been attempted out of fear of commercial failure - Rowling did not pioneer it; her publishing company did.)