Microsoft produced successful hardware - the SoftCard for the Apple II - before 'producing' PC DOS. At the time it had been shipping a number of BASIC and other language interpreters and compilers for some time.
No, not every little defect will require a ground based overhal. Quite the opposite. Airships are *great* for repairs.
The early 20th-century airships (I dont know about blimps) could have a lot of repairs done in flight. Crewmen could work outside the skin of the ship to patch holes in the skin, fiddle with the fins, and more.
This was especially useful on first-of-class or prototype ships. See Nevil Shute Norway's memoir Slide Rule(ISBN: 1842322915) for some amazing anecdotes about designing, building, and testing an airship.
An unmanned airship in need of manned repair could be visited by a manned airship, blimp or helicopter with a repair crew.
Most airships had some spare lift for emergencies. A ship would carry ballast for jettison when needed, and in extreme situations could jettison furniture, reserve fuel, and other material. Unless it were combined with some other problem (such as a bad storm) a ship could limp for a considerable distance while one gas-bag was deflating. In the case that one gas-bag was deflating, a modern airship might even be able to salvage some of the gas.
Some of the problems of maintaining long-term unmanned aircraft are even worse for satellites, which people keep finding ways to use.
Bob Shaw is one of my favourite writers. I liked the Slow Glass stories. I don't think slow glass is coming any faster, because there are considerable problems to solve besides slowing light. Suppose we have a manageable slab of material that stores light for years. What about the optics?
I suspect that looking at other days through a two-year slab of 'flat' slow glass would be like looking through a tunnel two light years long. Perhaps you could do something with fancy optics, maybe integral to the slab.
Small irregularites currently quite acceptable on (say) astronomical mirrors would result in different parts of the images emerging at different times. Would the images be usable? Would slow glass transmit all frequencies of visible light at the same speed?
Correct if I am wrong, but doesn't all open source code include the name of the copyright owner? Doesn't this mean that the software developers, at least a high level, are much better known than that of proprietary software in which the pieces of code might have been subcontracted to who knows where, through who knows how many layer of management?
The copyright owner of an open source program is not necessarily the developer, just as the copyright owner of a proprietary program is not necessarily its developer. So on its own, this does not mean that the developers of open source are better known than that of proprietary software.
But there are lots of other reasons that open source developers might be better known than closed-source developers. For instance, in many closed-source organisations, it is easy for someone within the organisation to find the author of a line of code. Typically the organisation will not want to share that information with the users of the software or the public at large.
With open source, as soon as you have the source you have the names of the authors, provided that:
the authors put their correct names on the source, and
subsequent authors and copyright holders saw fit to leave them there.
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Microsoft produced successful hardware - the SoftCard for the Apple II - before 'producing' PC DOS. At the time it had been shipping a number of BASIC and other language interpreters and compilers for some time.
None of these were really consumer products.
No, not every little defect will require a ground based overhal. Quite the opposite. Airships are *great* for repairs.
The early 20th-century airships (I dont know about blimps) could have a lot of repairs done in flight. Crewmen could work outside the skin of the ship to patch holes in the skin, fiddle with the fins, and more.
This was especially useful on first-of-class or prototype ships. See Nevil Shute Norway's memoir Slide Rule(ISBN: 1842322915) for some amazing anecdotes about designing, building, and testing an airship.
An unmanned airship in need of manned repair could be visited by a manned airship, blimp or helicopter with a repair crew.
Most airships had some spare lift for emergencies. A ship would carry ballast for jettison when needed, and in extreme situations could jettison furniture, reserve fuel, and other material. Unless it were combined with some other problem (such as a bad storm) a ship could limp for a considerable distance while one gas-bag was deflating. In the case that one gas-bag was deflating, a modern airship might even be able to salvage some of the gas.
Some of the problems of maintaining long-term unmanned aircraft are even worse for satellites, which people keep finding ways to use.
Bob Shaw is one of my favourite writers. I liked the Slow Glass stories. I don't think slow glass is coming any faster, because there are considerable problems to solve besides slowing light. Suppose we have a manageable slab of material that stores light for years. What about the optics?
I suspect that looking at other days through a two-year slab of 'flat' slow glass would be like looking through a tunnel two light years long. Perhaps you could do something with fancy optics, maybe integral to the slab.
Small irregularites currently quite acceptable on (say) astronomical mirrors would result in different parts of the images emerging at different times. Would the images be usable? Would slow glass transmit all frequencies of visible light at the same speed?
The copyright owner of an open source program is not necessarily the developer, just as the copyright owner of a proprietary program is not necessarily its developer. So on its own, this does not mean that the developers of open source are better known than that of proprietary software.
But there are lots of other reasons that open source developers might be better known than closed-source developers. For instance, in many closed-source organisations, it is easy for someone within the organisation to find the author of a line of code. Typically the organisation will not want to share that information with the users of the software or the public at large.
With open source, as soon as you have the source you have the names of the authors, provided that:
Any shape, "symmetrical" or otherwise, will do as long as its centre of mass lies in the middle of the spindle hole.
Many "symmetrical" shapes are no good if their hole is off-centre.
d.