SMS was expensive in the beginning because it used a part of the messaging protocol that was not really intended for high volume, and the telcos hadn't configured things to support it. But it beat hell out of the old text paging services.
Once the telcos figured out the demand and started configuring the hardware and software to facilitate it, the price dropped. Almost everyone just bundles unlimited messaging into their phone plan these days, don't they?
Given the players, my guess is that the hardware is likely HP or Dell x86 server boxes, possibly Sun, maybe with an HP Superdome for the database, running RedHat linux, with an Oracle database. Middleware/webserver is quite possibly WebLogic (given Oracle's involvement) with the code in Java. Ie, a LWOJ stack;-)
Very workable if given sufficient hardware (not VMs) and tuned properly -- but that latter often takes a fair bit of load testing and tweaking.
Whats wrong with statism**? [...] **I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt abs assume you actually know what statism is and you aren't actually talking about authoritarianism.
What's wrong with it is that there's no proven or practical way to prevent it from becoming authoritarianism.
Alas, there aren't really any other systems which don't tend in that direction either. People who seek power are generally the ones who can't be trusted with it.
The simplest way to do this is to detonate the explosive lenses at different times, rather than simultaneously. Rather than the implosion you need to go critical, you just blow the core into little pieces.
There's a bit of a radioactive materials clean up job, but no earth-shattering kaboom. (Just a small kaboom.)
Who said the switch failed? Likely it operated as supposed to, keeping the device not-fully-armed ("fail safe") because it hadn't been deliberately flipped.
That's a reasonable point on the atmospheric effects of reentry, but that's only in the last couple of hundred miles, so any angular deflection will have a lower effect on the CEP than would even a smaller deflection closer to the launch. Over a few thousand miles, a slight angle change makes a big difference.
And, you're assuming the reentry is unguided. That isn't necessarily the case. Even a simple cone can have some crossrange depending on the relation of center of mass vs center of aerodynamic pressure, with small thrusters, aerosurfaces, or weight-shifting to modify that. (Not that I know for sure one way or the other; if I did I probably couldn't say.)
The more accurate you can make the nuke, the smaller it can be. Saves you nuclear materials and launch weight.
And against hardened targets like missile silos or command bunkers, pretty accurate (eg, Cheyenne Mountain couldn't withstand a direct hit, but it could a nearby miss. Colorado Springs would be toast either way.)
ICBMs are pretty much autonomous once launched (I would assume/hope they have an abort mode), but their targeting data is updated regularly (especially true for sub-launched missiles, of course, but also for the independently targeted warheads on a MIRV.)
Seconds as a unit of Isp is nice because it tells you how many seconds of e.g. 1 lb force thrust you get for 1 lb mass of fuel. (Or conversely, how many pounds force you get from that 1 lb mass of fuel if you burn it all in one second.) It's a handy comparison number.
Granted it's kind of an odd unit if you're trying to work out trajectories and mass ratios and delta-vees and such, but hey, it's not rocket science.
And, of course, the whole notion that we'd have a world's fair is among the inaccurate predictions.
It's only off by one year. Expo 2015 will be in Milan, Italy. There was one last year (2012) in Yeosu, S. Korea. The World's Fairs started using the term Expo with the 1967 Montreal World's Fair, Expo '67.
It's generally a good idea to know what you're talking about before you accuse someone else of inaccuracy.
Not entirely unbelievable. A dive buddy of mine was doing some part time commercial dive work. One spring he was helping inspect the cooling water intakes for a steam plant in downtown Ottawa, near the river. Guess what he found up against one of the gratings. Yeah, a guy who'd gone through the ice on a snowmobile that winter.
The Saturn V had a payload to Earth orbit of 260,000 lb, which happens to be the weight of a fully-fueled Atlas missile. So in theory the Saturn V could orbit a vehicle which could use rocket braking to de-orbit and land without a heat shield.
Impractical as hell, of course.
Heck, even in my fictional future T-space stories, where we have warp, fusion, but no anti-gravity*, ships tend to use aerobraking. (Given the ridiculously high power and Isp of their thrusters, they could do a retrofire to landing, but generally don't. Tradition. Also helpful if you've about run out of fuel.)
*(In theory if you can bend space for a warp drive you can unbend it for anti-grav, but my stories take place in early days when humans haven't figured out how to do that yet. The pioneer in such technology suffered a rather messy accidental death while testing.)
I don't know of any touch screens before that even could detect angle of input
Are you seriously that ignorant of geometry?
Anything that returns more than one (x,y) coordinate pair (not even at the same time) is inherently returning an angle. In other words, every touch screen ever made.
Planes are not landed by computer; they are landed by human beings. Typically three of them -- the pilot, copilot, and flight engineer.
The 1960s called, wanting their commercial flight ops back. Planes haven't had flight engineers in decades (unless the plane itself is that old). Likewise commercial jets have had autoland for decades. It's standard procedure for airports which often have low visibility (like Heathrow). Heck, the autoland is so good that -- again, decades ago -- they introduced a bit of dither into the system to avoid excessive runway wear from heavies (747 etc) always landing on the exact same spot.
Not only that, but if the airlines are sharing more than e.g. the last 4 digits of the credit card info, they're probably in violation of PCI (Payment Card Industry) regs and could have their ability to take payments that way suspended.
That would be a lovely data stream for identity thieves to intercept.
Slashdot Mirror
What happens if a Pinto gets rear-ended by a Tesla?
Hang on, let me just check the slide rule...
(Actually I used have a Pinto -- well, it was my wife's -- and I'd buy a Tesla if it were in my budget.)
Wait, Dubai has trees?
(Yes, that was a joke. I'm sure Dubai has many trees. All carefully planted and plumbed with irrigation hoses, but... )
probably it is a politician trying to look cool. Even a high school chemistry student would know this.
You do realize that the intersection set between politicians and people who took (let alone passed) high school chemistry is vanishingly small, right?
If you're taking antibiotics, you're pretty much dumping antibiotics down the sewers every time you take a, er, dump. Or a piss.
But if you're doing it right that's the only way they're going down the sewers.
SMS was expensive in the beginning because it used a part of the messaging protocol that was not really intended for high volume, and the telcos hadn't configured things to support it. But it beat hell out of the old text paging services.
Once the telcos figured out the demand and started configuring the hardware and software to facilitate it, the price dropped. Almost everyone just bundles unlimited messaging into their phone plan these days, don't they?
Given the players, my guess is that the hardware is likely HP or Dell x86 server boxes, possibly Sun, maybe with an HP Superdome for the database, running RedHat linux, with an Oracle database. Middleware/webserver is quite possibly WebLogic (given Oracle's involvement) with the code in Java. Ie, a LWOJ stack ;-)
Very workable if given sufficient hardware (not VMs) and tuned properly -- but that latter often takes a fair bit of load testing and tweaking.
Whats wrong with statism**?
[...]
**I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt abs assume you actually know what statism is and you aren't actually talking about authoritarianism.
What's wrong with it is that there's no proven or practical way to prevent it from becoming authoritarianism.
Alas, there aren't really any other systems which don't tend in that direction either. People who seek power are generally the ones who can't be trusted with it.
I forget the physics term,
Mach stem.
You're welcome. ;)
The simplest way to do this is to detonate the explosive lenses at different times, rather than simultaneously. Rather than the implosion you need to go critical, you just blow the core into little pieces.
There's a bit of a radioactive materials clean up job, but no earth-shattering kaboom. (Just a small kaboom.)
Who said the switch failed? Likely it operated as supposed to, keeping the device not-fully-armed ("fail safe") because it hadn't been deliberately flipped.
That's a reasonable point on the atmospheric effects of reentry, but that's only in the last couple of hundred miles, so any angular deflection will have a lower effect on the CEP than would even a smaller deflection closer to the launch. Over a few thousand miles, a slight angle change makes a big difference.
And, you're assuming the reentry is unguided. That isn't necessarily the case. Even a simple cone can have some crossrange depending on the relation of center of mass vs center of aerodynamic pressure, with small thrusters, aerosurfaces, or weight-shifting to modify that. (Not that I know for sure one way or the other; if I did I probably couldn't say.)
The more accurate you can make the nuke, the smaller it can be. Saves you nuclear materials and launch weight.
And against hardened targets like missile silos or command bunkers, pretty accurate (eg, Cheyenne Mountain couldn't withstand a direct hit, but it could a nearby miss. Colorado Springs would be toast either way.)
ICBMs are pretty much autonomous once launched (I would assume/hope they have an abort mode), but their targeting data is updated regularly (especially true for sub-launched missiles, of course, but also for the independently targeted warheads on a MIRV.)
Of course there isn't. That's why boats float.
Seconds as a unit of Isp is nice because it tells you how many seconds of e.g. 1 lb force thrust you get for 1 lb mass of fuel. (Or conversely, how many pounds force you get from that 1 lb mass of fuel if you burn it all in one second.) It's a handy comparison number.
Granted it's kind of an odd unit if you're trying to work out trajectories and mass ratios and delta-vees and such, but hey, it's not rocket science.
Oh, wait...
And, of course, the whole notion that we'd have a world's fair is among the inaccurate predictions.
It's only off by one year. Expo 2015 will be in Milan, Italy. There was one last year (2012) in Yeosu, S. Korea. The World's Fairs started using the term Expo with the 1967 Montreal World's Fair, Expo '67.
It's generally a good idea to know what you're talking about before you accuse someone else of inaccuracy.
By the way thank you for purchasing our exported talent.
Just repayment for all those ex-Avro aerospace engineers that helped put Apollo on the moon.
Not entirely unbelievable. A dive buddy of mine was doing some part time commercial dive work. One spring he was helping inspect the cooling water intakes for a steam plant in downtown Ottawa, near the river. Guess what he found up against one of the gratings. Yeah, a guy who'd gone through the ice on a snowmobile that winter.
Put him right off diving for a while, it did.
I would have said 60,000. ;-)
The Saturn V had a payload to Earth orbit of 260,000 lb, which happens to be the weight of a fully-fueled Atlas missile. So in theory the Saturn V could orbit a vehicle which could use rocket braking to de-orbit and land without a heat shield.
Impractical as hell, of course.
Heck, even in my fictional future T-space stories, where we have warp, fusion, but no anti-gravity*, ships tend to use aerobraking. (Given the ridiculously high power and Isp of their thrusters, they could do a retrofire to landing, but generally don't. Tradition. Also helpful if you've about run out of fuel.)
*(In theory if you can bend space for a warp drive you can unbend it for anti-grav, but my stories take place in early days when humans haven't figured out how to do that yet. The pioneer in such technology suffered a rather messy accidental death while testing.)
There's no way that any sane person would grant them patent protection on the general concept
We're not talking about sane people, we're talking about the USPTO.
I don't know of any touch screens before that even could detect angle of input
Are you seriously that ignorant of geometry?
Anything that returns more than one (x,y) coordinate pair (not even at the same time) is inherently returning an angle. In other words, every touch screen ever made.
I am a pilot.
You're wrong.
Planes are not landed by computer; they are landed by human beings. Typically three of them -- the pilot, copilot, and flight engineer.
The 1960s called, wanting their commercial flight ops back. Planes haven't had flight engineers in decades (unless the plane itself is that old). Likewise commercial jets have had autoland for decades. It's standard procedure for airports which often have low visibility (like Heathrow). Heck, the autoland is so good that -- again, decades ago -- they introduced a bit of dither into the system to avoid excessive runway wear from heavies (747 etc) always landing on the exact same spot.
They had to come up with something. Not nearly as many crosses around. ;)
Not only that, but if the airlines are sharing more than e.g. the last 4 digits of the credit card info, they're probably in violation of PCI (Payment Card Industry) regs and could have their ability to take payments that way suspended.
That would be a lovely data stream for identity thieves to intercept.