The radiological properties of uranium are, as I understand it, vanishingly unimportant compared to the chemical toxicity.
Both the chemical toxicity and radiological properties of uranium are significant. Radiation from uranium is primarily alpha radiation and therefore generally won't penetrate the skin far enough to cause problems (though skin cancer would seem to be a possibility - I'm not sure if anyone's done a study). Ingested and particularly inhaled uranium is a different story and the alpha radiation is a definite issue in these cases. Most of the concern over depleted uranium use in warfare is about the consequences of alpha radiation from inhaled uranium dust. This problem is serious because DU rounds are pyrophoric (they vaporize on impact), and therefore leave a lot of small particles in the environment.
I guess it was an ultimatum, but I think that term distorts the situation a bit. To me he seemed to be saying "The process is currently wasting 3-4 hours a month for me. I'm no longer willing to waste that time. I've been the maintainer of the cygwin port for 2 years. I need CVS write access to the cygwin stuff, or I'm going to stop contributing via the current process". Note he never got any sort of reply as to why he couldn't have CVS write access. Every reply from the "status quo" faction avoided the issue and most were personal attacks (though both sides were guilty of that). This little flamewar also seems to be the final straw rather than the whole story. Harold mentioned trying to talk to people privately and getting no satisfactory response. Most of his emails in that thread were very polite, almost unusually so.
IMHO David Dawes comes off sounding arrogant and uninterested in solving problems (yet again - he seemed the same way over the Keith Packard blow up). He seems to have the attitude that since he is a volunteer he has no responsibility to the other developers, in terms of improving the process or otherwise making their life easier. It's not a good way to run a project.
You don't buy a license to a physical item - like a dovetailing bit - you buy the bit. It's your's. You own it and have full right to use it for the purpose intended.
I think you've acutally understated the situation. You don't just have the right to use the purchased good for the purpose intended, you have the right to use the purchased good for any purpose.
A lease is a fixed term contact that requires the return of the goods in question at the termination of the contract. This case is clearly not a lease. There is no contact or agreement made before the sale is finalised - it's a shrinkwrap "license". They are selling the good and then claiming that the buyer has fewer rights than is customary. It's dodgy at best.
So, I am glad they have blind (erm, faithful) followers like you, but hey, I am just concerned about their safty.
I'm sure Carmack et al are thrilled to know you are so deeply concerned for their well-being. No doubt your insightful criticism will also be much appreciated. After all they're mearly running the project and clearly have no idea what they're talking about. As for me, I'll limit myself to responding to your ad hominem attack since you'll obviously be unwilling to accept any argument made by someone you've already labelled a "blind follower".
First keep in mind that Armadillo had not anticipated being able to restart in flight. This is an extra, not a requirement.
1) (BIG) pressure difference
2) (HUGE) temperature difference
3) possible airflow difference
From what I've read the ignition mechanism is buried in the engine between two catalyst blocks so none of what you the conditions you've mentioned would apply.
I'd say he should do a lot more tests before being certain than inflight restarts is a guaranteed thing.
I imagine his understanding of the engine is several orders of magnitude better than yours or mine. I'd say we can take him at his word until there is evidence to contrary. Also Armadillo's whole program is based on exhaustive testing - they're not going to be lax on this aspect.
3D printers / rapid prototyping systems are even cooler than that. Make anything you like (within the size limits of the printer). Check out Z Corp's printers (or a BBC news article).
The Hindenburg disaster did not cause the downfall of the airship. It certainly hurt the airship's reputation but it would have recovered. What killed the airship was WWII and the commercial passenger plane. Commercial flying boat services started in 1939 (just two years after the Hindenburg disaster, and while other Zeppelin airships where still operating), taking half the time to cross the Atlantic. In 1947 (well before Zeppelin had any chance of recovering from the war) Pan Am started a non-stop transatlantic service taking 12 hours or less. There was no way an airship could compete.
It is not a problem, since the cause is not man-made. We can't do anything with about it unless we do some cosmic engineering thing like push the earth from the Sun.
Idiot. The cause is irrelevant. The result is what matters. And if we are contributing to the warming climate at all (and we clearly are - this is not in debate) then we certainly can at least slow the changes.
If you were to watch the sea lives rise at this rate for a 100 years, you wouldn't even be able to tell the difference.
Rising sealevels are indeed not a major concern expect in a few rare cases. The major concern is the potential economic damage caused by local climate changes that result from global climate change.
Even under the absolutely worst case scenario it just means we have to live in enclosed habitats.
The question is not one of survival. It is one of how much is my standard of living going to decline due to global warming? Is the decline going to be greater with this current "wait and see" approach than if we made of an effort to contain global warming now?
If the court buys SCO's version, IBM's goose is cooked, they lose their SVR4 liciense and owe SCO $3 billion; If the court buys IBM's version, SCO's goose is cooked and their assets go on auction, and their officers probably get hefty fines from the SEC and or jail time.
SCO has asked for $3B, but they are not guarenteed that amount even if the court finds in their favour. Unless the contract specifies some minimum amount that IBM must sell their versions of Unix for it is possible that the courts may decide that there are have been no damages inflicted. It's also possible that the courts could uphold both SCO's and IBM's complaints - SCO could win the case but still fall prey to IBM's patent violation claims.
Licenses really can be revoked under the terms of the license itself. The terms a government issues a drivers license under would include the specific laws involved. They cannot just arbitrarily revoke a drivers' license, but they can under those specific laws. If you commit certain actions the law says you may lose your license for, it can be revoked.
Please don't use the driver's license analogy that SCO have introduced. A driver's license is totally different (legally) from IBM/SGI's licenses to use Unix code. IBM/SGI's licenses are simply contracts allowing the use of certain SCO property in certain ways. A contract can have almost any provision (the obvious exception being illegal activities). Driver's licenses are not contracts, they are permits which can be granted and revoked as provided by the law. SCO have introduced the analogy of driver's licenses to obfuscate the issue and to make their claims seem stronger.
GoogleWatch speculates... The speculative piece was written last June.
You wrote that piece, correct? It's very poor form not to mention that fact.
Aside from that your piece is interesting, but it does come across as a bit inflamatory. Just present your facts and conclusions and forget about the conspiracy theories and sarcasm. You'll have a lot more success convincing people if you don't appear to have an axe to grind.
You can not compare Rubles and dollars here. Considering that back then Russians spent about 10 times less on their multiple space programs than americans, $764M is a heck of a lot more than was economically reasonable.
In the mid eighties Russia was making something like 10 times as many launches as the US (see the graph here), and had accumulated 3 times as much manned time in space. NASA's budget in 1985 was about USD 7B. There is no way Russia was making 10 times the launches on a tenth of NASA's budget. Don't forget that the Russian space program was part of the military. There was still plenty of money. Of course everything changed in the late eighties and early ninties. But when the designs were created Energia made sense financially.
On top of that it required its own huge launch pad and landing strip along with all associated equipment.
They did build a dedicated landing strip for Buran, but they reused the existing N1 facilities (built in the 1960's) at Baikonur for launches and a lot the assembly and testing requirements. In fact much of the Energia design was predicated on existing facilities, e.g. the 7.75 metre diameter stage 2 was the maximum size that could be handled by existing stage handling equipment developed for the N1 program. It did not require completely new facilities at all levels as you are claiming.
I don't disagree that canning the project was the right decision. You can't spend that sort of money on space flight while your population is starving. However the project itself made sense when it was concieved and was well excuted, one of the Russian space program's few genuine triumphs. The Russian's certainly had plans for Buran-Energia that where not possible with smaller rocket systems. Supporting MIR was not their only objective.
Energia is estimated to have cost $764M (in 1985 USD) per launch. Comparatively the Saturn V D cost $736M, and the N1 cost $604M. The cost of Energia was high, but not unusually so given it's 100,000kg payload to a 200km orbit. In terms of development cost Energia-Buran totalled some 16B roubles. I believe that was significantly less than the cost of the shuttle program (which was itself something like a quarter of the cost of the Apollo program).
Boosters required to propel equivalent payloads via more traditional technologies were almost an order of magnitude cheaper
From a Russian point of view the only thing non-traditional about the Energia technology was the size of the engines. Liquid propellant design was very well understood by the Russians (they were well ahead of the US in this regard), who had far more experience with it than with solid propellants. They tried more smaller engines with the N1 project and it was a disaster. The Energia design made a lot of sense, though it may have been a bit ambitious.
Buran was technically superior, mostly since the Russians got to see the US' attempt with the Space Shuttle before they designed their own.
USSR had a superior shuttle program, "Buran" which got cancelled because of three simple reasons
Your reasons are wrong. Buran was launched via a rocket-based system (Energia). It is essentially just one type of payload for the Energia system. It did not have significant expensive/reliability disadvantages compared to other rocket-based systems. Buran was cancelled because there was no clear, compelling role for the vehicle, and with the breakup of the USSR there was no money available to continue the project without a very strong reason.
On a side note, does anyone know if this drive actually supports hi-speed USB (ie, anything more than 12Mbps data transfer)? It uses evasive language and descriptions, has a restocking fee for returns, and no tech specs available...
It uses the USB 2.0 Hi-speed logo so they are certifiying that the interface performs transfers in the 480Mbps mode. The drive itself is not be capable of that speed: they claim it's 16x faster than a USB 1.1 drive, i.e. 192Mbps.
SCO have reused the diagram put together by Eric Levenez. The original is here. Note that at the bottom of the diagram it states: "an arrow indicates an inheritance like a compatibility, it is not only a matter of source code". They seem of neglected to copy that part. Given that they're clearly deliberately misrepresenting the meaning of the diagram I'm suprised Levenez continues to allow them to use it.
Have managed to find a few more descriptions. Unfortunately none of them seem to explain why having an extra shutter break the display of each frame helps reduce flicker. I would have thought that reducing the duration of the shutter break (i.e. speeding up the pull down) would have been more effective. Instead it seems that the frequency of the shutter breaks is more important than the duration of the shutter breaks.
But really searching for '48 fps' and 'projector' will get you tons of hits (though granted many will be about proposed improvements to the current system).
I'm struggling to find anything more than that very brief description on the screensound.gov.au site. Searching with "film" "projector" "48 fps" "-maxivision" gives that as the third hit and nothing else relevant looking. I really want an explanation as to why displaying the same frame twice is going to help in any way. The length of time that shutter is closed must still be the same as when the film is projected at 24fps (still takes the same amount of time to move the film), or are you saying that the film is printed with each frame twice?
Slashdot Mirror
Was that really necessary? I mean the FAQ isn't even linked in the article.
IMHO David Dawes comes off sounding arrogant and uninterested in solving problems (yet again - he seemed the same way over the Keith Packard blow up). He seems to have the attitude that since he is a volunteer he has no responsibility to the other developers, in terms of improving the process or otherwise making their life easier. It's not a good way to run a project.
What are you talking about? This is not insightful, it's wrong. There is nothing to stop Google's owners from issuing stock to valued employees.
A lease is a fixed term contact that requires the return of the goods in question at the termination of the contract. This case is clearly not a lease. There is no contact or agreement made before the sale is finalised - it's a shrinkwrap "license". They are selling the good and then claiming that the buyer has fewer rights than is customary. It's dodgy at best.
3D printers / rapid prototyping systems are even cooler than that. Make anything you like (within the size limits of the printer). Check out Z Corp's printers (or a BBC news article).
The Hindenburg disaster did not cause the downfall of the airship. It certainly hurt the airship's reputation but it would have recovered. What killed the airship was WWII and the commercial passenger plane. Commercial flying boat services started in 1939 (just two years after the Hindenburg disaster, and while other Zeppelin airships where still operating), taking half the time to cross the Atlantic. In 1947 (well before Zeppelin had any chance of recovering from the war) Pan Am started a non-stop transatlantic service taking 12 hours or less. There was no way an airship could compete.
Why do you need to upgrade to Acrobat 6? Has Acrobat 5 suddenly stopped working?
Aside from that your piece is interesting, but it does come across as a bit inflamatory. Just present your facts and conclusions and forget about the conspiracy theories and sarcasm. You'll have a lot more success convincing people if you don't appear to have an axe to grind.
I don't disagree that canning the project was the right decision. You can't spend that sort of money on space flight while your population is starving. However the project itself made sense when it was concieved and was well excuted, one of the Russian space program's few genuine triumphs. The Russian's certainly had plans for Buran-Energia that where not possible with smaller rocket systems. Supporting MIR was not their only objective.
Come on people, use the right units!
SCO have reused the diagram put together by Eric Levenez. The original is here. Note that at the bottom of the diagram it states: "an arrow indicates an inheritance like a compatibility, it is not only a matter of source code". They seem of neglected to copy that part. Given that they're clearly deliberately misrepresenting the meaning of the diagram I'm suprised Levenez continues to allow them to use it.
Have managed to find a few more descriptions. Unfortunately none of them seem to explain why having an extra shutter break the display of each frame helps reduce flicker. I would have thought that reducing the duration of the shutter break (i.e. speeding up the pull down) would have been more effective. Instead it seems that the frequency of the shutter breaks is more important than the duration of the shutter breaks.