Now we all know what happens when atmospheric processors are brought online- ancient alien eggs get discovered by The Company and nearly everyone dies.
Not exactly an earth-friendly solution.
Re:Well, I would agree with most of that there...
on
Space Wars
·
· Score: 1
Certainly the ol' military-industrial complex has a lot to do with overbuilding, but there are darn good reasons to overbuild.
For instance, if we knew our nukes were going to all work with the frequency of even a civilian automobile, we could get rid of a lot more of them. But we don't as we cannot go around firing the things to make sure. So we get enough so even a 33% 'success rate' will ensure enemy oblivion.
Same thing with the tanks. In a war with the USSR you have to figure that the European-based tanks would get chewed up in the first three weeks. Then you would have a loss rate from subs torpedoing resupply convoys. Add in wastage, and the tank figure is actually quite reasonable.
The Army is trying to go to a 'lighter' unit, the Medium Brigades. Unfortunately, they are ending up specing wheeled units when the M113 would do nicely, and yes that is for profit and no other good reason. But at least these are lighter units and a shot at reinventing doctrine for our current world.
Soldiers are paid that way so we can have vast numbers of them without bankrupting the country. There are lots of benefits often not touted. The educational benefits alone can easily fund most of a public college education, and the low-cost veteran financing for houses is worth 10s of thousands as well. Most of the non-combat skills are very transferable to the civilian world, and that training is paid for by the services.
Re:Well, I would agree with most of that there...
on
Space Wars
·
· Score: 1
You don't get the concept of deterrence, do you?
Re:Well, I would agree with most of that there...
on
Space Wars
·
· Score: 1
Given your subject title, I am going to assume you agree with most of my post, and so I will just go into what I understand your objections are.
I am not bashing the US by any means. We ARE not idiots, at least militarily. The two colonels who wrote Unrestricted Warfare do not consider us idiots either. They are most horrified by Desert Storm, as the PLA was set up (largely still is) like the Iraqi army and we can render China as not even a medium or regional power if we really want to. They are saying 'how can we deal with this de facto superiority'. Their answer is organizing political actions, economic warfare, use weapons like EMP bombs, terrorist acts, and mass psychoogical warfare as tools. Be prepared to play dirty dirty dirty is their motto. Try reading it, you will likely be surprised and disturbed.
I am saying that even if it's not the Chinese, somebody is going to pick up on our vulnerabilities and attack them as al Qaeda has. 9/11 is an example of assymetric warfare, suicide bombers is another. If you want to win you need to understand it and be prepared to fight it.
I don't think it is an accident that many hacker attacks come from China. They are prepping for full-blown cyberwar, just another phase of unrestricted warfare.
As far as defeating high-tech weapons are concerned, consider the example of the IR Maverick. Mounds of cash were put into that program, but an enterprising congressional staffer was able to utterly defeat that missile with just several little hibachis out on the test range. That problem has been fixed, but it is just an example that big money weapons can often be defeated by simple low-tech means.
The 2000-lb JDAM bombs we were smacking the Taliban with can be led astray by Radio-Shack-level component GPS jammers. There were no Radio Shacks in Afghanistan, but there may be next time around.
As for our enemies not being able to develop DEWADs or any other toys, think again. I seem to recall all sorts of American bluster and intel estimates that the Russians could not possibly make A-bombs or H-bombs within 5 years, or Pakis or Indians. But they DID. Yes we are world leaders in weapons tech but our opponents or nations with their own interests are not idiots either. If we want to win we must be prepared to realistically appraise our opponents.
As the British poster noted, dreadnaughts were the ICBMs of the early 1900s, but that vast investment did not stop the financial and political draining of the British Empire by subs in two world wars. Learn from history.
And yes they ARE toys in my sense of the word. I use the term toys to indicate that we have an infatuation with technology while often not recognizing that we could get the job done by other means. The bribe was just as important as the smart bomb in Afghanistan.
Finally, I want constitutional values to win the world over. The planet will be a happier place if it does. So I don't want silliness like Satellite Pax Americana to think that will get the job done by itself without a comprehensive political and economic doctrine.
Re:Pax Americana Can't Be Done With Weapons Only
on
Space Wars
·
· Score: 1
In order for the 'no they' one species one tribe model to work, most everyone has to agree to tribal membership. We may decide there is no they, but I suspect the rest of the world may disagree, and we have to be prepared to deal with that kind of world.
Re:Pax Americana Can't Be Done With Weapons Only
on
Space Wars
·
· Score: 1
Hmmm, dont know about that. For instance Hitler would not have gotten going if he didn't put on really great theater- a good cable show would have stopped all those klieg light shows. More importantly the German people felt a real grievance and were willing to follow someone who could deliver 'dignity' and bread.
Unfortunately we cannot stomp out every embroyonic Hitler hatchery. We'll just have to recognize them when they show up and flatten them.
Re:Pax Americana Can't Be Done With Weapons Only
on
Space Wars
·
· Score: 1
No can't say that I have driven around Mexico City with a nuke in the trunk. Of course customs has radiation detectors at the border, and I would assume all major cities have them on overpasses leading into town, that's why you enter the country on backroads with a bomb in a lead-lined box. I don't have to build it, I would buy a suitcase nuke on the open market, or build an EMP bomb or radiological bomb (far easier propositions).
Just because something is easy to do doesn't mean it will be done- the ability to do a WTC airliner attack existed prior to September 11, it's just somebody finally did it.
al Qaeda and other fanatics might beg to differ with you about ending the world. After all, we are infidels and they will be going to paradise.
Pax Americana Can't Be Done With Weapons Only
on
Space Wars
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Folks, this is not good military analysis, this is just Bruce selling an article.
It is true that the satellites provide massive reconaissance and communications force multipliers to the military. It is also true that we are very dependent on them not just for military functions but also for tele-economic industries (making them juicy targets). And it is true that America's constant investment in various technologies mean a uni-polar world re: conventional military power.
What Bruce fails to realize is that these tools are just that- tools that can be broken, circumvented or worse copied and used better by others.
For instance, if we follow through with heavy DEWAD use (Directed Energy Weapon Air Defense), yes we can knock down missiles and rule the skies- for a while. Then our enemies will eventually duplicate the technology, and knock down our cruise missiles, UAVs and bombers. Then all the satellites in the world won't help our inability to affect events on the ground with airpower.
Even if we have a Rumsfeldian dream US Space Force, that doesn't stop the VW driving in from Mexico City with the nuke in the trunk.
Our enemies will move around our military power. Take a looksee at this translation of two Chinese colonels writing about our Desert War dominance, and how to circumvent and defeat the US in spite of military superiority. Somehow in his rush to sell his article, he did not deal with assymetric warfare.
Pax Americana needs these toys to happen, but the toys by themselves can be beaten. What we really need is plenty of mutual interest (read money and self-determination) for most of the world to participate in Pax Americana, the will to crush in Cold or Hot War those who will take away self-determination and money from others in the name of an ism (even if they are American), and the spread of fair legal and financial system to the average world citizen.
We will win with satellite TV moreso then satellite lasers.
I don't know what happened to Bruce- way too many blue hawaiians on Austin's Sixth Street I imagine.
Clinton would never have survived the impeachment proceedings, bloated and ridiculous as they were, without a concerted media effort to save him.
As far as kicking him is concerned, Clinton was the best thing to happen to news in a long time. Remember, the media is in it for selling Alpo, and nothing sells dog food like salacious sex.
I would attribute the sycophancy to terror at what a wartime president could do to a mediacorp that does not 'play nice'.
Playing fair? Hmmmmm, there are fanatics of all stripes (any -ism you care to mention) that would like to take down the US without regard to American life or property. Playing fair is unlikely to deter such persons.
What I could agree with is that we need to 'play fair' in terms of working with nations and peoples, not boss them around like they are the hired help, or leaving them to rot with people we prop up for convenience, profit, or emotional appeal. That way we keep 94% of the world at least neutral towards us, then we can squash any -ism that is thinking about coming after us without having to fight the whole world.
On that second law, there should also be a law about why that is. The three corollaries I can think of are
1. Bad or unforeseen design decisions come back to haunt you and increasingly make growth/change of the package more and more inefficient.
2. Economics of programmer coding dictate that one cuts development/reoptimization.tuning costs by letting the hardware crutch through the consequences of corollary #1.
3. Chunks of the code were compiled in a different compile environment and inefficiencies creep in with executing code.
The writer has his own agenda beyond bshing Lucas. Science fiction writers have been banished to the back of the bookstore for a long time, and worse one cannot break out of it once one is pigeon-holed there. He is really angry at the marketing of publishers, Star Wars just gives him a vehicle (although the point about Empire Strikes Back is telling).
As for Stanislaw Lem, he and Cordwainer Smith ARE the greatest science fiction writers ever (just ask him- he certainly told the SFWA about it). Here is his home page. Note that Soderbergh and James Cameron are in on the movie.
My suggestion is start out light with the Cyberiad, go to Pirx the Pilot, then move up to the Star Diaries, the Futurological Congress and Solaris. Cordwainer Smith wasn't mentioned in the article, but he's the spiritual and emotional side to Lem's freewheeling tech and savage satire. His real name was Paul Linebarger, and he practically invented modern American Psychological Warfare. This is his daughter's website which like the Lem website will give you a taste of the writing.
Two novels came out in 1964 about heroes from a barren world that produced drugs humanity is dependent on- Dune and Norstrilia. I love Dune, but Norstrilia is better.
Finally, Legends of the Galactic Heroes shows Star Wars, Babylon 5 and Star Trek for the small little tripe they are. Space Opera has never been so big.
This is the kind of unintended thing our increasing abilities re: engineering and computing lead us to. For instance the al Qaeda could get build a gliding torpedo and program it to go after an LNG tanker in a harbor. Given the efficiences, the gliding torpedo could be launched hundreds of miles away off a beach or a trawler and blow your harbor to hell. Several nations could use it and it would be difficult to trace back to the origin ship.
The hospital that I worked at for years has had a lab delivery robot for about 5 years now. There was a huge naming contest, and they've used the poor thing for kicking off children's book drives or the like.
Visitors usually interact with it, I just open the doors if it's having trouble getting around and otherwise stay out of it's way.
F x (H-Q) ___________________ = man-hours (P1+P2+P3, etc.)/nP
where F is number of Features, H is Hobbling (range from 1 to 100), Q is Quality Assurance (range from 0 to 100), P1 is skill level of programmer on particular problem (skill level being from a range of.01 <script kiddie> to 1 <average competent programmer> to 10 <certified productive genius>), and nP is number of Programmers.
On (H-Q), use even if a negative number (excessive quality assurance can be as hobbling as normal bureaucracy), and treat 0 as 1.
This formula takes into account the complexity of the work the package is performing, the skill of the programmer(s) involved, the fog of bad user/organizational ineptitude, and the amount of QA work being done.
Software should not be described in terms of lines of code or database sizes, but rather by 'feature'. A feature could be thought of most easily as the list of salable points Microsoft and others use to sell their products. A feature can also be an internal function not recognizable by the user, but which aids development, error tracking, security or maintenance.
To use this formula in the context of the article, simply add a feature change to the feature number. Static applications will be a slight drain, but constantly changing applications will require man-hours, genius programmers and/or intensive QA work and a minimum of hobbling to reduce man-hours. Even with a fantasy level of positive factors, the complexity level will require features to be taken out, or a process to be started from scratch.
This formula also covers why Open Source has worked so well. OS brings together programmers to work on tasks they are well suited for on modules rather then one monster product, thus avoiding insane complexity levels. The peer review aspect quickly weeds out inept behavior, thus keeping the programmer skill level relatively high, whereas a corporation may not be able to recognize incompetence quickly.
Obviously plugging numbers into this formula is a highly subjective business, but then again so is Lehman's approach. Try this on for size- I would be very interested in hearing about real-world results.
Sadly, this process is exceedingly questionable. It's like running constant speadsheets about how well your business was doing without actually making or selling anything. Nothing is going to replace the occasional detonation for ensuring engineering quality control, and we were fools for signing the pesky treaty.
I do not trust this court to uphold public domain. Clinton practically held onto power with the help of media conglomerates, and like it or not Bush or any successor must reward or break the conglomerates to their will. Given the outcome of the 2000 campaign and other rulings, I suspect they will lean towards the corporatist viewpoint.
The WWII Online folks started out on the fanatical simulation side and still maintain, such that a tank round checks penetration due to range, speed, inertial power, armor, etc. and then bounces around inside differently with each shot. Unlike virtually every other game it is also going to go into logistical supply, so for instance cities will be targets much more for their railroads then anything else. Very very whack and important to us WWII freaks.
But it won't sell to the Quake crowd because war is realistically lots of boredom punctured by a few seconds or minutes of stark terror and probable death. So they are going to have to make concessions to the quakers and allow faster return into battle so everyone gets their jollies.
So for the sim freaks for online systems compromise will be the name of the game to keep the player numbers up.
I think anyone who buys from these guys has to be nuts. Submarines are precision machines where the tolerances for failure have to be in the space launch range of darn near zero. I would trust Woods Hole contractors or military sub contractors but not cutesy minisub guys.
Even that one aside, the operation of the sub would probably get ruined by the average non-understanding of the filthy rich person who bought it. "Whaddya mean I can't put my baby grand piano here in the lounge and ruin the balance of the ship? It's my sub, put it in!" Bloop.
And once it bloops, who is going to rescue your sad rich ass?
Technically World War II Online fails the role-playing part of MMORPG. Yes you do play the part of an armed forces person who moves up in rank in their chosen country and armed service branch, but you don't really get the RPG trip. There is no economy per se other then the marketplace of getting a desired piece of hardware that is limited by logistical constraints. The person each player plays is really themselves tearing around 1940 France. The normal combat result is most likely a bullet or.88 round in the back thanks to the lethality of 20th century warfare and a player base that is not sufficiently rewarded for living.
So why bring it up here? Because it's underlying fundamental design could be readily used for RPGing.
For instance, the game literally allows you to start out in an English sea village, catch a boat across the channel, and walk from the French coast to Germany in 1:2 scale. So it has room that would allow for a lot of player interaction and situations to develop.
The game is being built to track logistics to the point where capturing a key rail junction can impact the enemy all across the front. Obviously that can be used to 'fix' a lot of RPG headaches- markets could actually be represented, and the impact of the frost giants smashing all your riverboats will cause everyone to go hungry- better go gettem.
The physics are utterly accurate. Recently the programmers set off a 56 kt weapon in the game by just scaling up the numbers on a normal HE round- it blew a mountain off and rained down debris for minutes.
The tools are being developed which will give volunteer commanders the ability to manage their forces, thus actually incorporating military organization into the game. Even now, you don't get missions from game designers, you get missions from fellow commander players.
All of this means that it could be the big MMORPG engine to lay on whatever design an inventive game company can come up with. For instance, just thinking about the game, you could do Cold War Spies on exactly the same terrain- or Terrorist Hunts, come to think of it.
Finally, each side is really really compelled to whale on the other. Part of it is a game on WWII automatically conjures a lot of passion. Also, it is supremely wonderful to watch your opponent go nuts as you frustrate their carefully orchestrated attack, but that's just me.
Whatever the RPG game is, it should be compelling on some level for the target audience.
For reasons which I explain here, IBM is in a battle with the higher end supercluster providers. The fact that they won the microcode war and drove their hardware competitors out does not change that they are in trouble for growing their business for the future. And the true cost of mainframes is third party software tied to MIPS for the whole machine.
IBM needs desperately for the third-party software vendors to get on the boat with actual use pricing rather then the current entire-box pricing. So they certainly are out to mess with the third-party vendors, but not to eliminate them or generate revenue for Global Services (that's making lemons out of lemonade). They are out to take the Big Stick and beat the vendors into line.
So in a sense it isn't anti-competitive, IBM is actually far more concerned with keeping the Big Corporate Gravy Train going and making sure the MS and Unices do not derail them.
Now if IBM DID use Compuware's software in some junior VP's bid to get ahead, they do need to pay up.
Actually there are products on the mainframes that do Windows- on IBM they are session managers (essentially two or more dynamic terminal sessions displaying on one character screen kinda like the old Quarterdeck DOS windows), and on Burroughs they were sessions that were tied into their MARC menu system.
IBM does this at their training centers every week, which cleans up any mess a student left, eliminates security loopholes that might have been introduced, and gives IBM absolute control over the training machines.
If it's good enough for Big Blue it's good enough for the Little Red Schoolhouse.
Slashdot Mirror
Now we all know what happens when atmospheric processors are brought online- ancient alien eggs get discovered by The Company and nearly everyone dies.
Not exactly an earth-friendly solution.
Certainly the ol' military-industrial complex has a lot to do with overbuilding, but there are darn good reasons to overbuild.
For instance, if we knew our nukes were going to all work with the frequency of even a civilian automobile, we could get rid of a lot more of them. But we don't as we cannot go around firing the things to make sure. So we get enough so even a 33% 'success rate' will ensure enemy oblivion.
Same thing with the tanks. In a war with the USSR you have to figure that the European-based tanks would get chewed up in the first three weeks. Then you would have a loss rate from subs torpedoing resupply convoys. Add in wastage, and the tank figure is actually quite reasonable.
The Army is trying to go to a 'lighter' unit, the Medium Brigades. Unfortunately, they are ending up specing wheeled units when the M113 would do nicely, and yes that is for profit and no other good reason. But at least these are lighter units and a shot at reinventing doctrine for our current world.
Soldiers are paid that way so we can have vast numbers of them without bankrupting the country. There are lots of benefits often not touted. The educational benefits alone can easily fund most of a public college education, and the low-cost veteran financing for houses is worth 10s of thousands as well. Most of the non-combat skills are very transferable to the civilian world, and that training is paid for by the services.
You don't get the concept of deterrence, do you?
Given your subject title, I am going to assume you agree with most of my post, and so I will just go into what I understand your objections are.
I am not bashing the US by any means. We ARE not idiots, at least militarily. The two colonels who wrote Unrestricted Warfare do not consider us idiots either. They are most horrified by Desert Storm, as the PLA was set up (largely still is) like the Iraqi army and we can render China as not even a medium or regional power if we really want to. They are saying 'how can we deal with this de facto superiority'. Their answer is organizing political actions, economic warfare, use weapons like EMP bombs, terrorist acts, and mass psychoogical warfare as tools. Be prepared to play dirty dirty dirty is their motto. Try reading it, you will likely be surprised and disturbed.
I am saying that even if it's not the Chinese, somebody is going to pick up on our vulnerabilities and attack them as al Qaeda has. 9/11 is an example of assymetric warfare, suicide bombers is another. If you want to win you need to understand it and be prepared to fight it.
I don't think it is an accident that many hacker attacks come from China. They are prepping for full-blown cyberwar, just another phase of unrestricted warfare.
As far as defeating high-tech weapons are concerned, consider the example of the IR Maverick. Mounds of cash were put into that program, but an enterprising congressional staffer was able to utterly defeat that missile with just several little hibachis out on the test range. That problem has been fixed, but it is just an example that big money weapons can often be defeated by simple low-tech means.
The 2000-lb JDAM bombs we were smacking the Taliban with can be led astray by Radio-Shack-level component GPS jammers. There were no Radio Shacks in Afghanistan, but there may be next time around.
As for our enemies not being able to develop DEWADs or any other toys, think again. I seem to recall all sorts of American bluster and intel estimates that the Russians could not possibly make A-bombs or H-bombs within 5 years, or Pakis or Indians. But they DID. Yes we are world leaders in weapons tech but our opponents or nations with their own interests are not idiots either. If we want to win we must be prepared to realistically appraise our opponents.
As the British poster noted, dreadnaughts were the ICBMs of the early 1900s, but that vast investment did not stop the financial and political draining of the British Empire by subs in two world wars. Learn from history.
And yes they ARE toys in my sense of the word. I use the term toys to indicate that we have an infatuation with technology while often not recognizing that we could get the job done by other means. The bribe was just as important as the smart bomb in Afghanistan.
Finally, I want constitutional values to win the world over. The planet will be a happier place if it does. So I don't want silliness like Satellite Pax Americana to think that will get the job done by itself without a comprehensive political and economic doctrine.
In order for the 'no they' one species one tribe model to work, most everyone has to agree to tribal membership. We may decide there is no they, but I suspect the rest of the world may disagree, and we have to be prepared to deal with that kind of world.
Hmmm, dont know about that. For instance Hitler would not have gotten going if he didn't put on really great theater- a good cable show would have stopped all those klieg light shows. More importantly the German people felt a real grievance and were willing to follow someone who could deliver 'dignity' and bread.
Unfortunately we cannot stomp out every embroyonic Hitler hatchery. We'll just have to recognize them when they show up and flatten them.
No can't say that I have driven around Mexico City with a nuke in the trunk. Of course customs has radiation detectors at the border, and I would assume all major cities have them on overpasses leading into town, that's why you enter the country on backroads with a bomb in a lead-lined box. I don't have to build it, I would buy a suitcase nuke on the open market, or build an EMP bomb or radiological bomb (far easier propositions).
Just because something is easy to do doesn't mean it will be done- the ability to do a WTC airliner attack existed prior to September 11, it's just somebody finally did it.
al Qaeda and other fanatics might beg to differ with you about ending the world. After all, we are infidels and they will be going to paradise.
Folks, this is not good military analysis, this is just Bruce selling an article.
It is true that the satellites provide massive reconaissance and communications force multipliers to the military. It is also true that we are very dependent on them not just for military functions but also for tele-economic industries (making them juicy targets). And it is true that America's constant investment in various technologies mean a uni-polar world re: conventional military power.
What Bruce fails to realize is that these tools are just that- tools that can be broken, circumvented or worse copied and used better by others.
For instance, if we follow through with heavy DEWAD use (Directed Energy Weapon Air Defense), yes we can knock down missiles and rule the skies- for a while. Then our enemies will eventually duplicate the technology, and knock down our cruise missiles, UAVs and bombers. Then all the satellites in the world won't help our inability to affect events on the ground with airpower.
Even if we have a Rumsfeldian dream US Space Force, that doesn't stop the VW driving in from Mexico City with the nuke in the trunk.
Our enemies will move around our military power. Take a looksee at this translation of two Chinese colonels writing about our Desert War dominance, and how to circumvent and defeat the US in spite of military superiority. Somehow in his rush to sell his article, he did not deal with assymetric warfare.
Pax Americana needs these toys to happen, but the toys by themselves can be beaten. What we really need is plenty of mutual interest (read money and self-determination) for most of the world to participate in Pax Americana, the will to crush in Cold or Hot War those who will take away self-determination and money from others in the name of an ism (even if they are American), and the spread of fair legal and financial system to the average world citizen.
We will win with satellite TV moreso then satellite lasers.
I don't know what happened to Bruce- way too many blue hawaiians on Austin's Sixth Street I imagine.
Clinton would never have survived the impeachment proceedings, bloated and ridiculous as they were, without a concerted media effort to save him.
As far as kicking him is concerned, Clinton was the best thing to happen to news in a long time. Remember, the media is in it for selling Alpo, and nothing sells dog food like salacious sex.
I would attribute the sycophancy to terror at what a wartime president could do to a mediacorp that does not 'play nice'.
Playing fair? Hmmmmm, there are fanatics of all stripes (any -ism you care to mention) that would like to take down the US without regard to American life or property. Playing fair is unlikely to deter such persons.
What I could agree with is that we need to 'play fair' in terms of working with nations and peoples, not boss them around like they are the hired help, or leaving them to rot with people we prop up for convenience, profit, or emotional appeal. That way we keep 94% of the world at least neutral towards us, then we can squash any -ism that is thinking about coming after us without having to fight the whole world.
On that second law, there should also be a law about why that is. The three corollaries I can think of are
1. Bad or unforeseen design decisions come back to haunt you and increasingly make growth/change of the package more and more inefficient.
2. Economics of programmer coding dictate that one cuts development/reoptimization.tuning costs by letting the hardware crutch through the consequences of corollary #1.
3. Chunks of the code were compiled in a different compile environment and inefficiencies creep in with executing code.
The writer has his own agenda beyond bshing Lucas. Science fiction writers have been banished to the back of the bookstore for a long time, and worse one cannot break out of it once one is pigeon-holed there. He is really angry at the marketing of publishers, Star Wars just gives him a vehicle (although the point about Empire Strikes Back is telling).
As for Stanislaw Lem, he and Cordwainer Smith ARE the greatest science fiction writers ever (just ask him- he certainly told the SFWA about it). Here is his home page. Note that Soderbergh and James Cameron are in on the movie.
My suggestion is start out light with the Cyberiad, go to Pirx the Pilot, then move up to the Star Diaries, the Futurological Congress and Solaris.
Cordwainer Smith wasn't mentioned in the article, but he's the spiritual and emotional side to Lem's freewheeling tech and savage satire. His real name was Paul Linebarger, and he practically invented modern American Psychological Warfare. This is his daughter's website which like the Lem website will give you a taste of the writing.
Two novels came out in 1964 about heroes from a barren world that produced drugs humanity is dependent on- Dune and Norstrilia. I love Dune, but Norstrilia is better.
Finally, Legends of the Galactic Heroes shows Star Wars, Babylon 5 and Star Trek for the small little tripe they are. Space Opera has never been so big.
Check them out!!!!!
This is the kind of unintended thing our increasing abilities re: engineering and computing lead us to. For instance the al Qaeda could get build a gliding torpedo and program it to go after an LNG tanker in a harbor. Given the efficiences, the gliding torpedo could be launched hundreds of miles away off a beach or a trawler and blow your harbor to hell. Several nations could use it and it would be difficult to trace back to the origin ship.
The hospital that I worked at for years has had a lab delivery robot for about 5 years now. There was a huge naming contest, and they've used the poor thing for kicking off children's book drives or the like.
Visitors usually interact with it, I just open the doors if it's having trouble getting around and otherwise stay out of it's way.
Here is Mittermeyer's Law-
.01 <script kiddie> to 1 <average competent programmer> to 10 <certified productive genius>),
F x (H-Q)
___________________ = man-hours
(P1+P2+P3, etc.)/nP
where F is number of Features,
H is Hobbling (range from 1 to 100),
Q is Quality Assurance (range from 0 to 100),
P1 is skill level of programmer on particular problem (skill level being from a range of
and nP is number of Programmers.
On (H-Q), use even if a negative number (excessive quality assurance can be as hobbling as normal bureaucracy), and treat 0 as 1.
This formula takes into account the complexity of the work the package is performing, the skill of the programmer(s) involved, the fog of bad user/organizational ineptitude, and the amount of QA work being done.
Software should not be described in terms of lines of code or database sizes, but rather by 'feature'. A feature could be thought of most easily as the list of salable points Microsoft and others use to sell their products. A feature can also be an internal function not recognizable by the user, but which aids development, error tracking, security or maintenance.
To use this formula in the context of the article, simply add a feature change to the feature number. Static applications will be a slight drain, but constantly changing applications will require man-hours, genius programmers and/or intensive QA work and a minimum of hobbling to reduce man-hours. Even with a fantasy level of positive factors, the complexity level will require features to be taken out, or a process to be started from scratch.
This formula also covers why Open Source has worked so well. OS brings together programmers to work on tasks they are well suited for on modules rather then one monster product, thus avoiding insane complexity levels. The peer review aspect quickly weeds out inept behavior, thus keeping the programmer skill level relatively high, whereas a corporation may not be able to recognize incompetence quickly.
Obviously plugging numbers into this formula is a highly subjective business, but then again so is Lehman's approach. Try this on for size- I would be very interested in hearing about real-world results.
Sadly, this process is exceedingly questionable. It's like running constant speadsheets about how well your business was doing without actually making or selling anything. Nothing is going to replace the occasional detonation for ensuring engineering quality control, and we were fools for signing the pesky treaty.
I do not trust this court to uphold public domain. Clinton practically held onto power with the help of media conglomerates, and like it or not Bush or any successor must reward or break the conglomerates to their will. Given the outcome of the 2000 campaign and other rulings, I suspect they will lean towards the corporatist viewpoint.
The WWII Online folks started out on the fanatical simulation side and still maintain, such that a tank round checks penetration due to range, speed, inertial power, armor, etc. and then bounces around inside differently with each shot. Unlike virtually every other game it is also going to go into logistical supply, so for instance cities will be targets much more for their railroads then anything else. Very very whack and important to us WWII freaks.
But it won't sell to the Quake crowd because war is realistically lots of boredom punctured by a few seconds or minutes of stark terror and probable death. So they are going to have to make concessions to the quakers and allow faster return into battle so everyone gets their jollies.
So for the sim freaks for online systems compromise will be the name of the game to keep the player numbers up.
I think anyone who buys from these guys has to be nuts. Submarines are precision machines where the tolerances for failure have to be in the space launch range of darn near zero. I would trust Woods Hole contractors or military sub contractors but not cutesy minisub guys.
Even that one aside, the operation of the sub would probably get ruined by the average non-understanding of the filthy rich person who bought it. "Whaddya mean I can't put my baby grand piano here in the lounge and ruin the balance of the ship? It's my sub, put it in!" Bloop.
And once it bloops, who is going to rescue your sad rich ass?
Technically World War II Online fails the role-playing part of MMORPG. Yes you do play the part of an armed forces person who moves up in rank in their chosen country and armed service branch, but you don't really get the RPG trip. There is no economy per se other then the marketplace of getting a desired piece of hardware that is limited by logistical constraints. The person each player plays is really themselves tearing around 1940 France. The normal combat result is most likely a bullet or .88 round in the back thanks to the lethality of 20th century warfare and a player base that is not sufficiently rewarded for living.
So why bring it up here? Because it's underlying fundamental design could be readily used for RPGing.
For instance, the game literally allows you to start out in an English sea village, catch a boat across the channel, and walk from the French coast to Germany in 1:2 scale. So it has room that would allow for a lot of player interaction and situations to develop.
The game is being built to track logistics to the point where capturing a key rail junction can impact the enemy all across the front. Obviously that can be used to 'fix' a lot of RPG headaches- markets could actually be represented, and the impact of the frost giants smashing all your riverboats will cause everyone to go hungry- better go gettem.
The physics are utterly accurate. Recently the programmers set off a 56 kt weapon in the game by just scaling up the numbers on a normal HE round- it blew a mountain off and rained down debris for minutes.
The tools are being developed which will give volunteer commanders the ability to manage their forces, thus actually incorporating military organization into the game. Even now, you don't get missions from game designers, you get missions from fellow commander players.
All of this means that it could be the big MMORPG engine to lay on whatever design an inventive game company can come up with. For instance, just thinking about the game, you could do Cold War Spies on exactly the same terrain- or Terrorist Hunts, come to think of it.
Finally, each side is really really compelled to whale on the other. Part of it is a game on WWII automatically conjures a lot of passion. Also, it is supremely wonderful to watch your opponent go nuts as you frustrate their carefully orchestrated attack, but that's just me.
Whatever the RPG game is, it should be compelling on some level for the target audience.
When carrier battle groups, air wings, army divisions and the fate of nations are on the line, $1 billion for total SIGINT access is cheap indeed.
Break out those one-time key pads and pigeons, boys, the government will own your electronic crytposouls before you know it.
For reasons which I explain here, IBM is in a battle with the higher end supercluster providers. The fact that they won the microcode war and drove their hardware competitors out does not change that they are in trouble for growing their business for the future. And the true cost of mainframes is third party software tied to MIPS for the whole machine. IBM needs desperately for the third-party software vendors to get on the boat with actual use pricing rather then the current entire-box pricing. So they certainly are out to mess with the third-party vendors, but not to eliminate them or generate revenue for Global Services (that's making lemons out of lemonade). They are out to take the Big Stick and beat the vendors into line. So in a sense it isn't anti-competitive, IBM is actually far more concerned with keeping the Big Corporate Gravy Train going and making sure the MS and Unices do not derail them. Now if IBM DID use Compuware's software in some junior VP's bid to get ahead, they do need to pay up.
Actually there are products on the mainframes that do Windows- on IBM they are session managers (essentially two or more dynamic terminal sessions displaying on one character screen kinda like the old Quarterdeck DOS windows), and on Burroughs they were sessions that were tied into their MARC menu system.
Z/OS silly boy, 64-bit OS goodness.....
IBM does this at their training centers every week, which cleans up any mess a student left, eliminates security loopholes that might have been introduced, and gives IBM absolute control over the training machines.
If it's good enough for Big Blue it's good enough for the Little Red Schoolhouse.