The linked article page is not coming up, but I think nuclear is being proposed to use nuclear fuels to superheat gasses for propulsion, so it could be a constant burn and not a series of explosions. At least it's not going to behave like a series of a-bombs, that's stupid.
We have too few engineers and no manufacturing infrastructure. We will have to train a whole new class of workers and build many new factories. This doesn't happen overnight.
I think you vastly underestimate the existing base. Part of the reason that there are fewer people in manufacturing in the US is because US manufacturing increased in productivity. People that spent a lifetime as high school grads doing rote tasks were obsoleted by robots. Manual machinists were replaced by fewer people that operate faster and more accurate CNC machines, and those CNC machines get more productive every year.
While China's manufacturing output is huge, $3T+/yr, US manufacturing is still a $1.5 trillion dollar/yr industry.
Consumer Electronics is the one big non-native industry, but they can be made in the US. It's moved out primarily due to cost issues, competitors can make them cheaper, but I doubt that will really come back in significant numbers.
The one system showcased on FutureWeapons supposedly ramps up the heat slowly enough that people close their eyes much quicker, and much before there's any risk of cooking the eye.
You are right, but that's also because the fabs get more expensive on each generation, I think each feature size shrink requires a fab that costs 50% more than the previous fab.
USB is notoriously inefficient. From what I understand, they made some design decisions that prevent the protocol from operating quickly. This is why people find that Firewire devices end up being noticeably faster even though it's bitrate is 16% slower.
The firmware is significantly different from previous generations. It looks to me that they more than doubled the complexity of the firmware relative to the previous nano.
I don't think that this $59 is the marginal cost even, because the iSuppli numbers don't even include packaging, shipping, average warranty expense, retail mark-up and so on. In the past, they didn't even include the cost of the ear buds.
Maybe the target markets aren't the same. Maybe what they mean when saying "everyone" is that it's really "lowest common denominator". That kind of person might not be a PA reader at all.
I think Microsoft offers Universal tracks on the Zune Marketplace. I think iTunes still sells Universal music on the equivalent of "month-to-month" arrangement, it is just that ZM and iTS don't have the type of business model that SpiralFrog is using.
The difference is that both are open source and no matter what level of hot air that RMS can emit, he can't force anyone to do anything other than abide by the license of his software.
He can't force people to change the name of Linux, it's just that people decided to go along with it on their own. The GNU/Linux thing was kind of retarded given that Linux distributions feature code from a lot of different licenses, and GNU is the only one that's mentioned?
I don't think your Windows vs. Linux things applies directly, in part because that's closed source vs. open source, rather than an open source compiler against another open source compiler.
I think the point was that it's hard to justify having two open source compilers for the same language. It's a lot of duplicated work with far less benefit given that the existing compiler has been doing a pretty good job and the "new" kid on the block isn't even ready for use.
Sorta like how the US government has been complaining about the difficulty of hiring Arabic translators, despite the statistics from a few years back saying that there were several million US residence who were fluent in Arabic. (And, contrary to the jokes going around, they aren't all gay.;-)
I think there's a key difference between the security law and the US translator issue. It's not illegal to speak Arabic, be an Arabic translator, have any number of Arabic books and training aids, nor is it illegal to teach Arabic, and you don't get arrested or go to jail for admitting that you know Arabic. In fact, I'm not even sure what the comparison is here, I know that many US policies are flawed at best, but I'm not sure where the parallels are.
I'm puzzled by the story submission. One major selling point on the cable provider side is that digital saves bandwidth or allows them to push more channels down the cable. What would have been one analog channel can be partitioned to maybe four digital channels instead, and still get good quality. Digitizing an analog signal doesn't save any bandwidth.
GIMPShop supposedly copies the Photoshop UI. I still didn't like it. For Windows and Mac, I don't think it's competing against the pay version of Photoshop, GIMP is competing against the infringing copies ("free"/"pirated") version of Photoshop.
I don't even think it's about copying the UI. I don't think people mind different UIs, but I think they mind having to use less efficient UIs. I don't think the UI designers for GIMP really thought that one through. I counted the number of steps it took to perform an action for the actions I often use, and Photoshop beat it. That's not even counting the vertical menu thing in GIMP. I don't know how other people are, but for me, moving the mouse cursor side to side is more efficient than up and down, and the vertical menu has just been more irritating than the standard horizontal menu bar, even if the horizontal menu bar drops down to a short vertical menu.
iTouch is a nice platform with good future potential, but it's not designed to be used without a host computer to for syncing and backup. Most of the software would need to be modified.
Point being, this is sleight of hand. Their real move is going to be trying to buy the bands and keep them dark. Therefore, the bands are worth more with these rules in place than without and Verizon's contention that the FCC is disenfranchising the government of revenue by adding these rules is void.
What?
Why does Verizon care if the Government gets the revenue?
I don't understand why the open access rules would make any difference to the existing carriers if they just want to leave the band unused.
I never did place the blame, but you are right. The mayor deserves part of the blame, and the governor deserves part of the blame too. As far as I'm concerned, if it's a dire emergency, then the consequences of violating red tape is much lower than the consequences of not doing so.
Hubble doesn't really apply at all because it was intended to be serviceable. Hubble would only compare to a space probe if you remove the servicing costs, because probes aren't serviced. I'm sure the initial cost was even higher than you stated, I think the average cost of a shuttle launch is just a shade under $1B.
I presume they'll keep a low-key program with current Rovers after May. Unexpected longevity complicates NASAs budget.
The odd thing is that once the device is made and fired off on a rocket, far more of the money is spent than with the rest of the project. The cost to continue a project is minimal when the probe is already there.
I don't know about Magellan, but I thought Galileo was a preventative measure, they decided they couldn't risk an uncontrolled failure so they would just kill it when they still had control.
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The linked article page is not coming up, but I think nuclear is being proposed to use nuclear fuels to superheat gasses for propulsion, so it could be a constant burn and not a series of explosions. At least it's not going to behave like a series of a-bombs, that's stupid.
We have too few engineers and no manufacturing infrastructure. We will have to train a whole new class of workers and build many new factories. This doesn't happen overnight.
I think you vastly underestimate the existing base. Part of the reason that there are fewer people in manufacturing in the US is because US manufacturing increased in productivity. People that spent a lifetime as high school grads doing rote tasks were obsoleted by robots. Manual machinists were replaced by fewer people that operate faster and more accurate CNC machines, and those CNC machines get more productive every year.
While China's manufacturing output is huge, $3T+/yr, US manufacturing is still a $1.5 trillion dollar/yr industry.
Consumer Electronics is the one big non-native industry, but they can be made in the US. It's moved out primarily due to cost issues, competitors can make them cheaper, but I doubt that will really come back in significant numbers.
The one system showcased on FutureWeapons supposedly ramps up the heat slowly enough that people close their eyes much quicker, and much before there's any risk of cooking the eye.
I guess that's a fair question.
Richard Mackowitz of FutureWeapons covered this or something like this. He actually subjected himself to the beam.
You are right, but that's also because the fabs get more expensive on each generation, I think each feature size shrink requires a fab that costs 50% more than the previous fab.
Getting into the NBA is a bit easier than getting into to be an astronaut, statistically speaking.
A bit? Each NBA team probably fields more players in a given year than NASA has active astronauts. How many NBA teams are there now?
I'm surprised they support Linux at all. I think some of the previous ports were done as a labor of love by a few employees on their time off.
USB is notoriously inefficient. From what I understand, they made some design decisions that prevent the protocol from operating quickly. This is why people find that Firewire devices end up being noticeably faster even though it's bitrate is 16% slower.
The firmware is significantly different from previous generations. It looks to me that they more than doubled the complexity of the firmware relative to the previous nano.
I don't think that this $59 is the marginal cost even, because the iSuppli numbers don't even include packaging, shipping, average warranty expense, retail mark-up and so on. In the past, they didn't even include the cost of the ear buds.
Maybe the target markets aren't the same. Maybe what they mean when saying "everyone" is that it's really "lowest common denominator". That kind of person might not be a PA reader at all.
I think Microsoft offers Universal tracks on the Zune Marketplace. I think iTunes still sells Universal music on the equivalent of "month-to-month" arrangement, it is just that ZM and iTS don't have the type of business model that SpiralFrog is using.
The difference is that both are open source and no matter what level of hot air that RMS can emit, he can't force anyone to do anything other than abide by the license of his software.
He can't force people to change the name of Linux, it's just that people decided to go along with it on their own. The GNU/Linux thing was kind of retarded given that Linux distributions feature code from a lot of different licenses, and GNU is the only one that's mentioned?
I don't think your Windows vs. Linux things applies directly, in part because that's closed source vs. open source, rather than an open source compiler against another open source compiler.
I think the point was that it's hard to justify having two open source compilers for the same language. It's a lot of duplicated work with far less benefit given that the existing compiler has been doing a pretty good job and the "new" kid on the block isn't even ready for use.
Sorta like how the US government has been complaining about the difficulty of hiring Arabic translators, despite the statistics from a few years back saying that there were several million US residence who were fluent in Arabic. (And, contrary to the jokes going around, they aren't all gay. ;-)
I think there's a key difference between the security law and the US translator issue. It's not illegal to speak Arabic, be an Arabic translator, have any number of Arabic books and training aids, nor is it illegal to teach Arabic, and you don't get arrested or go to jail for admitting that you know Arabic. In fact, I'm not even sure what the comparison is here, I know that many US policies are flawed at best, but I'm not sure where the parallels are.
I'm puzzled by the story submission. One major selling point on the cable provider side is that digital saves bandwidth or allows them to push more channels down the cable. What would have been one analog channel can be partitioned to maybe four digital channels instead, and still get good quality. Digitizing an analog signal doesn't save any bandwidth.
GIMPShop supposedly copies the Photoshop UI. I still didn't like it. For Windows and Mac, I don't think it's competing against the pay version of Photoshop, GIMP is competing against the infringing copies ("free"/"pirated") version of Photoshop.
I don't even think it's about copying the UI. I don't think people mind different UIs, but I think they mind having to use less efficient UIs. I don't think the UI designers for GIMP really thought that one through. I counted the number of steps it took to perform an action for the actions I often use, and Photoshop beat it. That's not even counting the vertical menu thing in GIMP. I don't know how other people are, but for me, moving the mouse cursor side to side is more efficient than up and down, and the vertical menu has just been more irritating than the standard horizontal menu bar, even if the horizontal menu bar drops down to a short vertical menu.
iTouch is a nice platform with good future potential, but it's not designed to be used without a host computer to for syncing and backup. Most of the software would need to be modified.
I'd love to discuss it, but first of all I'd want to know what we're discussing.
That's not the Slashdot way. We're supposed to have an unfounded opinion based on insufficient facts and preexisting prejudices.
There does exist a pound mass, but it's rarely used.
Point being, this is sleight of hand. Their real move is going to be trying to buy the bands and keep them dark. Therefore, the bands are worth more with these rules in place than without and Verizon's contention that the FCC is disenfranchising the government of revenue by adding these rules is void.
What?
Why does Verizon care if the Government gets the revenue?
I don't understand why the open access rules would make any difference to the existing carriers if they just want to leave the band unused.
I never did place the blame, but you are right. The mayor deserves part of the blame, and the governor deserves part of the blame too. As far as I'm concerned, if it's a dire emergency, then the consequences of violating red tape is much lower than the consequences of not doing so.
Not all the busses were full. Quite a lot of school busses simply sat there unused and ended up being flooded.
Hubble doesn't really apply at all because it was intended to be serviceable. Hubble would only compare to a space probe if you remove the servicing costs, because probes aren't serviced. I'm sure the initial cost was even higher than you stated, I think the average cost of a shuttle launch is just a shade under $1B.
I presume they'll keep a low-key program with current Rovers after May. Unexpected longevity complicates NASAs budget.
The odd thing is that once the device is made and fired off on a rocket, far more of the money is spent than with the rest of the project. The cost to continue a project is minimal when the probe is already there.
I don't know about Magellan, but I thought Galileo was a preventative measure, they decided they couldn't risk an uncontrolled failure so they would just kill it when they still had control.
You're right about that, but then, I still don't see why people shouldn't be allowed to say that the story is lame.