This volume is named "Web Publishing", but can be read as a more general textbook on online publishing, communities and information exchange. The book has lots of concrete technical information (AOLserver, Oracle, SQL, Unix) which may be expected to go out of date in some years, but it is still general enough to make it a lasting source of information. Of course, you have to hack through Greenspun's egomaniac style, but if you don't take him too seriously, it works...
Plus, it has nice pictures. And you can read it on the web, in its newest, updated edition.
I know, I know, Cooper is ex-Microsoft and invented Visual Basic (at least the cover blurb claims so -- I wouldn't know that), but I found the book interesting, if sometimes hard, reading. It is only somewhat MS-specific; readers should be able to transfer ideas and solutions forwarded in the book to other GUI systems and OSs. It would round out the CS-heavy bias of most of the lists I have seen here towards the "applied" or "user" side.
Funny how most of the lists are so very similar! I wonder if the reason is in my/. settings (I only see about 30% of the posts), or in the quality of the books and the people writing about them...
... can also have good ideas for generating options in cases like these - options and ways to proceed that, one one's own (lawyer or non-lawyer), would not be so obvious. This is quite important in negotiation.
Can't turn back time, so think ahead...
on
The Unblinking Eye
·
· Score: 1
If we can't, as it seems, turn back time and stop the spread of "non-invasive" identification technology for public spaces, some thoughts should be spent on...
... how to live with it
... what to do to fool the technology, if necessary
... whether it is really necessary to worry so much
This last is more from a technical perspective, not from a political or moral: even if modern IT gives authorities easy access to huge amounts of data storage and automated data management, query and retrieval, my guess is that most of the time, and in most cases, all the captured face prints, finger prints, voice prints, license plates,... probably end up on some dusty hard disk, never to be seen again. This is for the simple reason that even with the aforementioned advances in automated evaluation methods, authorities simply cannot make use of the evaluation results, never mind the raw data.
In the end this may break down to the old question: are authorities and govt. agencies evil, sinister, effective instruments of doom (the "conspiracy theory interpretation"), or just huge, bloated organizations of overworked, underpaid humans who are as fallible, slow-moving and inefficient as any (the "organizational entropy interpretation")?
At least that's what I always think when it looks like one of civilization's problems involving unpopular change of behaviour by humans is in the process of being solved/going away. I try to imagine what would happen if a major news organization would put this on the wires: "Global Warming Stopped - Greenhouse Effect Checked". Even if it's true - it could be, if emissions were stopped now, in fifty year's time or so - the public effect, I believe, would be terrible. The first reaction on a headline like that would be "Great! So I can forget about that..."
Not to forget, in later parts of the Old Testament, several counts of incest, use of WMD (weapons of mass destruction), more murder, and so on. The N.T. actually starts with an instance of infanticide on a mind-boggling scale, with the guilty party saying "Ah didn inhale... eh, order that!". Which, of course, is a lie.
heise.de reports in this news item that German web hosting service 1&1-Puretec canceled a contract for hosting the site npd-aktuell.de. The site belonged to the political party NPD, which stands on the extreme right of the political spectrum, is generally viewed as being neo-Nazi, is under investigation for violating the democratic and free basic rules (bad translation of freiheitlich-demokratische Grundordnung) in many German federal states, and may be forbidden completely for this reason in the future. Puretec decided they didn't want the content, and canceled the contract - but they didn't (and couldn't) throw them out outright; they had to cancel the contract normally.
The reason for the cancellation is quoted to be the public image of hosting company Puretec. They are explicitly not responsible for content on sites hosted by them, so the decision was made voluntarily. If the content had been illegal (judged by German law), a hosting company must take it down as soon as they learn of it being illegal.
Generally, ISPs find themselves between a rock and a hard place: they want business, but if one customer's content offends other customers, they are in danger of losing those customers' business. Of course, taking down sites or content will put them in danger of losing business from people who don't like that...
The end of the Heise article states that at this time, trivial patents or ones with a broad claim are nearly impossible to enforce in court. Software patents are generally illegal, anyway.
The danger, however, lies in the European Patent Office trying to get permission to issue software patents. They want more revenue for themselves - if I recall correctly, the EPO actually has a positive cash flow - they're not tax-sucking bureaucrats, they're money-sucking ones! And being allowed to issue patents on software and genetics/molecules would increase their revenue stream immensely. The patent office has no reason whatsoever to make sure that patents make sense in any way. They get the same fee, whether it's a stupid patent or a sensible one.
Don't let them! Europeans, complain to your MEP!
... but Unix historically was a tool built by developers for their own needs, with no consideration at all given to "users" in the sense of "application users". Despite this, it turned out to be quite useful in a number of non-development roles, and today even makes a stab at becoming a desktop OS.
This reminds me of the venerable battlehorse of the air, the McDonnell-Douglas F-4 "Phantom II". It was designed and built for the single role only of intercepting enemy bombers as far away from their aircraft carrier as possible. Over a timespan of thirty years, there has hardly been a task in the air that Phantoms didn't master. The reason is that the basic airframe seems to have had a lot of reserve capability, and modifications and improvements were easily applied. And they are still in use today... sounds like Unix?
Usually, everybody working in a field is using the same basic physical laws, rules and processes - even in racing engines. The differences are marginal, which of course doesn't mean "unimportant" - especially in racing engines. The same applies to industrial production: using processes patented by sumebody else under license isn't that unusual; companies still make money by performing the process better, cheaper or faster than the competition. How to achieve this "better", "cheaper" or "faster" then is what is kept secret.
In the case of the Rambus patents, this seems to be impossible - it doesn't matter what and how you do it in detail, you have to pay regardless. This is unprecedented - it sounds like somebody getting a patent on fire and then extracting royalties from every manufacturer of internal combustion engines. Or like patenting the wheel...
Build a "proper" browser distribution out of Mozilla sources
Put it on a big server
Buy banner ads pointing to this server on both MSN and netscape.com, the default home pages of millions of unknowing internet users. MSN ads look like "THE latest browser for Microsoft users!". netscape.com ads look like "THE better Netscape!". Graphics to match.
Go back two steps. Make a deal with a lawyer to make sure ads are legally watertight. Incentive to the lawyer: damages for the time MSN and netscape.com block your ads though you paid for them.
Lo! Everyone's using a proper, open-source browser.
Now you can go and use your own server to generate rev... eh, enlightenment.
All the talk in this thread about air-to-air combat, identification issues, communications latency, jamming, hacking etc. is quite interesting in principle. Looking at the specific mission the Boeing aircraft is designed for, however, a lot of the issues become irrelevant.
The goal is to get a platform for Supression of Enemy Air Defences (SEAD) which is safer than the current manned airplanes, which have to fly right into the envelopes of the systems they are tasked to attack.
The Boeing UAV, I imagine, would perform its mission by flying over a given area, maybe around an enemy airfield, which is the target for a later attack by manned strike aircraft. The UAV package, say four UAVs, cruises in, sensing for air defense radar emissions and looking with EO sensors and radar. Possible targets could be identified and cataloged by the on-board computer, and transmitted to the control station. Most of this part of the mission could be run quite autonomously, with human controllers only supervising. If the UAVs are engaged by enemy systems, they could perform automatic evasion maneuvers, or the controllers could intervene, ordering the endangered UAV to, for example, "fly into this valley and hide", and redirect it back sometime later.
If the mission of the day is an attack on the air defense systems, this could be pre-planned in a very short amount of time by the controllers and the overall mission commander, based on the requirements of the follow-on strike package: "Let's take out these two missile batteries here first, they are on the ingress and egress routes for the strike, and then proceed to attack these gun batteries at the field - they may endanger our low-level strike planes". Targets can be designated, a time-on-target specified, and the UAV system would fly the UAVs in a manner consistent with these plans.
The actual attack, then, would be a more hands-on effort on the controller's part. Weapons release would be ordered by them, but the technicalities would be handled by the computers - just as in manned aircraft.
Afterwards, the surviving UAVs would withdraw or, possibly, stay on station to attack sudden threats when the manned strike aircraft are over the target.
In light of the requirements of this mission, consider this:
Identification: air-defence systems should be relatively easy to identify. Most of them need RF emissions to work, and many have pretty unique visual (and, I guess, imaging radar) signatures as well. Take this together, and it should be possible to present the human operator a high-confidence evaluation of the area below/in front of the UAV. Manned friendly aircraft in the vicinity are not a combat, only an air traffic control problem.
Comm latency: This is not so much a problem if the moves and actions of the UAV are not dependent on split-second timing, as for example in air combat. Most of the activities during an unmanned SEAD mission, I would imagine, are time-critical, but not that much. Evading a missile requires quick reaction, of course, but some of this - the first turn - can be automated, and then the humans can intervene. If the first reaction isn't sufficient, you only lose an UAV, not a three-times-the-price fighter and an expensively-trained pilot or two.
Jamming: This requires a technical solution, but shouldn't be a big problem. The UAVs can be made autonomous enough to fly on for short periods of comm interruptions, and to return home (or perform other default actions) when comms break down for a longer time.
Hacking: This would entail gaining access to the ground-based control systems or the on-board systems in the UAV itself. This would probably be accomplished by compromising the communications protocol between the two, trying to pass false commands to the UAV and to present false sensor data to the ground system. I imagine that it would be possible in principle to do this, but very, very hard to implement in practice. This problem isn't specific to the case of armed UAVs, and need also be addressed in other contexts like inter-vehicle communications for ground forces, or data communications between AWACS and manned aircraft.
Are you talking about the AIM-54 "Phoenix" air-to-air missile? The AIM-54, current operational version "C" (AIM-54C), is a heavy, long-range air-to-air missile originally designed for use with the AN/AWG-9 fire control system to intercept Soviet Navy bombers and missiles trying to attack U.S. Navy aircraft carriers. The only aircraft capable of using Phoenix AAMs is the U.S. Navy F-14 Tomcat fighter.
It's an air-to-air missile, so I don't see where topographical recognition would be useful. I'm not too sure about the GPS guidance - the Phoenix guidance system usually is described as "inertial cruise, mid-course update, active homing", which means that the missile is programmed by the fire control system to fly to a specific point in the air, switch on its own homing radar and go after whatever it sees there. Mid-course update means that the fire control system can radio a "correction" of this point to the missile while it is in flight. I've never heard of nuclear-tipped AIM-54s, but I suppose it would be possible.
In connection with this topic, use of the Phoenix seems to present a lot of problems associated with armed UAVs. Its long range makes it necessary to be sure about what you're shooting at, and sure as well that no friendlies might wander into the target area - the missile, when switching on its homing radar, doesn't distinguish between friend and foe. In the scenario the Phoenix was designed for, that was not a problem - the hypothetical engagements had all the linearity of a jousting tournament.
I think I'm babbling. What you write about sounds like the Tomahawk cruise missile. That comes in several variants, some of which use the technologies you mention. The U.S. military understandably seems to be in love with the things. At the usually quoted cost of USD 1e6 per shot and assuming an average "strike count" of about twenty missiles, you could get a lot of "strikes" for the price of a single B-2 aircraft, plus you don't need to feed, train and pay a flight crew, only a couple of technicians to baby-sit the missiles in storage.
Why not write to Jack Wheeler (mailto:jwheeler@GRANDMET.COM, administrative, technical and zone contact for guinnesssucks.com)
or Michelle Bonin (mailto:mbonin@PILLSBURY.COM billing contact)
and either
complain about the kind of language that Guiness as a large corporation associates with publicly
ask whether "Guinness sucks" is an official company statement, since they actually pay for the privilege of "saying" that
simply ask them what they intend to do with the domain
While staying in California, I had good experiences with Wells Fargo. Simple web pages, no JavaScript/Java trickery. Worked from Netscape/NT, IE/NT and Netscape/Linux.
I only used their checking/saving account functions, so I have no idea about, say, investment, mortgages, loans and such. Checking account was free in my case, though.
Can one assume that the technical people behind the ebook downloads at S. King's site are savvy enough to only count completed downloads?
If they just look at the GET requests in their web server logs, they are bound to get some skewed statistics - I know, because I aborted at least one download!
Check last week's (Sept. 16-23) Economist for an article about how hosting Olympic Games affects a city. (The web site has some free articles, but requires subscription otherwise. Can't provide a proper link - search for "Olympic games".) It seems as if L.A. 1984 was a financial success, Seoul 1988 were "national" games where the state invested heavily (so finances were no matter there) and Barcelona 1992 was a catastrophe. The article mentions somebody else as saying that the "jury is still out" on Atlanta, even though they tried to get a lot of non-public money.
I guess that if you want Other People's Money, these People will always try to influence what you do with Their Money.
... somehow I can't refrain from replying. Thank you for the "Dear moron", by the way.
I don't know where you saw me write "Columbus". I was just talking about the period of exploration voyages in general, drawing a comparison to today's age of space exploration (or the possibility of it).
Water on Mars could be used for purposes that it would be hard to use water on earth for. Like making fuel to establish industry in the asteroid belt. Or shooting probes even farther into space. Or whatever. It's not just drinking water. (And try to find out how much clean drinking water is left on earth - it's a global problem all right.)
I'm sorry to have put you to sleep, dear "Anonymous Coward". Sweet dreams!
Sorry. Next time I'll refrain from replying to sleepy persons.
While I don't claim to understand the physics involved in this myself, I found G. Harry Stine's
explanation of the science involved convincing. In his account of the development and testing of the DC-X rocket, "Halfway to Anywhere", he describes how there are designs that prove SSTO's feasibility (given a few new technologies), while there still are scientists claiming that this is not true. Everybody has their axe to grind and their own agenda, and the book does a good job of presenting them. It's somewhat proselytizing at times, but a good read nonetheless
... and America is just a heap of dirt in the sea
on
X-33 Shuttle Problems
·
· Score: 3
At least that would be the equivalent reaction of a 15th century explorer to the discovery of that annoying chunk of land mass sitting right on the sea lane to India.
I often try to decide whether space exploration is comparable to the sea voyages undertaken by 15th to 18th century mariners. These voyages were comparable in risk to today's space flights, even flights to the moon and to Mars. Back then, I guess, the motivation for these explorative voyages was partly commercial, partly just human curiosity. Admittedly, they did know that there were spices to be found in India. We (pretty much) know there's water on Mars - let's go there and see what we can do with it!
But no, we don't need to invent new technology. It's all been done before, so why bother? The Commissioner of the U.S. Patent Office declared in 1899, "Everything that can be invented has been invented." For this reason, he wanted his office closed. "No, no - you can't go farther than you can look, it's no use leaving here."
No, not moronic... (especially not in caps:) This is simply an application of a larger principle supposed to be in force in the EU. Manufacturers must think about how to get rid of their products up front, when they design them. This, the argument goes, will make it easier to recycle what's worth recycling and disposing of what needs disposing. It's been in force now for some time for cars, I think, and most car manufacturers put into their marketing broad hints on how much of the material in their cars is marked for proper recycling. In Germany, the Bundestag is discussing a regulation called "Elektronik-Schrott-Verordnung" (electronic waste regulation, approx.) which doesn't only apply to computer equipment but to all things containing semiconductors, circuit boards and such. This reg is a national application of the EU guideline or principle mentioned above.
Will this make things cost more? Of course, but this should be viewed like safety regulations for motor vehicles, aircraft, power tools and pretty much everything else. Manufacturers will adapt, and cost to the consumer will even out over the long run: the choice would be between somewhat cheaper equipment and individually expensive disposal, or somewhat more expensive equipment but no worries about disposal.
And for what happens when corporations get around safety regs, I propose taking a look at sport utility vehicles in the U.S. Classed as "light trucks", which mustn't be too expensive because they could be used by small businesses, they need not keep to the same safety (and emission) standards as passenger cars. And what are SUVs used for? Check any U.S. metropolitan rush hour highway at your leisure...
One main difference between hardware engineering and production and software engineering and production is the capital outlay required to start doing anything non-trivial. Comparing on equal bases, for software engineering, the required initial investment basically zero: everybody qualified to perform software engineering can be assumed to have access to a computer capable of the tasks required, and with Open Source operating systems and tools, the cost of software is zero as well. This means that even a single talented individual can sit down and produce high-quality products, or maybe just improvements to existing products. But not every electrical engineer can start cranking out clones of 3Com ethernet boards, Intel Pentium processors or Diamond video boards - even if they are just as qualified personally to work on these products! To actually perform the work, they need the proper environment: circuit board manufacturing machines, quality control and testing tools, the infrastructure for logistics... This stuff is expensive, (not to mention manpower-intensive), and will be acquired only by commercial firms who are in it for the long run.
Now, of course, there are parts of the world and people in the world who would go to these lengths and still rip off somebody else's design - but I doubt that this course of action brings a big economical advantage in the long run, since so much of the capital is bound in the production equipment. You can manufacture clones all you want, as soon as the designer of the product you're cloning puts out the next generation, you are back to square one, since your "design source" will make all the money for the next six months (or however long it takes you to copy their design, re-tool your production lines and get volume production with good-enough quality up and running). If the "design source does this every eighteen months, you generate revenue only two thirds of the time.
So I think that comparing hardware and software engineering from an economic point of view isn't very enlightening. I am not saying that there is no money at all to be made by producing closed-source software - just that comparing two technology areas doesn't make sense.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't The Law great? I have to look into publishing legal documents for their entertainment value...
Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing by Philip Greenspun
This volume is named "Web Publishing", but can be read as a more general textbook on online publishing, communities and information exchange. The book has lots of concrete technical information (AOLserver, Oracle, SQL, Unix) which may be expected to go out of date in some years, but it is still general enough to make it a lasting source of information. Of course, you have to hack through Greenspun's egomaniac style, but if you don't take him too seriously, it works...
Plus, it has nice pictures. And you can read it on the web, in its newest, updated edition.
About Face. The Essentials of User Interface Design by Alan Cooper
I know, I know, Cooper is ex-Microsoft and invented Visual Basic (at least the cover blurb claims so -- I wouldn't know that), but I found the book interesting, if sometimes hard, reading. It is only somewhat MS-specific; readers should be able to transfer ideas and solutions forwarded in the book to other GUI systems and OSs. It would round out the CS-heavy bias of most of the lists I have seen here towards the "applied" or "user" side.
Funny how most of the lists are so very similar! I wonder if the reason is in my /. settings (I only see about 30% of the posts), or in the quality of the books and the people writing about them...
... can also have good ideas for generating options in cases like these - options and ways to proceed that, one one's own (lawyer or non-lawyer), would not be so obvious. This is quite important in negotiation.
This last is more from a technical perspective, not from a political or moral: even if modern IT gives authorities easy access to huge amounts of data storage and automated data management, query and retrieval, my guess is that most of the time, and in most cases, all the captured face prints, finger prints, voice prints, license plates, ... probably end up on some dusty hard disk, never to be seen again. This is for the simple reason that even with the aforementioned advances in automated evaluation methods, authorities simply cannot make use of the evaluation results, never mind the raw data.
In the end this may break down to the old question: are authorities and govt. agencies evil, sinister, effective instruments of doom (the "conspiracy theory interpretation"), or just huge, bloated organizations of overworked, underpaid humans who are as fallible, slow-moving and inefficient as any (the "organizational entropy interpretation")?
At least that's what I always think when it looks like one of civilization's problems involving unpopular change of behaviour by humans is in the process of being solved/going away. I try to imagine what would happen if a major news organization would put this on the wires: "Global Warming Stopped - Greenhouse Effect Checked". Even if it's true - it could be, if emissions were stopped now, in fifty year's time or so - the public effect, I believe, would be terrible. The first reaction on a headline like that would be "Great! So I can forget about that..."
... I posted this under "Games" on Friday, and it was rejected.
drugabuse.com
minimumwage.com
righttobeararms.com
No, I didn't test them... I was afraid!
Not to forget, in later parts of the Old Testament, several counts of incest, use of WMD (weapons of mass destruction), more murder, and so on. The N.T. actually starts with an instance of infanticide on a mind-boggling scale, with the guilty party saying "Ah didn inhale... eh, order that!". Which, of course, is a lie.
heise.de reports in this news item that German web hosting service 1&1-Puretec canceled a contract for hosting the site npd-aktuell.de. The site belonged to the political party NPD, which stands on the extreme right of the political spectrum, is generally viewed as being neo-Nazi, is under investigation for violating the democratic and free basic rules (bad translation of freiheitlich-demokratische Grundordnung) in many German federal states, and may be forbidden completely for this reason in the future. Puretec decided they didn't want the content, and canceled the contract - but they didn't (and couldn't) throw them out outright; they had to cancel the contract normally.
The reason for the cancellation is quoted to be the public image of hosting company Puretec. They are explicitly not responsible for content on sites hosted by them, so the decision was made voluntarily. If the content had been illegal (judged by German law), a hosting company must take it down as soon as they learn of it being illegal.
Generally, ISPs find themselves between a rock and a hard place: they want business, but if one customer's content offends other customers, they are in danger of losing those customers' business. Of course, taking down sites or content will put them in danger of losing business from people who don't like that...
The end of the Heise article states that at this time, trivial patents or ones with a broad claim are nearly impossible to enforce in court. Software patents are generally illegal, anyway.
The danger, however, lies in the European Patent Office trying to get permission to issue software patents. They want more revenue for themselves - if I recall correctly, the EPO actually has a positive cash flow - they're not tax-sucking bureaucrats, they're money-sucking ones! And being allowed to issue patents on software and genetics/molecules would increase their revenue stream immensely. The patent office has no reason whatsoever to make sure that patents make sense in any way. They get the same fee, whether it's a stupid patent or a sensible one. Don't let them! Europeans, complain to your MEP!
This reminds me of the venerable battlehorse of the air, the McDonnell-Douglas F-4 "Phantom II". It was designed and built for the single role only of intercepting enemy bombers as far away from their aircraft carrier as possible. Over a timespan of thirty years, there has hardly been a task in the air that Phantoms didn't master. The reason is that the basic airframe seems to have had a lot of reserve capability, and modifications and improvements were easily applied. And they are still in use today... sounds like Unix?
Usually, everybody working in a field is using the same basic physical laws, rules and processes - even in racing engines. The differences are marginal, which of course doesn't mean "unimportant" - especially in racing engines. The same applies to industrial production: using processes patented by sumebody else under license isn't that unusual; companies still make money by performing the process better, cheaper or faster than the competition. How to achieve this "better", "cheaper" or "faster" then is what is kept secret.
In the case of the Rambus patents, this seems to be impossible - it doesn't matter what and how you do it in detail, you have to pay regardless. This is unprecedented - it sounds like somebody getting a patent on fire and then extracting royalties from every manufacturer of internal combustion engines. Or like patenting the wheel...
All the talk in this thread about air-to-air combat, identification issues, communications latency, jamming, hacking etc. is quite interesting in principle. Looking at the specific mission the Boeing aircraft is designed for, however, a lot of the issues become irrelevant. The goal is to get a platform for Supression of Enemy Air Defences (SEAD) which is safer than the current manned airplanes, which have to fly right into the envelopes of the systems they are tasked to attack.
The Boeing UAV, I imagine, would perform its mission by flying over a given area, maybe around an enemy airfield, which is the target for a later attack by manned strike aircraft. The UAV package, say four UAVs, cruises in, sensing for air defense radar emissions and looking with EO sensors and radar. Possible targets could be identified and cataloged by the on-board computer, and transmitted to the control station. Most of this part of the mission could be run quite autonomously, with human controllers only supervising. If the UAVs are engaged by enemy systems, they could perform automatic evasion maneuvers, or the controllers could intervene, ordering the endangered UAV to, for example, "fly into this valley and hide", and redirect it back sometime later.
If the mission of the day is an attack on the air defense systems, this could be pre-planned in a very short amount of time by the controllers and the overall mission commander, based on the requirements of the follow-on strike package: "Let's take out these two missile batteries here first, they are on the ingress and egress routes for the strike, and then proceed to attack these gun batteries at the field - they may endanger our low-level strike planes". Targets can be designated, a time-on-target specified, and the UAV system would fly the UAVs in a manner consistent with these plans.
The actual attack, then, would be a more hands-on effort on the controller's part. Weapons release would be ordered by them, but the technicalities would be handled by the computers - just as in manned aircraft.
Afterwards, the surviving UAVs would withdraw or, possibly, stay on station to attack sudden threats when the manned strike aircraft are over the target.
In light of the requirements of this mission, consider this:
It's an air-to-air missile, so I don't see where topographical recognition would be useful. I'm not too sure about the GPS guidance - the Phoenix guidance system usually is described as "inertial cruise, mid-course update, active homing", which means that the missile is programmed by the fire control system to fly to a specific point in the air, switch on its own homing radar and go after whatever it sees there. Mid-course update means that the fire control system can radio a "correction" of this point to the missile while it is in flight. I've never heard of nuclear-tipped AIM-54s, but I suppose it would be possible.
In connection with this topic, use of the Phoenix seems to present a lot of problems associated with armed UAVs. Its long range makes it necessary to be sure about what you're shooting at, and sure as well that no friendlies might wander into the target area - the missile, when switching on its homing radar, doesn't distinguish between friend and foe. In the scenario the Phoenix was designed for, that was not a problem - the hypothetical engagements had all the linearity of a jousting tournament.
I think I'm babbling. What you write about sounds like the Tomahawk cruise missile. That comes in several variants, some of which use the technologies you mention. The U.S. military understandably seems to be in love with the things. At the usually quoted cost of USD 1e6 per shot and assuming an average "strike count" of about twenty missiles, you could get a lot of "strikes" for the price of a single B-2 aircraft, plus you don't need to feed, train and pay a flight crew, only a couple of technicians to baby-sit the missiles in storage.
While staying in California, I had good experiences with Wells Fargo. Simple web pages, no JavaScript/Java trickery. Worked from Netscape/NT, IE/NT and Netscape/Linux.
I only used their checking/saving account functions, so I have no idea about, say, investment, mortgages, loans and such. Checking account was free in my case, though.
Can one assume that the technical people behind the ebook downloads at S. King's site are savvy enough to only count completed downloads?
If they just look at the GET requests in their web server logs, they are bound to get some skewed statistics - I know, because I aborted at least one download!
I guess that if you want Other People's Money, these People will always try to influence what you do with Their Money.
I don't know where you saw me write "Columbus". I was just talking about the period of exploration voyages in general, drawing a comparison to today's age of space exploration (or the possibility of it).
Water on Mars could be used for purposes that it would be hard to use water on earth for. Like making fuel to establish industry in the asteroid belt. Or shooting probes even farther into space. Or whatever. It's not just drinking water. (And try to find out how much clean drinking water is left on earth - it's a global problem all right.)
I'm sorry to have put you to sleep, dear "Anonymous Coward". Sweet dreams!
Sorry. Next time I'll refrain from replying to sleepy persons.
While I don't claim to understand the physics involved in this myself, I found G. Harry Stine's explanation of the science involved convincing. In his account of the development and testing of the DC-X rocket, "Halfway to Anywhere", he describes how there are designs that prove SSTO's feasibility (given a few new technologies), while there still are scientists claiming that this is not true. Everybody has their axe to grind and their own agenda, and the book does a good job of presenting them. It's somewhat proselytizing at times, but a good read nonetheless
I often try to decide whether space exploration is comparable to the sea voyages undertaken by 15th to 18th century mariners. These voyages were comparable in risk to today's space flights, even flights to the moon and to Mars. Back then, I guess, the motivation for these explorative voyages was partly commercial, partly just human curiosity. Admittedly, they did know that there were spices to be found in India. We (pretty much) know there's water on Mars - let's go there and see what we can do with it!
But no, we don't need to invent new technology. It's all been done before, so why bother? The Commissioner of the U.S. Patent Office declared in 1899, "Everything that can be invented has been invented." For this reason, he wanted his office closed. "No, no - you can't go farther than you can look, it's no use leaving here."
No, not moronic... (especially not in caps :) This is simply an application of a larger principle supposed to be in force in the EU. Manufacturers must think about how to get rid of their products up front, when they design them. This, the argument goes, will make it easier to recycle what's worth recycling and disposing of what needs disposing. It's been in force now for some time for cars, I think, and most car manufacturers put into their marketing broad hints on how much of the material in their cars is marked for proper recycling. In Germany, the Bundestag is discussing a regulation called "Elektronik-Schrott-Verordnung" (electronic waste regulation, approx.) which doesn't only apply to computer equipment but to all things containing semiconductors, circuit boards and such. This reg is a national application of the EU guideline or principle mentioned above.
Will this make things cost more? Of course, but this should be viewed like safety regulations for motor vehicles, aircraft, power tools and pretty much everything else. Manufacturers will adapt, and cost to the consumer will even out over the long run: the choice would be between somewhat cheaper equipment and individually expensive disposal, or somewhat more expensive equipment but no worries about disposal.
And for what happens when corporations get around safety regs, I propose taking a look at sport utility vehicles in the U.S. Classed as "light trucks", which mustn't be too expensive because they could be used by small businesses, they need not keep to the same safety (and emission) standards as passenger cars. And what are SUVs used for? Check any U.S. metropolitan rush hour highway at your leisure...
One main difference between hardware engineering and production and software engineering and production is the capital outlay required to start doing anything non-trivial. Comparing on equal bases, for software engineering, the required initial investment basically zero: everybody qualified to perform software engineering can be assumed to have access to a computer capable of the tasks required, and with Open Source operating systems and tools, the cost of software is zero as well. This means that even a single talented individual can sit down and produce high-quality products, or maybe just improvements to existing products. But not every electrical engineer can start cranking out clones of 3Com ethernet boards, Intel Pentium processors or Diamond video boards - even if they are just as qualified personally to work on these products! To actually perform the work, they need the proper environment: circuit board manufacturing machines, quality control and testing tools, the infrastructure for logistics... This stuff is expensive, (not to mention manpower-intensive), and will be acquired only by commercial firms who are in it for the long run.
Now, of course, there are parts of the world and people in the world who would go to these lengths and still rip off somebody else's design - but I doubt that this course of action brings a big economical advantage in the long run, since so much of the capital is bound in the production equipment. You can manufacture clones all you want, as soon as the designer of the product you're cloning puts out the next generation, you are back to square one, since your "design source" will make all the money for the next six months (or however long it takes you to copy their design, re-tool your production lines and get volume production with good-enough quality up and running). If the "design source does this every eighteen months, you generate revenue only two thirds of the time.
So I think that comparing hardware and software engineering from an economic point of view isn't very enlightening. I am not saying that there is no money at all to be made by producing closed-source software - just that comparing two technology areas doesn't make sense.