True, software projects were left to the geeks, with pretty predictable results (ie. occasional brilliance, mostly mush).
You are right about the analogy too - and the funny thing is that it feeds back into the building industry - do you promote project managers on large sites up from foreman, or down from architect?
(Heading off to Amazon with "Fred Brooks" in the copy buffer.)
If there was martian bacterial or microbial life, and we went to Mars with malice aforethought to destroy it all and we took along all our nuclear and biological agents to do so, thumped a few asteroids into the surface to make sure, and generally raised hell, we would fail in our mission to destroy martian life. Life has survived all this and more on Earth.
If there is no martian life, and earth fungus does get onto the surface of Mars, so what??
About a tonne of martian rock lands on Earth every year and about a tonne of Earth rock lands on Mars. This occurs because of large impacts in the past which ejected rock into space.
So, if there is life that can live under the conditions you describe, it could certainly survive two planetary impacts in a big enough chunk of rock.
To sum it up for you - if what you are suggesting is possible - it has already happened on a vast, vast scale.
Going to Mars is a Green concern - the more we learn about another planet, the more we know about our own. Runaway greenhouse effect? What's that? Take a look at Venus...
Answer that question (it's a three part answer) and you'll see why your response is "correct" but not accurate or adding any information
"Where am I?" "In a helicopter..." Do you work for MS my Anonymous friend?
Ok here's the answers to why condensation gets everywhere:
1) They are in zero g.
2) They have low-power cooling/heating systems and very little water and oxygen (they don't take showers, for example) so they can't dry the air, vent waste air immediately, or wash down the "decks" with fungus-killing detergent.
3) They don't have an oxygen/water making facility next door and a big powerplant to facilitate the actions described in point 2.
All these points are addressed on Mars. Oh yeah, and the other thing:
They DO have a janitor on board. What do you think the pilot does on Space Shuttle missions whilst on-orbit? S/He basically cleans the space potty. It's an extremely important job.
I think Microsoft is seeking to gain a couple of things with this request:
1) They want to look like they are taking it seriously - that's why the coverage has had the number of pages listed ("Wow they really do have a lot to present!")
2) They want to look like they are the mature, responsible ones - if the government comes out spitting on this "reasonable" request - MS look like the adults.
3) The want to perfect the 10 gajillion pages of tripe they are going to dump on the court - if you're gonna dump sewage on someone's doorstep and get away with it - that sewage had better smell pretty good. Either that or run really fast.
4) They want to have grounds for appeal if it goes south again - "We didn't have time to prepare bwah bwah..."
5) They will take any chance they can get for the political climate to change, their product line to change, the industry to change so that it all becomes academic. "But it's all one system - look you can't pull the +class of software here+ out without the whole thing collapsing. The media player is built in to the kernel."
6) They want to change public opinion.
7) Insert your fave conspiracy theory here.
I can't stop thinking of that ruling made against Microsoft in their temp employee case - their press release said they were "reviewing" the judgement. Imagine the luxury of being able to "review" judgements instead of being bound by them like everyone else............
Come on now, I know everyone wants to endure several hours of driver's ed training in order to go out in mum's 20 year old car that might get smashed into by some idiot at any time and has fungus growing inside it. Some link here! Oh and don't forget the chance that the car you are going out to the movies in might blow up too.
(Especially if it's a Ford Pinto or an Explorer with Firestones - heck then you might turn over and blow up.....Ack!)
... where an extremely senior space scientist debunks the whole article.
But for Linenger, who was almost killed by a fire during his stay on Mir, the lure of exploration will always outweigh dangers such as microbial infestation. Climbing into a rocket is like 'climbing onto a pile of explosives,' he explained. 'There are just too many other things to worry about.'
This article as a whole was tantamount to "Aliens ate my Elvis baby" rubbish. It does no credit to the Globe.
It's a worry when major newspapers become so desperate for column inches they beat up what is essentially a no-story into a show stopper for the space program as a whole.
This "finding" has absolutely no relevance to a humans-to-Mars program. To put up one trivial reason: Mars-tronauts would have plentiful water as a by-product of their in-situ propellant production, thus they would be able to wash themselves and the interior of their spacecraft at will. The expense of trucking water to orbit is one reason that there is a fungus "problem" on Mir.
This reminds me strongly of that other supposed Mars mission "show stopper" - zero gravity. "We can't send humans there, because they'd come out as cripples after 18 months of zero g." BALDERDASH. There is no requirement to send them out zero g at all! A half-mile tether to the upper stage going at about 1 rpm would create mars equivalent gravity for the crew on their spacecraft - with the added advantage of being able to construct floors.
It isn't rocket science! (Well it is but you know what I mean!)
Is exactly the same "why" Bill gave those millions to Apple a while back.
"You see your honor, my client supports competition in the marketplace - they'd be losing money if these other companies went under. So in summary your honor, you can't split them up because they'd flood the market with all these shares and... oh - did I say that out loud?! In court?! (sound of running)"
Every share they own is another little hostage. Heh.
Wow! What an incredible amount of xenophobia has been generated by this story!
All that aside, it will be interesting to see how this effects the US economy (currently causing just about every other country major currency palpitations) when all these workers start to leave.
Anyway, I hope the crisis (if it is one) prompts the US to do two things:
1. Do right by the many many talented workers whose efforts help to make America the economic wonder of the world, &
2. Replaces the current unweildy-and-prone-to-manipulation system with a better one.
Aside: I'm kinda wasting a little time daydreaming about an America that understands the brain drain (from experience) that most other "English speaking" countries have experienced to the US over the last x years! Would that knowledge help make good visa law? Maybe.
Last year I assisted in the preparation of a friend's dissertation on the path that new technologies take through the building industry while they are collecting the amount of experience required to be understood by your "average" builder.
TO summarise a complex paper (and issue) there is a significant danger with new technology (the paper focused on Low-E glazing) that "fast adopters" will have a bad experience with installation and make it difficult for architects to "sell" the technology in future jobs to clients who have all heard the one about the building where they tried technology X...
Any building designers out there - you really need to make a significant extra effort to educate your installers, and to be educated yourself about new technologies.
You're probably adopting them for the right reasons, but think about spending a that extra time to make sure your building doesn't become an argument NOT to use the tech in some other job!
In an attempt to ward off flames - this obviously doesn't happen in all cases, but according to the research it is a significant primary problem.
If you would like to be put in contact with the author of the paper I refer to above, email me on sroy at bigpond dot net dot au.
The language of the article above compared to the actual images within the article and observed quality are strikingly different.
I would score the difference as a 10 on the "I never had sexual relations with that woman" scale.
The difference in the propaganda and the actual images/sound has been a feature at all the levels of the compression discussion. Most of these disconnects come back to some fundamental misunderstandings about a little thing called "playback fidelity".
Playback Fidelity Recap follows:
As anyone who has ever chased "great sound" will know, half-decent stereo systems start at around $3000 with $1500 of these dollars being spent on the speakers alone. Listening to MP3s on half -decent stereo systems is a painful experience - fortunately outlawed as "cruel and unusual punishment".
But there are (at least) two other forces at work in the world of sound. Firstly, the bald fact that very very few people listen to music on half-decent stereo systems. Secondly, the bald fact that for around 20 years, the people making the music have had access to technologies known collectively (of course) as "compression". This is the process whereby, in post-production, the "raw" recorded sound is "dumbed down" or "compressed" to fit the sound qualities of most people's playback equipment. It is lossy compression - as parts of the sound are "thrown away" to concentrate on the most "noticed" parts.
This 20(odd)year process has resulted in a number of things, including the incredible "bass" that people feel that they get from ghetto blaster sized and priced playback units and (standard) car stereos. Also, people have become accustomed to the "compressed" sound and have actually come to really like it. Try playing these same tracks on half decent stereos (actually, don't) the experience is very different. Examples of extreme compression would include most rap/dance music, Britany Spears et al, etc. etc. Or really any music made for people with limited access to high quality playback.
And so at the playback fidelity that most people experience (PC speakers - $100) MP3s of course sound great. Likewise, at the playback fidelity of television tubes that are tuned for VHS in PAL or NTSC, I bet that DVD video ripped to 750MB looks fine.
Get a monitor quality TV set (you'll probably be able to afford one in a few years) - and suddenly VHS is unwatchable, free-to-air has chunks missing, cable "rips" every half minute or so, and DVD is almost acceptable, but you'll secretly hunger for something more.
I feel that playback fidelity shouldn't be forgotten when claims like "Barely noticible quality loss" are made.
Slashdot Mirror
The give away is the rhetorical: "Would you rather not have been born?"
To which, of course, millions of suicides answer "Yes" every year......
Trollity Trollity Troll - ignore it like I should have.
True, software projects were left to the geeks, with pretty predictable results (ie. occasional brilliance, mostly mush).
You are right about the analogy too - and the funny thing is that it feeds back into the building industry - do you promote project managers on large sites up from foreman, or down from architect?
(Heading off to Amazon with "Fred Brooks" in the copy buffer.)
Thanks!
Um.... "invented by Fred Brooks"????
The distinction between architecture and implementation has been in (for example) the building industry for thousands of years!
You even used the word: ARCHITECT!
Yeah. Long, luxurious showers with water costing a couple thou a liter.
Recycled, so it gradually collects biomatter.
Hey - it's pretty surprising they don't have a mould problem!
Why?
If there was martian bacterial or microbial life, and we went to Mars with malice aforethought to destroy it all and we took along all our nuclear and biological agents to do so, thumped a few asteroids into the surface to make sure, and generally raised hell, we would fail in our mission to destroy martian life. Life has survived all this and more on Earth.
If there is no martian life, and earth fungus does get onto the surface of Mars, so what??
About a tonne of martian rock lands on Earth every year and about a tonne of Earth rock lands on Mars. This occurs because of large impacts in the past which ejected rock into space.
So, if there is life that can live under the conditions you describe, it could certainly survive two planetary impacts in a big enough chunk of rock.
To sum it up for you - if what you are suggesting is possible - it has already happened on a vast, vast scale.
Going to Mars is a Green concern - the more we learn about another planet, the more we know about our own. Runaway greenhouse effect? What's that? Take a look at Venus...
And why does condensation get everywhere?
Answer that question (it's a three part answer) and you'll see why your response is "correct" but not accurate or adding any information
"Where am I?"
"In a helicopter..."
Do you work for MS my Anonymous friend?
Ok here's the answers to why condensation gets everywhere:
1) They are in zero g.
2) They have low-power cooling/heating systems and very little water and oxygen (they don't take showers, for example) so they can't dry the air, vent waste air immediately, or wash down the "decks" with fungus-killing detergent.
3) They don't have an oxygen/water making facility next door and a big powerplant to facilitate the actions described in point 2.
All these points are addressed on Mars. Oh yeah, and the other thing:
They DO have a janitor on board. What do you think the pilot does on Space Shuttle missions whilst on-orbit? S/He basically cleans the space potty. It's an extremely important job.
I would be interested in your response.
I think Microsoft is seeking to gain a couple of things with this request:
1) They want to look like they are taking it seriously - that's why the coverage has had the number of pages listed ("Wow they really do have a lot to present!")
2) They want to look like they are the mature, responsible ones - if the government comes out spitting on this "reasonable" request - MS look like the adults.
3) The want to perfect the 10 gajillion pages of tripe they are going to dump on the court - if you're gonna dump sewage on someone's doorstep and get away with it - that sewage had better smell pretty good. Either that or run really fast.
4) They want to have grounds for appeal if it goes south again - "We didn't have time to prepare bwah bwah..."
5) They will take any chance they can get for the political climate to change, their product line to change, the industry to change so that it all becomes academic. "But it's all one system - look you can't pull the +class of software here+ out without the whole thing collapsing. The media player is built in to the kernel."
6) They want to change public opinion.
7) Insert your fave conspiracy theory here.
I can't stop thinking of that ruling made against Microsoft in their temp employee case - their press release said they were "reviewing" the judgement. Imagine the luxury of being able to "review" judgements instead of being bound by them like everyone else............
Skip the movie! Noooooooo! That flashing red light is a classic!
<movieproducer>I know - one of his books made a great film! Let's buy them all and make them ALL into films!</movieproducer>
Wasn't Sphere great? Um, NOT!
Come on now, I know everyone wants to endure several hours of driver's ed training in order to go out in mum's 20 year old car that might get smashed into by some idiot at any time and has fungus growing inside it. Some link here! Oh and don't forget the chance that the car you are going out to the movies in might blow up too.
(Especially if it's a Ford Pinto or an Explorer with Firestones - heck then you might turn over and blow up.....Ack!)
This article as a whole was tantamount to "Aliens ate my Elvis baby" rubbish. It does no credit to the Globe.
It's a worry when major newspapers become so desperate for column inches they beat up what is essentially a no-story into a show stopper for the space program as a whole.
This "finding" has absolutely no relevance to a humans-to-Mars program. To put up one trivial reason: Mars-tronauts would have plentiful water as a by-product of their in-situ propellant production, thus they would be able to wash themselves and the interior of their spacecraft at will. The expense of trucking water to orbit is one reason that there is a fungus "problem" on Mir.
This reminds me strongly of that other supposed Mars mission "show stopper" - zero gravity. "We can't send humans there, because they'd come out as cripples after 18 months of zero g." BALDERDASH. There is no requirement to send them out zero g at all! A half-mile tether to the upper stage going at about 1 rpm would create mars equivalent gravity for the crew on their spacecraft - with the added advantage of being able to construct floors.
It isn't rocket science! (Well it is but you know what I mean!)
Is exactly the same "why" Bill gave those millions to Apple a while back.
"You see your honor, my client supports competition in the marketplace - they'd be losing money if these other companies went under. So in summary your honor, you can't split them up because they'd flood the market with all these shares and... oh - did I say that out loud?! In court?! (sound of running)"
Every share they own is another little hostage. Heh.
Wow! What an incredible amount of xenophobia has been generated by this story!
All that aside, it will be interesting to see how this effects the US economy (currently causing just about every other country major currency palpitations) when all these workers start to leave.
Anyway, I hope the crisis (if it is one) prompts the US to do two things:
1. Do right by the many many talented workers whose efforts help to make America the economic wonder of the world, &
2. Replaces the current unweildy-and-prone-to-manipulation system with a better one.
Aside: I'm kinda wasting a little time daydreaming about an America that understands the brain drain (from experience) that most other "English speaking" countries have experienced to the US over the last x years! Would that knowledge help make good visa law? Maybe.
Last year I assisted in the preparation of a friend's dissertation on the path that new technologies take through the building industry while they are collecting the amount of experience required to be understood by your "average" builder. TO summarise a complex paper (and issue) there is a significant danger with new technology (the paper focused on Low-E glazing) that "fast adopters" will have a bad experience with installation and make it difficult for architects to "sell" the technology in future jobs to clients who have all heard the one about the building where they tried technology X... Any building designers out there - you really need to make a significant extra effort to educate your installers, and to be educated yourself about new technologies. You're probably adopting them for the right reasons, but think about spending a that extra time to make sure your building doesn't become an argument NOT to use the tech in some other job! In an attempt to ward off flames - this obviously doesn't happen in all cases, but according to the research it is a significant primary problem. If you would like to be put in contact with the author of the paper I refer to above, email me on sroy at bigpond dot net dot au.
The real issue is not image quality versus file size - the real issue is image quality.
No, you are not the only one, the difference is staggering. The re-compressed version would be unwatchable.
The language of the article above compared to the actual images within the article and observed quality are strikingly different.
I would score the difference as a 10 on the "I never had sexual relations with that woman" scale.
The difference in the propaganda and the actual images/sound has been a feature at all the levels of the compression discussion. Most of these disconnects come back to some fundamental misunderstandings about a little thing called "playback fidelity".
Playback Fidelity Recap follows:
As anyone who has ever chased "great sound" will know, half-decent stereo systems start at around $3000 with $1500 of these dollars being spent on the speakers alone. Listening to MP3s on half -decent stereo systems is a painful experience - fortunately outlawed as "cruel and unusual punishment".
But there are (at least) two other forces at work in the world of sound. Firstly, the bald fact that very very few people listen to music on half-decent stereo systems. Secondly, the bald fact that for around 20 years, the people making the music have had access to technologies known collectively (of course) as "compression". This is the process whereby, in post-production, the "raw" recorded sound is "dumbed down" or "compressed" to fit the sound qualities of most people's playback equipment. It is lossy compression - as parts of the sound are "thrown away" to concentrate on the most "noticed" parts.
This 20(odd)year process has resulted in a number of things, including the incredible "bass" that people feel that they get from ghetto blaster sized and priced playback units and (standard) car stereos. Also, people have become accustomed to the "compressed" sound and have actually come to really like it. Try playing these same tracks on half decent stereos (actually, don't) the experience is very different. Examples of extreme compression would include most rap/dance music, Britany Spears et al, etc. etc. Or really any music made for people with limited access to high quality playback.
And so at the playback fidelity that most people experience (PC speakers - $100) MP3s of course sound great. Likewise, at the playback fidelity of television tubes that are tuned for VHS in PAL or NTSC, I bet that DVD video ripped to 750MB looks fine.
Get a monitor quality TV set (you'll probably be able to afford one in a few years) - and suddenly VHS is unwatchable, free-to-air has chunks missing, cable "rips" every half minute or so, and DVD is almost acceptable, but you'll secretly hunger for something more.
I feel that playback fidelity shouldn't be forgotten when claims like "Barely noticible quality loss" are made.
Totally and utterly incorrect. Sunday-school teacher lies.
The "camel through the eye of a needle" is CLASSIC exegesus material. A better translation would be:
"It is easier for a rope to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven."
Which is not only an indictment of the rich (Jesus also said "Give up all you own and follow me.") but also a good metaphor, unlike the camel thing.
Please note - I am not a Christian!