Actually, it's kind of dead in here. I would have expected more people to be excited about this. Granted, the technical problems are putting a real dampener on things. (When I submitted the story, the site was operating fine. Didn't take long for that to change.) But it's still kind of cool. Ars' complaint about having to spend $800 to get a $20 game misses the point. The point is that if you already spent the money (which a lot of gaming fans have), then this program offers some nice rewards for being a loyal customer. Spending money for the explicit purpose of getting stuff on the site seems a bit silly.
On another subject, anyone else notice that the site uses the Struts framework? If the issues they're experiencing are any indication, I'd say this is a perfect example of why Struts should never be used for a scalable solution. In my experience, far too much logic gets executed on every request while accomplishing very little. Especially when programmers are tempted into putting session initializer actions into their webapp. Then things just go haywire.;-)
If the couple was in hiding but was maintaining an active presence on Facebook, then I can see how this would be reasonable. The lawyer was required to deliver the papers to the last known address is addition to serving notice via Facebook. Interesting, the profile disappeared after the papers were served...
Of course, it will still be up to the judge to decide if the experiment was a success. If he decides that the papers were not properly served even after allowing it, he won't give a summary judgment. Alternatively, the judgment could be vacated if the couple later challenges the judgment and the next judge finds that papers were not properly served.
(IANAL, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn express once!)
2. It is technically not a manufacturing defect, as the unit was not designed to be flipped around while in use.
When the problem is that users are using the system in a vertical configuration as advertised by the manufacturer, you can bet your ass that it's a manufacturing defect! (More specifically a design defect, but we won't quibble.) Microsoft tells everyone that their system is just fine and dandy when placed in an upright position. Yet the slightest vibration (anyone have subwoofers? cabled controllers? hard wood floors?) can unseat the disc and cause scratches.
The problem has nothing to do with being flipped around, and everything to do with a flaw in the system's design.
They even include that extra plastic attachment thingy that provides even more horizontal coverage to ensure that your Wii remains as stable as possible. Not a bad idea when there are kids around the system.;-)
Speaking of which, this is hilarious. You'd think someone would have realized that the system doesn't look quite right...
The problem relates to the restraint of the disc. Slot loaders have restraints built in to accommodate the disc being loaded into the drive. Tray loaders often use the friction from the spindle to restrain the disc. That friction is maintained via gravity. (There are also notched on the edges of the tray that are supposed to help during loading, but I doubt they provide much restraint during use.) When you have a spindle used sideways, there's not much to prevent the disc from losing friction and wobbling a bit. That wobbling can create contact with the internals of the drive and result in a scratched disc.
At least, that's my understanding of the mechanics.
You know, for some reason I was under the impression that the PS3 was a tray-loader. My apologies for the mistake. However, my point still stands that the Wii is an inexpensive device that makes money on every console, thus demonstrating that a slot-loader is not a cost burden.
The discs only get scratched if you re-orient the console WHILE the disc is being USED.
As I mentioned in another post, this is incorrect. It would appear that the 360 does scratches discs in properly stabilized systems that are used in a vertical orientation. It seems likely that the system's own vibrations, plus issues with subwoofers and other vibrational sources contribute to the discs being unseated enough to cause scratching.
In effect, this is a serious design flaw. Microsoft should have either given up on vertical orientation altogether, or engineered the system to withstand the tolerances of vertically orienting an optical disc.
An xbox 360 is not something you pop a battery and headphones into and take jogging.
My understanding of the issue is that many consoles have had scratched discs even if the system was treated in an acceptable manner. Apparently, the system is not as well suited to a vertical configuration as Microsoft would have you believe.
This resulted in Kassa receiving an additional 1,000 complaints over the subsequent two months, with many customers denying the Xbox had moved when the scratching occurred, or that it had been placed in an unstable position.
Prompted by consumer reaction to their February 2007 report, Kassa performed several tests with Xbox 360s from customers who claimed their Xbox had the problem. Kassa stabilized these consoles and positioned them at a location remote from contact by anyone. The results of the laboratory conditions test revealed that one of the nine tested Xbox 360s had spontaneously scratched a disc after five hours of gaming. The consoles were also tested standing upright, and the test revealed that three of the nine tested Xbox 360s significantly scratched discs.
Generally I'm not a fan of slot-loading CD drives, but I think Nintendo got it right in this case. The slot-loader is gentle on the disc, works in multiple orientations, and is easy for even kids to use without damaging the system. IMHO, the 360 would have done well to also design around a slot-loader, especially given their desire to place the system in a vertical configuration. The Wii is a very inexpensive system, so I don't see such a solution adding much cost.
(Then again, what do I know? Microsoft did try to cut corners wherever possible to create the system as cheap as possible.)
Of course, Sony managed to get a tray system working without scratching disks. And the system can be placed in a vertical configuration. (Does anyone actually do that?) I can only guess that Sony's solution was one of the "more expensive" ideas that Microsoft rejected.
I am not saying that they should have chosen a different engine, and as you point out Direct also uses the RS-68. I am saying they should have re-evaluated the architecture and chosen a better approach.
This is a nonsense statement. There was nothing wrong with the Constellation program. Why would they stop everything and choose a proposal that didn't exist yet just because they had options for components?
That's like saying you should choose ECMAScript 5.0 on Linux 3.2 when your company is deciding between OpenSolaris and Suse for their Java application.
In the DIRECT plan, the Jupiter-120 is the equivalent of the Ares-I. It simply removes the Shuttle and puts the crew capsule on top of the shuttle stack. The J-120 can lift a fully functional capsule plus 25 metric tons to low earth orbit.
Which is incredibly wasteful. As I mentioned previously, it's like using a semi with the trailer unhitched to drive to the store. You can do it, but you might as well be burning money.
The Ares-I can barely lift a stripped-down capsule to orbit, and has no cargo capacity.
That's the idea. The current Space Shuttle has manned flight + 25 metric tonne capacity. The vehicle is not good at carrying cargo or people because of it. Too little lift capacity for cargo, too much for just lifting people. In result, it costs $100 million/flight with no customers (including NASA and the military) looking to buy cargo space. About the most it gets used for is building the ISS. And that's only because the ISS was designed with the Shuttle's capabilities in mind.
The Jupiter-232 is the equivalent of the Ares-V. It consists of the exact same components as the Jupiter-120, with the addition of an upper stage. The J-232 can lift 110 metric tons to LEO.
The Ares V can lift 188 tonnes. Which is likely to be far more useful. With that sort of capacity, Ares V could lift a fully functional space station in one flight. No need to split cargo between the manned vehicle (WTH is that cargo doing there?!?) and your cargo flight.
The Ares-V will have to lift a huge amount material to make up for the inability of Ares-I carry anything but a small crew capsule.
Once again, that's the whole point. By consolidating cargo into a cargo carrying vessel and manned lifting into a manned lift vessel, you make both less expensive to operate. If all you need is a lot of cargo, then you don't need to launch an man-rated vehicle. If all you need is people on the spot, then you don't need to lift a cargo vehicle. NASA originally thought that there would be more crossover between the two when they designed the shuttle. There wasn't. In fact, there was practically NO crossover whatsoever. Yet people still have to fly in the space shuttle just to haul an undersized quantity of cargo. Or worse, they still have to fly a massive cargo capacity vehicle when all they need is to get people up and down!
An Ares-I + Ares-V mission will lift about 165 tons to orbit.
I don't know where you're getting your figures, but they're wrong. Ares-V will lift 188 tonnes by itself. Ares I will lift 25 tonnes. The actual capacity of Ares I doesn't matter because it's all about whether or not you can lift your people and the vehicle they're in.
A dual Jupiter-232 mission will lift about 220 tons to orbit.
A dual Ares V mission would lift about 376 metric tonnes. For about the same cost. (Most of NASA's costs are fixed and actually go down the more flights they fly. Hardware costs are relatively low in comparison.) What's your point?
In spite of your assertion that Ares will save money, it will actually be much more expensive, and NASA will not be able to fly nearly as many missions as it could with Direct.
If the new programs are the best thing to happen to NASA in decades, then it should be trivial for Griffin to find a dozen experts in the field to tell Obama as much.
If switching to the Gecko rendering engine would be the best thing to happen to Microsoft since Internet Explorer was first created, it should be trivial to find a dozen experts to tell Microsoft as much.
...
Except for the ones who think WebKit would be a better kit. Or the ones who think that Microsoft should instead purchase Opera and use Presto. Or the ones who think that Microsoft would do better to rewrite Trident.
You get the point. In simple terms it seems like it should be easy to get everyone to fall into line. In reality, things rarely work that way. When Constellation was announced, it was easy to get everyone to line up behind it. Primarily because there were no alternatives. Now that Constellation has been in production for a while, it has inspired alternative ideas that all seem pretty good. Except that Constellation still isn't done yet. From a management perspective, Constellation needs to be completed before anyone looks at a more efficient vehicle. But engineers are... well... engineers. They get excited about the latest and greatest toys. Thus the closer we get to success, the farther we get from what engineering experts think is ideal.
From a management perspective however, we need to fly the new vehicles and get the kinks worked out first. Then we can go and chase the new ideas with real-world experience under our belts to make the next idea work.
10% is a huge difference in the context of rocket engines and vehicle design.
Not in this case, it's not. The use of the RS-68s as part of the ground-launch engine stack means that pure thrust actually outweighs the need for efficiency. That's why there are Solid Rocket Boosters strapped to the side and why the Saturn V used kerosene-powered engines in the first stage rather than the more efficient LHOx engines.
In fact, the RS-68 is two seconds MORE efficient at sea level than the SSMEs in exchange for the 43 second difference in a vacuum. Which, again, makes the engines ideal for ground-launches.
That change should have precipitated a full-blown re-evaluation of options, and it didn't.
Yes it did. There were only two engines on the market that would meet the needs: The SSME and the RS-68. Arguments were heard on both sides. The initial decision to come out of the arguments was that the SSMEs would be used on the first generation of the vehicle with a switch to RS-68s in the second generation of vehicle. Because the RS-68s provide almost double the raw thrust, greater payloads would be realized in the second generation of the vehicle.
As it worked out, the RS-68 reached stability and completed testing soon enough to be considered for the first generation of vehicle. Given the significant cost savings in using these engines (~$36 million/engine), it became almost a no-brainer for NASA to switch over.
As far as changing horses goes, this horse is still in the barn and will be for six more years.
If you've already retooled your factory, you'd have to either have a damn good reason to lose that investment (e.g. you just retooled for Hummers and gas is now at $4/gal) or you'd have to be an idiot who likes losing money. Changing programs in mid-stream fits the latter definition.
Developing one vehicle and one launch infrastructure to accomplish all current goals, instead of two completely different vehicles, two completely different launch infrastructures, two completely different everything, seems like an obvious decision to make.
Only to the average layman. For anyone who has even a modicum of understanding in how rocketry works, it becomes clear that two separate vehicles based on the same technologies will be far cheaper in the long run. Why? Because your big vehicle is more complex than your small vehicle. By having to man-rate the big vehicle, you're loosing the cost-savings realized in flying 100s of tonnes of cargo in a single shot. Meanwhile, you're spending more money to send people into space than if you had a smaller, less complex vehicle that was purpose-designed to get people into space.
To use a car analogy, DIRECT is like purchasing a semi as your primary vehicle because you occasionally need to haul a large amount of stuff. Does it make sense to keep driving the semi when 90% of the time you just need to go to the store? Sure, you can unhitch the trailer before using it for day-to-day activities, but that doesn't mean you're saving money on gas. Quite the opposite! Not to mention the safety problems of trying to fit such a large vehicle into roadways and spaces designed for smaller consumer vehicles.
Having two launch vehicles is a no-brainer. Any one-size solution is wrong-headed and significantly outside the bounds of what is ideal under current technological limitations.
Well, I will say that Obama has been quite vague on whether he'll keep NASA well funded.
So what you're saying is that he is pushing, "Change we've been duped into believing?" Speaking honestly for a moment here, I was not a supporter of Obama due to his policies on the Space Program and Energy. (Both of which he eventually backed off on, and even claimed he was a "big supporter" of the space program.) But when he was elected, I was very much hoping that he was the true force for public good that everyone hoped him to be. I don't want to be critical of him, but I cannot help but notice that he is poised to tear the space program asunder. If he can't even give a clear view on where he is going with NASA, how many other areas has he used misdirection to deceive the public on his policy?
So many people have put so many hopes, aspirations, and dreams upon Obama and how different of a President he would be. I could not bear to watch what would happen to the people around me if he turned out to be politics as usual.:-(
That aside, I can't really say that this kind of behavior that should be rewarded or even tolerated in a subordinate. The whole hiding of information and acting like double checking his figures suggests that he's lying about something makes it look like he genuinely has something bad to hide too.
I think you're exaggerating the situation. Griffen asked the contractors to keep their opinions to themselves about alternative programs. When the transition team comes knocking, they're going to want to know about the Constellation program. The last thing NASA needs is for every opinionated engineer to pipe up with his own pet ideas. The transition team (who lacks even a single engineering resource!) could easily become confused and fail to look at the Constellation program itself over the din of excited engineers talking about pie-in-the-sky alternatives.
While I agree that Griffin is stonewalling Garver, he has repeatedly asked to speak directly to the President-elect. Given his excellent handling of politics in the past, I have a feeling that Griffin would fall in line if the new President gave him a direct order. He would even make preparations if the President-elect told him exactly what he wanted to happen. But the key is that Griffin reports directly to the President. He does not report to middle men, relationship managers, or any other such nonsense. So the President-elect had better get used to not beating around the bush and simply meet with the man.
IMHO, Obama needs Griffin. Griffin is a very rare type of individual who can bridge the gap between the world of engineering and the world of politics. Loosing Griffin would mean going back to the NASA of the 90's and early 2000's. As in, the one with ineffective leadership which managed to take the space agency all of nowhere. (*shudder* O'Keefe in particular was a pure disaster.)
Especially when they decided to drop the Space Shuttle Main Engine in favor of the RS68 engine due to cost. The RS68 is cheaper, but much less efficient than the SSME.
Your analysis is extremely one-sided. The SSMEs may be 10% more efficient, but they're also heavier, more complex, and more expensive to build. Like the use of the J-2s (which I was initally opposed to for similar reasons), the use of the RS-68s was a cost-cutting and reliability measure that made a lot of sense.
The DIRECT project is where we need to be.
You do realize that DIRECT also suggests the use of RS-68 engines, right?
While I think DIRECT is a decent proposal, I have two key issues with it:
1) The proposal was pushed part-way through the development of the Constellation program. This is a BAD idea. If you keep changing direction in the middle of a program, you will never have a launch vehicle. At some point, a firm decision has to be made and stuck with even if it's slightly less ideal. The only reason to outright cancel a program should be that it is failing in the feasibility department. Then you need to kill the program least it become a matter of sunk cost. The decision of the Constellation program was already made. Now we need to see it through.
2) DIRECT relies on a one-size-fits-all vehicle. This is a bad idea for a lot of reasons. It was a bad idea during the Apollo program, but it worked due to the unique political situation. Once that political situation disappeared, NASA was told to stop flying the SatV. Immediately, they were then told to produce a one-size-fits-all vehicle that would be cheaper to operate. We call such cost-savings "The Space Shuttle". If you work out the projections, I'm sure you can figure out how many negative billions of dollars it has "saved" us.
An additional concern I have with DIRECT is that there is no guarantee that there won't be cost overruns with that program. Given the history of NASA engineering, I'd even say that overruns would be likely. Remember, this is rocket engineering. There are no easy answers. Only complex answers and REALLY complex answers.
Michael Griffin is the best thing to happen to NASA since the Apollo program. If Obama cans his ass, he will have lied about everything he said about maintaining the space program.
Griffin is 1000% correct here. Ares and Orion are the correct solutions to a NASA that has been traveling down the wrong technological path for nearly 30 years. Any interference should not be tolerated by NASA short of disbanding the space program all together. And any attempt to disband the space program would leave America at a severe technological and infrastructural disadvantage. (Many area of scientific tracking and computation have been consolidated under NASA over the years. Killing off the space program would have a cascade effect into these programs. Many of which rely on NASA's space access.)
I would hope it would also be a public relations nightmare as well.
I agree. The WebKit team has been simply amazing. Though in Google's defense, parts of the browser are customizations over WebKit. e.g. The V8 Javascript engine is quite a bit different from JSKit or Squirrelfish.
I have to give the Chrome team credit. Chrome has been improving in stability and usability almost like magic. From day to day, it seems like problems I had previously just disappear. As it turns out, Chrome has an automatic updater that runs in the background. The browser is constantly and silently upgrading itself as the Chrome team push out new updates. The results are quite impressive.
If you'd reading this in chrome and want to force the most recent update, just go to the "About" screen. Chrome will tell you if an update is available and allow you to manually run the updater. There's a good chance that most users are already updated, but it doesn't hurt to check.
The killer feature that I still think is missing is the ability to exit and save tabs. Chrome can Restore after a crash (most of the time), but you can't manually restart the browser without loosing the history you have open. Another issue I wish they'd fix is remembering the last save directory when doing a "Save As...". I realize that keeping a single Downloads directory is userfriendly, but using it as the default location when the user is overriding the download location is annoying. If I need to download 10 files, I need to navigate to the same directory 10 times. That's just ridiculous.
Otherwise my gripes are mostly minor and have no real bearing on its use in day to day activities. (e.g. I hate that I can't view the properties of an image. Sometimes I need to verify that its under a certain size. Or that there's no easy method of tracking page errors.) Thankfully, most of my gripes are developer-related and are better served by keeping a copy of FireFox around.
Kudos to Google for working on another alternative to Internet Explorer! If Chrome and Firefox can each grab a significant marketshare, Internet Explorer's hold over the Internet will disappear. Firefox's popularity has already caused it to wane. I look forward to the day when using IE will net you nothing but pages telling you to upgrade your web browser.:-)
and yeah, c&c was a ripoff [of Dune II] no doubt...
How could C&C possibly be a ripoff when Westwood created both games? Dune II was their first effort. C&C perfected their entry into the genre. If anything, Warcraft was the rip-off.
I keep on asking you to paste a code sniplet to demonstrate what you're trying to say and you keep on making up reasons for why you won't do so.
You are looking for something that would take a few very large chunks of C/C++ code to "demonstrate". I explained in detail the steps that the browser takes when it encounters similar code in Javascript vs. Java. Apparently that is over your head. And for that I am sorry.
Are already in the example given. So is the contents of "app.jar":
META-INF/MANIFEST.MF a.class b.class c.class
It is doubtful that repeating that information will get the point through to you any more clearly. It is doubtful that repeating that information will get the point through to you any more clearly. The steps shown are the steps the web browser takes when it encounters these files. It's very simple. The Javascript engine internalizes the code via execution. No more, no less. The Java engine has to obtain the entire JAR, extract the contents, load the meta data from the manifest, verify the classes, initialize the classes in the classloader, and then FINALLY execute the one class you asked for. After which it can then worry about libraries. Why that is so hard to understand, I have no idea.
I have experience writing Java classloaders and I've worked extensively with JAR files. I have fairly good knowledge of JS too.
Bullshit. And the sooner you learn that it's bullshit, the faster you can get up to speed. There is absolutely nothing in what you've said that gives me any confidence in your understanding of the JVM and Javascript execution environments. Can you write code for the environments? I'm sure. So could I back in 1998 when I also was young and silly enough to post random links to prove how Java was going to save the world*. But there's a huge difference between knowing enough to be dangerous and truly knowing the underlying technologies you're working with. You cannot understand my argument. That tells me that you'll still got a long way to go. I wish you the best and hope you get offended often and curious even more often. There are no better motivating factors than those two.
* BTW, we - the early adopters - already completed that task. As cool as we thought they were, Applets had to die to accomplish the task. Please leave them dead. They're nothing but a pain in the ass these days. Focus more on Webstart and new distribution technologies rather than the antiquated design of Applets.
You'll note that when the alert box pops up, the rendering has stopped with only "One" displaying. The final output is "One, Two, Three" in order, not "One, Three, Two" as you would expect if the script waited until the page was loaded.
But what about header scripts? They also must execute first. Here's another example:
test2.js:
function myalert() {
alert("You'll notice that this function exists by the time it is called!"); }
Obviously, myalert() could not execute if the test2.js file had not yet been executed and thus entered the myalert function into the Javascript environment.
As it happens, one of the tips for optimizing web page loads is to place your Javascript code as far down the page as possible. This allows more of the page to become visible before you take the hit of downloading and executing the JS file.
This can be (somewhat) offset by downloading a simple page that contains the javascript, which then executes and downloads the rest of the page
I'm not sure what you're trying to solve here, but I'm fairly certain that the problem isn't what you think it is. If you could describe the issue you're having, I'm sure I could easily provide a solution.
a) That's not Javascript. It's HTML. b) The HTML code you printed has nothing to do with the discussion of how the browser operates other than placing the tags in a useless context. Which was the point that seems to have gone "WHOOSH" right by you. c) You don't seem to understand how Javascript OR Java operate. d) Because JARs have absolutely no class files in them, right?
No offense young man, but I'm done attempting to explain this to you. It's obviously over your head. That's okay. If you're really interested, I recommend the following:
1) Learn more about Javascript. I recommend Douglas Crockford's introduction videos along with the Javascript Core Reference and Javascript Guide. 2) Learn more about Javascript engines and how they operate. I recommend programming a significant chunk of code that targets Rhino. If you create new APIs in Java for the engine, you'll learn the internals of the engine pretty well. 3) For the love of God, figure out what a JAR file is, will you? 4) Dive deep into the Java classloaders. I recommend writing your own when you get the chance. It's an enlightening experience. Try writing a command line shell for Java programs. That's a fairly simple use of a custom classloader. 5) Investigate the Applet life-cycle more thoroughly. There are obviously significant holes in your knowledge.
And a word of advice? Stop trying to refute arguments you don't understand. I have a feeling you still don't understand why you were horribly off base to post a link to JAR Indexes.
A blur filter implemented in JavaScript is unusably slow.
Maybe I'm missing something, but since when was less than a second "unusably slow"? (FF 3.04) If it was a really large image, I imagine that it might be wise to put up a progress bar and break up the work into small chunks that execute every few milliseconds, but I don't see that as a large problem. Nor would a user touching up his image, I would imagine. It's certainly a lot faster than the suggested round trip to the server.
Can you please provide a JS code sniplet that would generate the 6 lines of behavior you mentioned?
Why would I re-implement the browser's parsing and Javascript engine in Javascript? That seems pretty silly.
I was describing in abstract terms how the browser loads Javascript vs. Java. I don't understand what is confusing there? In Javascript, the script is read in and executed as soon as it finds the tag. Parsing STOPS until the script is finished executing. In Java, the JVM is spun off in a new thread as soon as the applet tag is seen. The JVM then takes the steps I described.
I believe I am quite familiar with Javascript.
I seriously doubt the truth of this statement. 99% of Java programmers I've conversed with have only a passing understanding of the technology. Considering your questions, I find it likely that you are in that 99%. In your defense, most developers in that 99% overestimate their familiarity with Javascript.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it's kind of dead in here. I would have expected more people to be excited about this. Granted, the technical problems are putting a real dampener on things. (When I submitted the story, the site was operating fine. Didn't take long for that to change.) But it's still kind of cool. Ars' complaint about having to spend $800 to get a $20 game misses the point. The point is that if you already spent the money (which a lot of gaming fans have), then this program offers some nice rewards for being a loyal customer. Spending money for the explicit purpose of getting stuff on the site seems a bit silly.
On another subject, anyone else notice that the site uses the Struts framework? If the issues they're experiencing are any indication, I'd say this is a perfect example of why Struts should never be used for a scalable solution. In my experience, far too much logic gets executed on every request while accomplishing very little. Especially when programmers are tempted into putting session initializer actions into their webapp. Then things just go haywire. ;-)
Here's the link I originally submitted: http://www.wiimedia.com/news/view/club_nintendo_goes_live/
The information is more or less the same, but Ars takes a very negative view on the service and the issues they're having.
If the couple was in hiding but was maintaining an active presence on Facebook, then I can see how this would be reasonable. The lawyer was required to deliver the papers to the last known address is addition to serving notice via Facebook. Interesting, the profile disappeared after the papers were served...
Of course, it will still be up to the judge to decide if the experiment was a success. If he decides that the papers were not properly served even after allowing it, he won't give a summary judgment. Alternatively, the judgment could be vacated if the couple later challenges the judgment and the next judge finds that papers were not properly served.
(IANAL, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn express once!)
When the problem is that users are using the system in a vertical configuration as advertised by the manufacturer, you can bet your ass that it's a manufacturing defect! (More specifically a design defect, but we won't quibble.) Microsoft tells everyone that their system is just fine and dandy when placed in an upright position. Yet the slightest vibration (anyone have subwoofers? cabled controllers? hard wood floors?) can unseat the disc and cause scratches.
The problem has nothing to do with being flipped around, and everything to do with a flaw in the system's design.
They even include that extra plastic attachment thingy that provides even more horizontal coverage to ensure that your Wii remains as stable as possible. Not a bad idea when there are kids around the system. ;-)
Speaking of which, this is hilarious. You'd think someone would have realized that the system doesn't look quite right...
The problem relates to the restraint of the disc. Slot loaders have restraints built in to accommodate the disc being loaded into the drive. Tray loaders often use the friction from the spindle to restrain the disc. That friction is maintained via gravity. (There are also notched on the edges of the tray that are supposed to help during loading, but I doubt they provide much restraint during use.) When you have a spindle used sideways, there's not much to prevent the disc from losing friction and wobbling a bit. That wobbling can create contact with the internals of the drive and result in a scratched disc.
At least, that's my understanding of the mechanics.
You know, for some reason I was under the impression that the PS3 was a tray-loader. My apologies for the mistake. However, my point still stands that the Wii is an inexpensive device that makes money on every console, thus demonstrating that a slot-loader is not a cost burden.
As I mentioned in another post, this is incorrect. It would appear that the 360 does scratches discs in properly stabilized systems that are used in a vertical orientation. It seems likely that the system's own vibrations, plus issues with subwoofers and other vibrational sources contribute to the discs being unseated enough to cause scratching.
In effect, this is a serious design flaw. Microsoft should have either given up on vertical orientation altogether, or engineered the system to withstand the tolerances of vertically orienting an optical disc.
My understanding of the issue is that many consoles have had scratched discs even if the system was treated in an acceptable manner. Apparently, the system is not as well suited to a vertical configuration as Microsoft would have you believe.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_technical_problems#Scratched_discs:
Generally I'm not a fan of slot-loading CD drives, but I think Nintendo got it right in this case. The slot-loader is gentle on the disc, works in multiple orientations, and is easy for even kids to use without damaging the system. IMHO, the 360 would have done well to also design around a slot-loader, especially given their desire to place the system in a vertical configuration. The Wii is a very inexpensive system, so I don't see such a solution adding much cost.
(Then again, what do I know? Microsoft did try to cut corners wherever possible to create the system as cheap as possible.)
Of course, Sony managed to get a tray system working without scratching disks. And the system can be placed in a vertical configuration. (Does anyone actually do that?) I can only guess that Sony's solution was one of the "more expensive" ideas that Microsoft rejected.
This is a nonsense statement. There was nothing wrong with the Constellation program. Why would they stop everything and choose a proposal that didn't exist yet just because they had options for components?
That's like saying you should choose ECMAScript 5.0 on Linux 3.2 when your company is deciding between OpenSolaris and Suse for their Java application.
Which is incredibly wasteful. As I mentioned previously, it's like using a semi with the trailer unhitched to drive to the store. You can do it, but you might as well be burning money.
That's the idea. The current Space Shuttle has manned flight + 25 metric tonne capacity. The vehicle is not good at carrying cargo or people because of it. Too little lift capacity for cargo, too much for just lifting people. In result, it costs $100 million/flight with no customers (including NASA and the military) looking to buy cargo space. About the most it gets used for is building the ISS. And that's only because the ISS was designed with the Shuttle's capabilities in mind.
The Ares V can lift 188 tonnes. Which is likely to be far more useful. With that sort of capacity, Ares V could lift a fully functional space station in one flight. No need to split cargo between the manned vehicle (WTH is that cargo doing there?!?) and your cargo flight.
Once again, that's the whole point. By consolidating cargo into a cargo carrying vessel and manned lifting into a manned lift vessel, you make both less expensive to operate. If all you need is a lot of cargo, then you don't need to launch an man-rated vehicle. If all you need is people on the spot, then you don't need to lift a cargo vehicle. NASA originally thought that there would be more crossover between the two when they designed the shuttle. There wasn't. In fact, there was practically NO crossover whatsoever. Yet people still have to fly in the space shuttle just to haul an undersized quantity of cargo. Or worse, they still have to fly a massive cargo capacity vehicle when all they need is to get people up and down!
I don't know where you're getting your figures, but they're wrong. Ares-V will lift 188 tonnes by itself. Ares I will lift 25 tonnes. The actual capacity of Ares I doesn't matter because it's all about whether or not you can lift your people and the vehicle they're in.
A dual Ares V mission would lift about 376 metric tonnes. For about the same cost. (Most of NASA's costs are fixed and actually go down the more flights they fly. Hardware costs are relatively low in comparison.) What's your point?
If switching to the Gecko rendering engine would be the best thing to happen to Microsoft since Internet Explorer was first created, it should be trivial to find a dozen experts to tell Microsoft as much.
Except for the ones who think WebKit would be a better kit. Or the ones who think that Microsoft should instead purchase Opera and use Presto. Or the ones who think that Microsoft would do better to rewrite Trident.
You get the point. In simple terms it seems like it should be easy to get everyone to fall into line. In reality, things rarely work that way. When Constellation was announced, it was easy to get everyone to line up behind it. Primarily because there were no alternatives. Now that Constellation has been in production for a while, it has inspired alternative ideas that all seem pretty good. Except that Constellation still isn't done yet. From a management perspective, Constellation needs to be completed before anyone looks at a more efficient vehicle. But engineers are... well... engineers. They get excited about the latest and greatest toys. Thus the closer we get to success, the farther we get from what engineering experts think is ideal.
From a management perspective however, we need to fly the new vehicles and get the kinks worked out first. Then we can go and chase the new ideas with real-world experience under our belts to make the next idea work.
Not in this case, it's not. The use of the RS-68s as part of the ground-launch engine stack means that pure thrust actually outweighs the need for efficiency. That's why there are Solid Rocket Boosters strapped to the side and why the Saturn V used kerosene-powered engines in the first stage rather than the more efficient LHOx engines.
In fact, the RS-68 is two seconds MORE efficient at sea level than the SSMEs in exchange for the 43 second difference in a vacuum. Which, again, makes the engines ideal for ground-launches.
Yes it did. There were only two engines on the market that would meet the needs: The SSME and the RS-68. Arguments were heard on both sides. The initial decision to come out of the arguments was that the SSMEs would be used on the first generation of the vehicle with a switch to RS-68s in the second generation of vehicle. Because the RS-68s provide almost double the raw thrust, greater payloads would be realized in the second generation of the vehicle.
As it worked out, the RS-68 reached stability and completed testing soon enough to be considered for the first generation of vehicle. Given the significant cost savings in using these engines (~$36 million/engine), it became almost a no-brainer for NASA to switch over.
If you've already retooled your factory, you'd have to either have a damn good reason to lose that investment (e.g. you just retooled for Hummers and gas is now at $4/gal) or you'd have to be an idiot who likes losing money. Changing programs in mid-stream fits the latter definition.
Only to the average layman. For anyone who has even a modicum of understanding in how rocketry works, it becomes clear that two separate vehicles based on the same technologies will be far cheaper in the long run. Why? Because your big vehicle is more complex than your small vehicle. By having to man-rate the big vehicle, you're loosing the cost-savings realized in flying 100s of tonnes of cargo in a single shot. Meanwhile, you're spending more money to send people into space than if you had a smaller, less complex vehicle that was purpose-designed to get people into space.
To use a car analogy, DIRECT is like purchasing a semi as your primary vehicle because you occasionally need to haul a large amount of stuff. Does it make sense to keep driving the semi when 90% of the time you just need to go to the store? Sure, you can unhitch the trailer before using it for day-to-day activities, but that doesn't mean you're saving money on gas. Quite the opposite! Not to mention the safety problems of trying to fit such a large vehicle into roadways and spaces designed for smaller consumer vehicles.
Having two launch vehicles is a no-brainer. Any one-size solution is wrong-headed and significantly outside the bounds of what is ideal under current technological limitations.
So what you're saying is that he is pushing, "Change we've been duped into believing?" Speaking honestly for a moment here, I was not a supporter of Obama due to his policies on the Space Program and Energy. (Both of which he eventually backed off on, and even claimed he was a "big supporter" of the space program.) But when he was elected, I was very much hoping that he was the true force for public good that everyone hoped him to be. I don't want to be critical of him, but I cannot help but notice that he is poised to tear the space program asunder. If he can't even give a clear view on where he is going with NASA, how many other areas has he used misdirection to deceive the public on his policy?
So many people have put so many hopes, aspirations, and dreams upon Obama and how different of a President he would be. I could not bear to watch what would happen to the people around me if he turned out to be politics as usual. :-(
I think you're exaggerating the situation. Griffen asked the contractors to keep their opinions to themselves about alternative programs. When the transition team comes knocking, they're going to want to know about the Constellation program. The last thing NASA needs is for every opinionated engineer to pipe up with his own pet ideas. The transition team (who lacks even a single engineering resource!) could easily become confused and fail to look at the Constellation program itself over the din of excited engineers talking about pie-in-the-sky alternatives.
While I agree that Griffin is stonewalling Garver, he has repeatedly asked to speak directly to the President-elect. Given his excellent handling of politics in the past, I have a feeling that Griffin would fall in line if the new President gave him a direct order. He would even make preparations if the President-elect told him exactly what he wanted to happen. But the key is that Griffin reports directly to the President. He does not report to middle men, relationship managers, or any other such nonsense. So the President-elect had better get used to not beating around the bush and simply meet with the man.
IMHO, Obama needs Griffin. Griffin is a very rare type of individual who can bridge the gap between the world of engineering and the world of politics. Loosing Griffin would mean going back to the NASA of the 90's and early 2000's. As in, the one with ineffective leadership which managed to take the space agency all of nowhere. (*shudder* O'Keefe in particular was a pure disaster.)
Your analysis is extremely one-sided. The SSMEs may be 10% more efficient, but they're also heavier, more complex, and more expensive to build. Like the use of the J-2s (which I was initally opposed to for similar reasons), the use of the RS-68s was a cost-cutting and reliability measure that made a lot of sense.
You do realize that DIRECT also suggests the use of RS-68 engines, right?
While I think DIRECT is a decent proposal, I have two key issues with it:
1) The proposal was pushed part-way through the development of the Constellation program. This is a BAD idea. If you keep changing direction in the middle of a program, you will never have a launch vehicle. At some point, a firm decision has to be made and stuck with even if it's slightly less ideal. The only reason to outright cancel a program should be that it is failing in the feasibility department. Then you need to kill the program least it become a matter of sunk cost. The decision of the Constellation program was already made. Now we need to see it through.
2) DIRECT relies on a one-size-fits-all vehicle. This is a bad idea for a lot of reasons. It was a bad idea during the Apollo program, but it worked due to the unique political situation. Once that political situation disappeared, NASA was told to stop flying the SatV. Immediately, they were then told to produce a one-size-fits-all vehicle that would be cheaper to operate. We call such cost-savings "The Space Shuttle". If you work out the projections, I'm sure you can figure out how many negative billions of dollars it has "saved" us.
An additional concern I have with DIRECT is that there is no guarantee that there won't be cost overruns with that program. Given the history of NASA engineering, I'd even say that overruns would be likely. Remember, this is rocket engineering. There are no easy answers. Only complex answers and REALLY complex answers.
Michael Griffin is the best thing to happen to NASA since the Apollo program. If Obama cans his ass, he will have lied about everything he said about maintaining the space program.
Griffin is 1000% correct here. Ares and Orion are the correct solutions to a NASA that has been traveling down the wrong technological path for nearly 30 years. Any interference should not be tolerated by NASA short of disbanding the space program all together. And any attempt to disband the space program would leave America at a severe technological and infrastructural disadvantage. (Many area of scientific tracking and computation have been consolidated under NASA over the years. Killing off the space program would have a cascade effect into these programs. Many of which rely on NASA's space access.)
I would hope it would also be a public relations nightmare as well.
So in short: Go Griffin!
Dude, you just made my day. I wonder when that was added? Or did I simply not notice it back when they released the browser?
I agree. The WebKit team has been simply amazing. Though in Google's defense, parts of the browser are customizations over WebKit. e.g. The V8 Javascript engine is quite a bit different from JSKit or Squirrelfish.
I have to give the Chrome team credit. Chrome has been improving in stability and usability almost like magic. From day to day, it seems like problems I had previously just disappear. As it turns out, Chrome has an automatic updater that runs in the background. The browser is constantly and silently upgrading itself as the Chrome team push out new updates. The results are quite impressive.
If you'd reading this in chrome and want to force the most recent update, just go to the "About" screen. Chrome will tell you if an update is available and allow you to manually run the updater. There's a good chance that most users are already updated, but it doesn't hurt to check.
The killer feature that I still think is missing is the ability to exit and save tabs. Chrome can Restore after a crash (most of the time), but you can't manually restart the browser without loosing the history you have open. Another issue I wish they'd fix is remembering the last save directory when doing a "Save As...". I realize that keeping a single Downloads directory is userfriendly, but using it as the default location when the user is overriding the download location is annoying. If I need to download 10 files, I need to navigate to the same directory 10 times. That's just ridiculous.
Otherwise my gripes are mostly minor and have no real bearing on its use in day to day activities. (e.g. I hate that I can't view the properties of an image. Sometimes I need to verify that its under a certain size. Or that there's no easy method of tracking page errors.) Thankfully, most of my gripes are developer-related and are better served by keeping a copy of FireFox around.
Kudos to Google for working on another alternative to Internet Explorer! If Chrome and Firefox can each grab a significant marketshare, Internet Explorer's hold over the Internet will disappear. Firefox's popularity has already caused it to wane. I look forward to the day when using IE will net you nothing but pages telling you to upgrade your web browser. :-)
How could C&C possibly be a ripoff when Westwood created both games? Dune II was their first effort. C&C perfected their entry into the genre. If anything, Warcraft was the rip-off.
You are looking for something that would take a few very large chunks of C/C++ code to "demonstrate". I explained in detail the steps that the browser takes when it encounters similar code in Javascript vs. Java. Apparently that is over your head. And for that I am sorry.
This:
vs. this:
Are already in the example given. So is the contents of "app.jar":
It is doubtful that repeating that information will get the point through to you any more clearly. It is doubtful that repeating that information will get the point through to you any more clearly. The steps shown are the steps the web browser takes when it encounters these files. It's very simple. The Javascript engine internalizes the code via execution. No more, no less. The Java engine has to obtain the entire JAR, extract the contents, load the meta data from the manifest, verify the classes, initialize the classes in the classloader, and then FINALLY execute the one class you asked for. After which it can then worry about libraries. Why that is so hard to understand, I have no idea.
Bullshit. And the sooner you learn that it's bullshit, the faster you can get up to speed. There is absolutely nothing in what you've said that gives me any confidence in your understanding of the JVM and Javascript execution environments. Can you write code for the environments? I'm sure. So could I back in 1998 when I also was young and silly enough to post random links to prove how Java was going to save the world*. But there's a huge difference between knowing enough to be dangerous and truly knowing the underlying technologies you're working with. You cannot understand my argument. That tells me that you'll still got a long way to go. I wish you the best and hope you get offended often and curious even more often. There are no better motivating factors than those two.
* BTW, we - the early adopters - already completed that task. As cool as we thought they were, Applets had to die to accomplish the task. Please leave them dead. They're nothing but a pain in the ass these days. Focus more on Webstart and new distribution technologies rather than the antiquated design of Applets.
I do, and you're wrong. Javascript is executed as it is loaded, and in the same thread as the HTML engine. Here's a simple experiment to demonstrate:
test.js:
test.html:
You'll note that when the alert box pops up, the rendering has stopped with only "One" displaying. The final output is "One, Two, Three" in order, not "One, Three, Two" as you would expect if the script waited until the page was loaded.
But what about header scripts? They also must execute first. Here's another example:
test2.js:
test2.html:
Obviously, myalert() could not execute if the test2.js file had not yet been executed and thus entered the myalert function into the Javascript environment.
As it happens, one of the tips for optimizing web page loads is to place your Javascript code as far down the page as possible. This allows more of the page to become visible before you take the hit of downloading and executing the JS file.
I'm not sure what you're trying to solve here, but I'm fairly certain that the problem isn't what you think it is. If you could describe the issue you're having, I'm sure I could easily provide a solution.
a) That's not Javascript. It's HTML.
b) The HTML code you printed has nothing to do with the discussion of how the browser operates other than placing the tags in a useless context. Which was the point that seems to have gone "WHOOSH" right by you.
c) You don't seem to understand how Javascript OR Java operate.
d) Because JARs have absolutely no class files in them, right?
No offense young man, but I'm done attempting to explain this to you. It's obviously over your head. That's okay. If you're really interested, I recommend the following:
1) Learn more about Javascript. I recommend Douglas Crockford's introduction videos along with the Javascript Core Reference and Javascript Guide.
2) Learn more about Javascript engines and how they operate. I recommend programming a significant chunk of code that targets Rhino. If you create new APIs in Java for the engine, you'll learn the internals of the engine pretty well.
3) For the love of God, figure out what a JAR file is, will you?
4) Dive deep into the Java classloaders. I recommend writing your own when you get the chance. It's an enlightening experience. Try writing a command line shell for Java programs. That's a fairly simple use of a custom classloader.
5) Investigate the Applet life-cycle more thoroughly. There are obviously significant holes in your knowledge.
And a word of advice? Stop trying to refute arguments you don't understand. I have a feeling you still don't understand why you were horribly off base to post a link to JAR Indexes.
Maybe I'm missing something, but since when was less than a second "unusably slow"? (FF 3.04) If it was a really large image, I imagine that it might be wise to put up a progress bar and break up the work into small chunks that execute every few milliseconds, but I don't see that as a large problem. Nor would a user touching up his image, I would imagine. It's certainly a lot faster than the suggested round trip to the server.
Why would I re-implement the browser's parsing and Javascript engine in Javascript? That seems pretty silly.
I was describing in abstract terms how the browser loads Javascript vs. Java. I don't understand what is confusing there? In Javascript, the script is read in and executed as soon as it finds the tag. Parsing STOPS until the script is finished executing. In Java, the JVM is spun off in a new thread as soon as the applet tag is seen. The JVM then takes the steps I described.
I seriously doubt the truth of this statement. 99% of Java programmers I've conversed with have only a passing understanding of the technology. Considering your questions, I find it likely that you are in that 99%. In your defense, most developers in that 99% overestimate their familiarity with Javascript.