Re:Calculator key?
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Personally, I would never buy a keyboard that has an "email key", that's what keybindings are for. I would question the build and design quality of a keyboard that relies on extra keys to get me to hand over the cash.
I never like the dumb (and utterly uselss) "email" buttons, but I am a fan of the Sun Keyboard designs. The "cut", "Copy", "paste", "stop" and other keys on the left can be very handy. It's too bad that Unix software is moving away from using such wonderful keys.:-(
The only thing that tends to throw users new to Unix keyboards is the location of the Control key. On Unix keyboards, the Control and Caps Lock are swapped. I actually find it a bit more comfortable, but many people are used to the PC keyboard design.
However, I think that it is still possible to eliminate all life on earth by the simultaneous detonation of all the world's nuclear weapons. Why? The fallout; the radiation.
If you read the links I posted, the radiation has never been an overriding concern with nuclear weapons. Apparently, nearly all the radiation deaths in Hiroshima/Nagasaki were from the initial exposure. Resident radiation was insufficient to cause any ongoing health concerns.
Similarly, Chernobyl only claimed a few dozen lives, most of which were workers and rescuers present at the event. Many people within the immediate vicinity at the time, however, did have to be treated for Thyroid issues. (Odd as it may sound, nuclear science is currently the only "cure" for thyroid cancer, an issue caused by nuclear science. How's that for irony?)
Not only would you be asking organisms to survive the dust and debris in the atmosphere, blocking out the sun for years.
Almost all nukes are detonated as airbursts and not ground bursts. As a result, there's nothing for them to pitch up into the air. That same reason is why there is very little radioactive fallout after most detonations. Keep in mind though, that Chernobyl spread a large amount of nuclear material all over the area, and yet life still thrives there. (Only a few humans to guard the place, though. The rest were evacuated.) Even though she was a fake, look up Elena's pictures sometime. You'll note how plants are happily growing in street cracks, trees and shubberies still abound, and that there's a thriving forest all around the city.
You may be interested to know that the background radiation in Norway is naturally higher than the background radiation in Chernobyl. Yet people in Norway live very happy and healthy lives. Some evidence even suggests that higher radiation levels may stimulate the body's repair functions and keep people healthier. Isn't radiation a crazy thing?
As for it requiring a full orbit to de-orbit, whoever told you that doesn't understand orbital mechanics.
No, I understand orbital mechanics very well. You can only deorbit by decellerating. Thrusting something straight down won't work. And if the target is in front of you or directly beneath you, you're going to need to make one of two decisions:
1. Deorbit the weapon now, taking a full orbit to do so.
2. Wait until you're sufficiently beyond the target to launch and deorbit your missile.
Point 1 guarantees a target that isn't there any more. Point 2 guaratees that you'll be dead from laser fire long before you can retaliate.
All it requires is sufficient energy added (say to the cannister) to begin the deorbit cycle.
It takes a LOT of propellent to deorbit that fast. The things would have to *heavy*. Most of that weight would then be lost in flight, leaving almost no (or perhaps none at all) propellant for atmosphereic manuvering. Which means that it will have to be guided by control surfaces. If the ship isn't close to within the flight path of the missile, the missile will miss.
Also remember you are "luanching" into a basket (area). Saturate the area, just as the SFW JSOW does on land, and you'll bag the lot.
You can't carry that much weight into orbit unless you have a superbooster. (Other than the shuttle, nobody's got 'em at the moment.) Even with a superbooster, you're talking about a lot of mass that will detract from the mission payload. Assuming that you do manage to carry a few of these, then you're a target that the carrier group will attempt to lase out of existence before you're in a position to fire.:-)
What would work would be a SQL interface to current files, and vice versa.
Do you mean a current interface as in a metadata wrapper around the existing file system, or a full network file system concept? The former concept sounds feasible, but the latter would be unlikely to work very scalably.:-)
Thanks for that. I searched the article for any mention of the military, but couldn't find it. The clarification is most appreciated. And now that we're down to the meat of what is actually going on (better fusion models for warheads), their interest now makes perfect sense.
Sorry if I was a little snippy. The constant replies of "well, it COULD be true" get to me after awhile.
Read up on the history of why MySQL was developed...
Waaaayyyy back in '98/'99 I actually thought that MySQL might be a good database after I read up on the history of it. The whole "it was designed to store gigabytes of data for our company" seemed very convincing at the time. When I actually started to use it later on, however, I quickly figured out that it suffered from a sydrome common to in-house software: It was designed only for the task at hand.
Many of the things outside of what the parent company needed were not implemented or were poorly implemented. When MySQL split off into its own company, it finally began to patch some of the holes. Unfortunately, they've had some difficulty in adding features typically found in a commercial database. Whether this is due to the state of the codebase or priority being placed on other areas is unclear.
Please don't feed the trolls. He's one of the guys who runs around badgering me because he doesn't like the fact that I have insightful and intersting opinions. All he really wants is to get someone into a time-wasting argument.
They're not needed as the cells can be extracted from the film. These cells can then be treated like a sketch, receiving a reinking and recoloring. The final cell should look better than the original.
It seems like you could take advantage of the 24 fps of the cell movements and the redundancy of the 24fps of the projector and use the redundant film to correct the damaged frames.
That's effectively what the DVNS tech does. The only problem is that lines of animation don't digitize very well, resulting in breaks. i.e. It's similar to the effect of scanning in a sketch. Much of the detail in the lines is lost and the picture may not be discernable.
Lasers are not vary energy efferent, are easy to defend (up to a point) and are not well suited for combat situations.
Quite a bit of my argument is that they are *not* as easy to defend against as it may seem. If you pump that much energy into a target, something is going to give. And as I pointed out in a previous post, the very mirrors that make these lasers work are just beyond the brink of destruction. There's no defense for an aircraft skin other than a cooling system capable of boiling off megajoules of energy. In all other cases, inperfections, dust, and grime will lead to a complete vaporization of the reflective surface.:-)
Needle gun / High velocity rail guns are well suited for short-range use as long as they have a good power supply to work from.
This is true.
Now when the navy wanted to build a catapult system to launch aircraft used a seam system, as it's extremely reliable and efferent.
You mean "steam" catapult? The next generation of aircraft carriers are slated to use electromagnetic catapults. Linky
The point I am trying to make is Needle guns are more efferent and reliable than lasers. Yes the rails only last so long but they're easily replaced. Where a large laser with a minor problem is going to be hell to fix.
Sadly, this is subjective for the moment. The military is working on laser weapons, but we don't know the details of their reliability. The situation is similar with rail guns where it's predicted that reliable devices can be designed with sufficient R&D. So far, no needlegun has had a proven track record of reliability. The rails almost always melt at very bad times. We'll call this point a toss up.:-)
Yea they don't sound as sci-fi but they seem to be a much better solution for ships.
Both solutions are currently sci-fi-ish. The only one we *know* is happening is the Navy's extended range munition rail guns.:-)
PS: It was my understanding that we even have working rail gun systems that are waiting for the next generation of aircraft carriers which will have more spare energy for these types of systems.
That's more or less true. Raytheon is currently firing the Navy's rail guns in tests to ensure the weapon system is ready. After the DD(X) class Destroyer (really, a cruiser) is deployed, it will be retrofitted with these weapons. (Stupid cost saving measure.) The CVN(X) class carrier is being designed with the same concept of supporting energy hardpoints, but will have the advantage of using nuclear power instead of gas turbines.
They are not supposed to be huge deck guns but rather closer to the size of a large washer drier unit / small car with a connection to an ammo supply.
The images have them looking something like a gun barrel jutting out at an 80 degree angle. If you follow some of the links I posted previously, you should find a few pictures. They may also replace one of the deck guns. Article w/Pictures of current DD(X):-)
Dude, you're repeating my point. (Granted, with much more detail.) Just about any database can *store* as much data as its disks can hold (as long as the internal data offsets are large enough numbers). The whole point of my post was that MySQL lacks the very features that make that much data *useful*.:-)
Also, until db2 v8 came out two years ago, it was pretty far behind oracle 8 & 9. Now, it's in a great competitive position.
Last time I did a comparison, it was DB2 7.1 vs. Oracle 8. Most of what bit me in the ass with DB2 was its flakey management tools and multitude of minor details that needed tweaking from the days when it was a mainframe database. (e.g. Why does it need a buffer large enough to hold the entire blob chunk that's going to be transferred? That's just stupid. It should pull across as much as the buffer can hold, fill the requesting array, then go back for more and repeat.)
As I said, it would only start a pointless discussion on who likes what database.
Can you back that up with some real-world examples where DB2 was worse than Oracle?
I could, but it would only start a useless argument over what database everyone prefers. Let's just say that my experience with DB2 has left me with less than stellar feelings toward that database and leave it at that.:-)
FWIW, my experience is with UDB and not the Mainframe DB2. At the end of the day, the two are very different beasts.
Fine, you can call it a rail gun, but it is nothing like what a point defense rail gun.
What is it with you and point defense rail guns? Rail guns suck for point defense in comparison to beam weapons. The type of Rail Gun you want is only useful for things like tanks or anti-aircraft fire.
And ICBMs and Shuttles are both Rockets. Just like the Navy's rail gun and your needlegun are both Rail Guns. So stop picking over nits that don't exist!
Yes. Did you? If you did, then you know that beta radiation doesn't pose an external risk to humans unless it's in sufficient quantities. i.e. Since the radiation is incapable of penetrating the layer of dead skin cells, it can't hurt you. However, given a significant enough source, you can be burned. So:
1. Don't handle $3 million worth of Tritium all at once.
I have no doubt that terabytes could be stored in MySQL. My overall point is that MySQL is not designed to effectively manage that much data. For example, the presentation you link to shows that Terabase is the workhorse of the business. Data is then offloaded to a disposable MySQL database for data warehousing analysis. The database is then purged after one week.
The holy grail of information technology would be to eliminate the need for such cumbersome replications, and instead have a single, reliable data source that can be queried for any information needed at any time. Unfortunately, MySQL isn't it.;-)
We've already got RDBMS tech - why reinvent an inadequate version of it?
Because current RDBMS designs are unsuitable for filesystems. Relational theory still holds (just as it does for OODBs), but the physical design should be quite different if it's going to be effecient.
As I said, this has been beaten to death in the research communities. BeOS even included a DBFS design, but it went largely unused. NTFS also has all the necessary stuff in it, but Microsoft constantly removes it in final releases. ReiserFS has DBFS features, but these also go largely unused.
I think the problem is that making effective use of a DBFS requires a very different set of applications. i.e. If the applications are aware of the functionality, then they can assist the user and provide useful support. But without this form of OS and application support, the user will find that the metadata is nothing but added confusion.
How about just getting filesystems to be relational?
For what purpose? I used to work with a Unisys NX Series (and a predecessor that I don't remember) and it had all data stored in database tables. PC files were stored in new tables with a record length matching the size of the file. It was more a PITA than actually useful.
Enough stuffing metadata into filenames. Enough shoehorning all data into a file/folder/cabinet model, now less familiar to people than the networked infosystems that mimic them. Enough fake hierarchies inconsistent with accurate data models, forcing whole technologies like Apple Spotlight, GNU Dashboard, and Google Search just to transact basic relatioships buried in the data.
You don't need a relational model for that. All you need is a metadata area in the FS, and a metadata indexing scheme. You can then save psudeo-directories as metadata searches. i.e. A bit like the Label system used by GMail. This concept has been done to death in the reseach community, but no one has yet had any success in getting users to accept the idea.
Again, you're describing something different than the military wants to deploy. The military wants a replacement for battleship guns. That's what they're designing. It's useless for point defense. What you're looking at is a design that might one day be miniturized into a portable weapon for tanks or close-in combat.
They are working on 150 km/s rail guns which would work at around mach 300.
And they also melt the rail on the way out. Why do you think the Navy isn't deploying these? They need distance and reliability, not light speed.:-)
That's nice. It won't handle a multi-terabyte database, though. That's the domain of Terabase, Oracle, and (blech) DB2. It's also what the article is about.
The power of PHP and mySQL is all I need.
And a moped is all you need to get to work. If you want to haul 300 metric tons of rock from point A to point B, you need a dump truck. Again, that's what this article is about.
Back on topic, this entire article is mostly speculative for the moment. A lot of excellent work has been done in OODB and XMLDB designs, but no singular design has yet emerged to solve all our woes. For example, I love the Prevayler concept. It solves a lot of problems, lowers data access times, and provides for complete data security. It also isn't usable or scalable without a lot more design work.
The future will hold some very interesting things, but for now we'll have to keep inventing until we come up with a consolidated solution.
Ah, ok. Now I follow. Yes, it isn't cheap. But the cost of the software is offset by the fact that it produces far better effects than phosphorescent solutions. Plus, there are competing products that cost quite a bit less. Or you could find a friend who has AAE to do some of the post-production for you. Or you could try to get a student discount. Or they could have pirated it. (Not ethical, but better than killing yourself.)
One way or another, they had far more and better options than filling a florescent lamp with gasoline.
If there really using ERGM's then I guess they can call it a rail gun if all it's doing is tossing it up in the air a few hundred feet but it's not the rapid fire kinetic weapon people think of when they say rail gun.
A rapid fire kinetic weapon as you describe is a Needlegun. A Rail Gun is simply a gun that fires its projectile using Lorentz force. The concept does not define any particular projectile, or rate of fire.
I am not talking about a "perfect mirror" Let's say I can reflect 95% of incoming energy well you now need a system that's 20x as powerful. Can this be done?
No. The issue is that once part of the mirror is compromised, the entire mirror face will be lost. ANY imperfections will result in the complete destruction of the reflective surface. It was part of what I quoted in my previous post.
As to Masers you need to have 2 to 4 of them to cover each section of the ship.
I wouldn't be surprised if far more of them were installed.
Now let's place these things on a battle ship. Well a dumb kinetic bomb that is filled with paint can take them all out.
For one, you'd need a lot of paint to cover an entire battleship. For another, the "dumb kinetic bomb" won't get close enough.
It's not explosive so hitting it wit a laser is not going to do much.
It's quite explosive. What do you think is going to happen when the paint is suddenly superheated? BOOM.
Lasers sound cool but a rail / coil gun is much more useful at point defense
Are you kidding? Rail guns would make for lousy point defense. At a paltry Mach 10, plus launch time, plus time for aim (which ain't gonna happen for something designed to fire straight up), and only minor course correction abilities, rail guns just aren't designed for close-in combat. That's precisely what lasers/masers excel at!
As I said "unless there moving at slow speeds at which point you can just use gun powder to do that"
You can use gunpowder to fire a shell as far as 250 miles at speeds of ~Mach 10, with future enhancements expected to significantly increase that velocity? You're kidding me, right?
These are all low velocity rounds. Note: Mach 10 is slow when you're talking about rail guns.
That really doesn't matter when you consider that rail guns are otherwise a non-functional weapon. Just because it is theoretically possible to launch these rounds faster doesn't mean that it's current feasible to do so. The "low velocity" you speak of is far in excess of any existing munitions. This link gives WWII muzzle velocities of around Mach 1.5.
The idea behind rail guns is you can take a 1lb iron dart and fire though 10 feet of carbon steel so you can then keep 20 tunes of said darts in less space and with less danger than you could other types of ammo.
Except that is not the type of rail gun that the Navy is deploying. They are deploying a more practical system that is different from the ideological concepts of the past. The Navy's design allows for greater range, lower duty cycle, longer rail life, and better combat effectivness. i.e. They're using rail technology to create more powerful battleship guns that take up less space, have a greater impact, and can be guided to their target.
" the ship was only able to carry such a system because it was a heavily overpowered Orion warship. (It carried several space shuttles up into space with it.)"
Your talking about sci-fi as if it real.
No, I'm talking about a scenario that *could* be real because it was based on *real* science. According to *real* science, the largest Orion is 8,000,000 tons (yes, tons, not pounds) using 1960's building technology. The REAL Orion designs are powerful enough to carry a cooling system sufficient to absorb megawatts of energy from REAL laser weapons. A missile cannot carry such a cooling system, because it doesn't have a REAL thrust-to-weight ratio sufficient to carry such a system. Unless we start using REAL Nuclear Thermal Rockets on them, that is.
Here's the previous Slashdot article. Note that I was pretty skeptical at the time, but many of the responses have since warmed me up to the idea a bit more:
Here's the guided munition data sheet. Plans are to deploy early versions in 5" deck guns, then use future versions in the rail guns. Future versions would supposedly remove the explosives package and acceleration motor in favor of the kinetic energy imparted by the rail gun:
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I would never buy a keyboard that has an "email key", that's what keybindings are for. I would question the build and design quality of a keyboard that relies on extra keys to get me to hand over the cash.
:-(
I never like the dumb (and utterly uselss) "email" buttons, but I am a fan of the Sun Keyboard designs. The "cut", "Copy", "paste", "stop" and other keys on the left can be very handy. It's too bad that Unix software is moving away from using such wonderful keys.
The only thing that tends to throw users new to Unix keyboards is the location of the Control key. On Unix keyboards, the Control and Caps Lock are swapped. I actually find it a bit more comfortable, but many people are used to the PC keyboard design.
However, I think that it is still possible to eliminate all life on earth by the simultaneous detonation of all the world's nuclear weapons. Why? The fallout; the radiation.
If you read the links I posted, the radiation has never been an overriding concern with nuclear weapons. Apparently, nearly all the radiation deaths in Hiroshima/Nagasaki were from the initial exposure. Resident radiation was insufficient to cause any ongoing health concerns.
Similarly, Chernobyl only claimed a few dozen lives, most of which were workers and rescuers present at the event. Many people within the immediate vicinity at the time, however, did have to be treated for Thyroid issues. (Odd as it may sound, nuclear science is currently the only "cure" for thyroid cancer, an issue caused by nuclear science. How's that for irony?)
Not only would you be asking organisms to survive the dust and debris in the atmosphere, blocking out the sun for years.
Almost all nukes are detonated as airbursts and not ground bursts. As a result, there's nothing for them to pitch up into the air. That same reason is why there is very little radioactive fallout after most detonations. Keep in mind though, that Chernobyl spread a large amount of nuclear material all over the area, and yet life still thrives there. (Only a few humans to guard the place, though. The rest were evacuated.) Even though she was a fake, look up Elena's pictures sometime. You'll note how plants are happily growing in street cracks, trees and shubberies still abound, and that there's a thriving forest all around the city.
You may be interested to know that the background radiation in Norway is naturally higher than the background radiation in Chernobyl. Yet people in Norway live very happy and healthy lives. Some evidence even suggests that higher radiation levels may stimulate the body's repair functions and keep people healthier. Isn't radiation a crazy thing?
As for it requiring a full orbit to de-orbit, whoever told you that doesn't understand orbital mechanics.
:-)
No, I understand orbital mechanics very well. You can only deorbit by decellerating. Thrusting something straight down won't work. And if the target is in front of you or directly beneath you, you're going to need to make one of two decisions:
1. Deorbit the weapon now, taking a full orbit to do so.
2. Wait until you're sufficiently beyond the target to launch and deorbit your missile.
Point 1 guarantees a target that isn't there any more. Point 2 guaratees that you'll be dead from laser fire long before you can retaliate.
All it requires is sufficient energy added (say to the cannister) to begin the deorbit cycle.
It takes a LOT of propellent to deorbit that fast. The things would have to *heavy*. Most of that weight would then be lost in flight, leaving almost no (or perhaps none at all) propellant for atmosphereic manuvering. Which means that it will have to be guided by control surfaces. If the ship isn't close to within the flight path of the missile, the missile will miss.
Also remember you are "luanching" into a basket (area). Saturate the area, just as the SFW JSOW does on land, and you'll bag the lot.
You can't carry that much weight into orbit unless you have a superbooster. (Other than the shuttle, nobody's got 'em at the moment.) Even with a superbooster, you're talking about a lot of mass that will detract from the mission payload. Assuming that you do manage to carry a few of these, then you're a target that the carrier group will attempt to lase out of existence before you're in a position to fire.
What would work would be a SQL interface to current files, and vice versa.
:-)
Do you mean a current interface as in a metadata wrapper around the existing file system, or a full network file system concept? The former concept sounds feasible, but the latter would be unlikely to work very scalably.
Thanks for that. I searched the article for any mention of the military, but couldn't find it. The clarification is most appreciated. And now that we're down to the meat of what is actually going on (better fusion models for warheads), their interest now makes perfect sense.
Sorry if I was a little snippy. The constant replies of "well, it COULD be true" get to me after awhile.
Read up on the history of why MySQL was developed...
Waaaayyyy back in '98/'99 I actually thought that MySQL might be a good database after I read up on the history of it. The whole "it was designed to store gigabytes of data for our company" seemed very convincing at the time. When I actually started to use it later on, however, I quickly figured out that it suffered from a sydrome common to in-house software: It was designed only for the task at hand.
Many of the things outside of what the parent company needed were not implemented or were poorly implemented. When MySQL split off into its own company, it finally began to patch some of the holes. Unfortunately, they've had some difficulty in adding features typically found in a commercial database. Whether this is due to the state of the codebase or priority being placed on other areas is unclear.
Please don't feed the trolls. He's one of the guys who runs around badgering me because he doesn't like the fact that I have insightful and intersting opinions. All he really wants is to get someone into a time-wasting argument.
:-)
Thanks.
Do you really think they have the original cells?
They're not needed as the cells can be extracted from the film. These cells can then be treated like a sketch, receiving a reinking and recoloring. The final cell should look better than the original.
It seems like you could take advantage of the 24 fps of the cell movements and the redundancy of the 24fps of the projector and use the redundant film to correct the damaged frames.
That's effectively what the DVNS tech does. The only problem is that lines of animation don't digitize very well, resulting in breaks. i.e. It's similar to the effect of scanning in a sketch. Much of the detail in the lines is lost and the picture may not be discernable.
Lasers are not vary energy efferent, are easy to defend (up to a point) and are not well suited for combat situations.
:-)
:-)
:-)
:-)
Quite a bit of my argument is that they are *not* as easy to defend against as it may seem. If you pump that much energy into a target, something is going to give. And as I pointed out in a previous post, the very mirrors that make these lasers work are just beyond the brink of destruction. There's no defense for an aircraft skin other than a cooling system capable of boiling off megajoules of energy. In all other cases, inperfections, dust, and grime will lead to a complete vaporization of the reflective surface.
Needle gun / High velocity rail guns are well suited for short-range use as long as they have a good power supply to work from.
This is true.
Now when the navy wanted to build a catapult system to launch aircraft used a seam system, as it's extremely reliable and efferent.
You mean "steam" catapult? The next generation of aircraft carriers are slated to use electromagnetic catapults. Linky
The point I am trying to make is Needle guns are more efferent and reliable than lasers. Yes the rails only last so long but they're easily replaced. Where a large laser with a minor problem is going to be hell to fix.
Sadly, this is subjective for the moment. The military is working on laser weapons, but we don't know the details of their reliability. The situation is similar with rail guns where it's predicted that reliable devices can be designed with sufficient R&D. So far, no needlegun has had a proven track record of reliability. The rails almost always melt at very bad times. We'll call this point a toss up.
Yea they don't sound as sci-fi but they seem to be a much better solution for ships.
Both solutions are currently sci-fi-ish. The only one we *know* is happening is the Navy's extended range munition rail guns.
PS: It was my understanding that we even have working rail gun systems that are waiting for the next generation of aircraft carriers which will have more spare energy for these types of systems.
That's more or less true. Raytheon is currently firing the Navy's rail guns in tests to ensure the weapon system is ready. After the DD(X) class Destroyer (really, a cruiser) is deployed, it will be retrofitted with these weapons. (Stupid cost saving measure.) The CVN(X) class carrier is being designed with the same concept of supporting energy hardpoints, but will have the advantage of using nuclear power instead of gas turbines.
Old Linky to Rail Gun tests
They are not supposed to be huge deck guns but rather closer to the size of a large washer drier unit / small car with a connection to an ammo supply.
The images have them looking something like a gun barrel jutting out at an 80 degree angle. If you follow some of the links I posted previously, you should find a few pictures. They may also replace one of the deck guns.
Article w/Pictures of current DD(X)
Dude, you're repeating my point. (Granted, with much more detail.) Just about any database can *store* as much data as its disks can hold (as long as the internal data offsets are large enough numbers). The whole point of my post was that MySQL lacks the very features that make that much data *useful*. :-)
Also, until db2 v8 came out two years ago, it was pretty far behind oracle 8 & 9. Now, it's in a great competitive position.
Last time I did a comparison, it was DB2 7.1 vs. Oracle 8. Most of what bit me in the ass with DB2 was its flakey management tools and multitude of minor details that needed tweaking from the days when it was a mainframe database. (e.g. Why does it need a buffer large enough to hold the entire blob chunk that's going to be transferred? That's just stupid. It should pull across as much as the buffer can hold, fill the requesting array, then go back for more and repeat.)
As I said, it would only start a pointless discussion on who likes what database.
"Blech?"
:-)
Can you back that up with some real-world examples where DB2 was worse than Oracle?
I could, but it would only start a useless argument over what database everyone prefers. Let's just say that my experience with DB2 has left me with less than stellar feelings toward that database and leave it at that.
FWIW, my experience is with UDB and not the Mainframe DB2. At the end of the day, the two are very different beasts.
Fine, you can call it a rail gun, but it is nothing like what a point defense rail gun.
What is it with you and point defense rail guns? Rail guns suck for point defense in comparison to beam weapons. The type of Rail Gun you want is only useful for things like tanks or anti-aircraft fire.
And ICBMs and Shuttles are both Rockets. Just like the Navy's rail gun and your needlegun are both Rail Guns. So stop picking over nits that don't exist!
Yes. Did you? If you did, then you know that beta radiation doesn't pose an external risk to humans unless it's in sufficient quantities. i.e. Since the radiation is incapable of penetrating the layer of dead skin cells, it can't hurt you. However, given a significant enough source, you can be burned. So:
1. Don't handle $3 million worth of Tritium all at once.
2. Don't drink the Tritium.
Are we clear now?
I have no doubt that terabytes could be stored in MySQL. My overall point is that MySQL is not designed to effectively manage that much data. For example, the presentation you link to shows that Terabase is the workhorse of the business. Data is then offloaded to a disposable MySQL database for data warehousing analysis. The database is then purged after one week.
;-)
The holy grail of information technology would be to eliminate the need for such cumbersome replications, and instead have a single, reliable data source that can be queried for any information needed at any time. Unfortunately, MySQL isn't it.
We've already got RDBMS tech - why reinvent an inadequate version of it?
Because current RDBMS designs are unsuitable for filesystems. Relational theory still holds (just as it does for OODBs), but the physical design should be quite different if it's going to be effecient.
As I said, this has been beaten to death in the research communities. BeOS even included a DBFS design, but it went largely unused. NTFS also has all the necessary stuff in it, but Microsoft constantly removes it in final releases. ReiserFS has DBFS features, but these also go largely unused.
I think the problem is that making effective use of a DBFS requires a very different set of applications. i.e. If the applications are aware of the functionality, then they can assist the user and provide useful support. But without this form of OS and application support, the user will find that the metadata is nothing but added confusion.
How about just getting filesystems to be relational?
For what purpose? I used to work with a Unisys NX Series (and a predecessor that I don't remember) and it had all data stored in database tables. PC files were stored in new tables with a record length matching the size of the file. It was more a PITA than actually useful.
Enough stuffing metadata into filenames. Enough shoehorning all data into a file/folder/cabinet model, now less familiar to people than the networked infosystems that mimic them. Enough fake hierarchies inconsistent with accurate data models, forcing whole technologies like Apple Spotlight, GNU Dashboard, and Google Search just to transact basic relatioships buried in the data.
You don't need a relational model for that. All you need is a metadata area in the FS, and a metadata indexing scheme. You can then save psudeo-directories as metadata searches. i.e. A bit like the Label system used by GMail. This concept has been done to death in the reseach community, but no one has yet had any success in getting users to accept the idea.
s/data security/data safety/g
I just realized that line might be confusing.
Again, you're describing something different than the military wants to deploy. The military wants a replacement for battleship guns. That's what they're designing. It's useless for point defense. What you're looking at is a design that might one day be miniturized into a portable weapon for tanks or close-in combat.
:-)
They are working on 150 km/s rail guns which would work at around mach 300.
And they also melt the rail on the way out. Why do you think the Navy isn't deploying these? They need distance and reliability, not light speed.
I didn't RTFA but for my needs
Or the summary
mySQL suits me quite well.
That's nice. It won't handle a multi-terabyte database, though. That's the domain of Terabase, Oracle, and (blech) DB2. It's also what the article is about.
The power of PHP and mySQL is all I need.
And a moped is all you need to get to work. If you want to haul 300 metric tons of rock from point A to point B, you need a dump truck. Again, that's what this article is about.
Back on topic, this entire article is mostly speculative for the moment. A lot of excellent work has been done in OODB and XMLDB designs, but no singular design has yet emerged to solve all our woes. For example, I love the Prevayler concept. It solves a lot of problems, lowers data access times, and provides for complete data security. It also isn't usable or scalable without a lot more design work.
The future will hold some very interesting things, but for now we'll have to keep inventing until we come up with a consolidated solution.
Adobe after effects - standard edition
Ah, ok. Now I follow. Yes, it isn't cheap. But the cost of the software is offset by the fact that it produces far better effects than phosphorescent solutions. Plus, there are competing products that cost quite a bit less. Or you could find a friend who has AAE to do some of the post-production for you. Or you could try to get a student discount. Or they could have pirated it. (Not ethical, but better than killing yourself.)
One way or another, they had far more and better options than filling a florescent lamp with gasoline.
If there really using ERGM's then I guess they can call it a rail gun if all it's doing is tossing it up in the air a few hundred feet but it's not the rapid fire kinetic weapon people think of when they say rail gun.
A rapid fire kinetic weapon as you describe is a Needlegun. A Rail Gun is simply a gun that fires its projectile using Lorentz force. The concept does not define any particular projectile, or rate of fire.
I am not talking about a "perfect mirror" Let's say I can reflect 95% of incoming energy well you now need a system that's 20x as powerful. Can this be done?
No. The issue is that once part of the mirror is compromised, the entire mirror face will be lost. ANY imperfections will result in the complete destruction of the reflective surface. It was part of what I quoted in my previous post.
As to Masers you need to have 2 to 4 of them to cover each section of the ship.
I wouldn't be surprised if far more of them were installed.
Now let's place these things on a battle ship. Well a dumb kinetic bomb that is filled with paint can take them all out.
For one, you'd need a lot of paint to cover an entire battleship. For another, the "dumb kinetic bomb" won't get close enough.
It's not explosive so hitting it wit a laser is not going to do much.
It's quite explosive. What do you think is going to happen when the paint is suddenly superheated? BOOM.
Lasers sound cool but a rail / coil gun is much more useful at point defense
Are you kidding? Rail guns would make for lousy point defense. At a paltry Mach 10, plus launch time, plus time for aim (which ain't gonna happen for something designed to fire straight up), and only minor course correction abilities, rail guns just aren't designed for close-in combat. That's precisely what lasers/masers excel at!
As I said "unless there moving at slow speeds at which point you can just use gun powder to do that"
You can use gunpowder to fire a shell as far as 250 miles at speeds of ~Mach 10, with future enhancements expected to significantly increase that velocity? You're kidding me, right?
These are all low velocity rounds.
Note: Mach 10 is slow when you're talking about rail guns.
That really doesn't matter when you consider that rail guns are otherwise a non-functional weapon. Just because it is theoretically possible to launch these rounds faster doesn't mean that it's current feasible to do so. The "low velocity" you speak of is far in excess of any existing munitions. This link gives WWII muzzle velocities of around Mach 1.5.
The idea behind rail guns is you can take a 1lb iron dart and fire though 10 feet of carbon steel so you can then keep 20 tunes of said darts in less space and with less danger than you could other types of ammo.
Except that is not the type of rail gun that the Navy is deploying. They are deploying a more practical system that is different from the ideological concepts of the past. The Navy's design allows for greater range, lower duty cycle, longer rail life, and better combat effectivness. i.e. They're using rail technology to create more powerful battleship guns that take up less space, have a greater impact, and can be guided to their target.
" the ship was only able to carry such a system because it was a heavily overpowered Orion warship. (It carried several space shuttles up into space with it.)"
Your talking about sci-fi as if it real.
No, I'm talking about a scenario that *could* be real because it was based on *real* science. According to *real* science, the largest Orion is 8,000,000 tons (yes, tons, not pounds) using 1960's building technology. The REAL Orion designs are powerful enough to carry a cooling system sufficient to absorb megawatts of energy from REAL laser weapons. A missile cannot carry such a cooling system, because it doesn't have a REAL thrust-to-weight ratio sufficient to carry such a system. Unless we start using REAL Nuclear Thermal Rockets on them, that is.
699 USD
What is $699? Tritium? Yes, it's not exhorbantly priced, but getting enough for a light saber is going to be.
Found it!
0 7&tid=126&tid=103
g m.pdf
Here's the previous Slashdot article. Note that I was pretty skeptical at the time, but many of the responses have since warmed me up to the idea a bit more:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/22/18392
Here's the guided munition data sheet. Plans are to deploy early versions in 5" deck guns, then use future versions in the rail guns. Future versions would supposedly remove the explosives package and acceleration motor in favor of the kinetic energy imparted by the rail gun:
http://www.raytheon.com/products/ergm/ref_docs/er