Manchester had a lot of history connected with computing and was responsible for a lot of new designs. Later they were responsible for an opem ARM core. Certainly their hardware efforts meant building a lot of expertise in low-level system design, i.e. for the writing of operating systems.
The Cambridge Computer Lab was also on the Microsoft Hit List for similar reasons, but they were less hardware but more operating systems and networking (remember the Cambridge Ring was the forerunner of the token-ring).
Whether or not either location was still relevant now is another matter, but their history gave them considerable clout in the since research councils which ran the funding and many of the senior academics 'moonlighted' on things like advising the government's procurement policy.
From Microsofts viewpoint, this has been a very good investment.
Given the wild claims that we have been hearing, this seems more and more reminiscent of leaders sufferring a large disconnect from reality as they can not come to terms with their diminished role.
Has it ocurred to anyone that Mr Darl McBride may in reality be a very sick person? I would be very interested in a psychiatric viewpoint on what is being said.
writes about very hard SF, full scale space-opea. Banks is about the same ahe as MacLeod. The interesting thing is that Banks writes conventional fiction as well.
A DC coupled amp handles low frequencies very nicely. A lot of domestic amps are AC-coupled means effectively a low-cutoff frequency as the stages are capacitively coupled.
The speaker is what interests me. You can get sub-20Hz responses but as you put it without a nice big resonant cavity, it won't go very far. I seem to remember reading that some cinemas were once equipped with low-frequency generators for special effects, but that meant one speaker per seat.
Seriously, they don't mention what frequencies were used (can someone extrapolate from the pipe length), but getting transducers to work so low isn't easy and you would need a DC coupled amp. Bass speakers theoretically go down to 20Hz but the performance falls off.
Remember, some European countries have deported all of the scientologists who are there for "religious work". I think that Germany was one of said countries.
The Scientologists may do what they want in Germany, however they are not granted either tax exempt status or the ability to garnish money directly from their member's pay checks Kirchsteur or church tax.
I really love the idea of being able to spend about $5-6 on a film which I then own and can rewatch. I think the idea of being able to get the independents is even better, bypassing the vertically integerated distribution system that only chooses what they think are blockbusters.
The problem is distribution. I don't know how big this film is, but a good quality movie rip can easily be between 700MB to 1.4GB of data in XViD format, more if in another form like SVCD. P2P works because of the cooperative downloads and uploads which gives several hundred sources for some films. I don't know the file sizes for the new system, but getting a large file out to a lot of people over a shorting period of time is painful (ask RedHat about ISOs, for example).
If someone is downloading, they can also almost simultaneously upload, meaning that large files propagate in a few days amongst thousands of people relatively efficiently.
What is interesting is that not everyone deletes the downloads so thez can act as a kind of 'memory', distributing storage cost across the P2P system. Between the systems connected to a P2P system, the collective capacity dwarfs anything that a single business can offer.
Ok, we have established that centralised distribution of very large files doesn't really work. P2P for very large files does work (particularly the more capable ones that allow files to be segmented with one being made available for upload as soon as it is downloaded) and it is a suprising efficient way of distribution.
The problem is how to make P2P movie distribution into a business proposition. Perhaps compensate P2P users who offer movies for upload as well as just downloading. The problem is that the 'anti-leach' mechanism on many P2P networks is broken.
I love movies, especially some of the smaller independent stuff, however getting to see it at a local arthouse isn't easy as they frequently have very short programme runs.
The last point is that I don't want any of this 'UK-only' or 'US-only' rubbish. I know this is also connected with the rights, which are still country based, but nowadays it is outmoded to limit Internet based distribution in this way.
A friend of mine works on fligh simulators. The fligh simulators are based on specialised computers doing the motion and the graphics - but they have no file store as such. They rely on 4 XP-Pro Pcs to serve data files that are used by the real time computers.
He was upgrading a simulator belonging to a well known German airline company and this meant pulling interface cards. As the XP systems came from the simulator company, they were not running corporate edition so they came up asking for a new keys in the middle of the night (all those hardware changes) whilst he was doing his maintenance.
Of course the machine wasn't on the net. There wasn't even a telephone nearby (mobiles don't work there) and he had to go three floors down to find an accessible telephone to get the systems reauthorized. Additionally, many offices are locked overnight. He was not happy.
These days it is very difficult to run machines without any network connection.
I was in Mumbai (Bombay) last year and curry powder could not be carried in the cabin. Curry powder in the eyes would be much like chilli-powder, not very pleasant, but still perhaps an overreaction.
Sure you can carry an MP3 player, a DVD player or whatever but do you want to when your laptop can do all those things. In any case, I prefer to watch movies off HD because a) it is quieter and b) it needs less power. I can also fit four or five DVDs worth of data in the space on my hd.
I'm careful what I look at work-wise on the plane (shoulder surfing), so having something else to help me relax is great.
The day I can drive from home to school (~400 miles) without buying gas is the day that I will buy an alternative-fuel car.
We don't buy gas because we have a TDI diesel Audi. The acceleration and top end isn't so good (it sucks above 100MPH) but we can easily go 500 to 600 miles without tanking.
NASA has a much better idea now how to build a reliable RLV
No, NASA as an organisation has proved that it can not retain engineering knowhow. Individual engineers might, but the management will not listen. Maybe they will now, but the managers responsible for the culture within NASA are still there.
Also, the main point of NASA is as a pork-barrel for the constituents of the members of the space comittee. They are therefore constrained to producing solutions which can be directly translated into jobs.
Private industry is more focussed - this tends to mean that they will do the bare minimum but get it done on time and within a budget.
Actually the point that the Scientologists really don't like is that they are allowed operate in Germany to practice their religion, only as far as the German authorities are concerned, they are treated as a business. They don't like that.
We may not be able to dodge patents completely so how about just codifying what many EU countries already do and that is to allow patents relating to the physical implementation of an algoritm only.
For example, if I create a machine that counts white cells in blood for example, composed of a microsocope, CCD camera and image analysis software, then the software may be covered as a component of the machine but not separately. So, a program that counts white spots against dark ones has no patent protection, but the machine as w whole does.
The engines lasted about 300 hours or so - and that was the newer versions. The RAF didn't have many major problems with the harrier, apart from the slow speed.
The Royal Navy had more problems but that was mostly due to advserse conditions. The RN prefer cautiously designed stuff with losts of space in the envelope to allow for reduced performance. The harrier always operated a bit on the edge.
I saw the prototype P1127 fly and have followed it on and off over the years including the string of accidents that the USMC had.
I don't know if you checked the link that I supplied, but you have about ten seconds to take emergency action before you pass out (assuming immediate depressurisation). The bends take some time to kick in because the blood is not directly exposed to vacuum.
Loss of pressure has happened in one famous incident at NASA in the eighties when a space suit failed in a test chamber. The chamber was rapidly repressurized and the tester showed no ill effects (i.e., no bends). The bends take some time to happen. When diving, it may take some tens of minutes for the effects to become severe. Small N2 bubbles in the blood are nasty but until they become larger i.e., by aggregation, they are not major. With immediate recompression, the N2 will quickly dissolve again.
The Soyuz 11 incident was also disclosed when the Russians started cooperating with NASA. In this case, the crew seemed to have about 30 seconds (the cabin took a little time to depressurize).
There is even an idea that has been floating around about having an unpressurised space suit - i.e., just the helmet would be pressurized. The rest of the suit would be elasticated, which would provide counter-pressure to the skin, to prevent swelling.
There has been a loss of pressure accident once in the Russian Space program (Soyuz 11). A valve stuck open and the cabin air was lost and the cosmonauts died. It seems they took many seconds to die (about half a minute) and it was just plain hypoxia that killed them - no boiling blood or whatever, that happened later after several minutes.
It seems that AC Clark got things about right in "2001" when Dave Bowman goes from the pod into the emergency airlock the hard way. You can read more about it here.
From what I remember, the transition was hard but not impossible, particularly after the automatic stabilizing system was installed. I have actually seen the sideways skid during a display but the roll problem seem to have been fixed by then. In reality, vertical takeoff isn't used because of the fuel issues and the transition problem doesn't exist with the ski-jump.
Yes, there is an RCS, (like a spaccraft) with exhaust gas vented fore and aft as well as at the wing tips. This actually goes all the way back to the P1127 prototype. The same flight controls are used both in normal flight and for hover.
The harrier was always high maintenance, and the VTOL would hardly ever be used in reality because they just drank fuel. However, with a ski-jump, VSTOL was easy.
Um, no. The harrier only started to have problems when the USMC took it over and attempted air-frame limiting manouvers. Essentially the use of vectored thrust in flight to make very fast changes of direction (i.e., for missile avoidance) did give some problems. The RAF didn't seem to have the same problems (although they did have accidents).
Actually, VMS was better than that. They made all data nonexecutable, not just the stack. You could still ocassionally overwrite addresses, but it is very difficult to launch arbitary code. Sometimes this safety was inconvenient, but the inconvenience was worth the improvement in security.
The thing is that MS have a bunch of people that they poached from VMS engineering so they ought to know about these things.
Any classic villain bent on worl d domination needs a long-haired white Persian cat, which he can then stroke whilst cackling in a manic way. The top hat is optional though.
Slashdot Mirror
The Cambridge Computer Lab was also on the Microsoft Hit List for similar reasons, but they were less hardware but more operating systems and networking (remember the Cambridge Ring was the forerunner of the token-ring).
Whether or not either location was still relevant now is another matter, but their history gave them considerable clout in the since research councils which ran the funding and many of the senior academics 'moonlighted' on things like advising the government's procurement policy.
From Microsofts viewpoint, this has been a very good investment.
Has it ocurred to anyone that Mr Darl McBride may in reality be a very sick person? I would be very interested in a psychiatric viewpoint on what is being said.
writes about very hard SF, full scale space-opea. Banks is about the same ahe as MacLeod. The interesting thing is that Banks writes conventional fiction as well.
Sorry, I couldn't remember the formula for an organ pipe, i.e., was it single ended or double ended - but 22Hz or so 'sounds' about right.
The speaker is what interests me. You can get sub-20Hz responses but as you put it without a nice big resonant cavity, it won't go very far. I seem to remember reading that some cinemas were once equipped with low-frequency generators for special effects, but that meant one speaker per seat.
Seriously, they don't mention what frequencies were used (can someone extrapolate from the pipe length), but getting transducers to work so low isn't easy and you would need a DC coupled amp. Bass speakers theoretically go down to 20Hz but the performance falls off.
The problem is distribution. I don't know how big this film is, but a good quality movie rip can easily be between 700MB to 1.4GB of data in XViD format, more if in another form like SVCD. P2P works because of the cooperative downloads and uploads which gives several hundred sources for some films. I don't know the file sizes for the new system, but getting a large file out to a lot of people over a shorting period of time is painful (ask RedHat about ISOs, for example).
If someone is downloading, they can also almost simultaneously upload, meaning that large files propagate in a few days amongst thousands of people relatively efficiently.
What is interesting is that not everyone deletes the downloads so thez can act as a kind of 'memory', distributing storage cost across the P2P system. Between the systems connected to a P2P system, the collective capacity dwarfs anything that a single business can offer.
Ok, we have established that centralised distribution of very large files doesn't really work. P2P for very large files does work (particularly the more capable ones that allow files to be segmented with one being made available for upload as soon as it is downloaded) and it is a suprising efficient way of distribution.
The problem is how to make P2P movie distribution into a business proposition. Perhaps compensate P2P users who offer movies for upload as well as just downloading. The problem is that the 'anti-leach' mechanism on many P2P networks is broken.
I love movies, especially some of the smaller independent stuff, however getting to see it at a local arthouse isn't easy as they frequently have very short programme runs.
The last point is that I don't want any of this 'UK-only' or 'US-only' rubbish. I know this is also connected with the rights, which are still country based, but nowadays it is outmoded to limit Internet based distribution in this way.
He was upgrading a simulator belonging to a well known German airline company and this meant pulling interface cards. As the XP systems came from the simulator company, they were not running corporate edition so they came up asking for a new keys in the middle of the night (all those hardware changes) whilst he was doing his maintenance.
Of course the machine wasn't on the net. There wasn't even a telephone nearby (mobiles don't work there) and he had to go three floors down to find an accessible telephone to get the systems reauthorized. Additionally, many offices are locked overnight. He was not happy.
These days it is very difficult to run machines without any network connection.
this does rather stomp on the people who said that first the spacewalk was impossible and then repair or rescue would have been impossible.
I was in Mumbai (Bombay) last year and curry powder could not be carried in the cabin. Curry powder in the eyes would be much like chilli-powder, not very pleasant, but still perhaps an overreaction.
I'm careful what I look at work-wise on the plane (shoulder surfing), so having something else to help me relax is great.
Also, the main point of NASA is as a pork-barrel for the constituents of the members of the space comittee. They are therefore constrained to producing solutions which can be directly translated into jobs.
Private industry is more focussed - this tends to mean that they will do the bare minimum but get it done on time and within a budget.
Actually the point that the Scientologists really don't like is that they are allowed operate in Germany to practice their religion, only as far as the German authorities are concerned, they are treated as a business. They don't like that.
Regrettably not. SCO Inc and SCO GmbH are two different legal entities.
As a business method, I reckon that I can patent the idea of outsourceing. I could make a fortune!!!!!!
For example, if I create a machine that counts white cells in blood for example, composed of a microsocope, CCD camera and image analysis software, then the software may be covered as a component of the machine but not separately. So, a program that counts white spots against dark ones has no patent protection, but the machine as w whole does.
The Royal Navy had more problems but that was mostly due to advserse conditions. The RN prefer cautiously designed stuff with losts of space in the envelope to allow for reduced performance. The harrier always operated a bit on the edge.
I saw the prototype P1127 fly and have followed it on and off over the years including the string of accidents that the USMC had.
Loss of pressure has happened in one famous incident at NASA in the eighties when a space suit failed in a test chamber. The chamber was rapidly repressurized and the tester showed no ill effects (i.e., no bends). The bends take some time to happen. When diving, it may take some tens of minutes for the effects to become severe. Small N2 bubbles in the blood are nasty but until they become larger i.e., by aggregation, they are not major. With immediate recompression, the N2 will quickly dissolve again.
The Soyuz 11 incident was also disclosed when the Russians started cooperating with NASA. In this case, the crew seemed to have about 30 seconds (the cabin took a little time to depressurize).
There is even an idea that has been floating around about having an unpressurised space suit - i.e., just the helmet would be pressurized. The rest of the suit would be elasticated, which would provide counter-pressure to the skin, to prevent swelling.
It seems that AC Clark got things about right in "2001" when Dave Bowman goes from the pod into the emergency airlock the hard way. You can read more about it here.
Yes, there is an RCS, (like a spaccraft) with exhaust gas vented fore and aft as well as at the wing tips. This actually goes all the way back to the P1127 prototype. The same flight controls are used both in normal flight and for hover.
The harrier was always high maintenance, and the VTOL would hardly ever be used in reality because they just drank fuel. However, with a ski-jump, VSTOL was easy.
Um, no. The harrier only started to have problems when the USMC took it over and attempted air-frame limiting manouvers. Essentially the use of vectored thrust in flight to make very fast changes of direction (i.e., for missile avoidance) did give some problems. The RAF didn't seem to have the same problems (although they did have accidents).
The thing is that MS have a bunch of people that they poached from VMS engineering so they ought to know about these things.
Any classic villain bent on worl d domination needs a long-haired white Persian cat, which he can then stroke whilst cackling in a manic way. The top hat is optional though.