Definitely true. However, you sortof need to look at it in context. I'm grabbing things off the cuff here, so if I'm wrong, let me know. P4's pipeline stage is 20-stage or so. I can see 3 which are probably due to x86: 6-8, the allocate/rename stages. I don't even think you can fully blame those on x86, but whatever. So about what, 15% of the pipeline is due to x86? That's not a huge penalty to pay for backwards compatibility, really: 15% of your IPC? 3 clock cycles out 20? I'd be happy with that tradeoff.
Honestly, though, if you look at the P4's architecture, I'm not entirely sure that those 3 clock cycles are due to x86 cruft: I think they're there to feed the ever-hungry execution units. I really do wonder exactly how much of a penalty modern processors pay due to the x86 ISA. I really would doubt it's much at all.
Remember that all the IP lawyer people are saying that you're not buying anything when you buy books, music, games, etc., you're "licensing intellectual property." And this is the kicker: if the IP is what's important, then if the object is damaged, I still have the license to the IP. And therefore, I can download a copy of it if I want to replace the loss that occurred. They can't have it both ways: they can't say "yes, you're buying IP, but when you lose the physical object, you lose the license, ha ha."
There isn't clear law on this, I don't think. You can't "illegally distribute" games, true. But you're not illegally distributing them: you're distributing a legal archival copy to people who have the right to possess it.
If Nintendo really wants to stop me from downloading ROMs, then they should support the IP that they never said they would stop supporting. Have a licensing card in each game, and allow me to download a new copy or obtain a new copy simply buy calling it. I'm buying IP. Not buying a game.
And yes, the analogy is correct. Simply because the difficult part of the reverse engineering is done (my friend already built the spare part for the 1980 Zephyr, or whatever) doesn't make copying his copy not reverse engineering. It's just that the gruntwork's already done for me. Isn't progress wonderful?
Honestly, look at the example I gave before. A part on my 1980 Zephyr breaks. They don't support it anymore. I go to a friend, who has the same car, and had the same problem. Before his part broke, he looked at it, made a copy of it, and stored it for safe keeping. I look at his copy, say "hmm", and make a copy myself. This is identical - literally - to the game situation at hand. The fact that "making a copy" was as simple as clicking on something and saying "Save As..." doesn't make it not making a copy.
I agree with you, although there may be a few certain situations where x87 is a better choice than SSE2 on certain processors due to non-parallelizability (is that a word?) of certain code. Hence the reason I said "decent compromise". If Intel had had the die space, I would've said have -both- a fast x87 unit and a fast SSE2 unit, and share what you can between them. But, eh.
I definitely agree with you that x86-64 is a significant improvement: that's why I'm confused why everyone thinks that it's impossible to extend an architecture and maintain backwards compatibility and still have an intelligent architecture. When I looked at x86-64, it looks half-decent: the old x86 cruft is hidden, and not even available in full 64-bit mode. My thoughts on this are heck, this is the way to go. Iterate this once, maybe twice more, and you'll have an architecture which competes with the best of 'em, yet is still fully backwards compatible.
Where does it say anywhere how long a product is supposed to last when you buy it? When I buy any video game, it doesn't say "This product will self-destruct in 10 years." People buy things because they "feel" rugged and solid, and "will last".
If you buy a chair, and it falls apart and the manufacturer is no longer making spare parts, is it illegal for you to look at the old part, say "hmm", and make another part that does the exact same thing? No, of course not. Likewise, when the battery in my copy of Legend of Zelda runs dead, is it illegal for me to open it up, look at the 5V watch battery that's in there, say "hmm", and replace it? No, of course not. And finally, when the poorly-designed insertion retaining mechanism inside my NES finally is worn past the point where the contacts will solidly connect, is it illegal for me to open it up and say "hmm" and figure out a way to do the exact same thing with a general-purpose computer? No.
It's not stealing. It's reverse engineering, plain and simple. A literal analogy would be when your old 1980 Zephyr (or whatever) stops working, you go to a friend who has the same car who developed a complete copy of the part that broke, stare at it, say "hmm", and copy his copy.
Actually, I think the reasoning probably came from the fact that Hammer is entering into the mainstream market (as an Athlon Pro, or whatever) rather than into the server-only market, like Itanium. Hammer really is going to be the first mainstream 64-bit chip. If Hammer really catches hold, then x86-64 specific OSs may come out (Linux will happen quickly, so quite a few servers will probably be running x86-64). At that point, they will not run on a P4, which still has a future ahead of it.
Yamhill is a P4 derivative, not an Itanium derivative (of course) - if x86-64 becomes market-important, then Intel will release Yamhill into the mainstream, and then the mainstream will be mostly x86-64, rather than IA32.
He's talking about market segments, not architectural benefits. He never said IA64 sucked.
You're right - from a theoretical standpoint. And, if all things were equal, IA64 should utterly rout x86-64.
However, things aren't that equal. First off, x86 has had a lot of work thrown into it, and the current processors are quite good at implementing x86: I doubt there's a huge architectural penalty anymore - you can build virtually identical PPC and x86 computers and compare them, and even though PPC is a much better architecture, it's not going to blow x86 out of the water. Yes, it's idiotic to have, for instance, a stack-based floating point implementation, but the P3 and Athlon both make FXCH free, so it's not that bad anyway, and the P4's SSE2 implementation isn't bad, so using SSE2 instead of x87 is a decent compromise.
Ars Technica (www.arstechnica.com) actually has a good writeup of why we should stop treating x86 as this bastard dog of an instruction set, although they mostly relied on the fact that we have a huge installbase of x86 software.
Honestly, I doubt x86 decoding seriously bloats the die that much - jeez, on a 0.13u process, how big would the original 8086 core be? Take a look at the die for a Hammer processor - x86 decoding doesn't take that much space.
Just wait and see, that's my answer. Let the benchmarks prove AMD or Intel wrong. Intel's really relying on the brilliance of compiler writers, whereas AMD's banking on tons of experience. We'll see who has a better strategy...
Most alarm clocks use the 60 Hz AC to generate time. Yes. It's not precise at any given point, but it's accurate over time. Even some digital clocks use this instead of crystals, hence the reason why if you plug them into outlets in other countries which use 220 V @ 50 Hz, they'll run slow. Not ALL digital clocks use this, but some (not sure how common it is, actually) - this I know from personal experience.
And if a power outage occurs, then yes, the computer may have a bit of trouble determining the time. It also may have a bit of trouble running at all.:)
As per the second comment, I don't know where you got that from: you wouldn't measure the frequency (which... would only need a frequency-to-voltage converter anyway: any basic EE text will have that) - you just need to use a bit of electronics to clean up the sine wave, turn it into a square wave, and then clock some logic with it. It's just as easy as using a crystal.
er... doubt they'd use that, to be honest.:) It's extremely unlikely that the entire system would be clockless: you'd have to redesign almost every peripheral. In any case, there'd be a clock SOMEWHERE for them to use.
For me, this is kindof amusing: asynchronous logic is where you start out - it's more basic (shove signal in, get signal out). You then move to synchronous logic to eliminate glitches and possible race conditions (clocked flipflops, etc.). Apparently now you move BACK to asynchronous logic to gain performance. I can't disagree : working with synchronous systems, I've always been annoyed that certain combinations couldn't be used because they were too close to a clock edge, and it could miss the latch. If you can eliminate the glitches and race conditions, asynchronous logic would be faster. Of course, that's like saying "if software bugs didn't occur, you'd never need to look over code." Yes, true, valid, but not gonna happen.
Of course, they're not talking about a true full asynchronous design: just getting rid of external clock slaving. The external clock would still BE there, for the external architecture - it's just that the internal architecture wouldn't all move to the beat of a clock.
For instance, I'm pretty sure that no one is suggesting getting rid of synchronous memory design: it's just easier that way.
on later versions of Red Hat machines. While/etc/rc.d/init.d/ will work,/etc/init.d/ should as well in later versions./etc/init.d/ is the LSB location of init scripts.
On a Debian machine, it's /etc/init.d/ssh restart (which kindof annoys me... it should be sshd restart, not ssh).
I thought there've been quite a few studies recently suggesting that it might be possible for a giant planet to form close to a star. Regardless, it's definitely true that we don't know for sure how these planets form and how they end up in their final location.
Even if you do accept that the planet migrated inward, it's not a given that it would 'remove everything in its way': this assumes that it's accreting, which is not a given at all (actually, a quick search on lanl located a few papers which discuss this fact). It would disturb the inner disk, yes, but it wouldn't necessarily 'clean it out'. In fact, it's quite likely that the disturbances would encourage inner planets to form.
I'm really surprised that the news item didn't surprise you - it's exactly the kind of system one would hope to find. It's a mix of both the "confusing" giant planet formation and "normal" giant planet formation. Why did one migrate in, and the other stay at a stable orbit? Did the other migrate in from much farther out? If that's true, how far must its protoplanetary disk have extended? Is the other planet migrating in slowly as well?
Anyway, it certainly is an exciting discovery. We knew that the preponderance 'near' giant planets were due to selection effects (or we hoped) and now it looks like there are a lot of planets out there, some of which are planets which are in what we consider to be the 'normal' regions.
That's not exactly true: in our case, the Sun pushed (light pressure, and another effect I can't think of the name of...) or ate all of the light gaseous material inside the asteroid belt. At least, it did, viewing it from 6 or so billion years later.
Now, the next problem is that we do NOT know how these giant planets near their star formed. People suggest that the planets migrated inwards, which would make an Earth-sized planet unlikely. However, there are some suggestions that the gas giants CAN form that close to their star. In fact, I don't think that we would even KNOW if there had previously been a gas giant inside Mercury's orbit that has long since been devoured by the Sun. Thus we could be looking at a Sol-like system, just much earlier in formation.
It should be noted that Jupiter has some influence on Earth - but it's very minor. Venus has significantly more influence (Venus's rotation is actually in a resonance with Earth's orbit).
A planet that close to the Sun orbiting that quickly would, from Earth's (1AU) point of view, just look like an increase in the Sun's mass. Work out the differential force: With a differential distance swing of 1/40 AU, but the distance going as the cube, it's really going to be quite minor: about 1/200th the tidal force of the Sun, which is less than that of the Moon. It's not like the Moon's influence seriously screws up the planet. (Note that I'm talking about the differential force of the swing of the inner planet: that is, how much does the tug of the inner planet really change from Earth's point of view? Not much at all).
Gravitational perturbations are due to differential gravitational forces, and the forces on Earth due to a planet orbiting at 0.025 AU are trivial. As for asteroid components, it depends on how the planet formed, which we don't understand yet. If it formed far out, and moved in, then yes, it would be a menace. But if it formed close in, it's extremely unlikely to cause any "asteroid bombardment" or anything like that.
Keep in mind that you could consider a slight "bulge" in the sun to be a "giant planet" orbiting the Sun obscenely quick: if it was likely that this would disturb the Earth, the Earth would be in very bad shape: bubbles of different densities appear on the Sun all the time. The differential force just isn't that great.
Should we look there first? Yes. It's an IDEAL target, actually! It's a planetary system where both standard Sol planetary formation processes are occuring, and this "weird' giant planet stuff is happening. If it isn't the first stop for the TPF, I'd be amazed. That's a system worth studying. And would anyone be surprised to see an Earth like planet show up there? Not likely.
Nope: what I'm doing is saying that a carbon/water system is the minimum-energy solution for life to form. That is, carbon/water life will be everywhere, at least compared to wacky life, which will be extremely rare.
The 'human life' I only tacked on at the end, because I really don't believe that humans need much more besides a planet with carbon, nitrogen, and liquid water. Everything else we could bring with us, since we recycle it. Would we 'need' to bring potassium, iron? Some. But then our wastes would contain potassium and iron (conservation of matter is cool!) and we could just recycle it. Recycling carbon, nitrogen, and water is harder, since they tend to dissipate a bit more than heavier elements. Colony growth would be a bit difficult too.:)
This isn't saying that human life will show up somewhere else. It's saying that the conditions for humans to live probably exist in a ton of places in the Universe. And I honestly think that if given the chance, life would find a way around, for instance, lack of iron, or lack of potassium.
I don't know. I'm not much of a biologist (it comes to me from my better half) - but I'd guess that there are quite a few microbes and very very primitive life forms that really only need carbon, nitrogen, and water to form. Of all the basic amino acids, there is only 1 (methionine) which contains anything besides carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen (it contains 1 sulfur atom). DNA is a little more complicated, but not much: it contains phosphate groups. Personally, I think those were as much "convenience choices" as anything else - I bet life could've probably come up with something similar with other atoms if they were the only ones available.
Basically, all I'm saying is that "life as we know it" is probably all we're going to find, because life as we know it basically means carbon/nitrogen/water systems, and I think that's really all that's needed for life. It'll use most of the amino acids we know of - may not use DNA, may use something else - but it will, for the most part, look like Earth life.
Water is liquid. H2O in solid form is called ice, and in gaseous form is called water vapor. I should've said "liquid water" rather than "water", but I thought it would be redundant.
The need for liquid - that is, aqueous solutions - should be obvious. Solids lack free motion of individual molecules (well, mostly free motion in solids - yes, they can vibrate, but they can't rearrange easily) and gasses have too large of a mean free path (gas laws suck, too: lower the mean free path, and temperature goes up) and so interactions don't happen that often, or they happen with far too much energy.
We haven't found liquid water anywhere else yet (found as in brought it back). When we go to Europa (IF we go...) and we find a liquid ocean of water there, I'd bet money we'll find life. Not MUCH money, because I could be wrong (hence 'my opinion') but I'd bet money.
Because if you think about it, the life that we have (as humans) is, in many ways, analagous to a "minimum-energy solution" to a problem.
Think about it. Life on Earth begins, fundamentally, with long carbon chains and water cycles. Why carbon? Carbon is the only element that can form arbitrarily long, stable chains. Silicon can form chains - but only short ones. Longer silicon chains break down. There are additional reasons for carbon later, too. Why water? Take a list of molecules, starting from the simplest you can make. That is, H2, LiH, etc. Many of these compounds won't exist, though. Keep going. Water will stick out like a sore thumb when you get to it - because it's the first strong dipole you'll come across that's covalently bonded. The covalence is important because in a liquid form, the molecules are still there, rather than just ions. Ammonia (NH3) is a dipole, but not of the same level as water is. So, a water solution provides literally TONS of bonding possibilities. Hydrogen bonds form all over the place, and you get extremely complex chemicals popping up everywhere.
The basic requirements for life, in my opinion, would have to be the possibility for many, many combinations of molecules. That's what allows life to exist, really. So carbon/water based life suddenly becomes your 'minimum-energy' solution to generating life.
The other reasoning here is that if you look at the basic life on Earth, the elements it uses are, well, a little bit "unique" on a stellar scale. The most important elements for life on Earth are undeniably carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. Without a doubt, you could probably make living objects from just these few elements (probably really basic, but still life). Here's the kicker: hydrogen is the most abundant element in the Universe, and carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen are the elements produced in the second most common stellar nucleosynthesis event, the triple-alpha process (the pp chain is the most common: it turns 4 protons into 1 alpha particle). So flat out, you are NOT going to have carbon somewhere and NOT have water, not for stellar abundance reasons. Temperature-wise, it's possible, so in very bizarre temperature regions, you might get life - I will admit that - but I do consider it unlikely, since high temperature regions don't really allow for molecules to form easily.:)
That being said, I want to note that I don't agree with the author here: I think he's being exceptionally restrictive. My opinion is all you really need for life is carbon and water. You probably also need nitrogen for variety, but as I've said, where there's carbon and water, you'll have nitrogen as well. Now, the 'livable for humans' bit: I honestly think that anyplace that has carbon, liquid water, and nitrogen could be made livable for humans. You need trace elements (iron, for instance, for hemoglobin), but in general humans recycle them - they don't get 'consumed' - so a well designed colony could probably survive by taking some small amount of trace elements along with them. But as for life developing THERE? I think with the above ingredients, they would find a solution that doesn't use a trace element that they don't have.
It doesn't matter, really. We have one data point to play with, and we can do whatever we want with it. His instinct says "no life anywhere, it's really complex" my instinct says "life everywhere there's water and carbon: it has this 'knack' for showing up everywhere."
Placing an upper limit on an energy state only bounds the system, rather than bounding the energy states. The energy states will asymptotically approach the maximum energy limit that you place on them.
It is highly, highly, highly unlikely that the universe is made up of a finite number of discrete states. Many observables are complementary (I think this is the term... my basic QM text is four floors up) - that is, akin to momentum and position. This means that when the system is in an eigenstate of one observable, it is in a superposition of many eigenstates in the other. That superposition is a Fourier integral of an infinite number of states - a bounded infinity, but probably not even a countable infinity - even for a system with physical bounds.
Nature pretty much proves this point: take emission lines, for instance. Heat up a gas to some temperature, and measure the emission spectrum around a certain transition line. You'll find that even after correcting for thermal broadening (if you somehow can do this, which in some cases is possible, but not in my naive example) the energy spectrum output from an emission line is STILL spread- and that's due to natural broadening. Since there's a characteristic 'interaction time', there has to be a characteristic spread in energy as well. Thus, even when you talk about a photon being in an energy eigenstate when emitted as a transition photon, it still is a superposition of an infinite number of states.
If Wolfram's point does involve a finite state system, it won't work. The Universe is weird - very weird. Especially the point regarding reversability - people who think the Second Law is something spooky or difficult to understand are missing the point. The Second Law is obvious - it says the entropy of a closed system always increases or stays the same. Entropy is information: this is saying that for a closed system, one of two things is happening: either something is happening, or nothing is happening. You can't have "less than nothing" happening - entropy is simply the Universe's method of keeping track of the fact that something has happened.
Yah, I know about the thoughts that carbonaceous asteroids might contain ice, but that's still iffy. Looking for 'pockets' of ice is likely to be hit and miss with an asteroid. With Mars there's a LOT more surface area for a pocket to be contained. It depends really what you want, though.
The lack of an oxidizer isn't true - Mars has plenty of oxygen - in the soil. It's true you'd have to get the oxygen out of the soil, and that likely means "solar", which will take a longer time, but it really depends what you're talking about here - long term viability, or short term viability. I doubt an asteroid outpost could last that long: I really wonder exactly how MUCH water would be available on an asteroid. Then again, if you're mining, you don't care: it's a once and done thing, so again, it really depends what you're talking about.
It's too bad we're not talking about Venus here. Sigh. If only we had infinite energy - creating a new Earth is easy - we already know how to do it. Smack Mars into Venus. Poof. New Earth. It's kinda funny that there happened to be two Mars like objects, and two proto-Earth like objects in the solar system to begin with.
I will note that fusion isn't that far away: people may say it's "always 50 years away", but they don't note that significant progress IS being made. Reactors have crossed the breakeven point. The next step is ignition, which is just going to take some time. Damn Moore's Law. Always expecting the pace of innovation to be as insanely stupid as the computing industry has taken it.
(Interesting point of note: what other industry is racing as fast as the computer industry towards a brick wall? None. Name another industry where the fundamental laws of physics are going to be limiting their growth? Yah. Thought so.)
You do have to remember that unstable radioactive compounds on Mars are going to be far more abundant on Mars than they are on Earth (or at least, they should be) - lacking a magnetic field, Mars gets irradiated directly with the solar wind and solar radiation, so there's a lot more bombardment with the possibility to create radioactive elements.
Uranium is unlikely, I will agree: however, if we ever (dear God) develop a fusion type reactor on Earth, that's easy as hell to refuel. We know the Moon has a highly enhanced Helium-3 to Helium-4 ratio due to solar particle radiation, and it's highly likely that Mars will have a very enhanced deuterium-to-water ratio as well as an enhanced helium-3 to helium-4 ratio (deuterium's stable - so once it's made, it's done).
All comets are in eccentric orbits, and you (or a previous poster) justified the preference of going to NEAs and comets by saying that comets contain low-weight gases and compounds (water ice, etc.). Asteroids will contain high-density materials (metals), but if you want low-density stuff (water, gases) you're going to a planet or a comet, and intercepting comets sucks.
You also misunderstood the point about tracking asteroids - we're not talking about tracking the asteroid in the sky, we're talking about tracking the distance between a known point (asteroid) and an unknown point (the craft that's heading there), and that involves more than just astronomy - it's physics, because you have to know the propulsion of the craft itself. Also, 'excellent accuracy' is somewhat relative. Check the accuracy of known NEA objects, and you'll find that, well, it's not ridiculously good. It's good, but you could still end up missing it by a long shot. For an asteroid in a normal orbit, it's not bad, as you can do standard course corrections, though you don't have the added assistance of a huge cross section like you do with planets.
It's impressive that we've managed to actually intercept all of the asteroids we've tried to, but it's not 'trivial' at all. Getting to another planet is trivial - getting to an asteroid is not.
Finally, as for the known energy source, there's large reserves of water (one hopes- in the form of the ice caps), which is perfectly good fuel if you use solar power to split it. Plus don't forget that Mars suffers the same fate as the Moon: direct solar wind impingement, so you'll probably get things like a severely enhanced deuterium-to-water and helium-3 to helium-4 ratio. Granted, at the moment, lacking a fusion reactor design, this isn't that useful, but one hopes (one hopes!) that in the future, this is.
Saying "there's no known energy source on Mars" is really naive. It's a planet. It probably has pockets of gas stored in its surface somewhere, and probably other sources of fuel as well. We already know (or hope) that the caps contain water (ok, ok, it's up in the air whether it's CO2 or H2O and has been for a while). My point wasn't that we know of any fuel sources, but that it's a planet. Big. Large. It probably HAS fuel sources we haven't found yet - we just need to look for them.
Definitely will agree that the main question is whether or not the benefits do outweigh the additional costs. It's funny - in this situation, they really should be exploring the low cost options (asteroid mining), but that seems to only be a side interest at all. I think the main problem here really is that all that asteroids have is stuff that Earth already has in abundance.
OK, few points: there are advantages to going to a fixed planet rather than a stray comet or asteroid. First, it's easier - we have more data, more accuracy, and less chance for a course error. In addition, most comets (not asteroids) are in hyperbolics or extremely eccentric orbits, so you have a very very brief window of time to actually land on them - you can't do a transfer orbit: you have to actually intercept them, and errors in either orbit or course leaves you whizzing through empty space, with no hope of fixing your course. You can't match orbits with them, and since they definitely aren't much of a gravity well, orbiting around them is harder than Mars.
I'm not discounting the rest of your arguments - they're valid. But getting to asteroids and comets is much much harder than getting to Mars. This is in theory, of course. Our track record for getting to Mars isn't that good (it's good, but not perfect), and we have virtually no statistics for asteroid/comet landings (no, NEAR does not count. You have to actually LAND on the thing, not careen crazily into it.)
Second, the Martian atmosphere is only part of the problem with irradiation - that's only solar radiation, and only EM radiation. Mars has no magnetic field (none worth speaking of - it wouldn't even guide a compass) and therefore has no magnetosheath which blocks the solar wind. There are no Van Allen belts, no auroras, etc. All the radiation from the Sun just blasts on it. You'd have to bury yourself a fair bit underground to survive.
Playing devil's advocate again, though, as has been pointed out before, both Mars and the Moon have excellent shielding material available - their own soil.
It also should be pointed out we are talking about PLANETS here. Not islands, or little bitty rocks: planets. Huge. You know, like our own. Mars may have only roughly what, like, 1/4 the surface area? but that's still the same amount of land space as Earth has excluding ocean. You're CRAZY if you think that you can't find a considerable amount of fuel on Mars as well. The only problem is that it might take some effort to find it (but hello, we have satellites in orbit around the planet now, and they have these things called 'instruments', which can find things...). A well planned mission to Mars could really work.
Will we have to put some work into doing it? Yes. But is there significant benefit to going to Mars over going to an asteroid or comet? Yes. Do the benefits outweigh the additional costs? Don't know. I'm not an economist.
Is Agilent doing that bad? I'm really curious, because as far as I can tell, they're doing fine. I definitely agree about the robustness of the equipment, though - for the most part we've had no problem with any of the lab equipment we have, and it's almost completely all HP/Agilent stuff.
I mean, honestly, I wouldn't even know who ELSE to go with for equipment like that - in the labs I've worked in, they've all been HP/Agilent equipment.
What kind of test equipment do you mean? Their test equipment and lab supplies spinoff, Agilent, is doing pretty well: many lab supplies you'd be crazy to buy anything except Agilent, and I'm (starting) to grow fond of the Infinium oscilloscopes, though Tektronix is still my preferred (I do NOT like seeing an oscilloscope bluescreen!). If you're buying lab power supplies, you're best off buying Agilent, as they're the most well known.
Then again, it could be because I'm still IN a lab that's Agilent/HP dominated, so I might be biased without even knowing it. HP itself I don't think is that bad: printer-wise, they're still in the top running, IMHO.
I'd be sad to see HP flounder simply because the high-end stuff faltered. Maybe they can spin off their printer division as well, so the stupid parts can die in peace.:)
Hey, yah, there WAS some weird sexual tension thing going on. At least between Arcee and Hot Rod (when Autobot City is being destroyed, it's um, fairly clear). Between Springer and Arcee, it's less evident, though - they might actually be brother and sister, for all it feels like. It shows up again in later episodes, if memory serves.
The soundtrack, IMHO, does rule. Most other people hate it (probably because, well, it's 80s music) but it's personally one of my favorites - I still think "Dare" is one of the more well-used songs in that movie. "The Touch" was a bit overdone (this is when I was re-watching it about two weeks ago, so my viewpoint's changed), but "Dare to be Stupid" was just plain hilarious.
God, with just a TINY bit of rework, that movie could be really, really good. I'm surprised Nimoy didn't choke the writers when they gave him terrific lines and then gave him utter junk lines as well ("I, Galvatron, will crush you, Ultra Magnus, the same way Megatron crushed Prime." - what the hell? like we forgot their names or something??)
But it's not like the movie didn't rule anyway. As someone else has pointed out, my absolute favorite comeback still comes from Unicron.
I don't think you meant Spike, actually, as Spike doesn't really appear in the movie too much other than his brief cameo from Moon Base 2, and then the part where he's about to fall into the acid pit.
The purely comic relief characters, IMHO, were Wheelie, Grimlock, Wreck-Gar, Starscream, and Blurr. At least I hope they didn't want Blurr to have any serious role. It certainly didn't seem like it. I hope not. God I hate Blurr.
There were a disturbing number of characters which simply "vanished" - that is, the movie lost track of them. Blaster, Perceptor, virtually all of the Decepticons, etc. If you look at it this way, it's clear that the people who wrote the film didn't want to focus on certain older characters but rather on the new ones they created. There are even Decepticons that die MULTIPLE TIMES simply because they hadn't created enough new characters for fodder.
The funny thing about Spike growing up was that while they NAMED his wife, they barely (if ever! I don't remember!) show her. Daniel, however, got tons of air time, and for the most part, the Autobots were his parents far more than Spike was.
I should say that I am a big fan of the Voltron series, though I really wish they did more plot-driven things rather than filler. There were a few really good ones (where they replaced Sven with the Princess, for instance, and of course the original) but a whole whole lot of complete junk. I honestly don't know why I liked the lionbot over the carbot. I can't think of a real reason, other than the fact that there were just far too freakin' many cars that made up the carbot.
The other thing that's amusing is that if you look at the Transformers Encyclopedia, you'll realize that they "hid" a lot of the plot that was going on inside the episode itself, and most people didn't even realize things were evolving and changing - I'm sure that's what happened with the Voltron series as well. Apparently at that time, it wasn't considered "kosher" to have a continuity and a developing plotline, and so you had to "hide" the plot portions in a stock story that everyone is used to.
Yah. As I've stated in another thread, the one thing that always amazed me about Galvatron vs. Megatron was the fact that they were both completely evil with no redeeming values, but at least with Galvatron, you could tell that he was screwed up in the head - typical megalomania. Megatron just sounded like a broken record many times ("Die, Autobot!") and really didn't have any deeper character at all. This really showed through in the movie with Galvatron, but they stretched it out a bit in later episodes as well. Most first half Transformers eps were "Megatron comes up with cool plan, Autobots must stop him." Web World was a terrific example of an interesting episode that deviated significantly from that, mainly because Galvatron wasn't the psycho mad scientist broken record that Megatron was.
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Definitely true. However, you sortof need to look at it in context. I'm grabbing things off the cuff here, so if I'm wrong, let me know. P4's pipeline stage is 20-stage or so. I can see 3 which are probably due to x86: 6-8, the allocate/rename stages. I don't even think you can fully blame those on x86, but whatever. So about what, 15% of the pipeline is due to x86? That's not a huge penalty to pay for backwards compatibility, really: 15% of your IPC? 3 clock cycles out 20? I'd be happy with that tradeoff.
Honestly, though, if you look at the P4's architecture, I'm not entirely sure that those 3 clock cycles are due to x86 cruft: I think they're there to feed the ever-hungry execution units. I really do wonder exactly how much of a penalty modern processors pay due to the x86 ISA. I really would doubt it's much at all.
Remember that all the IP lawyer people are saying that you're not buying anything when you buy books, music, games, etc., you're "licensing intellectual property." And this is the kicker: if the IP is what's important, then if the object is damaged, I still have the license to the IP. And therefore, I can download a copy of it if I want to replace the loss that occurred. They can't have it both ways: they can't say "yes, you're buying IP, but when you lose the physical object, you lose the license, ha ha."
There isn't clear law on this, I don't think. You can't "illegally distribute" games, true. But you're not illegally distributing them: you're distributing a legal archival copy to people who have the right to possess it.
If Nintendo really wants to stop me from downloading ROMs, then they should support the IP that they never said they would stop supporting. Have a licensing card in each game, and allow me to download a new copy or obtain a new copy simply buy calling it. I'm buying IP. Not buying a game.
And yes, the analogy is correct. Simply because the difficult part of the reverse engineering is done (my friend already built the spare part for the 1980 Zephyr, or whatever) doesn't make copying his copy not reverse engineering. It's just that the gruntwork's already done for me. Isn't progress wonderful?
Honestly, look at the example I gave before. A part on my 1980 Zephyr breaks. They don't support it anymore. I go to a friend, who has the same car, and had the same problem. Before his part broke, he looked at it, made a copy of it, and stored it for safe keeping. I look at his copy, say "hmm", and make a copy myself. This is identical - literally - to the game situation at hand. The fact that "making a copy" was as simple as clicking on something and saying "Save As..." doesn't make it not making a copy.
I agree with you, although there may be a few certain situations where x87 is a better choice than SSE2 on certain processors due to non-parallelizability (is that a word?) of certain code. Hence the reason I said "decent compromise". If Intel had had the die space, I would've said have -both- a fast x87 unit and a fast SSE2 unit, and share what you can between them. But, eh.
I definitely agree with you that x86-64 is a significant improvement: that's why I'm confused why everyone thinks that it's impossible to extend an architecture and maintain backwards compatibility and still have an intelligent architecture. When I looked at x86-64, it looks half-decent: the old x86 cruft is hidden, and not even available in full 64-bit mode. My thoughts on this are heck, this is the way to go. Iterate this once, maybe twice more, and you'll have an architecture which competes with the best of 'em, yet is still fully backwards compatible.
Where does it say anywhere how long a product is supposed to last when you buy it? When I buy any video game, it doesn't say "This product will self-destruct in 10 years." People buy things because they "feel" rugged and solid, and "will last".
If you buy a chair, and it falls apart and the manufacturer is no longer making spare parts, is it illegal for you to look at the old part, say "hmm", and make another part that does the exact same thing? No, of course not. Likewise, when the battery in my copy of Legend of Zelda runs dead, is it illegal for me to open it up, look at the 5V watch battery that's in there, say "hmm", and replace it? No, of course not. And finally, when the poorly-designed insertion retaining mechanism inside my NES finally is worn past the point where the contacts will solidly connect, is it illegal for me to open it up and say "hmm" and figure out a way to do the exact same thing with a general-purpose computer? No.
It's not stealing. It's reverse engineering, plain and simple. A literal analogy would be when your old 1980 Zephyr (or whatever) stops working, you go to a friend who has the same car who developed a complete copy of the part that broke, stare at it, say "hmm", and copy his copy.
Actually, I think the reasoning probably came from the fact that Hammer is entering into the mainstream market (as an Athlon Pro, or whatever) rather than into the server-only market, like Itanium. Hammer really is going to be the first mainstream 64-bit chip. If Hammer really catches hold, then x86-64 specific OSs may come out (Linux will happen quickly, so quite a few servers will probably be running x86-64). At that point, they will not run on a P4, which still has a future ahead of it.
Yamhill is a P4 derivative, not an Itanium derivative (of course) - if x86-64 becomes market-important, then Intel will release Yamhill into the mainstream, and then the mainstream will be mostly x86-64, rather than IA32.
He's talking about market segments, not architectural benefits. He never said IA64 sucked.
You're right - from a theoretical standpoint. And, if all things were equal, IA64 should utterly rout x86-64.
However, things aren't that equal. First off, x86 has had a lot of work thrown into it, and the current processors are quite good at implementing x86: I doubt there's a huge architectural penalty anymore - you can build virtually identical PPC and x86 computers and compare them, and even though PPC is a much better architecture, it's not going to blow x86 out of the water. Yes, it's idiotic to have, for instance, a stack-based floating point implementation, but the P3 and Athlon both make FXCH free, so it's not that bad anyway, and the P4's SSE2 implementation isn't bad, so using SSE2 instead of x87 is a decent compromise.
Ars Technica (www.arstechnica.com) actually has a good writeup of why we should stop treating x86 as this bastard dog of an instruction set, although they mostly relied on the fact that we have a huge installbase of x86 software.
Honestly, I doubt x86 decoding seriously bloats the die that much - jeez, on a 0.13u process, how big would the original 8086 core be? Take a look at the die for a Hammer processor - x86 decoding doesn't take that much space.
Just wait and see, that's my answer. Let the benchmarks prove AMD or Intel wrong. Intel's really relying on the brilliance of compiler writers, whereas AMD's banking on tons of experience. We'll see who has a better strategy...
Most alarm clocks use the 60 Hz AC to generate time. Yes. It's not precise at any given point, but it's accurate over time. Even some digital clocks use this instead of crystals, hence the reason why if you plug them into outlets in other countries which use 220 V @ 50 Hz, they'll run slow. Not ALL digital clocks use this, but some (not sure how common it is, actually) - this I know from personal experience.
:)
And if a power outage occurs, then yes, the computer may have a bit of trouble determining the time. It also may have a bit of trouble running at all.
As per the second comment, I don't know where you got that from: you wouldn't measure the frequency (which... would only need a frequency-to-voltage converter anyway: any basic EE text will have that) - you just need to use a bit of electronics to clean up the sine wave, turn it into a square wave, and then clock some logic with it. It's just as easy as using a crystal.
er... doubt they'd use that, to be honest. :) It's extremely unlikely that the entire system would be clockless: you'd have to redesign almost every peripheral. In any case, there'd be a clock SOMEWHERE for them to use.
For me, this is kindof amusing: asynchronous logic is where you start out - it's more basic (shove signal in, get signal out). You then move to synchronous logic to eliminate glitches and possible race conditions (clocked flipflops, etc.). Apparently now you move BACK to asynchronous logic to gain performance. I can't disagree : working with synchronous systems, I've always been annoyed that certain combinations couldn't be used because they were too close to a clock edge, and it could miss the latch. If you can eliminate the glitches and race conditions, asynchronous logic would be faster. Of course, that's like saying "if software bugs didn't occur, you'd never need to look over code." Yes, true, valid, but not gonna happen.
Of course, they're not talking about a true full asynchronous design: just getting rid of external clock slaving. The external clock would still BE there, for the external architecture - it's just that the internal architecture wouldn't all move to the beat of a clock.
For instance, I'm pretty sure that no one is suggesting getting rid of synchronous memory design: it's just easier that way.
Actually, just to clear things up, it's
/etc/rc.d/init.d/ will work, /etc/init.d/ should as well in later versions. /etc/init.d/ is the LSB location of init scripts.
/etc/init.d/sshd restart
on later versions of Red Hat machines. While
On a Debian machine, it's
/etc/init.d/ssh restart
(which kindof annoys me... it should be sshd restart, not ssh).
I thought there've been quite a few studies recently suggesting that it might be possible for a giant planet to form close to a star. Regardless, it's definitely true that we don't know for sure how these planets form and how they end up in their final location.
Even if you do accept that the planet migrated inward, it's not a given that it would 'remove everything in its way': this assumes that it's accreting, which is not a given at all (actually, a quick search on lanl located a few papers which discuss this fact). It would disturb the inner disk, yes, but it wouldn't necessarily 'clean it out'. In fact, it's quite likely that the disturbances would encourage inner planets to form.
I'm really surprised that the news item didn't surprise you - it's exactly the kind of system one would hope to find. It's a mix of both the "confusing" giant planet formation and "normal" giant planet formation. Why did one migrate in, and the other stay at a stable orbit? Did the other migrate in from much farther out? If that's true, how far must its protoplanetary disk have extended? Is the other planet migrating in slowly as well?
Anyway, it certainly is an exciting discovery. We knew that the preponderance 'near' giant planets were due to selection effects (or we hoped) and now it looks like there are a lot of planets out there, some of which are planets which are in what we consider to be the 'normal' regions.
That's not exactly true: in our case, the Sun pushed (light pressure, and another effect I can't think of the name of...) or ate all of the light gaseous material inside the asteroid belt. At least, it did, viewing it from 6 or so billion years later.
Now, the next problem is that we do NOT know how these giant planets near their star formed. People suggest that the planets migrated inwards, which would make an Earth-sized planet unlikely. However, there are some suggestions that the gas giants CAN form that close to their star. In fact, I don't think that we would even KNOW if there had previously been a gas giant inside Mercury's orbit that has long since been devoured by the Sun. Thus we could be looking at a Sol-like system, just much earlier in formation.
It should be noted that Jupiter has some influence on Earth - but it's very minor. Venus has significantly more influence (Venus's rotation is actually in a resonance with Earth's orbit).
A planet that close to the Sun orbiting that quickly would, from Earth's (1AU) point of view, just look like an increase in the Sun's mass. Work out the differential force: With a differential distance swing of 1/40 AU, but the distance going as the cube, it's really going to be quite minor: about 1/200th the tidal force of the Sun, which is less than that of the Moon. It's not like the Moon's influence seriously screws up the planet. (Note that I'm talking about the differential force of the swing of the inner planet: that is, how much does the tug of the inner planet really change from Earth's point of view? Not much at all).
Gravitational perturbations are due to differential gravitational forces, and the forces on Earth due to a planet orbiting at 0.025 AU are trivial. As for asteroid components, it depends on how the planet formed, which we don't understand yet. If it formed far out, and moved in, then yes, it would be a menace. But if it formed close in, it's extremely unlikely to cause any "asteroid bombardment" or anything like that.
Keep in mind that you could consider a slight "bulge" in the sun to be a "giant planet" orbiting the Sun obscenely quick: if it was likely that this would disturb the Earth, the Earth would be in very bad shape: bubbles of different densities appear on the Sun all the time. The differential force just isn't that great.
Should we look there first? Yes. It's an IDEAL target, actually! It's a planetary system where both standard Sol planetary formation processes are occuring, and this "weird' giant planet stuff is happening. If it isn't the first stop for the TPF, I'd be amazed. That's a system worth studying. And would anyone be surprised to see an Earth like planet show up there? Not likely.
Nope: what I'm doing is saying that a carbon/water system is the minimum-energy solution for life to form. That is, carbon/water life will be everywhere, at least compared to wacky life, which will be extremely rare.
:)
The 'human life' I only tacked on at the end, because I really don't believe that humans need much more besides a planet with carbon, nitrogen, and liquid water. Everything else we could bring with us, since we recycle it. Would we 'need' to bring potassium, iron? Some. But then our wastes would contain potassium and iron (conservation of matter is cool!) and we could just recycle it. Recycling carbon, nitrogen, and water is harder, since they tend to dissipate a bit more than heavier elements. Colony growth would be a bit difficult too.
This isn't saying that human life will show up somewhere else. It's saying that the conditions for humans to live probably exist in a ton of places in the Universe. And I honestly think that if given the chance, life would find a way around, for instance, lack of iron, or lack of potassium.
I don't know. I'm not much of a biologist (it comes to me from my better half) - but I'd guess that there are quite a few microbes and very very primitive life forms that really only need carbon, nitrogen, and water to form. Of all the basic amino acids, there is only 1 (methionine) which contains anything besides carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen (it contains 1 sulfur atom). DNA is a little more complicated, but not much: it contains phosphate groups. Personally, I think those were as much "convenience choices" as anything else - I bet life could've probably come up with something similar with other atoms if they were the only ones available.
Basically, all I'm saying is that "life as we know it" is probably all we're going to find, because life as we know it basically means carbon/nitrogen/water systems, and I think that's really all that's needed for life. It'll use most of the amino acids we know of - may not use DNA, may use something else - but it will, for the most part, look like Earth life.
Water is liquid. H2O in solid form is called ice, and in gaseous form is called water vapor. I should've said "liquid water" rather than "water", but I thought it would be redundant.
The need for liquid - that is, aqueous solutions - should be obvious. Solids lack free motion of individual molecules (well, mostly free motion in solids - yes, they can vibrate, but they can't rearrange easily) and gasses have too large of a mean free path (gas laws suck, too: lower the mean free path, and temperature goes up) and so interactions don't happen that often, or they happen with far too much energy.
We haven't found liquid water anywhere else yet (found as in brought it back). When we go to Europa (IF we go...) and we find a liquid ocean of water there, I'd bet money we'll find life. Not MUCH money, because I could be wrong (hence 'my opinion') but I'd bet money.
Because if you think about it, the life that we have (as humans) is, in many ways, analagous to a "minimum-energy solution" to a problem.
:)
Think about it. Life on Earth begins, fundamentally, with long carbon chains and water cycles. Why carbon? Carbon is the only element that can form arbitrarily long, stable chains. Silicon can form chains - but only short ones. Longer silicon chains break down. There are additional reasons for carbon later, too. Why water? Take a list of molecules, starting from the simplest you can make. That is, H2, LiH, etc. Many of these compounds won't exist, though. Keep going. Water will stick out like a sore thumb when you get to it - because it's the first strong dipole you'll come across that's covalently bonded. The covalence is important because in a liquid form, the molecules are still there, rather than just ions. Ammonia (NH3) is a dipole, but not of the same level as water is. So, a water solution provides literally TONS of bonding possibilities. Hydrogen bonds form all over the place, and you get extremely complex chemicals popping up everywhere.
The basic requirements for life, in my opinion, would have to be the possibility for many, many combinations of molecules. That's what allows life to exist, really. So carbon/water based life suddenly becomes your 'minimum-energy' solution to generating life.
The other reasoning here is that if you look at the basic life on Earth, the elements it uses are, well, a little bit "unique" on a stellar scale. The most important elements for life on Earth are undeniably carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. Without a doubt, you could probably make living objects from just these few elements (probably really basic, but still life). Here's the kicker: hydrogen is the most abundant element in the Universe, and carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen are the elements produced in the second most common stellar nucleosynthesis event, the triple-alpha process (the pp chain is the most common: it turns 4 protons into 1 alpha particle). So flat out, you are NOT going to have carbon somewhere and NOT have water, not for stellar abundance reasons. Temperature-wise, it's possible, so in very bizarre temperature regions, you might get life - I will admit that - but I do consider it unlikely, since high temperature regions don't really allow for molecules to form easily.
That being said, I want to note that I don't agree with the author here: I think he's being exceptionally restrictive. My opinion is all you really need for life is carbon and water. You probably also need nitrogen for variety, but as I've said, where there's carbon and water, you'll have nitrogen as well. Now, the 'livable for humans' bit: I honestly think that anyplace that has carbon, liquid water, and nitrogen could be made livable for humans. You need trace elements (iron, for instance, for hemoglobin), but in general humans recycle them - they don't get 'consumed' - so a well designed colony could probably survive by taking some small amount of trace elements along with them. But as for life developing THERE? I think with the above ingredients, they would find a solution that doesn't use a trace element that they don't have.
It doesn't matter, really. We have one data point to play with, and we can do whatever we want with it. His instinct says "no life anywhere, it's really complex" my instinct says "life everywhere there's water and carbon: it has this 'knack' for showing up everywhere."
Placing an upper limit on an energy state only bounds the system, rather than bounding the energy states. The energy states will asymptotically approach the maximum energy limit that you place on them.
It is highly, highly, highly unlikely that the universe is made up of a finite number of discrete states. Many observables are complementary (I think this is the term... my basic QM text is four floors up) - that is, akin to momentum and position. This means that when the system is in an eigenstate of one observable, it is in a superposition of many eigenstates in the other. That superposition is a Fourier integral of an infinite number of states - a bounded infinity, but probably not even a countable infinity - even for a system with physical bounds.
Nature pretty much proves this point: take emission lines, for instance. Heat up a gas to some temperature, and measure the emission spectrum around a certain transition line. You'll find that even after correcting for thermal broadening (if you somehow can do this, which in some cases is possible, but not in my naive example) the energy spectrum output from an emission line is STILL spread- and that's due to natural broadening. Since there's a characteristic 'interaction time', there has to be a characteristic spread in energy as well. Thus, even when you talk about a photon being in an energy eigenstate when emitted as a transition photon, it still is a superposition of an infinite number of states.
If Wolfram's point does involve a finite state system, it won't work. The Universe is weird - very weird. Especially the point regarding reversability - people who think the Second Law is something spooky or difficult to understand are missing the point. The Second Law is obvious - it says the entropy of a closed system always increases or stays the same. Entropy is information: this is saying that for a closed system, one of two things is happening: either something is happening, or nothing is happening. You can't have "less than nothing" happening - entropy is simply the Universe's method of keeping track of the fact that something has happened.
Yah, I know about the thoughts that carbonaceous asteroids might contain ice, but that's still iffy. Looking for 'pockets' of ice is likely to be hit and miss with an asteroid. With Mars there's a LOT more surface area for a pocket to be contained. It depends really what you want, though.
The lack of an oxidizer isn't true - Mars has plenty of oxygen - in the soil. It's true you'd have to get the oxygen out of the soil, and that likely means "solar", which will take a longer time, but it really depends what you're talking about here - long term viability, or short term viability. I doubt an asteroid outpost could last that long: I really wonder exactly how MUCH water would be available on an asteroid. Then again, if you're mining, you don't care: it's a once and done thing, so again, it really depends what you're talking about.
It's too bad we're not talking about Venus here. Sigh. If only we had infinite energy - creating a new Earth is easy - we already know how to do it. Smack Mars into Venus. Poof. New Earth. It's kinda funny that there happened to be two Mars like objects, and two proto-Earth like objects in the solar system to begin with.
I will note that fusion isn't that far away: people may say it's "always 50 years away", but they don't note that significant progress IS being made. Reactors have crossed the breakeven point. The next step is ignition, which is just going to take some time. Damn Moore's Law. Always expecting the pace of innovation to be as insanely stupid as the computing industry has taken it.
(Interesting point of note: what other industry is racing as fast as the computer industry towards a brick wall? None. Name another industry where the fundamental laws of physics are going to be limiting their growth? Yah. Thought so.)
You do have to remember that unstable radioactive compounds on Mars are going to be far more abundant on Mars than they are on Earth (or at least, they should be) - lacking a magnetic field, Mars gets irradiated directly with the solar wind and solar radiation, so there's a lot more bombardment with the possibility to create radioactive elements.
Uranium is unlikely, I will agree: however, if we ever (dear God) develop a fusion type reactor on Earth, that's easy as hell to refuel. We know the Moon has a highly enhanced Helium-3 to Helium-4 ratio due to solar particle radiation, and it's highly likely that Mars will have a very enhanced deuterium-to-water ratio as well as an enhanced helium-3 to helium-4 ratio (deuterium's stable - so once it's made, it's done).
Yet more reason for working on fusion reactors...
All comets are in eccentric orbits, and you (or a previous poster) justified the preference of going to NEAs and comets by saying that comets contain low-weight gases and compounds (water ice, etc.). Asteroids will contain high-density materials (metals), but if you want low-density stuff (water, gases) you're going to a planet or a comet, and intercepting comets sucks.
You also misunderstood the point about tracking asteroids - we're not talking about tracking the asteroid in the sky, we're talking about tracking the distance between a known point (asteroid) and an unknown point (the craft that's heading there), and that involves more than just astronomy - it's physics, because you have to know the propulsion of the craft itself. Also, 'excellent accuracy' is somewhat relative. Check the accuracy of known NEA objects, and you'll find that, well, it's not ridiculously good. It's good, but you could still end up missing it by a long shot. For an asteroid in a normal orbit, it's not bad, as you can do standard course corrections, though you don't have the added assistance of a huge cross section like you do with planets.
It's impressive that we've managed to actually intercept all of the asteroids we've tried to, but it's not 'trivial' at all. Getting to another planet is trivial - getting to an asteroid is not.
Finally, as for the known energy source, there's large reserves of water (one hopes- in the form of the ice caps), which is perfectly good fuel if you use solar power to split it. Plus don't forget that Mars suffers the same fate as the Moon: direct solar wind impingement, so you'll probably get things like a severely enhanced deuterium-to-water and helium-3 to helium-4 ratio. Granted, at the moment, lacking a fusion reactor design, this isn't that useful, but one hopes (one hopes!) that in the future, this is.
Saying "there's no known energy source on Mars" is really naive. It's a planet. It probably has pockets of gas stored in its surface somewhere, and probably other sources of fuel as well. We already know (or hope) that the caps contain water (ok, ok, it's up in the air whether it's CO2 or H2O and has been for a while). My point wasn't that we know of any fuel sources, but that it's a planet. Big. Large. It probably HAS fuel sources we haven't found yet - we just need to look for them.
Definitely will agree that the main question is whether or not the benefits do outweigh the additional costs. It's funny - in this situation, they really should be exploring the low cost options (asteroid mining), but that seems to only be a side interest at all. I think the main problem here really is that all that asteroids have is stuff that Earth already has in abundance.
OK, few points: there are advantages to going to a fixed planet rather than a stray comet or asteroid. First, it's easier - we have more data, more accuracy, and less chance for a course error. In addition, most comets (not asteroids) are in hyperbolics or extremely eccentric orbits, so you have a very very brief window of time to actually land on them - you can't do a transfer orbit: you have to actually intercept them, and errors in either orbit or course leaves you whizzing through empty space, with no hope of fixing your course. You can't match orbits with them, and since they definitely aren't much of a gravity well, orbiting around them is harder than Mars.
I'm not discounting the rest of your arguments - they're valid. But getting to asteroids and comets is much much harder than getting to Mars. This is in theory, of course. Our track record for getting to Mars isn't that good (it's good, but not perfect), and we have virtually no statistics for asteroid/comet landings (no, NEAR does not count. You have to actually LAND on the thing, not careen crazily into it.)
Second, the Martian atmosphere is only part of the problem with irradiation - that's only solar radiation, and only EM radiation. Mars has no magnetic field (none worth speaking of - it wouldn't even guide a compass) and therefore has no magnetosheath which blocks the solar wind. There are no Van Allen belts, no auroras, etc. All the radiation from the Sun just blasts on it. You'd have to bury yourself a fair bit underground to survive.
Playing devil's advocate again, though, as has been pointed out before, both Mars and the Moon have excellent shielding material available - their own soil.
It also should be pointed out we are talking about PLANETS here. Not islands, or little bitty rocks: planets. Huge. You know, like our own. Mars may have only roughly what, like, 1/4 the surface area? but that's still the same amount of land space as Earth has excluding ocean. You're CRAZY if you think that you can't find a considerable amount of fuel on Mars as well. The only problem is that it might take some effort to find it (but hello, we have satellites in orbit around the planet now, and they have these things called 'instruments', which can find things...). A well planned mission to Mars could really work.
Will we have to put some work into doing it? Yes. But is there significant benefit to going to Mars over going to an asteroid or comet? Yes. Do the benefits outweigh the additional costs? Don't know. I'm not an economist.
Is Agilent doing that bad? I'm really curious, because as far as I can tell, they're doing fine. I definitely agree about the robustness of the equipment, though - for the most part we've had no problem with any of the lab equipment we have, and it's almost completely all HP/Agilent stuff.
I mean, honestly, I wouldn't even know who ELSE to go with for equipment like that - in the labs I've worked in, they've all been HP/Agilent equipment.
What kind of test equipment do you mean? Their test equipment and lab supplies spinoff, Agilent, is doing pretty well: many lab supplies you'd be crazy to buy anything except Agilent, and I'm (starting) to grow fond of the Infinium oscilloscopes, though Tektronix is still my preferred (I do NOT like seeing an oscilloscope bluescreen!). If you're buying lab power supplies, you're best off buying Agilent, as they're the most well known.
:)
Then again, it could be because I'm still IN a lab that's Agilent/HP dominated, so I might be biased without even knowing it. HP itself I don't think is that bad: printer-wise, they're still in the top running, IMHO.
I'd be sad to see HP flounder simply because the high-end stuff faltered. Maybe they can spin off their printer division as well, so the stupid parts can die in peace.
Hey, yah, there WAS some weird sexual tension thing going on. At least between Arcee and Hot Rod (when Autobot City is being destroyed, it's um, fairly clear). Between Springer and Arcee, it's less evident, though - they might actually be brother and sister, for all it feels like. It shows up again in later episodes, if memory serves.
The soundtrack, IMHO, does rule. Most other people hate it (probably because, well, it's 80s music) but it's personally one of my favorites - I still think "Dare" is one of the more well-used songs in that movie. "The Touch" was a bit overdone (this is when I was re-watching it about two weeks ago, so my viewpoint's changed), but "Dare to be Stupid" was just plain hilarious.
God, with just a TINY bit of rework, that movie could be really, really good. I'm surprised Nimoy didn't choke the writers when they gave him terrific lines and then gave him utter junk lines as well ("I, Galvatron, will crush you, Ultra Magnus, the same way Megatron crushed Prime." - what the hell? like we forgot their names or something??)
But it's not like the movie didn't rule anyway. As someone else has pointed out, my absolute favorite comeback still comes from Unicron.
"I have summoned you here for a purpose."
"No one summons Megatron!"
"Then it pleases me to be the first."
I don't think you meant Spike, actually, as Spike doesn't really appear in the movie too much other than his brief cameo from Moon Base 2, and then the part where he's about to fall into the acid pit.
The purely comic relief characters, IMHO, were Wheelie, Grimlock, Wreck-Gar, Starscream, and Blurr. At least I hope they didn't want Blurr to have any serious role. It certainly didn't seem like it. I hope not. God I hate Blurr.
There were a disturbing number of characters which simply "vanished" - that is, the movie lost track of them. Blaster, Perceptor, virtually all of the Decepticons, etc. If you look at it this way, it's clear that the people who wrote the film didn't want to focus on certain older characters but rather on the new ones they created. There are even Decepticons that die MULTIPLE TIMES simply because they hadn't created enough new characters for fodder.
The funny thing about Spike growing up was that while they NAMED his wife, they barely (if ever! I don't remember!) show her. Daniel, however, got tons of air time, and for the most part, the Autobots were his parents far more than Spike was.
I should say that I am a big fan of the Voltron series, though I really wish they did more plot-driven things rather than filler. There were a few really good ones (where they replaced Sven with the Princess, for instance, and of course the original) but a whole whole lot of complete junk. I honestly don't know why I liked the lionbot over the carbot. I can't think of a real reason, other than the fact that there were just far too freakin' many cars that made up the carbot.
The other thing that's amusing is that if you look at the Transformers Encyclopedia, you'll realize that they "hid" a lot of the plot that was going on inside the episode itself, and most people didn't even realize things were evolving and changing - I'm sure that's what happened with the Voltron series as well. Apparently at that time, it wasn't considered "kosher" to have a continuity and a developing plotline, and so you had to "hide" the plot portions in a stock story that everyone is used to.
Yah. As I've stated in another thread, the one thing that always amazed me about Galvatron vs. Megatron was the fact that they were both completely evil with no redeeming values, but at least with Galvatron, you could tell that he was screwed up in the head - typical megalomania. Megatron just sounded like a broken record many times ("Die, Autobot!") and really didn't have any deeper character at all. This really showed through in the movie with Galvatron, but they stretched it out a bit in later episodes as well. Most first half Transformers eps were "Megatron comes up with cool plan, Autobots must stop him." Web World was a terrific example of an interesting episode that deviated significantly from that, mainly because Galvatron wasn't the psycho mad scientist broken record that Megatron was.