The software which the government creates tends to be focused on a certain task, not generalized. And the results of a research project such as this is particularly likely to have one useful routine which needs alterations for the desired interface -- sometimes the only thing of general use is the algorithm. Not that "An Interactive Orbital Trajectory Planning Tool" has an obvious general use.
Having the government sell software made more sense when computers were big expensive things and any development project required formal approval and a big budget. Most businesses are small businesses, and they create an amazing variety of services and items. It makes more sense to just publish the results for public use (just as the research results should be)...and let the government get more income from increased wealth (wealth is not a zero-sum game).
Sure, a big company might not have to pay $25,000 when they can get it free. But 250 people or small companies may examine the free code and create a wider variety of things and even more wealth. If only 25 people create $5,000 each in additional income, the government already gained more in taxes. (That's easy to exceed; I'm likely to create $5,000 in income just from an hour a day in my basement this year, and a serious profit activity creates much more)
"If patent holders do not develop the product, no one can."
The U.S. Constitution says patents are for a limited time, and specifically mentions that this is for the benefit of science. Your objection was dealt with if you are in the USA.
Unless, of course, you're referring to trademarks and copyrights and are now restricted by the Mickey Mouse extensions to those protections.
Their paper is online, a link is in another comment. They did not just time two earthquakes, they listened on at least six seismographs to the supersonic rumble of the object pushing through the magma. Once they found events whose time fit the expected pattern they studied the wave patterns and found they were what is expected for something moving in a long line, not an earthquake at a single point. They did find the data at one Australian station could also fit an earthquake at an unlikely spot, but with less confidence than for a linear event.
Oops. Now that the link to the entire paper has been found, I see that it was indeed the supersonic shock wave which was used for detection. My seismographic tech knowledge is out of date.
Messages for advanced civilizations are easy, particularly if the messages are analyzed before further exploration. An explorer with a pack full of shaped explosive charges might just walk in, blow the next door open, and tinker with whatever catches his eye. One can hope that one-man casual tunneling machines don't exist, so the workers outside will survive -- but if there is a family tunneling machine in wide use then the storage area can't be protected without a Colossus-style armored/armed hollow shell around the entire facility.
But if little enough time has passed that the worst waste and the nuclear bomb are still dangerous, probably that advanced civilization is related to ours, and we should have passed the warnings on to them. All that would take is wood signs on the surface which are periodically updated to the current popular languages. (why wood? so they will be destroyed in a few years if abandoned)
Victorian-age scientists might interpret everything as a temple to a death god -- although they should notice a progression from primitive representations to advanced messages, and recognize more science as they translate more. Primitives might be temporarily scared away by warning images and boobytraps, but by the time the "last chance" area is reached all that has failed.
Don't call your congressman. Call your cryptozoologist and ask him to breed the unexplained fish in his zoo so as to decrease the ratio of explosive unexplained fish to nonexplosive types down from 3:1. (or as a percentage: 75% explosive)
Maybe a dozen people already have been killed, but they all seemed to be boiler or water heater explosions. ("Look at this! It exploded hard enough to crack the foundation!")
The odds of hitting NY or LA are slim. Our largest cities use a miniscule fraction of the planet's surface area. Even less if you are referring to the few blocks of downtown which has tall buildings. Even less if you're considering the nonvertical passages, where there are very few buildings taller than 20 stories so there's a lot of empty air between the buildings -- and that bottom 200 feet that is full of concrete is really small when compared to the cross section of the Earth (although you should be comparing the surface area of the Earth to the surface area of a cylinder 200 feet tall and as large around as the downtown area).
In downtown, a building falling down or getting a hole punched through it would attract attention -- unless a collapse was diagnosed as structural failure and nobody happened to be filming and saw a hole appeared near the top a second before the building fell.
Out in the suburbs, it's just another hot water heater explosion, gas explosion, tree being hit by lightning under a clear sky, or sinkhole collapsing under the street.
Particularly because it's likely that no more than one town has had an impact in all of recorded history so there hasn't been much chance to interpret the event properly.
Entrance and exit impacts. I think the phrasing suggests that only the entry and exit points were detected because seismographs detect the sharp shock of solid rock being damaged.
Seismographs can detect the shock of broken rock, and can detect the echoes of that shock bouncing off underground formations. But they aren't designed to hear the cone-shaped shock wave produced by something moving through molten rock at supersonic speeds. Much as a microphone above a stage can clearly hear an arrow hitting the stage floor, but has difficulty hearing the arrow flying through the air...unless it happens to be near the microphone.
I anticipate that scientists who get interested in such events will design different instruments to detect the passage shock. I wonder if those will also hear any of the mantle convection currents.
No, his sample of two per year were not based only on perpendicular strangelet impacts. The article mentioned detection of two events which both went near the South Pole but went anywhere near the North Pole. Thus the approach angle is not relevant.
Also, these events intersected the volume of the Earth. Neither surface area nor cross section. As we don't care much about damage done inside the Earth we are not particularly concerned with the chance of a certain cubic centimeter being hit (such as the exact center). So the chance of the entire surface area of the Earth being hit, at any angle, is a reasonable approximation.
We also don't particularly care about the damage done inside a person, as any impact can be considered significant, so use the surface area of a person and calculate the ratio between impacts per Earth surface area to impacts per person surface area.
As surface area increases fractally with decreasing scale of measurement, the surface area of a circle and the surface area of a cylinder are suitable.
Do not cover the Earth with the additional volume of a person and try to calculate based on that, unless you really care about the chance of either you or the Earth being hit.
Now go back the the back of your envelope and continue the exercise.
No, the nuclear bomb is perfect for the situation. Keep in mind this would obviously have to be a small device which will damage a small part of the mountain and not affect the deeper structure, while remaining an underground explosion. It would also have to be a primitive mechanical device of the "two subcritical pieces hit together" type.
A primitive group which can devote enough effort to scrape through all the deceptions and barriers is most likely to cause damage by extracting and scattering the radioactive waste. Killing those who would be exploring the protected-only-by-a-locked-door chamber after the last chance warning will likely remove some leaders. Undoing all the effort by collapsing a lot of mountain in the way and/or making a hole to cross will make new physical and psychological barriers. The legend should keep generations away. More time gained.
A somewhat scientific group, such as of the Victorian age, would consider the "last chance" room's display to be significant and should spend time studying it. Unfortunately, there might also be explorer/haul-to-museum types who would tinker with the bomb before study was complete. Fortunately, this is also the group which would record whatever happens and future actions would be based upon either scientific knowledge or on a historical account of a severely hazardous event. If the storage area is reached, either scientists will immediately detect radiation or explorers will study the first container to figure out what deserved so much protection. Scientists will do it safely. Explorers may remove low-level waste but if high-level waste is still dangerous they'll quickly recognize the relationship between radiation sickness and the waste. Either way, the area will again be treated carefully and the waste can sit there safely for a longer time.
A group which is as advanced as we are would either figure out the warnings in the "last chance" room, recognize and disarm the weapon, or..if they figure out the dangers after detonation they'll also have copies of the "last chance" information and recognize how the area has to be treated. If they don't treat the waste to eliminate the problem, they'll seal it back up in a way similar to how we did.
There also is a very relevant characteristic of using a nuclear weapon: time. If the radioactivity of the bomb has faded enough that it no longer is dangerous (either as a bomb or a radiation pulse generator), then also enough time has elapsed that the waste is no longer very dangerous. The bomb components obviously would be larger than for a device which only has to be a strategic weapon, so the radioactive components are functional for a longer time.
That does sound reasonable: seal it and hide it. There's enough land that nobody might dig there for 10,000 years. (back of the envelope: how many acres in the USA, and what is the chance of a 10-acre quarry being in a certain 10 acres?)
Then the problem becomes those "basic underground markings". The reports point out that solid barriers can mean "this barrier is protecting treasure". If there are no barriers, future archeologists or curious miners might remove the fill, thinking that the shaft was abandoned for other reasons. (Yes, I know the facility will be much larger than a single 7-foot shaft, and that makes it even more interesting to study)
Remember, Oak Island, with a barricaded and boobytrapped shaft still attracts attention from treasure hunters after repeated failures over two hundred years.
Construction workers routinely cut through reinforced concrete. Tunnels are cut through granite. Barriers will only stop someone with wooden tools, and will only slow down hundreds of slaves eroding it with stone tools. Solid metal can be worn away by building an iron-age smelter against it and melting the surface. Modern welding or water/plasma/laser cutters are even faster.
Deception: We could try placing treasure in a barricated chamber with little disguise, and hide the further shaft. But the ancient Egyptians tried that, and both old tomb thieves and modern archeologists went on to find the real tombs. And any treasure is an invitation to find more.
I think there should be a solid barrier behind camouflage, then a backfilled vertical shaft. The real horizontal shaft can be carefully hidden behind the top of the vertical shaft (by "carefully" I mean modern tech used to drop a solid block across shaft and the seams melted and aged to make the wall seem to be virgin mountain rock -- again, old tricks: behind this barrier we can put as many modern physical barriers as we want, as anyone going past the deceptions will always think there is more). The vertical shaft is a time waster which will make many explorers give up before reaching the bottom. At the bottom of the shaft leave broken mining tools, indications of some routine exploration, and a crushed body or two. Success will only prove to be a waste of time, delaying further exploration for perhaps a generation or two while the story of failure lasts.
Large scale: We could use an underground nuclear explosion to make a large cavern (or maybe grotto is the right word, as it is man-made) across the shaft. Then there's both a large pit as a trap, and there is no shaft to follow until climbers explore the far side. But in additional to possible damage to the storage area, a cavern with characteristics different than other caves would attract attention.
We could try talking to miners by leaving broken mining tools in front of the barrier, but youngsters think they can do better than their ancestors.
There is one more thing: A few hundred feet in from the entrances, behind all the deceptions and barriers, put two chambers. Cover the walls with graphic warnings, modern scientific warnings, gold-leaf ionization detector. This is the last chance room -- we already know we can't stop them physically so we hope they're archeologists and figure out the warnings. The word of this is supposed to get out, so if they encounter its twin in the other shaft on the other side of the mountain they'll keep people away for a few generations. The chamber beyond the last warning chamber has a nuclear bomb with a simple mechanical trigger -- it explodes when grabbed. This will either show advanced people exactly what type of problem exists (they defuse it and find it has radioactive material or read the warnings), or detonates and reseals the shafts, or if it is no longer functional but not enough time has passed then its radioactivity poisons the team and warns others of the effects of going further.
There is a very good reason why XP is needed: The company wants to run their proprietary Windows-only document handling software on it.
Why they haven't put their document handling software on Linux is a different issue. Their engineering staff is certainly acquainted with Linux, as we can be sure several of them are already using it at home.
4th quarter is only about 6 months from now. That is not a long time in manufacturing and transport time.
A competitor could see that idea today, create an engineering drawing in less than a week...then order standard parts and rearrange an assembly area while waiting for the custom plastic and metal parts. If all goes well and parts have been ordered at priority rates...it's going to take a month before manufacturing begins. Then you've got less than 5 months to make enough stock, and if you're not shipping by air you allow some time for transport also.
A more reasonable schedule requires creation of a prototype, rather than having a production mold cut from the first engineering drawing. With the prototype you check clearances, measure stresses, and ensure the design can be manufactured easily (ie, avoid requiring one person hold an LCD panel while another connects short cables, then tucks cables around support posts while closing the case). The prototype time is measured in weeks -- at least two weeks.
Of course, if you don't have suitable circuitry you'll also get to design PC boards and get those manufactured. It's just a bit unlikely that you already have circuitry for a dual-headed laptop.
Yes, he had fun with details. I won't give away the punch line of the story involving "we have the fastest missile with the most powerful explosive and an electronic armor piercer". It's all perfectly sound physics, the only fiction needed was the "perfect capacitator" material.
That reminds me of the silly situation in Venus Equilateral where a guy was making blocks of stable unknown elements with atomic numbers of several hundred. He was stacking them on top of each other...until several exploded. The boss pointed out that the properties were not measured, and there are several combinations of known elements which react violently.
(How were they casually making unknown elements? Spinning the dials on a matter duplicator. "Venus Equilateral" is a set of space stories based on vacuum tube technology, and it's very hacked tech. Very good hacking.)
Slashdot Mirror
Having the government sell software made more sense when computers were big expensive things and any development project required formal approval and a big budget. Most businesses are small businesses, and they create an amazing variety of services and items. It makes more sense to just publish the results for public use (just as the research results should be)...and let the government get more income from increased wealth (wealth is not a zero-sum game).
Sure, a big company might not have to pay $25,000 when they can get it free. But 250 people or small companies may examine the free code and create a wider variety of things and even more wealth. If only 25 people create $5,000 each in additional income, the government already gained more in taxes. (That's easy to exceed; I'm likely to create $5,000 in income just from an hour a day in my basement this year, and a serious profit activity creates much more)
Lycos...and CMU uses Google for their site search. Good to see they're avoiding NIH problems.
The U.S. Constitution says patents are for a limited time, and specifically mentions that this is for the benefit of science. Your objection was dealt with if you are in the USA.
Unless, of course, you're referring to trademarks and copyrights and are now restricted by the Mickey Mouse extensions to those protections.
I suppose this also means one should bring a handheld computer with a spectrogram program to a concert...
Their paper is online, a link is in another comment. They did not just time two earthquakes, they listened on at least six seismographs to the supersonic rumble of the object pushing through the magma. Once they found events whose time fit the expected pattern they studied the wave patterns and found they were what is expected for something moving in a long line, not an earthquake at a single point. They did find the data at one Australian station could also fit an earthquake at an unlikely spot, but with less confidence than for a linear event.
Oops. Now that the link to the entire paper has been found, I see that it was indeed the supersonic shock wave which was used for detection. My seismographic tech knowledge is out of date.
But if little enough time has passed that the worst waste and the nuclear bomb are still dangerous, probably that advanced civilization is related to ours, and we should have passed the warnings on to them. All that would take is wood signs on the surface which are periodically updated to the current popular languages. (why wood? so they will be destroyed in a few years if abandoned)
Victorian-age scientists might interpret everything as a temple to a death god -- although they should notice a progression from primitive representations to advanced messages, and recognize more science as they translate more. Primitives might be temporarily scared away by warning images and boobytraps, but by the time the "last chance" area is reached all that has failed.
Don't call your congressman. Call your cryptozoologist and ask him to breed the unexplained fish in his zoo so as to decrease the ratio of explosive unexplained fish to nonexplosive types down from 3:1. (or as a percentage: 75% explosive)
The odds of hitting NY or LA are slim. Our largest cities use a miniscule fraction of the planet's surface area. Even less if you are referring to the few blocks of downtown which has tall buildings. Even less if you're considering the nonvertical passages, where there are very few buildings taller than 20 stories so there's a lot of empty air between the buildings -- and that bottom 200 feet that is full of concrete is really small when compared to the cross section of the Earth (although you should be comparing the surface area of the Earth to the surface area of a cylinder 200 feet tall and as large around as the downtown area).
In downtown, a building falling down or getting a hole punched through it would attract attention -- unless a collapse was diagnosed as structural failure and nobody happened to be filming and saw a hole appeared near the top a second before the building fell.
Out in the suburbs, it's just another hot water heater explosion, gas explosion, tree being hit by lightning under a clear sky, or sinkhole collapsing under the street.
Particularly because it's likely that no more than one town has had an impact in all of recorded history so there hasn't been much chance to interpret the event properly.
Seismographs can detect the shock of broken rock, and can detect the echoes of that shock bouncing off underground formations. But they aren't designed to hear the cone-shaped shock wave produced by something moving through molten rock at supersonic speeds. Much as a microphone above a stage can clearly hear an arrow hitting the stage floor, but has difficulty hearing the arrow flying through the air...unless it happens to be near the microphone.
I anticipate that scientists who get interested in such events will design different instruments to detect the passage shock. I wonder if those will also hear any of the mantle convection currents.
Also, these events intersected the volume of the Earth. Neither surface area nor cross section. As we don't care much about damage done inside the Earth we are not particularly concerned with the chance of a certain cubic centimeter being hit (such as the exact center). So the chance of the entire surface area of the Earth being hit, at any angle, is a reasonable approximation.
We also don't particularly care about the damage done inside a person, as any impact can be considered significant, so use the surface area of a person and calculate the ratio between impacts per Earth surface area to impacts per person surface area.
As surface area increases fractally with decreasing scale of measurement, the surface area of a circle and the surface area of a cylinder are suitable.
Do not cover the Earth with the additional volume of a person and try to calculate based on that, unless you really care about the chance of either you or the Earth being hit.
Now go back the the back of your envelope and continue the exercise.
- A primitive group which can devote enough effort to scrape through all the deceptions and barriers is most likely to cause damage by extracting and scattering the radioactive waste. Killing those who would be exploring the protected-only-by-a-locked-door chamber after the last chance warning will likely remove some leaders. Undoing all the effort by collapsing a lot of mountain in the way and/or making a hole to cross will make new physical and psychological barriers. The legend should keep generations away. More time gained.
- A somewhat scientific group, such as of the Victorian age, would consider the "last chance" room's display to be significant and should spend time studying it. Unfortunately, there might also be explorer/haul-to-museum types who would tinker with the bomb before study was complete. Fortunately, this is also the group which would record whatever happens and future actions would be based upon either scientific knowledge or on a historical account of a severely hazardous event. If the storage area is reached, either scientists will immediately detect radiation or explorers will study the first container to figure out what deserved so much protection. Scientists will do it safely. Explorers may remove low-level waste but if high-level waste is still dangerous they'll quickly recognize the relationship between radiation sickness and the waste. Either way, the area will again be treated carefully and the waste can sit there safely for a longer time.
- A group which is as advanced as we are would either figure out the warnings in the "last chance" room, recognize and disarm the weapon, or..if they figure out the dangers after detonation they'll also have copies of the "last chance" information and recognize how the area has to be treated. If they don't treat the waste to eliminate the problem, they'll seal it back up in a way similar to how we did.
There also is a very relevant characteristic of using a nuclear weapon: time. If the radioactivity of the bomb has faded enough that it no longer is dangerous (either as a bomb or a radiation pulse generator), then also enough time has elapsed that the waste is no longer very dangerous. The bomb components obviously would be larger than for a device which only has to be a strategic weapon, so the radioactive components are functional for a longer time.Then the problem becomes those "basic underground markings". The reports point out that solid barriers can mean "this barrier is protecting treasure". If there are no barriers, future archeologists or curious miners might remove the fill, thinking that the shaft was abandoned for other reasons. (Yes, I know the facility will be much larger than a single 7-foot shaft, and that makes it even more interesting to study)
Remember, Oak Island, with a barricaded and boobytrapped shaft still attracts attention from treasure hunters after repeated failures over two hundred years.
Construction workers routinely cut through reinforced concrete. Tunnels are cut through granite. Barriers will only stop someone with wooden tools, and will only slow down hundreds of slaves eroding it with stone tools. Solid metal can be worn away by building an iron-age smelter against it and melting the surface. Modern welding or water/plasma/laser cutters are even faster.
Deception: We could try placing treasure in a barricated chamber with little disguise, and hide the further shaft. But the ancient Egyptians tried that, and both old tomb thieves and modern archeologists went on to find the real tombs. And any treasure is an invitation to find more.
I think there should be a solid barrier behind camouflage, then a backfilled vertical shaft. The real horizontal shaft can be carefully hidden behind the top of the vertical shaft (by "carefully" I mean modern tech used to drop a solid block across shaft and the seams melted and aged to make the wall seem to be virgin mountain rock -- again, old tricks: behind this barrier we can put as many modern physical barriers as we want, as anyone going past the deceptions will always think there is more). The vertical shaft is a time waster which will make many explorers give up before reaching the bottom. At the bottom of the shaft leave broken mining tools, indications of some routine exploration, and a crushed body or two. Success will only prove to be a waste of time, delaying further exploration for perhaps a generation or two while the story of failure lasts.
Large scale: We could use an underground nuclear explosion to make a large cavern (or maybe grotto is the right word, as it is man-made) across the shaft. Then there's both a large pit as a trap, and there is no shaft to follow until climbers explore the far side. But in additional to possible damage to the storage area, a cavern with characteristics different than other caves would attract attention.
We could try talking to miners by leaving broken mining tools in front of the barrier, but youngsters think they can do better than their ancestors.
There is one more thing: A few hundred feet in from the entrances, behind all the deceptions and barriers, put two chambers. Cover the walls with graphic warnings, modern scientific warnings, gold-leaf ionization detector. This is the last chance room -- we already know we can't stop them physically so we hope they're archeologists and figure out the warnings. The word of this is supposed to get out, so if they encounter its twin in the other shaft on the other side of the mountain they'll keep people away for a few generations. The chamber beyond the last warning chamber has a nuclear bomb with a simple mechanical trigger -- it explodes when grabbed. This will either show advanced people exactly what type of problem exists (they defuse it and find it has radioactive material or read the warnings), or detonates and reseals the shafts, or if it is no longer functional but not enough time has passed then its radioactivity poisons the team and warns others of the effects of going further.
Well, at least I glanced at that and wondered what Boskone was launching... Oh, Bookscan.
Exactly what I was thinking. If you don't have enough LAN traffic to keep the lights on, stream Usenet.
:-)
Just say to yourself "There is no echo" until you believe it.
You forgot:
rm $(whereis echo)
Why they haven't put their document handling software on Linux is a different issue. Their engineering staff is certainly acquainted with Linux, as we can be sure several of them are already using it at home.
A competitor could see that idea today, create an engineering drawing in less than a week...then order standard parts and rearrange an assembly area while waiting for the custom plastic and metal parts. If all goes well and parts have been ordered at priority rates...it's going to take a month before manufacturing begins. Then you've got less than 5 months to make enough stock, and if you're not shipping by air you allow some time for transport also.
A more reasonable schedule requires creation of a prototype, rather than having a production mold cut from the first engineering drawing. With the prototype you check clearances, measure stresses, and ensure the design can be manufactured easily (ie, avoid requiring one person hold an LCD panel while another connects short cables, then tucks cables around support posts while closing the case). The prototype time is measured in weeks -- at least two weeks.
Of course, if you don't have suitable circuitry you'll also get to design PC boards and get those manufactured. It's just a bit unlikely that you already have circuitry for a dual-headed laptop.
You certainly can. I wouldn't, but you can go ahead and do what you want with yours.
Yes, he had fun with details. I won't give away the punch line of the story involving "we have the fastest missile with the most powerful explosive and an electronic armor piercer". It's all perfectly sound physics, the only fiction needed was the "perfect capacitator" material.
Yes. See the definition of "Monopoly".
How much is the list price of MS Office now? (I wouldn't know, I bought Applixware...)
(How were they casually making unknown elements? Spinning the dials on a matter duplicator. "Venus Equilateral" is a set of space stories based on vacuum tube technology, and it's very hacked tech. Very good hacking.)
Of course, the really cool way to build your transparent periodic table is with transparent aluminum.
A Nobel prize to the first person that makes the actual element teleport in when the appropriate link is clicked.