Of course those are just the two major non "white man" countries with nuclear weapons. Other countries have nuclear power, but not weapons. Brazil and Taiwan to name two.
And Brazil had a nuclear weapons program and gave it up. Then there's Pakistan, decidedly non white... and North Korea too.
So the OP is decidedly ignorant of the nuclear geography of the world, or just ignorant period.
If you think the Shuttle is the only booster ever built or even flying that had political and business decisions embedded in it's design - I have some nice waterfront property and a nice bridge to sell you. Doubly so since or the 'launchers' you link to - one (the X37B) is a payload, and another (the Minotaur) is a Peacekeeper missile... (and neither are commercially available.)
The problem is - current generation spy birds have far more payload capacity (I.E. higher resolution sensors) than the X-37B *and* the ability to change orbital inclination. So, the X-37B doesn't seem to have any advantage there. Not to mention that the 37B is fairly easily trackable if you have a mind to - so any advantage of surprise would be short lived. (And to some extent predictable, it's hard to change your orbit enough to radically change your observation windows.)
One of the big "it's not as logical as you'd think" headslappers of the space age is that the cost of launch dwarfs the cost of hardware.
Well, no. Except for fairly simple payloads, and payloads like comsats that are built more-or-less on an assembly line basis, the cost of hardware is generally on par with or dwarfs the cost of launches. That's one of the big reasons there's been no particular reason to drive down launch costs. (The extraordinarily low demand being another.)
The space shuttle made a whole lot of sense with the idea of repairing satellites in space until you realized that with launch costs what they were, it was cheaper to sent up a new sat than fix an old one.
Well, no, not entirely. The idea was that you economize on your expensive hardware by repairing it with cheap launches - then two things happened that broke that paradigm.
First, the Shuttle turned out to be nowhere as cheap as it was thought it might be. Partly because they built it and they didn't come, partly because they couldn't reach the planned flight rates. (Even when they offered subsidized launches, they didn't come.) The latter was/is particularly ruinous because the bulk of the Shuttle programs costs are fixed costs which are incurred regardless of how many times it flies, meaning they were amortized over fewer flights.
Second, the digital revolution happened. Technology, and hence capacity and performance, was/is evolving at such a rate that it made less and less economic sense to repair/refurbish existing satellites on orbit. (And the decreasing size, weight, and electrical demand of the electronics meant it was easier to provide redundancy and space capacity.)
The Hubble remains a very special case and I'm sure some people could make a case that it would have been cheaper to build and launch a series of Hubbles with incremental improvements on the usual $100 million a launch expendable vehicles than service it with $500 million a launch shuttles.
The problem with that case is that it relies on a whole raft of hidden and questionable assumptions. Like finding a $100 million launcher to launch it on. (There isn't one.) Like relying on Congress to steadily fund a stream of replacements when the old one(s) were still working. (And Congress isn't really too unusual in this respect, it's almost always easier to get money to keep something running than it is to start something new.) Etc... etc...
No, I'm not suggesting that. I'm suggesting the OP is an idiot for assuming that Sony and Microsoft's model was the only one. Learn to read and think you blithering idiot.
Nope. But that's because I pay attention to what I download, just like I pay attention to how much water I use, how much electricity I use, etc... etc... It's called being an adult and being responsible for your own actions.
Possibly tribalism is the most destructive influence in Africa: everybody seems to think that different rules apply to fellow-tribesmen than apply to other tribes. In the West, we have managed largely to get our national boundaries to match our tribal ones - or vice versa. Where this is not true - e.g. former Yugoslavia - problems arise.
Yeah - England, France, Italy, Germany... All those formerly tribal nations mired in inter-tribal rivalry.
Oh, wait.
Not to mention two of those nations were seperate 'tribes' within the last century and a half... So, no. National boundaries in the West don't even remotely align with tribal boundaries, nor does not being so aligned automagically lead to problems.
I can read, I also know the difference between a primary definition and a secondary one - especially when the secondary one is unusual usage in the sense you used it. Once again, as in the previous message, you aren't even as remotely as smart as you think you are. You're an idiot who thinks tossing around unfounded assumptions and big words makes you look smart... when the actual effect is quite the opposite.
What in his bibliography entitles him to earn royalties from someone else's bibliography?
I see nothing indicating he's collecting anyone else's royalties. Thus, that represents an assumption or opinion on your part, not a fact. Learn to tell the difference.
If I'm looking for apples, I type 'apples' into the search box - not 'oranges'. Regardless, Google categorizes sites by what they do - not by their names. (If you're paying attention, you'll not Amazon and Overstock appear above Google - simply by typing 'shopping'.)
I'm pretty sure any company would have turned towards that in the end. I think the problem will be proving it. Since google know pretty much how their ranking algorithm works - I'm pretty sure they can design a site which always turns up top - without needing to 'cheat'.
That has to be one of the oddest definition of 'not cheating' I've ever heard. Using insider information is, almost universally, regarded as unfair competition if not cheating.
I'm not sure who's side I'm on this time. I mean, it'd be stupid if (say) you google something on Bing and you don't get the Microsoft solution first. I think it'd be weird if you look up "Shopping" and google shopping is at the bottom.
I'd find it weird if 'Google Shopping' came out anywhere in the top ten. I'd expect the big chains and online sites to come in well ahead of any Google offering, because that's what I see linked to and discussed online. Like so many other of Google's offerings, their shopping function is a distant third at best - yet another bastard stepchild largely ignored by parent and society both.
And actually going and searching on 'shopping', I find the results pretty close to what I'd expect: A company I've never heard of on top, Amazon and Overstock in second and third - and Google in sixth.
And who gets to decide that, the competition or a neutral party?
A few billion neutral third parties have said that they like Google's appraisal just fine.
Except - there aren't a few billion neutral third parties. There's a few billion people swayed by the opinions of their acquaintances, by endless links to Google searches, etc... etc... Marketing is a powerful tool, doubly so when it's grassroots and the company being marketed maintains such a populist image that many people literally believe they can do no wrong and will indulge in whatever mental gyrations required to maintain that belief. When you have millions of defenders with that mindset - you really have always been at war with Eastasia.
If their results weren't so in line with what people want and expect, users would have gone with a different search engine.
The same could be said of Microsoft Windows, McDonald's hamburgers, and Wal-Mart's Chinese imports. (And don't forget the 'banks too big to fail either'. Lot's of people like them just fine too.)
Reiterating - this is a mostly analog product. It does not already have or need an MCU.
That's not reiterating, as that wasn't in your original message. It's adding additional details after the fact. Details that are utterly irrelevant to the design principles I enumerated in my message. This, along with the balance of your reply, shows you can't tell the difference between design principles and blind dogma
the 555 is universal. (Or, at least, it USED to be.)
I would expect an intelligent consultant to know whether or not it CURRENTLY is universal - that it used to be is utterly irrelevant. Again, you advocate blind dogma over knowledge.
I'm sure glad I no longer hire consultants - I encountered too many just like you.
It reminds me of a discussion at the Electronics firm I am consulting for. They needed to add a 1/2 second delay to the startup of a device in a new product. I suggested they add a 555 timer circuit. They looked at me like I had two heads. Their solution was to throw a microcontroller into the product. Come on, guys! It can be done with a 555, a cap, and two resistors. It's crash-proof, too. Whatever happened to K.I.S.S?
K.I.S.S. operates on many levels. Maybe they already use the microcontroller elsewhere, so it makes sense to use components already on hand. Maybe the microcontroller is compatible with the power available inside the device and the 555 isn't. Maybe it's simpler for their assembly machines to handle the microcontroller rather than a 555 and it's associated components...
Without more details. it's hard to judge - but K.I.S.S. is a principle to be applied intelligently within the range of constraints on the design, not a mindless bromide to be followed as dogma.
Yes, and it varies more-or-less directly with usage.
Charging an electric car is added revenue.
Offset by the added costs of maintenance.
If the added revenue isn't greater than the variable cost (wear and tear plus fuel more or less) then the electric company indeed has a big problem.
No fucking duh. And roughly completely fucking irrelevant to my point. (The sound you heard was it whooshing over your head.)
Variable time-of-day pricing relies on shifting loads (running the drier, the washer, the dishwasher as well as commercial users) from day to night to use generators that would otherwise be shut down.
No fucking duh. Got any other gems of wisdom Captain Obvious?
The problem is that transformers that distribute power from the electrical grid to homes are often designed to handle less than about 12,000 watts
often designed to handle 12,000 watts? Hogwash. That's 50 amp service (in North America, where homes are almost always supplied at 240VAC). Most new homes in North America receives at minimum 200 amp service. Even my rural 1956 rancher has 70 amp service.
Their numbers for the transformer are off, but the fact is the grid is not designed around every house in an given load area/neighborhood drawing anything more than a fraction of it's peak load at the same time. The system is designed around the average maximum load with some overcapacity built in to handle spikes. The assumption is that heavy loads (like the fans in HVAC systems) will cycle on-and-off randomly (from the POV of the distribution system) - and that's not much of an assumption, being on par with 'the sun will rise in the East and set in the West', because that's how reality works.
We had an object lesson in that right here on the Kitsap Peninusula just last week. A combination wind/snow storm with subfreezing temperatures took out huge chunks of the local grid. (At it's height, almost a third of the county's population.) Bringing power back was slowed down because when they restored power (downed lines or blown transformers), they were blowing transformers because all the houses downstream had their heat, refrigerators, etc... come on all at once. So they had to go downstream of the fault, open breakers, restore power, and then close the breakers to bring the system back online in small chunks. Even so, they would often run dangerously close to capacity (causing brownouts) for hours as heaters ran full blast trying to heat the houses back up.
Most charging will be done at night, when electricity use (home and business) is otherwise low.
And when the demand is low, plants are shut down (extending their service life and reducing the amount of maintenance required). If demand goes up, then service life is expended faster and more in depth and frequent maintenance is required.
Also, consider that most charging is likely to take place at night. That will have a huge leveling effect on the grid.
>.< I wish this misconception would die in a fire. I'm tired of debunking it every time somebody brings it up.
The grid is already designed with leveling in mind. That's why they have peak and base load plants - the grid is already designed around high loads during the day and much lesser loads at night. (And selling what ever leftover power there is at night to existing customers.)
Electric cars throw this design for a loop - because they add demand when there previously was none or much, much less. So the effect will be the opposite of what you think - base load plants will have to be run at higher capacity at night. Systems running near the edge of capacity might have to import power at night (or cease exporting power at night), or run load following or peaking plants during hours they previously were shut down.
Rather than going into panic mode the electric utilities should just work with auto-makers to build timers into their chargers (maybe give the car a charge up to 25-50% if it is really low right away, and then defer the rest of the charge until the middle of the night, or have a switch to select the charging mode). They should also educate electric car owners on rate plans that charge less for power consumed at night.
Really, I don't see how "adding demand to a grid not designed for it is not a positive thing" is so freaking hard for people to understand.
The electric industry is going into a panic mode because additional loads on a system not designed for it cause problems. They're going into a panic mode because eco-nuts and NIMBY's have blocked, and will continue to block, the building of additional power plants and distribution lines. They're going into panic mode because state regulation boards, swayed by public insistence that rates stay rock bottom, have kept rates artificially low and blocked bond issues for those few upgrades that have made it past the eco-nuts and NIMBY's.
As with so much, it's popular to blame the utilities, the corporations, and the goverment - but in reality, we have met the cause of the problem... and it's us.
We've had spy satellites with that capability for over thirty years - and much better ones than this spaceplane can ever be, since they have payloads considerably larger. (Think orders of magnitude.)
Do you mean the Space Shuttle? In case you don't, what are you talking about? (serious question, I'd like to know what I missed.)
Serious answer: You've missed pretty much the entire history of US spy sat development.
Slashdot Mirror
And Brazil had a nuclear weapons program and gave it up. Then there's Pakistan, decidedly non white... and North Korea too.
So the OP is decidedly ignorant of the nuclear geography of the world, or just ignorant period.
If you think the Shuttle is the only booster ever built or even flying that had political and business decisions embedded in it's design - I have some nice waterfront property and a nice bridge to sell you. Doubly so since or the 'launchers' you link to - one (the X37B) is a payload, and another (the Minotaur) is a Peacekeeper missile... (and neither are commercially available.)
The problem is - current generation spy birds have far more payload capacity (I.E. higher resolution sensors) than the X-37B *and* the ability to change orbital inclination. So, the X-37B doesn't seem to have any advantage there. Not to mention that the 37B is fairly easily trackable if you have a mind to - so any advantage of surprise would be short lived. (And to some extent predictable, it's hard to change your orbit enough to radically change your observation windows.)
Well, no. Except for fairly simple payloads, and payloads like comsats that are built more-or-less on an assembly line basis, the cost of hardware is generally on par with or dwarfs the cost of launches. That's one of the big reasons there's been no particular reason to drive down launch costs. (The extraordinarily low demand being another.)
Well, no, not entirely. The idea was that you economize on your expensive hardware by repairing it with cheap launches - then two things happened that broke that paradigm.
First, the Shuttle turned out to be nowhere as cheap as it was thought it might be. Partly because they built it and they didn't come, partly because they couldn't reach the planned flight rates. (Even when they offered subsidized launches, they didn't come.) The latter was/is particularly ruinous because the bulk of the Shuttle programs costs are fixed costs which are incurred regardless of how many times it flies, meaning they were amortized over fewer flights.
Second, the digital revolution happened. Technology, and hence capacity and performance, was/is evolving at such a rate that it made less and less economic sense to repair/refurbish existing satellites on orbit. (And the decreasing size, weight, and electrical demand of the electronics meant it was easier to provide redundancy and space capacity.)
The problem with that case is that it relies on a whole raft of hidden and questionable assumptions. Like finding a $100 million launcher to launch it on. (There isn't one.) Like relying on Congress to steadily fund a stream of replacements when the old one(s) were still working. (And Congress isn't really too unusual in this respect, it's almost always easier to get money to keep something running than it is to start something new.) Etc... etc...
No, I'm not suggesting that. I'm suggesting the OP is an idiot for assuming that Sony and Microsoft's model was the only one. Learn to read and think you blithering idiot.
I don't know about your planet, but here on Earth GM sells a lot more than just Volts.
Nope. But that's because I pay attention to what I download, just like I pay attention to how much water I use, how much electricity I use, etc... etc... It's called being an adult and being responsible for your own actions.
I was thinking the same thing - the GP sounds like he's advancing yet another variant of the [racist] "white mans burden".
Yeah - England, France, Italy, Germany... All those formerly tribal nations mired in inter-tribal rivalry.
Oh, wait.
Not to mention two of those nations were seperate 'tribes' within the last century and a half... So, no. National boundaries in the West don't even remotely align with tribal boundaries, nor does not being so aligned automagically lead to problems.
I can read, I also know the difference between a primary definition and a secondary one - especially when the secondary one is unusual usage in the sense you used it. Once again, as in the previous message, you aren't even as remotely as smart as you think you are. You're an idiot who thinks tossing around unfounded assumptions and big words makes you look smart... when the actual effect is quite the opposite.
I see nothing indicating he's collecting anyone else's royalties. Thus, that represents an assumption or opinion on your part, not a fact. Learn to tell the difference.
Mr Bear's Bibliography.
Non-plussed - A state of perplexity, confusion, or bewilderment.
What, actually getting out and learning your environment is too complex for you?
I suspect that has more to do with you acting like a thief than anything else - I'm routinely in that aisle and it's almost always empty.
If I'm looking for apples, I type 'apples' into the search box - not 'oranges'. Regardless, Google categorizes sites by what they do - not by their names. (If you're paying attention, you'll not Amazon and Overstock appear above Google - simply by typing 'shopping'.)
Not so different from Google...
That has to be one of the oddest definition of 'not cheating' I've ever heard. Using insider information is, almost universally, regarded as unfair competition if not cheating.
I'd find it weird if 'Google Shopping' came out anywhere in the top ten. I'd expect the big chains and online sites to come in well ahead of any Google offering, because that's what I see linked to and discussed online. Like so many other of Google's offerings, their shopping function is a distant third at best - yet another bastard stepchild largely ignored by parent and society both.
And actually going and searching on 'shopping', I find the results pretty close to what I'd expect: A company I've never heard of on top, Amazon and Overstock in second and third - and Google in sixth.
Except - there aren't a few billion neutral third parties. There's a few billion people swayed by the opinions of their acquaintances, by endless links to Google searches, etc... etc... Marketing is a powerful tool, doubly so when it's grassroots and the company being marketed maintains such a populist image that many people literally believe they can do no wrong and will indulge in whatever mental gyrations required to maintain that belief. When you have millions of defenders with that mindset - you really have always been at war with Eastasia.
The same could be said of Microsoft Windows, McDonald's hamburgers, and Wal-Mart's Chinese imports. (And don't forget the 'banks too big to fail either'. Lot's of people like them just fine too.)
That's not reiterating, as that wasn't in your original message. It's adding additional details after the fact. Details that are utterly irrelevant to the design principles I enumerated in my message. This, along with the balance of your reply, shows you can't tell the difference between design principles and blind dogma
I would expect an intelligent consultant to know whether or not it CURRENTLY is universal - that it used to be is utterly irrelevant. Again, you advocate blind dogma over knowledge.
I'm sure glad I no longer hire consultants - I encountered too many just like you.
K.I.S.S. operates on many levels. Maybe they already use the microcontroller elsewhere, so it makes sense to use components already on hand. Maybe the microcontroller is compatible with the power available inside the device and the 555 isn't. Maybe it's simpler for their assembly machines to handle the microcontroller rather than a 555 and it's associated components...
Without more details. it's hard to judge - but K.I.S.S. is a principle to be applied intelligently within the range of constraints on the design, not a mindless bromide to be followed as dogma.
Yes, and it varies more-or-less directly with usage.
Offset by the added costs of maintenance.
No fucking duh. And roughly completely fucking irrelevant to my point. (The sound you heard was it whooshing over your head.)
No fucking duh. Got any other gems of wisdom Captain Obvious?
Their numbers for the transformer are off, but the fact is the grid is not designed around every house in an given load area/neighborhood drawing anything more than a fraction of it's peak load at the same time. The system is designed around the average maximum load with some overcapacity built in to handle spikes. The assumption is that heavy loads (like the fans in HVAC systems) will cycle on-and-off randomly (from the POV of the distribution system) - and that's not much of an assumption, being on par with 'the sun will rise in the East and set in the West', because that's how reality works.
We had an object lesson in that right here on the Kitsap Peninusula just last week. A combination wind/snow storm with subfreezing temperatures took out huge chunks of the local grid. (At it's height, almost a third of the county's population.) Bringing power back was slowed down because when they restored power (downed lines or blown transformers), they were blowing transformers because all the houses downstream had their heat, refrigerators, etc... come on all at once. So they had to go downstream of the fault, open breakers, restore power, and then close the breakers to bring the system back online in small chunks. Even so, they would often run dangerously close to capacity (causing brownouts) for hours as heaters ran full blast trying to heat the houses back up.
And when the demand is low, plants are shut down (extending their service life and reducing the amount of maintenance required). If demand goes up, then service life is expended faster and more in depth and frequent maintenance is required.
TANSTAAFL.
>.< I wish this misconception would die in a fire. I'm tired of debunking it every time somebody brings it up.
The grid is already designed with leveling in mind. That's why they have peak and base load plants - the grid is already designed around high loads during the day and much lesser loads at night. (And selling what ever leftover power there is at night to existing customers.)
Electric cars throw this design for a loop - because they add demand when there previously was none or much, much less. So the effect will be the opposite of what you think - base load plants will have to be run at higher capacity at night. Systems running near the edge of capacity might have to import power at night (or cease exporting power at night), or run load following or peaking plants during hours they previously were shut down.
Really, I don't see how "adding demand to a grid not designed for it is not a positive thing" is so freaking hard for people to understand.
The electric industry is going into a panic mode because additional loads on a system not designed for it cause problems. They're going into a panic mode because eco-nuts and NIMBY's have blocked, and will continue to block, the building of additional power plants and distribution lines. They're going into panic mode because state regulation boards, swayed by public insistence that rates stay rock bottom, have kept rates artificially low and blocked bond issues for those few upgrades that have made it past the eco-nuts and NIMBY's.
As with so much, it's popular to blame the utilities, the corporations, and the goverment - but in reality, we have met the cause of the problem... and it's us.
Serious answer: You've missed pretty much the entire history of US spy sat development.