I have to say that the runner-up is so much better it hurts. The problem with slashdot is all the noise. The collapseable sections would be a much welcome improvement. Don't see why they didn't go with the runner up.
Indeed - even without the collapsible sections the runner up is (graphically) vastly superior, a design that will stand up for years as it's based on classical principles. (Much like the current Slashdot design.)
OTOH - the winner's styling already looks like what it is, sooo 2005. In particular, the mix of squared and rounded corners is *very* poorly done - they draw the eye all over hell and back as well as clashing with each other due to the misguided choice to echo them (badly) in different colors and orientations in the LH and RH columns.
Re: astroturfing and other methods of "poisoning the 'well".
Ideally you would want to end up with a situation like Wikipedia where you have such a large number of contributors (experts) that it cancels out all the garbge like you've mentioned. Whether or not that is feasible in a system like this remains to be seen I guess.
It could be argued that Wikipedia has failed to demonstrate the feasibility of this concept.
There are at present only two methods for sifting uranium atoms, or isotopes, to create the right mix.
[TFA refers to the two most common methods; gaseous diffusion and centrifuges.]
There is a third method that has been used on an industrial scale, which is to essentially build a huge mass spectrometer.
There's also a fourth method - thermal diffusion. In this method you have two concentric pipes, you run coolant through the inner pipe, and heat the outside of the outer pipe, and pipe uranium hexaflouride gas between them. This method was used by the Manhattan Engineering District[1] and was studied by the Japanese (during WWII) as part of their (miniscule) weapons program. The only good thing about thermal diffusion is that it's only slightly less murderously inefficient than electromagnetic seperation. (the 'giant mass spectrometers' of the OP, properly called 'Calutrons'.)
Thermal diffusion was only pursued because the Navy had a boiler test and development facility that could provide the massive volume of steam needed as a heat source. It's small capacity limited it's role to providing enriched 'hex' to the Calutrons. (Using a more enriched feedstock moved them from hideously murderously inefficient to merely murderously inefficient.) Like the calutrons, the thermal diffusion plant was dismantled as soon as enough capacity from the gaseous diffusion (K-25) plant was available.
Richard Rhode's The making of the Atomic Bomb discusses the various enrichment methods available in WWII in great detail.
Re:Mars Exploration Rovers and the future
on
Mars Rover Upgraded
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The current generation of rovers have shown themselves to be reliable and very flexible. They've brought back a view of Mars that far surpasses anything we've seen before. It's really disappointing, therefore, that NASA is throwing away all of the knowledge used to make these missions a success. Delivery of a robot to Mars requires a successful launch, accurate navigation, and, of course, a good landing. To say nothing of the design of the rovers themselves. All of this must be carefully worked out in advance.
But NASA has decided instead to throw away all of that and spend money to develop a new, bigger probe, the Mars Science Labratory.
The current Rover's can only reach about 2% of the Martian surface, and are extremely lucky to last more than a few months - so we should stick with them? That's insane.
Here in the real world, the Mars Science Laboratory builds on the experience gained from the two MER rovers, in the same way that the MER rovers built on Pathfinder, which built on decades of research and development. Nothing is 'thrown away'.
It's a shame that the limited science money NASA gets isn't being spent in the most efficient way possible on stuff that we know to will give excellent scientific data, but instead is used for these kinds of big budget employment makers.
Sure, they've given us excellent data - but there's more questions and more data needed. Questions the MER rovers can't answer and data they can't provide.
For a "casual" player, PP was actually more friendly, since you could hop on a Navy vessel and just play one of the station puzzles (sailing, carpentry, bilging, navigation) without having to talk to anyone. After a while, they started making the land-based head-to-head puzzles free only on certain days. And to run a store or own a ship, you had to have a badge purchased with dubloons (the harder currency). It was easier to buy it for dollars than grind away to get enough of the light currency to buy dubloons at auction. The whole thing ended up being no fun.
YPP! remains fun for the casual player - it's folks who think they should acess to the entire game without either grinding or paying who now find it no fun. (You also have the option of playing on a subscription ocean where, for a single payment a month, everything is available to you.)
I'd happily donate one by paying double, that should be enough. Charging triple seems like gauging, especially when there are plenty of impoverished kids IN THIS COUNTRY who could use a kick-ass $200 laptop. I'm one of them.
You have acess to a computer. You have your own freakin' domain. You aren't impoverished, or in need of 'kick-ass' laptop.
What you need is a kick in the ass for being so arrogant as to think yourself in any way as needy as the kids these laptops are destined for.
I really don't understand this. "We don't want to sell 'first-worlders' these laptops for $100." I sort of understand, if they're taking a loss. But why not sell them for $249*, and advertise that all profits go to subsidize further development and deployment of these laptops in their intended role?
It's vintage Negroponte - philoposphy uber alles. Real world considerations need not apply.
You are correct, you do see this in many fields of scientific research. An idea catches on, and just as quickly it fades away. In the 1930's two men invented what is called the "bathysphere", it was eventually made by GE (General Electric), the home appliance company. The two men were Barton and Beebe, they got to a depth of around 1,400 feet.
After that, in 1953, a Swiss explorer, Auguste Piccard, made a record shattering dive to almost 7 miles. This vessel, the Trieste, was sponsored by the U.S. Navy. After that they funding stopped citing it as a waste of money. Man has not since been back to that depth (AFAIK), making it strikingly similar to the space program and the Lunar projects. =/
I'm always astonished when people write arrant nonsense, close it with an 'AFAIK' - and then treat it as if it was fact. Does no one ask questions any more? Do they lack the curiosity and wit to even try and educate themselves?
Sound eerily like you not only don't have a clue, but lack the wit to use Google as well.
we get one (or a couple) good efforts going, finally start learning stuff... and then people drop it with the mentality of "all right, that's good enough."
Hasn't happened with with oceanography - or space. What has happened is that both have become common enough that it's no longer 'sexy'.
I'm sure there's a good supply of young people who would be very willing to do out on new oceanographic research trips...
Indeed there is - and there are new research trips made each and every year.
We really need to get back on this train. Oceanography wasn't really even around until relatively recent times. Even once it started catching on, it quickly died off. To date, one of our biggest contributions to oceanography and marine biology has been the H.M.S. Challenger in the 1870's, it's three year mission to explore strange... well, nevermind you get the picture. Sure we have made some large steps since then, but nothing that comes close.
How did this nonsense get modded insightful? Even a minute of googling on 'oceanography' and 'marine biology' shows them to be extremely active fields.
HMS Challenger's mission was a three year one - because it took that long to get from the UK to anywhere interesting in the Pacific, and back. Today, rather than sending a handful of scientists on a three year mission - thousands are flying or sailing across the globe on a daily basis.
Remember the game where a bunch of people would gather in a circle and then one person would whisper a phrase in the ear of the person next them, and then they'd repeat the phrase to then next person until it got all the way around the circle -- but, more often than not, completely changed from the original?
Especially if the source is attributed, I have no problem with block quoting the predecessor source.
I have no problems with attributed blockquotes - but the game of 'telephone' is really, really annoying.
All too often blogger 'a' blockquotes, and links to blogger 'b', who block quotes and links to blogger 'c'... And if you are lucky, 'c' links to the actual article. it's not unusual (for me) to get down to blogger 'e' or 'f' before I get the original article.
The problem is our GOVERNMENT DOESN'T WANT TO DO IT
No, the problem is that Jerry Pournelle, like a lot of Space Cadets, has this fixed idea in his head the somehow the US Goverment is responsible for making their dreams reality. The idea that commercial developments are generally funded by the market - and the lack of realistic profit opportunities, doesn't bother him one bit. Apollo, done by the goverment, provided him and his ilk with decades of masturbatory fantasies - and he and others like him now view it as their birthright to have their fantasies fueled at taxpayer expense.
However... Sojuz seems a lot more reliable to me...
You are right, Soyuz seems to be a lot safer.
Mostly it seems so because it's numerous failures and problems (with the exception of Soyuz 1 and 11) are little known outside of Russian space program. (During the Soviet era they told niether the US, nor their own people.) However an account of just the re-entry and landing problems makes for frightening reading - and leaves out the two launch accidents and multiple loss-of-mission accidents/incidents.
The next argument people make is usually the same one that you did, "Soyuz hasn't killed anyone... lately". Let's put that in perspective shall we? Between STS-26 (Return To Flight post Challenger) and STS-107 (the loss of Columbia) the Space Shuttle flew more flights than the Soyuz has in it's entire history.
Finally, we have the current Soyuz model, the TMA. It's flown eight missions to date, with accidents or serious incidents on four of those eight flights.
The moral? When you have a spacecraft with an ongoing history of problems - it's not a safe spacecraft, no matter whose flag is on the side, and even if it hasn't killed anyone 'lately'.
The European and Japanese can ship the parts for the ISS.
No, they can't.
They have no experience with automated rendezvous, and the payloads are designed to 'hang' in the Shuttle's cargo bay as opposed to 'sitting' on the payload ring of a conventional booster. (Not to mention they depend on the shuttle for power, cooling, communications, etc...)
One could develop an adapter to handle these problems - but such development would take years.
Ask those same college students if they are willing do sell their souls first to the Airforce and then play the gambling game of never getting picked and less then 1% would say yes. The problem is not that people are not interested, the problem is it too hard to get involved with the space program, only the best of the best of the military get to be astronauts.
Which fails to explain the half the astronaut corps which has no military background whatsoever.
I renember reading that back in the 70's, somebody got a bunch of companies together to try and buy an unused Atlas rocket from the government and form a private space program - NASA killed it.
An odd claim since private companies have been buying boosters since the 1960's - and launching them.
Do I even need to mention the cost and problems with the space shuttle, or the meter to feet conversion disaster of the mars mission, or the lenzing error on the hubble telescope.
For someone who is not a troll - you list a few problems, but not the many sucesses. (On top of which you repeat the urban legend that a conversion problem ended a Mars mission.)
The simple truth is that by being there, they make it so that nobody else in private enterprise wants to act.
Ah, yes - private enterprise, famous for performing expensive basic science research.
For chrissake, why did a private millionaire space tourists need to go to Russia?
For two reasons: 1) The Russians were desperate for cash, and 2) despite mistaken beliefs of many: it's never been in NASA's mission to give joyrides to private citizens.
"As for doing science, an astronaut can stop, look, say "ooh, what an interesting rock!" then walk over, pick it up, and examine it closely with a Mark I eyeball in, what, 30 seconds? It takes days if not weeks for a Mars rover to do the same thing."
Did I not already cover this argument? Robot missions are done for a tiny tiny fraction of the payload and cost of human missions. They have to conserve and go slow precisely because they are not given the funding, resources, or payload size that the human missions are.
Umm... No. Robot missions accomplish less than manned missions because robots are less capable than humans. Period. Take Spirit and Opportunity - no amount of payload or budget will make them go faster, because the technology simply doesn't exist to do so. (And a *huge* amount of money has been expended trying - with so little sucess that we have gone back to the 'try anything, anything - something might work' phase. See the DARPA Grand Challenge.)
"This really bears repeating: the viability of a successful space program -- public or private -- has nothing to do with technology; what we have now is totally adequate for the task and has been for at least the last 20 years."
It has everything to do with technology. Yes, what we have is adequate to get into space, but at an ENORMOUS COST that simply does not justify itself in any way shape or form.
Umm... No. The technology we have *now* is sufficient to send us into space at a fraction of the current costs.
"NASA is seeking proposals 'for creating and managing innovative activities, events, products, services, or other types of formal or informal education methods for the purpose of disseminating information nationally about NASA's projects and programs.'" Seriously, I have no idea what this sentence says.
It's simply English, believe it or not.
Translated for those too lazy to bother: NASA is seeking proposals for creating PR and educational presentations, events, etc... etc...
I think he'd have been very interested indeed in the maiden flight of the Airbus A380 yesterday
I think Leonardo would indeed have applauded the maiden flight of the A380 - on April 27, 2005. (The maiden flight of the aircraft was over a year ago.)
which received NO coverage whatsoever on Slashdot (stuff that matters!) and would be pissed off by this lame article about some fools trying to cash-in on his name (stuff that matters not).
It's amusing that you criticize Slashdot for not having coverage of an event you can't even get the facts straight on. It must not have mattered much to you.
If you want to kill off an industry, the best way to do so is to regulate it the way the medical industry and the aviation industry are regulated.
In both cases, the industry in question is regulated not at the results level but at the process level. To change the way an airplane is manufactured, you have to get your manufacturing process recertified by the FAA. It's a great way to prevent technological progress.
Ah. So that's why we don't have computers controlling almost every function on airliners, no new structual materials since aluminum, no new engines, etc... etc...
To put this into perspective, modern piston airplanes are still using mechanical fuel injection. We're talking technology that was first put into use in the 1950s.
Of course, that's all the fault of the evil FAA - and it has nothing to do with the virtually microscopic demand for such engines.
As a result, it takes the financial commitment of basically building an entirely new company in order to manufacture composite airplanes (as opposed to using aluminum sheetmetal and rivets).
Yet - somehow numerous manufacturers are using composites. (Including some pretty small airfram manufacturers.)
Manufacturers aren't allowed to truly compete with each other by continuously improving their products in meaningful ways because the cost of improving the product is too high.
Ah - so that's why we haven't had any new and improved aircraft in decades...
Or to sum it up simply; your rant fails by comparison to an existence proof - Reality.
Slashdot Mirror
OTOH - the winner's styling already looks like what it is, sooo 2005. In particular, the mix of squared and rounded corners is *very* poorly done - they draw the eye all over hell and back as well as clashing with each other due to the misguided choice to echo them (badly) in different colors and orientations in the LH and RH columns.
Thermal diffusion was only pursued because the Navy had a boiler test and development facility that could provide the massive volume of steam needed as a heat source. It's small capacity limited it's role to providing enriched 'hex' to the Calutrons. (Using a more enriched feedstock moved them from hideously murderously inefficient to merely murderously inefficient.) Like the calutrons, the thermal diffusion plant was dismantled as soon as enough capacity from the gaseous diffusion (K-25) plant was available.
Richard Rhode's The making of the Atomic Bomb discusses the various enrichment methods available in WWII in great detail.
Here in the real world, the Mars Science Laboratory builds on the experience gained from the two MER rovers, in the same way that the MER rovers built on Pathfinder, which built on decades of research and development. Nothing is 'thrown away'.
Sure, they've given us excellent data - but there's more questions and more data needed. Questions the MER rovers can't answer and data they can't provide.What you need is a kick in the ass for being so arrogant as to think yourself in any way as needy as the kids these laptops are destined for.
I find it very amusing that the MIT team assumes that cultural norms in the West will be matched in the darkest Africa.
I find the implied bigotry (only kids need computers) less amusing.
At any rate, the answer to you unasked question is, No, they have not stopped funding deep ocean research.
HMS Challenger's mission was a three year one - because it took that long to get from the UK to anywhere interesting in the Pacific, and back. Today, rather than sending a handful of scientists on a three year mission - thousands are flying or sailing across the globe on a daily basis.
All too often blogger 'a' blockquotes, and links to blogger 'b', who block quotes and links to blogger 'c'... And if you are lucky, 'c' links to the actual article. it's not unusual (for me) to get down to blogger 'e' or 'f' before I get the original article.
Mostly it seems so because it's numerous failures and problems (with the exception of Soyuz 1 and 11) are little known outside of Russian space program. (During the Soviet era they told niether the US, nor their own people.) However an account of just the re-entry and landing problems makes for frightening reading - and leaves out the two launch accidents and multiple loss-of-mission accidents/incidents.
The next argument people make is usually the same one that you did, "Soyuz hasn't killed anyone... lately". Let's put that in perspective shall we? Between STS-26 (Return To Flight post Challenger) and STS-107 (the loss of Columbia) the Space Shuttle flew more flights than the Soyuz has in it's entire history.
Finally, we have the current Soyuz model, the TMA. It's flown eight missions to date, with accidents or serious incidents on four of those eight flights.
The moral? When you have a spacecraft with an ongoing history of problems - it's not a safe spacecraft, no matter whose flag is on the side, and even if it hasn't killed anyone 'lately'.
They have no experience with automated rendezvous, and the payloads are designed to 'hang' in the Shuttle's cargo bay as opposed to 'sitting' on the payload ring of a conventional booster. (Not to mention they depend on the shuttle for power, cooling, communications, etc...)
One could develop an adapter to handle these problems - but such development would take years.
Translated for those too lazy to bother: NASA is seeking proposals for creating PR and educational presentations, events, etc... etc...
With such a large data set - it seems to me that at least some basic analysis is well suited for a distributed BOINC project like SETI@Home.
Or to sum it up simply; your rant fails by comparison to an existence proof - Reality.
But a word of advice from someone who has actually spent hundreds of hours in real simulators and trainers: Simulation doesn't always work.