Maybe instead of "thinking" about the issue you should have checked out the company site where they have a video of ice being removed from an airfoil in a wind tunnel. That seemed like a fairly conclusive demonstration of the practicality of this process for that purpose.
Maybe *you* should think rather than take at face value a few seconds of video. The video is of a model (a very small one at that) removing a one time accumulation (rather that the ongoing accumulation more typical of real aircraft). In short, the video isn't conclusive of anything.
The thing about drinking is that people forget fairly quickly what a hangover feels like... And go... "Oh what is one beer going to do to me! Mmmm... This buzz feels good. Another one can't hurt!"
Sure, if you lack self control, or party in an enviroment that encourages drinking beyond your limits. But most of us grow out of it.
Puzzle Pirates is probably one of the most interesting MMORG economies around. Just moving money from place to place is either dangerous or expensive (you choose).
Not anymore sadly - over the virtually unanimous outrage of the playerbase, they've implemented a 'universal purse'. All your POE is available to you everywhere you go - and is safe from brigands so long as it isn't in your [ships] coffers or booty chest.
They did this to 'make the game more understandable to newbies'. I always find that explanation for game changes suspicious - after all, were not the existing players newbies once upon a time? Haven't they figured it out?
Although I haven't played in a year or two, I hear they're doing even more experiments with economies on some oceans where they allow dollars to be spent in-game on certain things.
It's a different dollar purchase model than other games. You can purchase doubloons with dollars, and then doubloons are required to purchase items or perform certain functions within the game. *However*, there is also a (officialy sponsored) player-to-player exchange where you can buy doubloons for POE. (I.E. obtained from gambling, pillaging, whatever.)
I don't play any game that has an endless money supply in it -- I don't think there are any games yet that have a fixed amount of commodities in the gaming world, but I'd appreciate seeing it. It would really make people strive to earn (or steal or barter) their "income" online.
Puzzle Pirates. Resources spawn at a more-or-less fixed rate, and must be purchased at auction. Virtually all the items manufactured from these resources are either consumable or decay.
While it is interesting . . . but if you have ever tried dual booting with Windows the first couple of times you always find out that Windows will boot and the other operating system is screwed up. I mean seriously - when has dual booting with Windows "ever" worked out of the box?
Quite well when you ran Windows in a Desqview window.
Ffrom TFAS:
On the whole, it sounds like the number of affected users is quite small, but may reflect a common lack of knowledge of what a 'beta' release really is: Not ready for prime-time.
Your friendly neighborhood Google has helped with thay by leaving almost all their 'beta' apps hanging out in public for months and years. Sometimes it seems they shove a mediocre beta out, knowing the fanbois will adopt it uncritically - and then fix it when they get around to it.
Aerogel is an insulator, not an ablative - and has very little structural strength to boot. (Nor is it magic, dump enough heat into it and it will break down.)
Insofar as putting ablative materials on the outside of the missle goes; it's possible but at great cost to the range and payload. To regain those means a bigger and more expensive missile - which means the Bad Guys have fewer to toss, which is a win. Even so, the lasers pulse will evaporate layers of ablative, which will push the missile off course (equal and opposite reaction and all that as the gases expand away from the missile). Probably not enough to tumble it, but enough to effect the CEP - which, unless the warhead is NBC, is still a net (if minor) win from the defenders POV.
The ABL is kinda like a SAM battery - even if it doesn't get all the attackers, it breaks up the attack and reduces the total damage the attack can generate. This increases friction and decreases certainty (from the attackers POV) - which is a Very Good Thing from the defenders POV. The calculus of war in the real world is a spectrum of grey, not black and white - it's very important to keep this in mind.
Considering latest Russian rockets have unpredictable trajectory, targeting would be quite an interesting math problem. Unpredictable as in chaotic, not as in "we don't know where they shoot".
To put it simply - if you want to fire from point 'y' to point 'x', you can't deviate very far without spending large amounts of energy (and decreasing the weight of the payload). It's simply ballistics - Russian propoganda non withstanding. (Thats even more true in the lower atmosphere, where the ABL is intended to intercept the missiles, because significant maneuvers cost greatly in energy and the required additional weight for structural reinforcement.)
At any rate, the ABL is designed to hit TBMs, not ICBMs; and at the range in question - the missile simply can't move fast enough to outrun the targeting laser and then the main laser.
These weapons may have been useful and valuable in the cold war era to cancel an airborne nuclear threat from our of our communist rivals. In this day and age, when nuclear weapons and other explosives are less likely to be airborne and more likely to arrive in a shipping container on one of our ports, doesn't it seem like we're going even further down the path of excessive militarization??
No.
First off, this isn't designed to shoot down ICBMs - it's designed to shoot down TBMs, which are not exactly uncommon and become more widespread by the day. Second off, nuclear weapons are about as likely to arrive via a shipping container as I am to grow a second head. (National leaders typically want such weapons closely controlled, because they are articles of statecraft, not weapons. There's a reason why virtually every nation that has built or sought to build nuclear weapons also seeks to build missiles.)
The military-industrial complex accounts for 30% of government spending
No.
It accounts for 30% of the discretionary spending - but for only about 10% of the total spending. (The goverment has sytematically mislead the people about the true size of the federal budget, and how much goes to social programs, by classifying entitlements as 'non-discretionary spending' and not reporting it as part of the budget.)
I agree that it's important to have technology in defense , but pouring all these resources into military technology that doesn't make a whole lot of strategic sense when we could be putting money into, say, education and health care, and actual national security concerns - doesn't it make you stop for a second and think?
Between the discretionary and non discretionary portions of the budget (and setting aside social security), HEW's purse is already several times larger than the DOD's - with little noticeable impact after decades.
Your micky taking hints at part of a good question. The article does not explain how reinforcing the casing or rotating the missile so it takes longer to heat effect the performance of the laser. How does this implementation overcome these countermeasures? - I assume it already takes them into account.
It doesn't have to take them into account - as they are strawmen, not countermeasures.
The laser deliver it's energy in a few milliseconds - it's simply impossible to spin the missile body fast enough to make a difference.
Reinforcing the casing means increasing the weight (and the cost) of the missile. This means the bad guys can build fewer of them, thus the number of weapons they have to toss is reduced - which is precisely the purpose of the ABL. (Not to mention that coatings that can stand up to megawatts of power and the (relatively) rough handling of a field missile are essentially non-existent.)
Airborne Laser, a jumbo jet packed with gear designed to shoot down enemy missiles half a world away, at the speed of light.
And how does something like that help us fight an enemy that puts up a roadside bomb?
It doesn't. But then, niether does about half of the US militarys arsenal - I supposed we should do away with all that too?
Troops need body armor and armored trucks. Not, useless debt building toys that are made to fight a cold war enemy, long gone.
The ABL is designed to fight a very real threat - Theatre Ballistic Missiles, which are being deployed ever more widely every year. It's not designed to defend against ICBM's.
Hitler lost the war by micromanaging his army into the ground. But he had blind faith that technology would save him, and he always talked about the "fantastic new weapons" (jet engines, etc.) he was expecting from his scientists to save the war.
Yes... and no.
Hitler lost because the West outproduced him. He also lost because he didn't adapt new technology - in 1944 he was still fighting largely with 1938 era equipment, while the West was fielding 1944 era equipment. (For various political and economic reasons the Nazi hierarchy a) wouldn't disturb existing production for new production and b) couldn't agree on what to produce in the first place.)
Hitler's much vaunted belief in 'wonderweapons' is an artifact of the last phases of the war, when the situation was starting to crumble.
This is nothing new, this kind of thing has been underdevelopment since late in the Cold War. Unlike perceptions in the pentagon, times have changed. These missile systems will not prevent projectiles like rpg fire
The military has dozens of systems that won't stop RPG fire - shall we get rid of them too?
we need defense platforms for the present, not the past.
The TBM (Theatre Ballistic Missile) is the threat of today - they are not uncommon, and them what doesn't have them are trying very hard to obtain them.
There's no point in building an anti-missile laser when Iran or whoever developes a nuke can completly skip the missile.
Without a missile, there's essentially no way to deliver the nuclear warhead. (Except by airplane, which a) we already know how to shoot down and b) is generally not the chosen delivery method of the average tinpot dicatator.)
Whose going to build their nuclear weapon onto a missle delivery system if they know we can shoot it down?
That is precisely the point - but this laser will also work against chemical or biological payloads as well as conventional ones too.
Not being able to shoot them down was the reason we put nukes on missiles in the first place.
You are confusing ICBMs (which this laser system isn't designed to defeat), with IRBMs and TBMs - which it is.
Now if the missle rotates (nothing too hard about making it rotate) then your super laser-pointer has to be really powerfull to penetrate through it and make permanent damage.
On the contrary, the lasers pulse is measured in milliseconds - which means the missile has to rotate *very* fast. (On the order of several hundred RPM, which is very difficult.)
Another simple idea is to make a sliding shield protecting from laser beam.
Sliding from where, to where? How does the missile know in advance to slide it? How to hold it in place at tens of gees of accelleration and with a supersonic airflow attempting to tear it off?
Clutches allow full mechanical wheel disengage. That increases survivability.
Clutches can also fail (either engaged or disengaged). This reduces survivability.
For their actual lifespan so far - dunno. If there will be one more wheel failure the rover is dead. If it had a mechanical wheel disengage it could have survived with only one functional motor remaining on either side.
If it had a mechanical wheel disengagement system - that too could fail. (Either by failing to engage, or failing to disengage when required.)
It's not a simple black-and-white case. Clutches are not immune to failure.
As far as the designs are concerned it is still a rehash of old and actually bad designs. There are much more interesting all terrain transmission designs out there nowdays.
Certainly - but when you are sending something millions of miles from the local service center, that encourages the use of tried and true designs. They are only 'bad' if you subscribe to the mistaken belief that 'old'=='bad' without exception.
We should point out that these missions [to Venus] preceded the viking missions to Mars, thus they were the first landings on another planet.
Something well known to anyone with knowledge of space history beyond the Mass Media. (I.E. anyone who has read actual books.) They were first on Mars and the Moon too.
I know that I will get modded down by some "dixie gung-ho we are the best of the world" fanboy, but the only reason for it to drag the wheel instead of freerolling it is that it is an American design.
And you should be so modded - because it's not nearly as simple as that. You make it into a black-and-white case of bias rather than the complex engineering decision it really is.
If you compare the Spirit design with the Russian Moon rover series (aka Lunokhod) you will immediately notice one striking difference. The american design has something missing. It is called a CLUTCH. Yeah, I know, an extremely foreign concept for 95%+ of the American population.
If the wheels were individually clutched the way they were on the old Russian moon exploration vehicles it would have been happily cruising at slightly reduced power instead of dragging its wheel.
A clutch adds weight, adds complexity, and adds failure modes, all to protect against a single failure mode. If your prime mover needs to be extremely reliable in the first place, then (from an engineering standpoint) - it's not immediately clear that simply adding a clutch gains you anything. Lunokhod also needed clutches to steer with, with it's close set wheels and simple suspension system it would have been virtually impossible to drive without them. Given the (originally) expected short lifetime of the rovers, the case becomes even murkier.
So yes, you can make a case for adding clutches, but you can make an equally valid case for not having them. It's not, as you imply, a straightforward '0' or '1' choice with a proveably wrong answer.
Once again we see the advantages of an unmanned space program over our manned one.
Just as point of reference - what Spirit has accomplished (in terms of ground covered and science performed) in a little over two years, could be accomplished by a trained geologist in a little over two weeks.
I really can not believe that the rovers are still running at all. NASA did a bang up job on these.
One might also argue that since they so grossly exceeded their life expectancy then they were overdesigned and cost too much.
One might argue that. One might, equally as fruitfully, argue that the earth is flat. The simple fact is this; the key pacing item for the life expectancy of the rovers is the amount of dust that collects on the solar panels - and a series of fortuitous events have prevented the dust from collecting at the rate expected.
Build more and recover the economies of scale!
Yes! Yes! Yes!
No! No! No! The big costs are in operations and launching - niether of which is particularly sensitive to scaling. (Even so, assembly of the rovers is mostly manual work, and much of the cost is in testing and verification - again, not very sensitive to scaling.)
I can't understand why they insist on going back to the drawing board every time. I've read about the next generation rovers. They're very different in many ways including the way they'll land on Mars.
They don't go back to the drawing board each time - they draw on the experience from the previous missions and go forward. They also seek to answer different questions and perform different missions each time. (Spirit and Opportunity are in particularly easy to get to, easy to navigate locations - not all of Mars is like that.)
I just don't understand why, with the success that Spirt and Opportunity have had, they don't build these as a platform.
For the same reason we no longer use 8086's as a platform, or '56 big block engines. Times change, requirements change.
Surely if the research was put into new instruments that could be attached to the current design, rather than redesigning from scratch, that would be a better use of the money.
Sure - if all you wanted to do was run unambitious missions in 'safe' areas. The rovers can only operate in flattish areas near the Martian equator. The terrestrial equivalent is roughly the Sahara Desert. There's some interesting rock formations, etc.. etc.. But it's only on very small portion of the planet.
I'm sure plenty of people far smarter than I ever will be have considered Venus and dismissed the idea after a few seconds of thought. But why? And why is Mars, with such wimpy gravity and such a scarce existing atmosphere given all the attention when it comes to dreams of terraforming?
There are several reasons but two biggies;
1 - Suit and machinery design for Mars are overwhelmingly easier. (Think Mars = suburban backyard. Venus = two feet under flowing lava on the bottom of the Marianas Trench.)
2 - Nobody has figured out how to get rid of the gigatons of carbon that would have to be removed from the Venusian atmophere. (You can't just convert it to bricks and pile it up - it's flammable as hell.)
The former [the Shuttle] uses parachutes to break and the latter uses a slide instead of a front wheel which doubles up as a friction break.
Actually, the parachute the Shuttle deploys on landing serves mostly to keep the nose landing gear off the ground until the Shuttle slows, it's quite capable of landing without it. (The parachute was added after the Shuttle was flying.) This reduces the loading on the rather fragile nose gear.
First of all how can the be the richest man in the world's office? Bill Lumberg's office was nicer than that! Geez, cheap basic apartment blinds, a cheesy plant, particle board desk, etc. Maybe that's an attempt to endear him as an average joe.
I've personally known three millionaires. (All of whom got their money in real estate and worked from home.)
The desk of the first was an old door laid across a pair of sawhorses.
The desk of the second he made himself - from plywood and molding he drove down in his '67 pickup and picked up at a local hardware store. The he threw is back out and I had to haul the @$#% thing from the basement, around the front, and then down the narrow ass hallways of his old house. (This particular millionare was my father-in-law.)
The desk of the third is the same cheapass vinyl over particleboard computer desk he bought back in college.
So Bill's office doesn't suprise me in the least.
Second of all I wonder how much real direction Bill offers Microsoft nowadays. Or he is more of a figurehead? I would think a company with 50,000 employees and lots of entrenched middle/senior level management would be relatively self sustaining. Perhaps Bill just gives generic wish list contributions, like "It sure would be swell if people could collaborate on a project through a hosted website." And the underlings put flesh and bone to the task.
Saying "I wish x would happen" *is* real direction. Having underlings do the grunt work is pretty much how most companies of any size do things.
Third of all if he eats his own cooking, doesn't he get occasionally frustrated with the stability and security shortcomings of Windows? Granted XP is a lot more stable than the Windows 9x/ME branch of their product line, but security is still a concern. Even with SP2 in place. Perhaps his Internet access is going through multiple software firewalls, firewall appliances, etc. so he doesn't get hit by malware.
In six months my XP machine has crashed once - and had maybe three program crashes, and I use it 9-12 hours daily. So stability isn't an issue. One software and one hardware firewall - and no malware. So malware isn't an issue. (I do use non Microsoft browsers and email though.)
Forth, this really isn't a day in the life of Bill Gates, and is (as the article is entitled) how he gets his work done. I want to see him on MTV Cribs or the equivalent. Showing off all of his electronic bling. That would be cooler than this self serving advertisement.
Folks with attention spans longer than an MTV video often find subtle things like philosophy and organization interesting. Bling is for the lemmings.
[Under questioning, Mr. Laflamme and Mr. Rheault conceded their role in spreading a video that Mr. Raza, then 15,] had made of himself and left on a shelf in the school TV studio
case solved. plantiff guilty or embarrassing himself.
I see - since he left his 'door' unlocked, it's perfectly acceptable for the thief to waltz in and help himself. It's always easier to blame the victim isn't it?
On a less practical note, it'd be quite interesting if John Carmack would release the flight control software he has developed for Armadillo's prototypes. While its highly proprietary code, it would give a sense as to what needs to be tracked during the duration of rocket flight and might interest others in aerospace engineering.
What needs to be tracked (and controlled) is already widely known - that's not the hard part. The hard part (and what ends up proprietary) is the actually doing of it. Since the actual doing is going to be tightly bound to computer architecture, vehicle configuration, and other factors - it's not clear that other programmers can gain if he opens it up. (Flight control software is more like writing hardware drivers than email programs.)
Slashdot Mirror
They did this to 'make the game more understandable to newbies'. I always find that explanation for game changes suspicious - after all, were not the existing players newbies once upon a time? Haven't they figured it out?
It's a different dollar purchase model than other games. You can purchase doubloons with dollars, and then doubloons are required to purchase items or perform certain functions within the game. *However*, there is also a (officialy sponsored) player-to-player exchange where you can buy doubloons for POE. (I.E. obtained from gambling, pillaging, whatever.)Ffrom TFAS:
Your friendly neighborhood Google has helped with thay by leaving almost all their 'beta' apps hanging out in public for months and years. Sometimes it seems they shove a mediocre beta out, knowing the fanbois will adopt it uncritically - and then fix it when they get around to it.Insofar as putting ablative materials on the outside of the missle goes; it's possible but at great cost to the range and payload. To regain those means a bigger and more expensive missile - which means the Bad Guys have fewer to toss, which is a win. Even so, the lasers pulse will evaporate layers of ablative, which will push the missile off course (equal and opposite reaction and all that as the gases expand away from the missile). Probably not enough to tumble it, but enough to effect the CEP - which, unless the warhead is NBC, is still a net (if minor) win from the defenders POV.
The ABL is kinda like a SAM battery - even if it doesn't get all the attackers, it breaks up the attack and reduces the total damage the attack can generate. This increases friction and decreases certainty (from the attackers POV) - which is a Very Good Thing from the defenders POV. The calculus of war in the real world is a spectrum of grey, not black and white - it's very important to keep this in mind.
At any rate, the ABL is designed to hit TBMs, not ICBMs; and at the range in question - the missile simply can't move fast enough to outrun the targeting laser and then the main laser.
First off, this isn't designed to shoot down ICBMs - it's designed to shoot down TBMs, which are not exactly uncommon and become more widespread by the day. Second off, nuclear weapons are about as likely to arrive via a shipping container as I am to grow a second head. (National leaders typically want such weapons closely controlled, because they are articles of statecraft, not weapons. There's a reason why virtually every nation that has built or sought to build nuclear weapons also seeks to build missiles.)
No.It accounts for 30% of the discretionary spending - but for only about 10% of the total spending. (The goverment has sytematically mislead the people about the true size of the federal budget, and how much goes to social programs, by classifying entitlements as 'non-discretionary spending' and not reporting it as part of the budget.)
Between the discretionary and non discretionary portions of the budget (and setting aside social security), HEW's purse is already several times larger than the DOD's - with little noticeable impact after decades.The laser deliver it's energy in a few milliseconds - it's simply impossible to spin the missile body fast enough to make a difference.
Reinforcing the casing means increasing the weight (and the cost) of the missile. This means the bad guys can build fewer of them, thus the number of weapons they have to toss is reduced - which is precisely the purpose of the ABL. (Not to mention that coatings that can stand up to megawatts of power and the (relatively) rough handling of a field missile are essentially non-existent.)
Hitler lost because the West outproduced him. He also lost because he didn't adapt new technology - in 1944 he was still fighting largely with 1938 era equipment, while the West was fielding 1944 era equipment. (For various political and economic reasons the Nazi hierarchy a) wouldn't disturb existing production for new production and b) couldn't agree on what to produce in the first place.)
Hitler's much vaunted belief in 'wonderweapons' is an artifact of the last phases of the war, when the situation was starting to crumble.
It's only 'simple' to the armchair engineer.
It's not a simple black-and-white case. Clutches are not immune to failure.
Certainly - but when you are sending something millions of miles from the local service center, that encourages the use of tried and true designs. They are only 'bad' if you subscribe to the mistaken belief that 'old'=='bad' without exception.So yes, you can make a case for adding clutches, but you can make an equally valid case for not having them. It's not, as you imply, a straightforward '0' or '1' choice with a proveably wrong answer.
1 - Suit and machinery design for Mars are overwhelmingly easier. (Think Mars = suburban backyard. Venus = two feet under flowing lava on the bottom of the Marianas Trench.)
2 - Nobody has figured out how to get rid of the gigatons of carbon that would have to be removed from the Venusian atmophere. (You can't just convert it to bricks and pile it up - it's flammable as hell.)
Actually, yes it does.
Actually, the parachute the Shuttle deploys on landing serves mostly to keep the nose landing gear off the ground until the Shuttle slows, it's quite capable of landing without it. (The parachute was added after the Shuttle was flying.) This reduces the loading on the rather fragile nose gear.
So Bill's office doesn't suprise me in the least.
Saying "I wish x would happen" *is* real direction. Having underlings do the grunt work is pretty much how most companies of any size do things.
In six months my XP machine has crashed once - and had maybe three program crashes, and I use it 9-12 hours daily. So stability isn't an issue. One software and one hardware firewall - and no malware. So malware isn't an issue. (I do use non Microsoft browsers and email though.)
Folks with attention spans longer than an MTV video often find subtle things like philosophy and organization interesting. Bling is for the lemmings.
They laughed at Columbus. They also laughed at Bozo the Clown.