This whole exercise, and an entire swath of the federal Ministry of Freedom, could be eliminated if 95% of the computer-using population wasn't indoctrinated to use a shoddy, unsafe, and feeble operating system, Windows, which is insecure by design.
Cyber-security my ass. It's just another gear in the machinery of government control now.
It's from that "Office Space" movie, where Marty had to go back in time and use the Schwartz to prevent President Lincoln from being assassinated by Lee Harvey Wallbanger.
The Jupiter is a straightforward evolution of the Shuttle system into a traditional rocket. 1) The Shuttle itself is removed from the stack. 2) The external tank is modified and strengthened to carry a payload on top and engines on the bottom. 3) The three expensive shuttle main engines are replaced by two expendable engines and moved to the bottom of the external tank. 4) A 10 meter payload fairing is mounted on top of the fuel tank, with a capacity of up to 20 tons of hardware. 5) The Orion spacecraft is placed on top of the payload fairing. 6) A crew escape system is placed on top of the Orion.
Now, that sounds complicated, but it is much simpler once you see the results: DIRECT Launcher.
What that gives you is a versatile rocket for placing a six man crew PLUS 20 tons of cargo at the space station in a single launch. This configuration by itself is almost a complete replacement for the Shuttle, except for the Shuttle's ability to return payloads to Earth. Or, the Jupiter could lift 50 tons of payload to LEO in an unmanned configuration. Ares-I can't do either of those jobs, now or ever. No existing or planned EELV can do that. Ares-V would be such a behemoth (if it ever flies) that it would be much too expensive to fly on a regular basis. That is why Jupiter-120 is more versatile than Ares-I.
The second phase of the Jupiter proposal is to add a second liquid rocket stage on top of the core stage, while at the same time adding a third engine at the bottom. That will enable the Jupiter to place up to 110 tons of payload in LEO in a single launch. For the lunar mission there would be two launches, just as for Ares. One launch would carry the Orion CEV and the Altair lunar lander. The second launch would just lift extra fuel and the upper stage. The Orion and Altair would dock with the upper stage, then use the upper stage to send them to lunar orbit.
Jupiter can also be used to launch exploration missions to Near Earth Orbit (NEO) objects, launch large scientific payloads such as really big telescopes, Earth recon sats, etc. Jupiter is small enough and affordable enough to be used on a regular basis, but still twice as powerful as any existing or planned commercial launcher (including SpaceX).
Because Jupiter is so cleanly derived from the Space Shuttle, it needs much less development money than Ares. In fact, the entire Jupiter project, including lunar capability, would cost less than half of what is planned for Ares. The Ares-I project is going to cost around $15 billion by itself, with another $16-17 billion for Ares-V. Jupiter is projected to cost less than $12 billion for both the initial LEO version and upper stage. This economy is possible because both versions use the exact same "common core", with only the addition of the third main engine and the upper stage to allow lunar missions.
So the whole DIRECT premise is to build a single new "medium" sized rocket from the Shuttle heritage, which can be used for Earth orbit and lunar exploration. Ares requires the development of two entirely new rockets, neither of which have much at all in common with Shuttle or each other. Jupiter can use most of the existing launch infrastructure, including crawlers, crawlerways, and the fixed portion of the existing launch towers. Ares-I and -V both require extensive modifications of the launch pads, and both launch pads will be dedicated to one or the other vehicle, since they are so different. And at this point, the Ares-V is getting so large that it may require completely new pads and crawlerways to be built.
Jupiter can be used with or without an upper stage. It can launch manned missions with or without payloads. It can launch payloads with or without crew. It can be ready up to three years sooner than Ares-I, which is actually planning their first manned flight for 2016. 2016! Jupiter will still take until late 2013, but that is because it has to wait for the Orion CEV to be finished.
And that's why Jupiter is more versatile, affordable, and sensible than Ares.
Thanks for the conversation! I don't think either one of us is going to change the other's mind.
But maybe someone else will read this and decide to look into this issue a little deeper on their own. And that is a win no matter which side you're coming from.
I am not saying that they should have chosen a different engine, and as you point out Direct also uses the RS-68. I am saying they should have re-evaluated the architecture and chosen a better approach.
In the DIRECT plan, the Jupiter-120 is the equivalent of the Ares-I. It simply removes the Shuttle and puts the crew capsule on top of the shuttle stack. The J-120 can lift a fully functional capsule plus 25 metric tons to low earth orbit.
The Ares-I can barely lift a stripped-down capsule to orbit, and has no cargo capacity.
The Jupiter-232 is the equivalent of the Ares-V. It consists of the exact same components as the Jupiter-120, with the addition of an upper stage. The J-232 can lift 110 metric tons to LEO.
The Ares-V will have to lift a huge amount material to make up for the inability of Ares-I carry anything but a small crew capsule. NASA is still trying to figure out how to launch that much mass, and the Ares-V design is changing all the time.
Both approaches require two launches to get to the moon. Direct requires development and support of a single vehicle. Ares requires two completely different vehicles. There is no economy of scale, no saving through commonality, etc, etc.
An Ares-I + Ares-V mission will lift about 165 tons to orbit. A dual Jupiter-232 mission will lift about 220 tons to orbit.
In spite of your assertion that Ares will save money, it will actually be much more expensive, and NASA will not be able to fly nearly as many missions as it could with Direct. NASA is paying to develop two vehicles, two launch infrastructures, two support facilities, two of everything. It is not cheaper, not even close.
10% is a huge difference in the context of rocket engines and vehicle design. Not that I'm a rocket scientist, or anything.
That change should have precipitated a full-blown re-evaluation of options, and it didn't. Griffin decided to "stay the course" even though the main freakin engines are now completely different.
As far as changing horses goes, this horse is still in the barn and will be for six more years. No Ares-I launches are planned until at least 2014, maybe even later. There is plenty of time to make a course correction without destroying the program. And Ares-V is even farther off in the future. Way way farther off...
Developing one vehicle and one launch infrastructure to accomplish all current goals, instead of two completely different vehicles, two completely different launch infrastructures, two completely different everything, seems like an obvious decision to make. It's not like NASA is rolling in Scrooge McDuck's money vault.
Reliability was not the primary issue. The SSME's are very reliable and have a very good track record. But they are designed to be flown and re-flown for up to 25 missions. And with Ares (or DIRECT or any non-Shuttle rocket), the engines will not be re-used. They will crash into the ocean when the fuel is used up and the stage is disposed of.
But the SSME costs upwards of $60 million each, whereas the RS-68 only costs about $25 million.
Finally, I am not saying that it was the wrong decision to make. I am saying that they should have re-evaluated all options when the main engines were changed out. That decision completely destroyed the basis for the ESAS committee's recommendations.
Griffin is dead-set on Ares because it is his pet project. He brought it with him from the university think tank that Bush pulled him from. It is not a good architecture, and even now NASA engineers are fighting basic laws of physics to get the thing to fly.
The ESAS committee rubber-stamped Ares because that's what Griffin wanted. It is not the best approach. Especially when they decided to drop the Space Shuttle Main Engine in favor of the RS68 engine due to cost. The RS68 is cheaper, but much less efficient than the SSME. Once they dropped the SSME, they should have convened another committee to re-evaluate all options using the RS68 numbers.
The DIRECT project is where we need to be. Check it out, check the numbers. NASA has been sitting on this for almost three years now. It's ridiculous.
Um. You do realize that Intel had no intention of ever extending x86 arch to 64-bits, right?
And that the plan was to force anyone who needed more that 4GB of address space or eight 32-bit registers to migrate to Itanium?
And that Intel had strong-armed or bluffed all competing RISC vendors (except Sun) into abandoning their 64-bit CPUs based on Intel's plans for an entire Itanium 'ecosystem'?
And that they had the entire IT press eating out of their hands, blathering on about the bright inescapable future of Itanium everywhere for about four straight years?
And that Intel didn't really care about cost, price-performance, power consumption, or other customer-centric innovations whatsoever?
No, Intel had all their plans laid out, and nothing would stand in their way. It was their way (Itanium) or the highway.
And then AMD put the Hammer down. The debut of the Opteron in 2003 was the beginning of the end of Itanium. AMD's intense competitive streak, while not always profitable, certainly altered the entire x86 ecosystem away from 'legacy' status, and sidelined Itanium into a niche player that any smaller manufacturer would have dropped years ago.
So yes, I think the whole IT world owes AMD a huge debt of gratitude for nipping Itanium in the bud. And for creating a vibrant, competitive market that otherwise would have stagnated under the sway of a single monopolistic vendor.
So like I said before, who will keep Intel honest now that AMD has applied King Solomon's solution to itself?
A design firm plus a foundry does not equal an integrated semiconductor powerhouse.
Who is left to compete with Intel now? At least we will have Nehalem. Get used to Nehalem, embrace it, love it. Because it's going to be around for a long, long time. At least we have the x86-64 ISA, on-board memory controller, and point-to-point processor communications as an AMD legacy. And thank $DEITY that AMD was able to put a stake through the heart of Itanium.
There won't be much future innovation from Intel without the spur of aggressive competition from AMD.
I couldn't believe all of the negative posts, almost as bad as the replies on TFA's blog. How can anyone count themselves as computer-literate, and have such a morbid outlook on life and the future of human kind?
Computer geeks are supposed to be on the leading edge, always looking to advance the state of the art and take on the next challenge. If we, as a group, morph into a cabal of Malthusian doomsayers, who would take up the torch?
Anyone who feels that badly about our chances should just do the rest of us a favor and take the first exit off of this merry-go-round. You're using up our resources and not contributing a thing.
When people make statements that are obviously wrong but stated politely, must we still be polite in return? Okay, I'll try.
First, you are wrong when you state that one could take Tivo's code, modify it, and use the modified software on one's own hardware. When one purchases a Tivo DVR, that device now belongs to the purchaser, not to the seller, and not to the manufacturer. The DRM hardware prevents the new owner from running his choice of operating systems and applications on his own Tivo DVR device. Thus your first statement is obviously and flatly false.
Now if Tivo were only leasing out their devices, the way the cable and satellite companies are currently doing, that would be a different story. In that case, the hardware would continue to be owned by the vendor, and only the vendor would be entitled to hack their devices. But Tivo is selling devices to the public, and the purchase should convey full rights to the new owner.
Second, you are wrong when you state that software licensed under the GPL3 could not be used in voting machines. Since the election boards are not selling voting machines to individual voters, and since a voter does not own the voting machines in question (other than in the 'we the people' kind of way), the voters would not have the right to modify the software on the machines, nor would they be entitled to receive any modified source code or crypto keys needed to enable it. The local election board, or the state institution responsible for acquiring and maintaining the voting machines, would be the entity entitled to source code, crypto keys, and any other items necessary to make it possible to install and run modified software on the voting machines that they own. These rights would not convey to every Tom, Dick, and Harriet that walks in off the street to cast their ballot.
So, as I said before, Wrong and Wrong. But thanks for trying!
Cheers!
P.S. And what's up with the '+5 Insightful' rating for the parent? Sheesh.
It didn't disappear! It just went back in time to 1955 with Marty, and caused his dad who worked for GM to get fired, so he never invented it in the first place!
!!
(ba-da-bing. its lame joke Friday!)
Let me rebut. First of all, the only reason that space travel seems adventurous is because it is still new, dangerous, expensive, and controversial. All of those aspects need to be removed from the equation of space travel before it can be a productive endeavor. We have to keep working at it, improving it, productionizing it, until space travel becomes old, safe, cheap, and boring. THen we won't have any old-school scientists (taken your metamucil today, Roger?) spewing drivel like this.
Second, any "scientist" who states that manned space travel is a waste is simple envious of the "whopping" budget for manned space flights. True, the space program is expensive compared to say, dinner at Burger Barn. But compared to the 2003 GDP of $10.7 Trillion, the entire NASA budget for 2003 was $15.0 Billion, or only 0.14% of our nation's productivity. Or as a percentage of the $2.128 Trillion 2003 federal budget, only 0.71%. (Holy crap, I had no idea that the feds took 20% of the GDP!) Or finally, as a percentage of the interest we paid on the national debt last year of $181 Billion, only 8.3%. Of Social Security's $472 Billion, 3.2%; of National defense's $368 Billion, 4.1%; of Medicare/Medicaid's $390 Billion, 3.8%; of other 'discretionary' spending's $390 Billion, also 3.8%. Compared to the major federal spending programs, NASA is small potatoes indeed.
There will always be space exploration, but what we need now is to start harvesting the resources available in space. Space travel will become a national priority when it becomes a net positive on the balance sheet. Or in other words, when the expenses are clearly outweighed by the benefits, by the resources made available, and by the money to be made, in outer space.
Argh! I hate it when "distinguished elder scientists" come up with this kind of crap. Do they just enjoy shooting themselves, and their colleagues, in the foot? Sheesh.
Well, by my calculations, taking into account the effects of Einstein's theory of general relativity, once the data center is accelerated to 88mph, it will consume exactly 1.21GW of electricity!
"Limbo is strongly typed, provides automatic garbage collection, supports only very restricted pointers, and compiles into machine-independent byte code for execution on a virtual machine."
This pretty much disqualifies Limbo as a successor language to C. C is a systems programming language, not a byte-code interpreted play-toy.
Thanks for making my point for me. I should have used the/sarcasm tag for the Win95 statement.;^)
In my exuberance, I forgot that not everyone here was up walking on two feet when the 386 was introduced in 19-freakin-86! Of course, logic dictates that the processor, or at least its exact specification, must be available before an operating system can take advantage of it. That explains why the first version of Windows to exploit any 32-bit features of the 386 was introduced in 1987. And that's why Intel's position that they were wait for the OS was ready before releasing the chips is nonsense.
So what Intel was really doing all this time was delaying the inevitable. They were afraid of introducing any commodity 64-bit processors (x86-64) that would make their future cash-cow IA64 product even more undesirable than it already was (and still is). And now that AMD is going gangbusters with Athlon-64 and Opteron, Intel could no longer afford to wait. The Itanium will now have to make it on its own merits, if any, instead of being forced on the unwilling IT departments of the world.
The thing that grates on me is the two-facedness (is that a word?) of Microsoft, first in promising 64-bit support for AMD, and then withholding its release until Intel has at least some form of competitive product. There is no reason that they couldn't have had full support for AMD64 by the end of 2003 at the latest. Operton was released in April '03 and of MS would have had early samples months or years before that.
And of course Michael Dell is Intel's lapdog and wouldn't dare offer any product without Intel's approval. Time will tell, but I think Dell will regret that eventually. Just because Intel will have a chip that can execute AMD64 code doesn't mean that it will do it particularly well. There's more to an architecture than just the instruction set.
I can't wait until Intel releases their spec sheet and promo materials stating that their processors are 'fully AMD64 compatible'. And will they call the instruction set AMD64, x86-64, IA32+32 (can't use IA64!), or what?
Its nice to see Intel eating a healthy portion of crow. After all, just a few months ago Intel was telling the press the they saw no need for a 64-bit desktop processor until 2010 or so! And even now, their justification for being so late is that they were waiting for the tools and infrastructure for 64-bit to become available. I guess that explains why they didn't release the 80386 until Windows 95 was released.;^)
Does Hundt work for or own a fiber-optic cable manufacturer?
Don't mind me, I'm just naturally cynical.
That being said, I do believe that FTTP (Fiber to the Premises) is where we will eventually end up. THe question is, do we make that our goal now and move directly to achieve it, or do we wander around aimlessly in the broadband desert for forty years, waiting and suffering through every concievable combination of DSL, vDSL, Fixed wireless, satellite, cable, and carrier pigeon, before we get where we're going.
Slashdot Mirror
This whole exercise, and an entire swath of the federal Ministry of Freedom, could be eliminated if 95% of the computer-using population wasn't indoctrinated to use a shoddy, unsafe, and feeble operating system, Windows, which is insecure by design.
Cyber-security my ass. It's just another gear in the machinery of government control now.
It's from that "Office Space" movie, where Marty had to go back in time and use the Schwartz to prevent President Lincoln from being assassinated by Lee Harvey Wallbanger.
Cheers!
Well, since you asked...
The Jupiter is a straightforward evolution of the Shuttle system into a traditional rocket. 1) The Shuttle itself is removed from the stack. 2) The external tank is modified and strengthened to carry a payload on top and engines on the bottom. 3) The three expensive shuttle main engines are replaced by two expendable engines and moved to the bottom of the external tank. 4) A 10 meter payload fairing is mounted on top of the fuel tank, with a capacity of up to 20 tons of hardware. 5) The Orion spacecraft is placed on top of the payload fairing. 6) A crew escape system is placed on top of the Orion.
Now, that sounds complicated, but it is much simpler once you see the results: DIRECT Launcher.
What that gives you is a versatile rocket for placing a six man crew PLUS 20 tons of cargo at the space station in a single launch. This configuration by itself is almost a complete replacement for the Shuttle, except for the Shuttle's ability to return payloads to Earth. Or, the Jupiter could lift 50 tons of payload to LEO in an unmanned configuration. Ares-I can't do either of those jobs, now or ever. No existing or planned EELV can do that. Ares-V would be such a behemoth (if it ever flies) that it would be much too expensive to fly on a regular basis. That is why Jupiter-120 is more versatile than Ares-I.
The second phase of the Jupiter proposal is to add a second liquid rocket stage on top of the core stage, while at the same time adding a third engine at the bottom. That will enable the Jupiter to place up to 110 tons of payload in LEO in a single launch. For the lunar mission there would be two launches, just as for Ares. One launch would carry the Orion CEV and the Altair lunar lander. The second launch would just lift extra fuel and the upper stage. The Orion and Altair would dock with the upper stage, then use the upper stage to send them to lunar orbit.
Jupiter can also be used to launch exploration missions to Near Earth Orbit (NEO) objects, launch large scientific payloads such as really big telescopes, Earth recon sats, etc. Jupiter is small enough and affordable enough to be used on a regular basis, but still twice as powerful as any existing or planned commercial launcher (including SpaceX).
Because Jupiter is so cleanly derived from the Space Shuttle, it needs much less development money than Ares. In fact, the entire Jupiter project, including lunar capability, would cost less than half of what is planned for Ares. The Ares-I project is going to cost around $15 billion by itself, with another $16-17 billion for Ares-V. Jupiter is projected to cost less than $12 billion for both the initial LEO version and upper stage. This economy is possible because both versions use the exact same "common core", with only the addition of the third main engine and the upper stage to allow lunar missions.
So the whole DIRECT premise is to build a single new "medium" sized rocket from the Shuttle heritage, which can be used for Earth orbit and lunar exploration. Ares requires the development of two entirely new rockets, neither of which have much at all in common with Shuttle or each other. Jupiter can use most of the existing launch infrastructure, including crawlers, crawlerways, and the fixed portion of the existing launch towers. Ares-I and -V both require extensive modifications of the launch pads, and both launch pads will be dedicated to one or the other vehicle, since they are so different. And at this point, the Ares-V is getting so large that it may require completely new pads and crawlerways to be built.
Jupiter can be used with or without an upper stage. It can launch manned missions with or without payloads. It can launch payloads with or without crew. It can be ready up to three years sooner than Ares-I, which is actually planning their first manned flight for 2016. 2016! Jupiter will still take until late 2013, but that is because it has to wait for the Orion CEV to be finished.
And that's why Jupiter is more versatile, affordable, and sensible than Ares.
Cash, check, money order, options, you name it. Give it to them.
If they ask for a raise or a bonus, give it to them. They need it.
If they don't ask for a raise or a bonus, give it to them. They need it but are afraid to ask.
If they actually tell you they don't need or want a bonus or a raise, give it to them anyways. They need it and don't know it.
If you do all that and they are still not happy, then obviously you are still not paying them enough.
Now. What was the name of your company again? I need to apply there...
Thanks for the conversation! I don't think either one of us is going to change the other's mind.
But maybe someone else will read this and decide to look into this issue a little deeper on their own. And that is a win no matter which side you're coming from.
Cheers!
I am not saying that they should have chosen a different engine, and as you point out Direct also uses the RS-68. I am saying they should have re-evaluated the architecture and chosen a better approach.
In the DIRECT plan, the Jupiter-120 is the equivalent of the Ares-I. It simply removes the Shuttle and puts the crew capsule on top of the shuttle stack. The J-120 can lift a fully functional capsule plus 25 metric tons to low earth orbit.
The Ares-I can barely lift a stripped-down capsule to orbit, and has no cargo capacity.
The Jupiter-232 is the equivalent of the Ares-V. It consists of the exact same components as the Jupiter-120, with the addition of an upper stage. The J-232 can lift 110 metric tons to LEO.
The Ares-V will have to lift a huge amount material to make up for the inability of Ares-I carry anything but a small crew capsule. NASA is still trying to figure out how to launch that much mass, and the Ares-V design is changing all the time.
Both approaches require two launches to get to the moon. Direct requires development and support of a single vehicle. Ares requires two completely different vehicles. There is no economy of scale, no saving through commonality, etc, etc.
An Ares-I + Ares-V mission will lift about 165 tons to orbit.
A dual Jupiter-232 mission will lift about 220 tons to orbit.
In spite of your assertion that Ares will save money, it will actually be much more expensive, and NASA will not be able to fly nearly as many missions as it could with Direct. NASA is paying to develop two vehicles, two launch infrastructures, two support facilities, two of everything. It is not cheaper, not even close.
Cheers!
10% is a huge difference in the context of rocket engines and vehicle design. Not that I'm a rocket scientist, or anything.
That change should have precipitated a full-blown re-evaluation of options, and it didn't. Griffin decided to "stay the course" even though the main freakin engines are now completely different.
As far as changing horses goes, this horse is still in the barn and will be for six more years. No Ares-I launches are planned until at least 2014, maybe even later. There is plenty of time to make a course correction without destroying the program. And Ares-V is even farther off in the future. Way way farther off...
Developing one vehicle and one launch infrastructure to accomplish all current goals, instead of two completely different vehicles, two completely different launch infrastructures, two completely different everything, seems like an obvious decision to make. It's not like NASA is rolling in Scrooge McDuck's money vault.
Cheers!
Reliability was not the primary issue. The SSME's are very reliable and have a very good track record. But they are designed to be flown and re-flown for up to 25 missions. And with Ares (or DIRECT or any non-Shuttle rocket), the engines will not be re-used. They will crash into the ocean when the fuel is used up and the stage is disposed of.
But the SSME costs upwards of $60 million each, whereas the RS-68 only costs about $25 million.
Finally, I am not saying that it was the wrong decision to make. I am saying that they should have re-evaluated all options when the main engines were changed out. That decision completely destroyed the basis for the ESAS committee's recommendations.
Griffin is dead-set on Ares because it is his pet project. He brought it with him from the university think tank that Bush pulled him from. It is not a good architecture, and even now NASA engineers are fighting basic laws of physics to get the thing to fly.
The ESAS committee rubber-stamped Ares because that's what Griffin wanted. It is not the best approach. Especially when they decided to drop the Space Shuttle Main Engine in favor of the RS68 engine due to cost. The RS68 is cheaper, but much less efficient than the SSME. Once they dropped the SSME, they should have convened another committee to re-evaluate all options using the RS68 numbers.
The DIRECT project is where we need to be. Check it out, check the numbers. NASA has been sitting on this for almost three years now. It's ridiculous.
www.directlauncher.com
Hey, that's just the answer that I got!
I also came up with an average density of just over 1.16 kg/cc or 41.7 lb/cubic inch. That doesn't sound so bad!
We're all gonna be a lot thinner!
Um. You do realize that Intel had no intention of ever extending x86 arch to 64-bits, right?
And that the plan was to force anyone who needed more that 4GB of address space or eight 32-bit registers to migrate to Itanium?
And that Intel had strong-armed or bluffed all competing RISC vendors (except Sun) into abandoning their 64-bit CPUs based on Intel's plans for an entire Itanium 'ecosystem'?
And that they had the entire IT press eating out of their hands, blathering on about the bright inescapable future of Itanium everywhere for about four straight years?
And that Intel didn't really care about cost, price-performance, power consumption, or other customer-centric innovations whatsoever?
No, Intel had all their plans laid out, and nothing would stand in their way. It was their way (Itanium) or the highway.
And then AMD put the Hammer down. The debut of the Opteron in 2003 was the beginning of the end of Itanium. AMD's intense competitive streak, while not always profitable, certainly altered the entire x86 ecosystem away from 'legacy' status, and sidelined Itanium into a niche player that any smaller manufacturer would have dropped years ago.
So yes, I think the whole IT world owes AMD a huge debt of gratitude for nipping Itanium in the bud. And for creating a vibrant, competitive market that otherwise would have stagnated under the sway of a single monopolistic vendor.
So like I said before, who will keep Intel honest now that AMD has applied King Solomon's solution to itself?
Cheers!
Stick a fork in AMD, they're done.
A design firm plus a foundry does not equal an integrated semiconductor powerhouse.
Who is left to compete with Intel now? At least we will have Nehalem. Get used to Nehalem, embrace it, love it. Because it's going to be around for a long, long time. At least we have the x86-64 ISA, on-board memory controller, and point-to-point processor communications as an AMD legacy. And thank $DEITY that AMD was able to put a stake through the heart of Itanium.
There won't be much future innovation from Intel without the spur of aggressive competition from AMD.
Cheers!
Since corporate appropriation of this type of work is tolerated, or even encouraged, what is your hangup? You should be jumping at the chance.
Cheers!
Or maybe just not during the term of your employment? That would almost seem reasonable, if you don't mind that kind of indentured servitude.
A short-sighted company will take this approach. A visionary company would not. Your choice.
Cheers!
Thanks swokm, you get my vote.
I couldn't believe all of the negative posts, almost as bad as the replies on TFA's blog. How can anyone count themselves as computer-literate, and have such a morbid outlook on life and the future of human kind?
Computer geeks are supposed to be on the leading edge, always looking to advance the state of the art and take on the next challenge. If we, as a group, morph into a cabal of Malthusian doomsayers, who would take up the torch?
Anyone who feels that badly about our chances should just do the rest of us a favor and take the first exit off of this merry-go-round. You're using up our resources and not contributing a thing.
Cheers!
When people make statements that are obviously wrong but stated politely, must we still be polite in return? Okay, I'll try.
First, you are wrong when you state that one could take Tivo's code, modify it, and use the modified software on one's own hardware. When one purchases a Tivo DVR, that device now belongs to the purchaser, not to the seller, and not to the manufacturer. The DRM hardware prevents the new owner from running his choice of operating systems and applications on his own Tivo DVR device. Thus your first statement is obviously and flatly false.
Now if Tivo were only leasing out their devices, the way the cable and satellite companies are currently doing, that would be a different story. In that case, the hardware would continue to be owned by the vendor, and only the vendor would be entitled to hack their devices. But Tivo is selling devices to the public, and the purchase should convey full rights to the new owner.
Second, you are wrong when you state that software licensed under the GPL3 could not be used in voting machines. Since the election boards are not selling voting machines to individual voters, and since a voter does not own the voting machines in question (other than in the 'we the people' kind of way), the voters would not have the right to modify the software on the machines, nor would they be entitled to receive any modified source code or crypto keys needed to enable it. The local election board, or the state institution responsible for acquiring and maintaining the voting machines, would be the entity entitled to source code, crypto keys, and any other items necessary to make it possible to install and run modified software on the voting machines that they own. These rights would not convey to every Tom, Dick, and Harriet that walks in off the street to cast their ballot.
So, as I said before, Wrong and Wrong. But thanks for trying!
Cheers!
P.S. And what's up with the '+5 Insightful' rating for the parent? Sheesh.
It didn't disappear! It just went back in time to 1955 with Marty, and caused his dad who worked for GM to get fired, so he never invented it in the first place! !! (ba-da-bing. its lame joke Friday!)
Let me rebut. First of all, the only reason that space travel seems adventurous is because it is still new, dangerous, expensive, and controversial. All of those aspects need to be removed from the equation of space travel before it can be a productive endeavor. We have to keep working at it, improving it, productionizing it, until space travel becomes old, safe, cheap, and boring. THen we won't have any old-school scientists (taken your metamucil today, Roger?) spewing drivel like this.
Second, any "scientist" who states that manned space travel is a waste is simple envious of the "whopping" budget for manned space flights. True, the space program is expensive compared to say, dinner at Burger Barn. But compared to the 2003 GDP of $10.7 Trillion, the entire NASA budget for 2003 was $15.0 Billion, or only 0.14% of our nation's productivity. Or as a percentage of the $2.128 Trillion 2003 federal budget, only 0.71%. (Holy crap, I had no idea that the feds took 20% of the GDP!) Or finally, as a percentage of the interest we paid on the national debt last year of $181 Billion, only 8.3%. Of Social Security's $472 Billion, 3.2%; of National defense's $368 Billion, 4.1%; of Medicare/Medicaid's $390 Billion, 3.8%; of other 'discretionary' spending's $390 Billion, also 3.8%. Compared to the major federal spending programs, NASA is small potatoes indeed.
There will always be space exploration, but what we need now is to start harvesting the resources available in space. Space travel will become a national priority when it becomes a net positive on the balance sheet. Or in other words, when the expenses are clearly outweighed by the benefits, by the resources made available, and by the money to be made, in outer space.
Argh! I hate it when "distinguished elder scientists" come up with this kind of crap. Do they just enjoy shooting themselves, and their colleagues, in the foot? Sheesh.
Now, where's my Delorean?
Cheers!
Cheers!
In my exuberance, I forgot that not everyone here was up walking on two feet when the 386 was introduced in 19-freakin-86! Of course, logic dictates that the processor, or at least its exact specification, must be available before an operating system can take advantage of it. That explains why the first version of Windows to exploit any 32-bit features of the 386 was introduced in 1987. And that's why Intel's position that they were wait for the OS was ready before releasing the chips is nonsense.
So what Intel was really doing all this time was delaying the inevitable. They were afraid of introducing any commodity 64-bit processors (x86-64) that would make their future cash-cow IA64 product even more undesirable than it already was (and still is). And now that AMD is going gangbusters with Athlon-64 and Opteron, Intel could no longer afford to wait. The Itanium will now have to make it on its own merits, if any, instead of being forced on the unwilling IT departments of the world.
The thing that grates on me is the two-facedness (is that a word?) of Microsoft, first in promising 64-bit support for AMD, and then withholding its release until Intel has at least some form of competitive product. There is no reason that they couldn't have had full support for AMD64 by the end of 2003 at the latest. Operton was released in April '03 and of MS would have had early samples months or years before that.
And of course Michael Dell is Intel's lapdog and wouldn't dare offer any product without Intel's approval. Time will tell, but I think Dell will regret that eventually. Just because Intel will have a chip that can execute AMD64 code doesn't mean that it will do it particularly well. There's more to an architecture than just the instruction set.
CHeers!
Its nice to see Intel eating a healthy portion of crow. After all, just a few months ago Intel was telling the press the they saw no need for a 64-bit desktop processor until 2010 or so! And even now, their justification for being so late is that they were waiting for the tools and infrastructure for 64-bit to become available. I guess that explains why they didn't release the 80386 until Windows 95 was released. ;^)
CHeers!
Don't mind me, I'm just naturally cynical.
That being said, I do believe that FTTP (Fiber to the Premises) is where we will eventually end up. THe question is, do we make that our goal now and move directly to achieve it, or do we wander around aimlessly in the broadband desert for forty years, waiting and suffering through every concievable combination of DSL, vDSL, Fixed wireless, satellite, cable, and carrier pigeon, before we get where we're going.
I prefer the direct route.
CHeers!