If I remember right, there already is a successor in the pipeline. Anyway, I would be surprised that the end of Kepler would be the end of the exoplanet revolution. It's a very hot field in astronomy. There's a scientific gold vein out there, people will keep digging. Kepler is a significant milestone, and one of my favorite missions, but not a unique instrument. It's the beginning, not the end.
The shuttle was nowhere near capable of flying to Kepler. It's at 40 million miles, while the space shuttle could only fly up a couple hundred miles. Besides, considering the cost of the mission, it would not warrant a complicated repair mission. For that money you could probably send up 10 new telescopes.
Only persons who WANT to believe in God will attribute the origin of life to him.
And only persons who WANT to believe in aliens will attribute the unexplained lights in the sky to flying saucers.
What I believe or don't believe has nothing to do with what I want. It would be rather stupid to believe something is true because you want it to be true.
Adding vast amounts of time does not solve the problem because no one was there to observe life come into existence.
Suppose someone was there to observe it, what problem would then have been solved? We would have a historical claim about the abiogenesis, but that would be it. That's not science, it explains nothing. We could even doubt the veracity of the claim, and there would be no way to settle it.
Adding large amounts of time does not answer any question, indeed. The only thing it does (together with the vast scale of the universe), is that very rare events can not be ruled out. Again, nobody knows how life started and it is quite possible we will never find out, but I have no problem with not knowing. I don't feel a need to invent invisible magical creatures that then magically created life. That would be silly.
Why would you disguise a UAV as a bird if you want to use it for firefighting? Also, it's just a press release infomercial, some guys want to put their hand in the military money jar so they put some feathers on a remote controlled airplane. Awesome... not!
Even the simplest single celled organism is unbelievably complex and contains a prodigious amount of information. The theory that life on Earth was seeded from space begs the question, how did that life begins wherever it did begin?
That's true. But somehow you don't seem to draw the correct conclusions from that. When confronted with something complex, the theory of evolution tells you it can not have formed instantly, but instead it happened gradually. Therefore, the "starting point" of life is at the molecular level, not at the cell level. And I put the quotes there deliberately, because there won't be a single point, it will be a gradual process. Just like there isn't a point where there is a "first tree" or "first human".
Even with the best efforts of intelligent scientists and the expenditure of mountains of money, no one has yet created any life form whatsoever from nonliving matter.
So what? Why should we be able to create life? Why should it be simple? There are an unknown number of possibilities to consider. It might have been a freak accident or rather trivial, nobody knows. Whatever the odds, in a universe this big it is rather a non-issue.
I'm old enough to remember when cellphones first appeared. First when someone pulled a phone out of his pocket, everybody looked, made a joke, laughed, whatever. A few years later, almost everybody had one. Another few years, and the first reports of people whose phone had fused with their hand started to pour in. I doubt that 'not socially acceptable' will be a major issue.
You think I just know how alcohol is decomposed? No, I know that alcohol = simple molecule. Enzyme = protein. That should be more than enough to raise a few red flags.
So basically that's a sort of pulse-width modulation. The same technique used in DC-DC converters to maximize efficiency. Keep the motor running at maximum efficiency. Fine. Now take a look at this again: "alternately slow down and speed up to take advantage of regenerative braking". Can you spot the difference?
Look, the most efficient way to move is at constant speed. There is no way on earth that speeding up/slowing down is going to be more efficient. You need energy to speed up, at less than 100% efficiency, and you recuperate energy from slowing down, at less than 100% efficiency. How can that ever prolong battery life? That's basic highschool stuff. If the reporter has a highschool degree, yet is unaware of that, then that's quite embarrasing for the educational system.
It's true that accusing the reporter to lie is a serious one, but so is accusing the technical support staff of such incompetence. That leaves that there was a misunderstanding between the two: maybe support wanted to explain how to optimally slow down to maximize energy recuperation, and the dumb reporter didn't understand. Or maybe Tesla hired a moron for tech support. All are possible. With all results being possible, that is equivalent to saying that no conclusion can be made. So: do the test again, better this time.
I was also highly confused. Science literacy is important: we live in the 21st century, people. Please don't make basic errors like that! It only feeds misantropy in the rest of us.
There are some fishy things though. When he's presented with logs, all of a sudden everything he did is because of tech support. Very convenient. And then there's tech advice like this: I was given battery-conservation advice at that time (turn off the cruise control; alternately slow down and speed up to take advantage of regenerative braking).
Why would such a thing work unless you believe in perpetuum mobiles? I mean, seriously, the world needs more BS detectors. It's possible some nitwit gave hime that advice, or the reporter misunderstood, or he lied.
Unless the phone logs are kept, we'll probably never know. The only thing remaining is to repeat the test, or continue argueing untill the sun turns into a red giant.
+1 for the Hungarian Notation. It only creates problems, if you don't know a variable's type you just use the code editor to find out. HN is only possibly useful if you use notepad for writing code, and even then I'm being generous.
I used to work on a project that shows some similarities. Ad-hoc coding, feature creep, heavy time constraints, overly complex code,... Don't expect miracles. If you start with a heap of dung, it is never going to smell good.
I sent an e-mail to my manager detailing 4 of the most critical problems. Fortunately, he was wiling to hear them, and we made some changes that improved the situation. But when I left there was still a scheduler (to start and stop machines at specific times) that was never rewritten. It was funny, the day I left I found the e-mail again, and then I heard a fellow-engineer had been assigned to make a trivial change to it. Expected amount of work: two weeks.
If the problems lie deep, it is wishful thinking that you can simply fix it. In a perfect world, you would start over again. In reality, there are all sorts of constraints. Here are some tips:
Analyze the project history: try to discover what files are changed the most, what kind of changes are mostly requested, are there modules that produce a spray of bugs whenever they are touched etc. (you do have a bug tracking system, right? If not, get one now!).
With that analysis, try to isolate some pieces of problematic code. Remove all sharp objects from your desk while doing this, because you might want to poke your eyes out. Focus on a part that changes a lot and see how you may fix that. To give an example: every time new menu options had to be added, the guy who wrote that became pale and mumbled something and went off to implement it. A few days later it became available, with some bugs like wrong menu's popping up. So when I tried to find out what was the problem, it turned out that every goddamn menu-item had a hand-coded position ID. so if a new item had to be inserted, all the next menu's needed their id's to be incremented, and all references to those id's updated. Using some rather advanced macro's (including concatenations), I managed to clean that up. It's not cleanest solution, but it only took me 2-3 days to implement, and after that, new menu's could be added in no time and without bugs. Also, anyone could add them.
What I want to say with this: you may improve the situation without making extremely drastic solutions. If you make just a couple of such changes, these can already have a drastic impact on development time. More importantly, it will not go unnoticed, and change the dynamic of the team and management. People will start asking the right questions: how can we further improve the situation? At that moment, your voices will be heard much louder.
If there are no test cases (as was the case for me too), you have to reconcile with the fact that it's too late. Try to add test cases for new modules, but realize that retro-fitting unit tests to a large project with low-quality code is not realistic. The next best thing might be adding assertions wherever you encounter bugs. Also adding sanity checks (e.g. testing if large object trees contain valid data) may prove helpful in debugging.
I hope that helps, and best of luck. Any further criticism/advice is always welcome.
Also, the USA doesn't own China, it's more like the other way around (China has tons of cash, and uses it to invest in the USA, 6.5 billion dollars last year). And it holds about 2 trillion dollars worth of treasurys. Those Chinese sure are funny people. You can almost hear them think "You no like communism? Ok, then we do capitalism. We beat you with capitalism".
Anyway, that means there's absolutely nothing left of the gp post.. what an enourmous fail.
Slashdot Mirror
If I remember right, there already is a successor in the pipeline. Anyway, I would be surprised that the end of Kepler would be the end of the exoplanet revolution. It's a very hot field in astronomy. There's a scientific gold vein out there, people will keep digging. Kepler is a significant milestone, and one of my favorite missions, but not a unique instrument. It's the beginning, not the end.
The shuttle was nowhere near capable of flying to Kepler. It's at 40 million miles, while the space shuttle could only fly up a couple hundred miles. Besides, considering the cost of the mission, it would not warrant a complicated repair mission. For that money you could probably send up 10 new telescopes.
- Make better reaction wheels
- Make better valves
Those two things always come back when missions end, or when a rocket launch has to be delayed.
Only persons who WANT to believe in God will attribute the origin of life to him.
And only persons who WANT to believe in aliens will attribute the unexplained lights in the sky to flying saucers.
What I believe or don't believe has nothing to do with what I want. It would be rather stupid to believe something is true because you want it to be true.
Adding vast amounts of time does not solve the problem because no one was there to observe life come into existence.
Suppose someone was there to observe it, what problem would then have been solved? We would have a historical claim about the abiogenesis, but that would be it. That's not science, it explains nothing. We could even doubt the veracity of the claim, and there would be no way to settle it.
Adding large amounts of time does not answer any question, indeed. The only thing it does (together with the vast scale of the universe), is that very rare events can not be ruled out. Again, nobody knows how life started and it is quite possible we will never find out, but I have no problem with not knowing. I don't feel a need to invent invisible magical creatures that then magically created life. That would be silly.
quote: "The system is especially suitable for border surveillance missions, firefighting, and anti-drug trafficking operations amongst others."
Why would you disguise a UAV as a bird if you want to use it for firefighting? Also, it's just a press release infomercial, some guys want to put their hand in the military money jar so they put some feathers on a remote controlled airplane. Awesome... not!
Even the simplest single celled organism is unbelievably complex and contains a prodigious amount of information. The theory that life on Earth was seeded from space begs the question, how did that life begins wherever it did begin?
That's true. But somehow you don't seem to draw the correct conclusions from that. When confronted with something complex, the theory of evolution tells you it can not have formed instantly, but instead it happened gradually. Therefore, the "starting point" of life is at the molecular level, not at the cell level. And I put the quotes there deliberately, because there won't be a single point, it will be a gradual process. Just like there isn't a point where there is a "first tree" or "first human".
Even with the best efforts of intelligent scientists and the expenditure of mountains of money, no one has yet created any life form whatsoever from nonliving matter.
So what? Why should we be able to create life? Why should it be simple? There are an unknown number of possibilities to consider. It might have been a freak accident or rather trivial, nobody knows. Whatever the odds, in a universe this big it is rather a non-issue.
I'm old enough to remember when cellphones first appeared. First when someone pulled a phone out of his pocket, everybody looked, made a joke, laughed, whatever. A few years later, almost everybody had one. Another few years, and the first reports of people whose phone had fused with their hand started to pour in. I doubt that 'not socially acceptable' will be a major issue.
You think I just know how alcohol is decomposed? No, I know that alcohol = simple molecule. Enzyme = protein. That should be more than enough to raise a few red flags.
So basically that's a sort of pulse-width modulation. The same technique used in DC-DC converters to maximize efficiency. Keep the motor running at maximum efficiency. Fine. Now take a look at this again: "alternately slow down and speed up to take advantage of regenerative braking". Can you spot the difference?
Look, the most efficient way to move is at constant speed. There is no way on earth that speeding up/slowing down is going to be more efficient. You need energy to speed up, at less than 100% efficiency, and you recuperate energy from slowing down, at less than 100% efficiency. How can that ever prolong battery life? That's basic highschool stuff. If the reporter has a highschool degree, yet is unaware of that, then that's quite embarrasing for the educational system.
It's true that accusing the reporter to lie is a serious one, but so is accusing the technical support staff of such incompetence. That leaves that there was a misunderstanding between the two: maybe support wanted to explain how to optimally slow down to maximize energy recuperation, and the dumb reporter didn't understand. Or maybe Tesla hired a moron for tech support. All are possible. With all results being possible, that is equivalent to saying that no conclusion can be made. So: do the test again, better this time.
I was also highly confused. Science literacy is important: we live in the 21st century, people. Please don't make basic errors like that! It only feeds misantropy in the rest of us.
There are some fishy things though. When he's presented with logs, all of a sudden everything he did is because of tech support. Very convenient. And then there's tech advice like this: I was given battery-conservation advice at that time (turn off the cruise control; alternately slow down and speed up to take advantage of regenerative braking).
Why would such a thing work unless you believe in perpetuum mobiles? I mean, seriously, the world needs more BS detectors. It's possible some nitwit gave hime that advice, or the reporter misunderstood, or he lied.
Unless the phone logs are kept, we'll probably never know. The only thing remaining is to repeat the test, or continue argueing untill the sun turns into a red giant.
I changed my opinion about javascript after watching this video. I give it a lot more credit than I did before.
That made me remind of this comic.
+1 for the Hungarian Notation. It only creates problems, if you don't know a variable's type you just use the code editor to find out. HN is only possibly useful if you use notepad for writing code, and even then I'm being generous.
State capitalism is also capitalism.
I used to work on a project that shows some similarities. Ad-hoc coding, feature creep, heavy time constraints, overly complex code, ... Don't expect miracles. If you start with a heap of dung, it is never going to smell good.
I sent an e-mail to my manager detailing 4 of the most critical problems. Fortunately, he was wiling to hear them, and we made some changes that improved the situation. But when I left there was still a scheduler (to start and stop machines at specific times) that was never rewritten. It was funny, the day I left I found the e-mail again, and then I heard a fellow-engineer had been assigned to make a trivial change to it. Expected amount of work: two weeks.
If the problems lie deep, it is wishful thinking that you can simply fix it. In a perfect world, you would start over again. In reality, there are all sorts of constraints. Here are some tips:
Analyze the project history: try to discover what files are changed the most, what kind of changes are mostly requested, are there modules that produce a spray of bugs whenever they are touched etc. (you do have a bug tracking system, right? If not, get one now!).
With that analysis, try to isolate some pieces of problematic code. Remove all sharp objects from your desk while doing this, because you might want to poke your eyes out. Focus on a part that changes a lot and see how you may fix that. To give an example: every time new menu options had to be added, the guy who wrote that became pale and mumbled something and went off to implement it. A few days later it became available, with some bugs like wrong menu's popping up. So when I tried to find out what was the problem, it turned out that every goddamn menu-item had a hand-coded position ID. so if a new item had to be inserted, all the next menu's needed their id's to be incremented, and all references to those id's updated. Using some rather advanced macro's (including concatenations), I managed to clean that up. It's not cleanest solution, but it only took me 2-3 days to implement, and after that, new menu's could be added in no time and without bugs. Also, anyone could add them.
What I want to say with this: you may improve the situation without making extremely drastic solutions. If you make just a couple of such changes, these can already have a drastic impact on development time. More importantly, it will not go unnoticed, and change the dynamic of the team and management. People will start asking the right questions: how can we further improve the situation? At that moment, your voices will be heard much louder.
If there are no test cases (as was the case for me too), you have to reconcile with the fact that it's too late. Try to add test cases for new modules, but realize that retro-fitting unit tests to a large project with low-quality code is not realistic. The next best thing might be adding assertions wherever you encounter bugs. Also adding sanity checks (e.g. testing if large object trees contain valid data) may prove helpful in debugging.
I hope that helps, and best of luck.
Any further criticism/advice is always welcome.
Also, the USA doesn't own China, it's more like the other way around (China has tons of cash, and uses it to invest in the USA, 6.5 billion dollars last year). And it holds about 2 trillion dollars worth of treasurys.
Those Chinese sure are funny people. You can almost hear them think "You no like communism? Ok, then we do capitalism. We beat you with capitalism".
Anyway, that means there's absolutely nothing left of the gp post.. what an enourmous fail.
I'm postponing my doomsday-device test until December 22, just so I can laugh at those idiots who believe all that nonsense.
High frequency traders don't have toilet breaks. They are machines.
Evolution does not need help. It is a natural process, based on imperfect copying and selection of those copies. Nothing more, nothing less.
may I ask Eastern-EU folks to please refrain from hacking my servers during the holiday season?
Sure, just provide me with your domain name, provider and root password and I'll add you to my do-not-hack list.
This should be a call-out to all skeptics who got convinced by the data to write an open letter.