I used to be a big believer in the NASA Myth: that they were the only ones capable of doing big space launches and that space access for humans was inherently expensive.
Then I heard Jerry Pournelle speak a couple years ago at a convention. He said something that shook me: NASA has many good people and does many good things but needs to get out of the business of launching people and robots into space. It surprised me because here is a guy who is in favor of space exploration but against NASA.
NASA as an organization doesn't really care about cheap, reliable space launches, because that would mean that their budget would be cut! The shuttle accidents are a symptom of bureaucratic mentality. Think on this: the Russian space agency will charge you about $15M for a trip to the space station. It costs between $500M and $1 billion just to do a shuttle launch.
NASA does a great job building Mars rovers and such, let's keep them doing that. But we should turn everything else over to private industry.
You didn't find this item for Wednesday, August 20th interesting?
"Building a Back Office Alternative"
Technical Installation and Architecture Training Using SCO Office Server to Create a Linux-based Alternative to Microsoft® BackOffice®.
Will the rest of Transmetropolitan be collected as paperbacks? I put off buying the individual issues waiting for the collections, but they seem to be a little slow in coming.
All right, let's suppose that the US is tapping these undersea cables. This story is appearing in a publically available source, and, given the feasability of the task, I have no reason to disbelieve it.
Now, what terrorist would possibly use these undersea cables for communications? You can be certain that the bad guys know about the US's capabilities. If I were organizing a multinational terror organization, I'd make sure that my communications didn't get routed via tappable cables. Or use some sort of code, encryption or steganography to hide the message. Easy enough.
So what's the point of monitoring these communications?
The other thing that needs to be emphasized, in terms of fan letter
campaigns, is that the currency of the fan campaign is that it's been
in large measure devalued by over-use, at least in terms of how the
studios see it (having been told this straight up). These days *any*
show that is nominally SF or fantasy, when its time ends, gets a
writing camapign to get it back or keep it on the air. Good show, bad
show, indifferent...the campaigns come regardless. So it doesn't
really carry the same weight it did once.
My Quick Review
on
KDE 3.0 is Out
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I found a quick mirror, downloaded and installed it today.
I had some problems getting the right support RPMS with my RH 7.1 system, but that's nothing I'm not used to.
As noted here by someone else, it's a little slow to start up. I wonder if that is an artifact of it starting up for the very first time. The look and feel are very similar KDE 2.2.2 for me.
The big difference so far is performance. Menus snap into place quickly, window operations are faster, pages render more quickly, the file manager is fast, and so on. My computer has a 300Mhz Celeron.
Also, a lot of web pages now work correctly, where they didn't in the 2.x series.
Overall stability is unknown at this point.
Re:"Impossible to drive" says the article
on
BYO Battlebot
·
· Score: 1
I had to borrow a radio at the last minute (Murphy's Law). I believe it was in the 75 Mhz band. Definitely PCM. As I've seen, PCM can glitch, too.
The people at the TX impound told me that EVERY 72 and 75 Mhz channel was in use by more than one robot. Futaba PCM radios seemed to be very popular.
Comments on the design
on
BYO Battlebot
·
· Score: 3
I've been building combat robots for a few years now, and competed at BattleBots Treasure Island 2001. I thought I'd offer some insight on this robot.
PVC is a bit weak for BattleBots. I used it on my first robot,
The Tunabomber, but that was for DragonCon's Robot Battles, where they don't have killsaws or robots like Whacker and Ziggo. Incidentally, my website has a tutorial similar to the one referenced in this story, but with more detail.
An onboard PC is certainly overkill for control. I do give it points for hack value, though. Competitors who want computer control functions usually use the
IFI system. This also allows you to use PC joysticks to control your robot remotely (a joystick setup was mentioned in an earlier post, this is almost certainly what was used).
I wonder why the guys who built this robot didn't compete with it. After going through all that effort, it should be worth it to get to the competition, if only to see your robot ripped to shreds.
Finally, please moderate down all those people who talk about how easy it is to build a winning robot, unless they've actually done it. Slashdotters: as with Open Source, it's put up or shut up.
You should enjoy rooting for the robot Son of Whyachi on the new BattleBots season. Comedy Central's BattleBots preview commercial shows a 0.5 second clip if it smashing Biohazard.
Re:"Impossible to drive" says the article
on
BYO Battlebot
·
· Score: 1
Range and interference ARE a problem, even with PCM radio. You've got lights, arena hazards, camera equipment and the like all giving off radio waves. This is something that R/C airplane people don't have to deal with.
And I know this for a fact. I competed at BattleBots Treasure Island and had interference problems.
Re:That's still retarded.
on
BYO Battlebot
·
· Score: 1
Hello Mr. User ID 211768,
Build a robot like you describe and fight it against a robotic combat champ. If it's true, as you say, there's no excuse, I'll be seeing you at the next BattleBots.
Who gave this post a score of 5?
He's not saying you don't need an operating system. Raskin is merely pointing out that current modern operating systems and GUI environments get in the way of the user getting work done. The words "the omnipresence of the OS is obsolete" are the author's (Burg) not Raskin's.
Tasks such as file, window, and application management are a burden to users. Slashdotters are among those who will influence the next generation of computing. Think about it: could the boot-up sequence and file system checks be eliminated? Why do we have separate applications for every type of interaction, with many applications having overlapping functionality? Why should programs ever be 'closed' in the modern era of virtual memory? With all of today's spare processing cycles and enormous hard drives, why aren't computers as easy to use as a typewriter?
It's often hard to think outside the box when you've become accustomed to doing something one way for so long. The current state of GUI's seems like 'the right way' now, but that could all change in 5 years.
i somehow failed to notice who yueh was until i saw him at the episode climax. only then did i recall seeing him in earlier scenes. but i don't think he was ever clearly identified before that.
I thought this was pretty clever on the part of the creators. It left something of a puzzle for you if you already knew the story. Dr. Yueh is the very first person you see in the opening scene.
The press release in no way claims that these things have "the highest energy density of any
electrochemical device". In fact, the energy density is only claimed to be equal to that of lead-acid batteries. Lead acid batteries have a much lower energy density than NiCd, NiMH or Lithium ion batteries.
These wouldn't make very good laptop batteries because they're too heavy. They would be great for BattleBots because of their high power/weight ratio.
I see a big problem here in that there is an assumption that each article has a "goodness" value which doesn't vary. Let's say I browse at level 3. Everyone else who browses at level 3 sees exactly the same articles that I do. Some may love "Hot Grits" posts. To each his own.
I'd much prefer it if I were to elect or join a group of moderators. This way, the trolls could read about Natalie Portman, Linux zealots wouldn't ever see anything remotely positive about Microsoft, etc.
It seems so simple: just let the liquid nitrogen expand and use that pressure to drive an air motor.
But I think most of the posters on this topic have missed a very important point: it takes energy to make the nitrogen expand. This heat comes from the atmosphere, as well as from the expansion chamber, the motor, fuel lines, etc. At the same time that you're heating the nitrogen, you're also cooling everything else down. As everything else gets colder, the system gets less efficient.
If you've ever fired an air rifle or paintball gun, you might have noticed how cold they can get.
Also, the you have to deal with frost forming on the outer components.
You'd need a massive heat sink or an electric heater to keep it all working.
(SARCASM)
Wait, I've got it! We'll use an electric heater to heat ordinary air so that it expands, then drive an air motor with the extra pressure!
(/SARCASM)
Working with people who are new to computers, I've noticed several common problems:
1. Multiple overlapping windows are very hard to sort out for someone who's not used to it. Notice that on video games, ATM's and the like that everything is completely modal; you're not distracted by everything else that's going on.
It would be better if computer GUI's took care of some of the complexity associated with arranging windows, dialog boxes, etc.
2. People aren't used to having to organize their files in a thougtful manner. Many users give their files names like 'Bob.xls' or 'Mary.doc'. What directory are they saving to? Many (maybe even most) people have absolutely no idea.
If the computer organized the user's data into a searchable database, rather than a hierarchial filesystem, information would be much easier to retrieve and reuse.
3. Collaboration is excessively difficult. This could be remedied through better versioning, easier interfaces to web publishing, and the like.
There are a lot of other problems, too, such as creeping featurism, emphasis on style over substance, etc., which I'm sure will be mentioned in other posts.
Slashdot Mirror
I used to be a big believer in the NASA Myth: that they were the only ones capable of doing big space launches and that space access for humans was inherently expensive.
Then I heard Jerry Pournelle speak a couple years ago at a convention. He said something that shook me: NASA has many good people and does many good things but needs to get out of the business of launching people and robots into space. It surprised me because here is a guy who is in favor of space exploration but against NASA.
NASA as an organization doesn't really care about cheap, reliable space launches, because that would mean that their budget would be cut! The shuttle accidents are a symptom of bureaucratic mentality. Think on this: the Russian space agency will charge you about $15M for a trip to the space station. It costs between $500M and $1 billion just to do a shuttle launch.
NASA does a great job building Mars rovers and such, let's keep them doing that. But we should turn everything else over to private industry.
This was actually a funny post.
Jerry Pournelle posted some more photos on his web site a couple days ago: http://jerrypournelle.com/view/view258.html#SS1
Will the rest of Transmetropolitan be collected as paperbacks? I put off buying the individual issues waiting for the collections, but they seem to be a little slow in coming.
When Alcatel tried to force the idea from him without a license, he could have merely presented an idea that was completely impractical.
For instance, "Decompiling the binaries is easy: we'll just zap them with a massive negative-entropy ray!"
Since he's never written anything down, there's no way to prove that this isn't his wonderful solution to whatever the final 20% of the problem was.
And why would Alcatel even waste their time suing to get something that could turn out to be total bullshit?
All right, let's suppose that the US is tapping these undersea cables. This story is appearing in a publically available source, and, given the feasability of the task, I have no reason to disbelieve it.
Now, what terrorist would possibly use these undersea cables for communications? You can be certain that the bad guys know about the US's capabilities. If I were organizing a multinational terror organization, I'd make sure that my communications didn't get routed via tappable cables. Or use some sort of code, encryption or steganography to hide the message. Easy enough.
So what's the point of monitoring these communications?
http://america.net/~judge/jms04-18
I had some problems getting the right support RPMS with my RH 7.1 system, but that's nothing I'm not used to.
As noted here by someone else, it's a little slow to start up. I wonder if that is an artifact of it starting up for the very first time. The look and feel are very similar KDE 2.2.2 for me.
The big difference so far is performance. Menus snap into place quickly, window operations are faster, pages render more quickly, the file manager is fast, and so on. My computer has a 300Mhz Celeron.
Also, a lot of web pages now work correctly, where they didn't in the 2.x series.
Overall stability is unknown at this point.
The people at the TX impound told me that EVERY 72 and 75 Mhz channel was in use by more than one robot. Futaba PCM radios seemed to be very popular.
PVC is a bit weak for BattleBots. I used it on my first robot, The Tunabomber, but that was for DragonCon's Robot Battles, where they don't have killsaws or robots like Whacker and Ziggo. Incidentally, my website has a tutorial similar to the one referenced in this story, but with more detail.
An onboard PC is certainly overkill for control. I do give it points for hack value, though. Competitors who want computer control functions usually use the IFI system. This also allows you to use PC joysticks to control your robot remotely (a joystick setup was mentioned in an earlier post, this is almost certainly what was used).
I wonder why the guys who built this robot didn't compete with it. After going through all that effort, it should be worth it to get to the competition, if only to see your robot ripped to shreds.
Finally, please moderate down all those people who talk about how easy it is to build a winning robot, unless they've actually done it. Slashdotters: as with Open Source, it's put up or shut up.
You can see all the heavyweight competitors at RobotCombat.com.
Range and interference ARE a problem, even with PCM radio. You've got lights, arena hazards, camera equipment and the like all giving off radio waves. This is something that R/C airplane people don't have to deal with. And I know this for a fact. I competed at BattleBots Treasure Island and had interference problems.
Hello Mr. User ID 211768, Build a robot like you describe and fight it against a robotic combat champ. If it's true, as you say, there's no excuse, I'll be seeing you at the next BattleBots. Who gave this post a score of 5?
EOM
A Google search shows that this isn't completely safe:
Byte Article
Tasks such as file, window, and application management are a burden to users. Slashdotters are among those who will influence the next generation of computing. Think about it: could the boot-up sequence and file system checks be eliminated? Why do we have separate applications for every type of interaction, with many applications having overlapping functionality? Why should programs ever be 'closed' in the modern era of virtual memory? With all of today's spare processing cycles and enormous hard drives, why aren't computers as easy to use as a typewriter?
It's often hard to think outside the box when you've become accustomed to doing something one way for so long. The current state of GUI's seems like 'the right way' now, but that could all change in 5 years.
It appears that hackers are now considering a piece of hardware that sits between the DSS receiver and the smart card. It would emulate the damaged area of memory and, presumably, prevent that area from being written to again. You didn't really think the game was over, did you?
I thought this was pretty clever on the part of the creators. It left something of a puzzle for you if you already knew the story. Dr. Yueh is the very first person you see in the opening scene.
These wouldn't make very good laptop batteries because they're too heavy. They would be great for BattleBots because of their high power/weight ratio.
XML?
I'd much prefer it if I were to elect or join a group of moderators. This way, the trolls could read about Natalie Portman, Linux zealots wouldn't ever see anything remotely positive about Microsoft, etc.
But I think most of the posters on this topic have missed a very important point: it takes energy to make the nitrogen expand. This heat comes from the atmosphere, as well as from the expansion chamber, the motor, fuel lines, etc. At the same time that you're heating the nitrogen, you're also cooling everything else down. As everything else gets colder, the system gets less efficient.
If you've ever fired an air rifle or paintball gun, you might have noticed how cold they can get.
Also, the you have to deal with frost forming on the outer components.
You'd need a massive heat sink or an electric heater to keep it all working.
(SARCASM)
Wait, I've got it! We'll use an electric heater to heat ordinary air so that it expands, then drive an air motor with the extra pressure!
(/SARCASM)
Where do you get the energy to compress the air?
1. Multiple overlapping windows are very hard to sort out for someone who's not used to it. Notice that on video games, ATM's and the like that everything is completely modal; you're not distracted by everything else that's going on.
It would be better if computer GUI's took care of some of the complexity associated with arranging windows, dialog boxes, etc.
2. People aren't used to having to organize their files in a thougtful manner. Many users give their files names like 'Bob.xls' or 'Mary.doc'. What directory are they saving to? Many (maybe even most) people have absolutely no idea.
If the computer organized the user's data into a searchable database, rather than a hierarchial filesystem, information would be much easier to retrieve and reuse.
3. Collaboration is excessively difficult. This could be remedied through better versioning, easier interfaces to web publishing, and the like.
There are a lot of other problems, too, such as creeping featurism, emphasis on style over substance, etc., which I'm sure will be mentioned in other posts.