OTOH, the specified 875000 Megatons (3.7e21 joules) is only about 7 years of total human energy consumption at current rates. It would not be inconceivable to tap off that much energy.
However, I would assume that the total heat energy in the magma dwarfs the amount of energy released in the explosive shock itself. Maybe you'd have to tap off quite a bit more than the explosive power to prevent a magma release. Still, over thousands of years of tapping, it might still make a difference.
It would be a lot cheaper and safer to send a repair robot than a human to fix things that break. However, very few robotic probes are even worth the cost of fixing, especially when the fixing involves humans. Just send another one.
As I pointed out above on this thread, it would have been cheaper to produce several Hubbles and send up new ones when the old ones broke than to fix them with missions in the ridiculously risky and expensive space shuttle.
I think that non-human missions should be expanded to include things like general-purpose robots that could do repair work. For example, on Mars an entire robotic base could be set up over time with a power source, repair capability, spare parts, etc. That would still cost a tiny fraction of a human mission and would be able to operate many times longer.
If only Columbus, Magellan and all others that followed thought the same.
They didn't have remote probes. More importantly, their destinations were not in lifeless, uninhabitable, waterless vacuums.
Going into space was always about *pushing* boundaries. You are NOT doing that with freaking robots!
Sure we are. For example, a mission to drill down into the liquid oceans of Europa would push plenty of boundaries (and would be totally impossible for humans anyway).
But we don't have any data on *how* to survive someplace like the Moon.
So what? We don't need to know how to do that unless we find a valid reason have anybody live there. It's a waste of valuable resources to figure it out now.
Apollo program resulted in computers (I guess that was a non-cost effective problem). If it wasn't for Apollo, NO ONE would fund the early silicon fabs. It would continue to advance at the pace of current fusion research.
False. Integrated circuits were first used for ICBM guidance, which is another robotic space technology.
To date, the main use of peoples' improvisational abilities in space has been to save their own asses when they got into trouble.
(Missions like fixing the Hubble telescope don't count, either. It would have been cheaper to build several Hubbles on an assembly line and launch them as they break than to send shuttle missions to service them.)
You're confusing the ends with the means. The ultimate goal is to gain scientific knowledge and/or access to resources. This can currently be done more effectively without the additional cost of sending humans.
The only current useful purpose for sending humans into space is to provide an exhibition of national bravado.
Right, let's just sit on our asses and wait for that Technological leap to appear out of nowhere so we can utilize the infinite resources in space.
That's exactly what we should do. In the mean time, robotic probes can accomplish much more useful work in space than fragile human meat sacks at a small fraction of the cost.
Yeah, because nobody expects a file system to be part of an operating system!
That's not the problem. The problem is that this royalty-generating file system will be part of most cameras and other gadgets.
If it was one unsupported by Windows, simply include a file system driver to be installed alongside the drivers and utilities that come with most cameras.
Countless others on this story have pointed out why that is not practical. Installing a driver takes significant effort and administrative rights on the system. User will not go through this effort if Microsoft has already installed their proprietary driver through their unique back channel that nobody else has access to.
In theory, nobody is "holding a gun their head" keep people from adopting a different file system for cameras. Also in theory, quantum fluctuations could cause a tiny flying pig to materialize on my desk. In reality, neither is going to happen. You know it, I know it, and Microsoft knows it.
SD, the camera manufacturers are free to make cameras that support other formats.
But they won't, because Microsoft will use its privileged position as the sole controller of "security" updates for its desktop monopoly OS to automatically push this encumbered filesystem to the vast majority of computers in use. No camera or card maker could ever hope to surmount that barrier and install enough filesystem drivers to reach critical mass of general adoption.
Microsoft is leveraging its monopoly position OSes to generate royalties in the unrelated camera market. That looks like an antitrust violation to me.
NTSC TV signals have much lower resolution in the color components than the intensity. Typical uncompressed implementations used chroma subsampling to match the analog bandwidth. I picked the common case of 4:2:2, where each pixel has a unique Y (intensity) value, and each pair of pixels share common values for Cr and Cb. With 8-bit sampling, this averages out to 2 bytes per pixel overall.
Consider how many "gigabytes" you "consume" just by watching TV for a few hours. Nothing new here...
It's totally meaningless, too, since it depends on the particular compression algorithms used. (For example, it's probably theoretically possible to get much better video compression than current block-based DCT technologies by better understanding and modeling how the human brain processes images.)
Back in the 1970s before MPEG was invented, measuring video data rates would have required about 720*480*30*2 = 20 Mbytes/sec. So someone who averaged 2 hours of daily TV would have "consumed" about 150 GB per day. Thus, using this logic, I conclude that the amount of information we absorb is plummeting!
Um, how else would it use its engines, if it wasn't at the side?
It's not just on the side. It's on the side with critical heat shields and flight components situated *below* a bunch of loose coatings and chunks of ice. That wouldn't have happened if they had not been so focused on making a spacecraft that looks like an airplane.
For example, if the fissile material or shape charges degrade, you're not going to go about replacing them. You'd just buld new ones, and in that case might as well design a better one from scratch.
No, because then you'd either have to test them or somehow convince yourself that they'll work without having ever been tested. The first option would have massive political costs, possibly reigniting a global nuclear arms race, and the second option is wishy-washy.
For the fissile material it would be best to melt them down, re-refine them, and build replacements to the exact original specifications. For the other parts, just build exact replacements.
I don't buy the oft-spouted line that "they can't be replaced because nobody makes the parts any more". Pay someone to develop the capability to build the old components. If they could make them 40 years ago, they sure as hell could make them now. There is no conceivable way that would cost more than an entirely new weapons program.
The problem with that is if your DVD is more than a few weeks old, you often have to download hundreds of megabytes of updates (frequently including GIMP) as soon as you boot up anyway. Unless and until Ubuntu starts implementing updates with efficient binary diffs, there's really no substitute for a fast connection.
I can't tell if you're joking, but everything you said about deuterium is 100% false. There is more D in the earth's oceans (1/6500th of all the water) than we could ever imagine using for fusion. It's also extracted cheaply and easily.
Not completely. Social Security provides an important benefit right now: It greatly reduces the risk that your mother-in-law will be moving in with you.
MS puts out a few non starters, eventually refines it's product to take the lead.
Not if it keeps up its current marketing incompetence. I've been amazed at how stupid their approach has been with their obnoxious pop-up search windows.
They've turned a whole bunch of 3rd-party websites into minefields, where you don't dare move your mouse cursor. If you're unlucky enough to hover over one of their stupid "links" that's put on every 10th common English word, then they evade popup blockers and slap in a huge irrelevant window topped with bing that covers up exactly what you're trying to read.
The result is that the user is repeatedly infuriated. What's worse, at exactly each time he is angered, he is shown the "bing" trademark, which reinforces the association in his mind between bing and idiocy.
Microsoft still doesn't understand the Internet or what its users want. Google has nothing to worry about yet.
Thanks for telling us that those claims are too complicated for you to read.
It's not just those claims. There are MILLIONS of software patent claims in existence. In theory, every developer needs to check every piece of code they write against all of those millions of claims. Otherwise they could be infringing on someone's patent. It's a completely unreasonable burden.
This isn't the old days where if you invent a new cotton gin, you could just look under "cotton gin" in a card index to find out if you're infringing.
And actually I haven't ever seen MS patent trolling,
Their shakedown of camera vendors and threats to OS implementors over the VFAT patents are a classic case of patent trolling.
The technology covered by the patents no longer has any intrinsic value, because nobody uses OSes that don't support long filenames. The only reason to use the long/short filename conversion in VFAT is purely circular: to ensure compatibility with VFAT itself.
Thus, these patents only remaining purpose in life is to create a barrier to entry in the markets that Microsoft operates in. The technology covered by them is is providing no end-user benefit, and consumers are paying royalties and getting nothing in return other than a less competitive market.
Slashdot Mirror
You would encounter the same problem if Ford had re-badged the Mazda RX-8 as a "Mustang".
I don't know. Ford rebranded an F-150 truck chassis as a "Lincoln", and it didn't seem to hurt them.
The will spew all sorts of particulate matter and chemicals into the air and then whine when a cigarette smokers do it.
Drivers don't generally back their cars up next to your face inside an enclosed room and then gun the engine, do they?
Nor do smokers have catalytic converters.
OTOH, the specified 875000 Megatons (3.7e21 joules) is only about 7 years of total human energy consumption at current rates. It would not be inconceivable to tap off that much energy.
However, I would assume that the total heat energy in the magma dwarfs the amount of energy released in the explosive shock itself. Maybe you'd have to tap off quite a bit more than the explosive power to prevent a magma release. Still, over thousands of years of tapping, it might still make a difference.
... the same bottle of beer is almost an order of magnitude cheaper at your local beverage mart than at an upscale night club. How can that be?
It would be a lot cheaper and safer to send a repair robot than a human to fix things that break. However, very few robotic probes are even worth the cost of fixing, especially when the fixing involves humans. Just send another one.
As I pointed out above on this thread, it would have been cheaper to produce several Hubbles and send up new ones when the old ones broke than to fix them with missions in the ridiculously risky and expensive space shuttle.
I think that non-human missions should be expanded to include things like general-purpose robots that could do repair work. For example, on Mars an entire robotic base could be set up over time with a power source, repair capability, spare parts, etc. That would still cost a tiny fraction of a human mission and would be able to operate many times longer.
If only Columbus, Magellan and all others that followed thought the same.
They didn't have remote probes. More importantly, their destinations were not in lifeless, uninhabitable, waterless vacuums.
Going into space was always about *pushing* boundaries. You are NOT doing that with freaking robots!
Sure we are. For example, a mission to drill down into the liquid oceans of Europa would push plenty of boundaries (and would be totally impossible for humans anyway).
But we don't have any data on *how* to survive someplace like the Moon.
So what? We don't need to know how to do that unless we find a valid reason have anybody live there. It's a waste of valuable resources to figure it out now.
Apollo program resulted in computers (I guess that was a non-cost effective problem). If it wasn't for Apollo, NO ONE would fund the early silicon fabs. It would continue to advance at the pace of current fusion research.
False. Integrated circuits were first used for ICBM guidance, which is another robotic space technology.
To date, the main use of peoples' improvisational abilities in space has been to save their own asses when they got into trouble.
(Missions like fixing the Hubble telescope don't count, either. It would have been cheaper to build several Hubbles on an assembly line and launch them as they break than to send shuttle missions to service them.)
You're confusing the ends with the means. The ultimate goal is to gain scientific knowledge and/or access to resources. This can currently be done more effectively without the additional cost of sending humans.
The only current useful purpose for sending humans into space is to provide an exhibition of national bravado.
Right, let's just sit on our asses and wait for that Technological leap to appear out of nowhere so we can utilize the infinite resources in space.
That's exactly what we should do. In the mean time, robotic probes can accomplish much more useful work in space than fragile human meat sacks at a small fraction of the cost.
Yeah, because nobody expects a file system to be part of an operating system!
That's not the problem. The problem is that this royalty-generating file system will be part of most cameras and other gadgets.
If it was one unsupported by Windows, simply include a file system driver to be installed alongside the drivers and utilities that come with most cameras.
Countless others on this story have pointed out why that is not practical. Installing a driver takes significant effort and administrative rights on the system. User will not go through this effort if Microsoft has already installed their proprietary driver through their unique back channel that nobody else has access to.
In theory, nobody is "holding a gun their head" keep people from adopting a different file system for cameras. Also in theory, quantum fluctuations could cause a tiny flying pig to materialize on my desk. In reality, neither is going to happen. You know it, I know it, and Microsoft knows it.
SD, the camera manufacturers are free to make cameras that support other formats.
But they won't, because Microsoft will use its privileged position as the sole controller of "security" updates for its desktop monopoly OS to automatically push this encumbered filesystem to the vast majority of computers in use. No camera or card maker could ever hope to surmount that barrier and install enough filesystem drivers to reach critical mass of general adoption.
Microsoft is leveraging its monopoly position OSes to generate royalties in the unrelated camera market. That looks like an antitrust violation to me.
What don't you like about the algorithms used in NTFS?
I don't like that they're shrouded in a black box.
I was going to comment on your post, but I've set my system to allow the browser to send only 100 cha
NTSC TV signals have much lower resolution in the color components than the intensity. Typical uncompressed implementations used chroma subsampling to match the analog bandwidth. I picked the common case of 4:2:2, where each pixel has a unique Y (intensity) value, and each pair of pixels share common values for Cr and Cb. With 8-bit sampling, this averages out to 2 bytes per pixel overall.
Consider how many "gigabytes" you "consume" just by watching TV for a few hours. Nothing new here...
It's totally meaningless, too, since it depends on the particular compression algorithms used. (For example, it's probably theoretically possible to get much better video compression than current block-based DCT technologies by better understanding and modeling how the human brain processes images.)
Back in the 1970s before MPEG was invented, measuring video data rates would have required about 720*480*30*2 = 20 Mbytes/sec. So someone who averaged 2 hours of daily TV would have "consumed" about 150 GB per day. Thus, using this logic, I conclude that the amount of information we absorb is plummeting!
Um, how else would it use its engines, if it wasn't at the side?
It's not just on the side. It's on the side with critical heat shields and flight components situated *below* a bunch of loose coatings and chunks of ice. That wouldn't have happened if they had not been so focused on making a spacecraft that looks like an airplane.
For example, if the fissile material or shape charges degrade, you're not going to go about replacing them. You'd just buld new ones, and in that case might as well design a better one from scratch.
No, because then you'd either have to test them or somehow convince yourself that they'll work without having ever been tested. The first option would have massive political costs, possibly reigniting a global nuclear arms race, and the second option is wishy-washy.
For the fissile material it would be best to melt them down, re-refine them, and build replacements to the exact original specifications. For the other parts, just build exact replacements.
I don't buy the oft-spouted line that "they can't be replaced because nobody makes the parts any more". Pay someone to develop the capability to build the old components. If they could make them 40 years ago, they sure as hell could make them now. There is no conceivable way that would cost more than an entirely new weapons program.
The problem with that is if your DVD is more than a few weeks old, you often have to download hundreds of megabytes of updates (frequently including GIMP) as soon as you boot up anyway. Unless and until Ubuntu starts implementing updates with efficient binary diffs, there's really no substitute for a fast connection.
By the way, I've never known anyone who gets aggressive when drunk. Happy or silly, yes. Aggressive, no.
You've never seen an aggressive drunk? You must lead a sheltered life.
I can't tell if you're joking, but everything you said about deuterium is 100% false. There is more D in the earth's oceans (1/6500th of all the water) than we could ever imagine using for fusion. It's also extracted cheaply and easily.
So it's like social security?
Not completely. Social Security provides an important benefit right now: It greatly reduces the risk that your mother-in-law will be moving in with you.
MS puts out a few non starters, eventually refines it's product to take the lead.
Not if it keeps up its current marketing incompetence. I've been amazed at how stupid their approach has been with their obnoxious pop-up search windows.
They've turned a whole bunch of 3rd-party websites into minefields, where you don't dare move your mouse cursor. If you're unlucky enough to hover over one of their stupid "links" that's put on every 10th common English word, then they evade popup blockers and slap in a huge irrelevant window topped with bing that covers up exactly what you're trying to read.
The result is that the user is repeatedly infuriated. What's worse, at exactly each time he is angered, he is shown the "bing" trademark, which reinforces the association in his mind between bing and idiocy.
Microsoft still doesn't understand the Internet or what its users want. Google has nothing to worry about yet.
Thanks for telling us that those claims are too complicated for you to read.
It's not just those claims. There are MILLIONS of software patent claims in existence. In theory, every developer needs to check every piece of code they write against all of those millions of claims. Otherwise they could be infringing on someone's patent. It's a completely unreasonable burden.
This isn't the old days where if you invent a new cotton gin, you could just look under "cotton gin" in a card index to find out if you're infringing.
And actually I haven't ever seen MS patent trolling,
Their shakedown of camera vendors and threats to OS implementors over the VFAT patents are a classic case of patent trolling.
The technology covered by the patents no longer has any intrinsic value, because nobody uses OSes that don't support long filenames. The only reason to use the long/short filename conversion in VFAT is purely circular: to ensure compatibility with VFAT itself.
Thus, these patents only remaining purpose in life is to create a barrier to entry in the markets that Microsoft operates in. The technology covered by them is is providing no end-user benefit, and consumers are paying royalties and getting nothing in return other than a less competitive market.