A lot of live HD distribution is still done in MPEG2. Why? The coding delay for MPEG2 is a lot lower than for h264/HVEC/whatever the latest fancy is. Not a big deal when dealing with canned material, but a huge factor in dealing with live material. It's the difference between an 18Mbps stream (for MPEG2 HD) vs 6Mbps (h.264), but also the difference between 0.5 seconds of encoding delay vs 2 or 3 seconds.
Also, the broadcast industry is incredibly stingy when it comes to spending money, especially capital expenditures. MPEG2 encoders are pretty cheap at this point, whereas MPEG4 are 10x the cost.
Yes and no. The upper stage for the Delta IV heavy is much more performant than the Falcon 9 second stage. While the F9 can throw more weight to LEO, it's less clear when it comes to direct geostationary insertion.
The other issue is that the F9/FH fairing is pretty close to being too small to actually use the FH's entire throw weight. The only way it could really actually launch the 60 tons or whatever would be if it was solid metal. A customer wanting to launch such a large load would alos have to pay for a new fairing in a new size, and then they would have to work out all the aerodynamics and stuff for the new fairing.
So yeah, as big of a fan of SpaceX as I am, it's not as clear cut as you're making it out to be.
Nuclear power is reliable, inexpensive (at least compared to solar + batteries), carbon free, and also the safest energy source we have.
Not sure what planet you're living on. Sure it's reasonably reliable. But I don't think anyone in their right mind would consider it inexpensive. Also, it's definitely not carbon free due to the immense amounts of concrete required to build the plants, never mind mine the Uranium and enrich it. But hey, don't let facts get in the way of your argument.
The jury is still out. Working at home allows you to complete tasks on your own time and in your own environment where you are presumably less distracted.
I'm absolutely the other way. At home is where all my distractions are: All my projects that are waiting for me to finish, my computers/games, my local pub, my cat, and so forth and so on. I get very little done while I'm at home, where as at work, the only distractions are from coworkers, and that I can deal with.
I am very pro-geoengineering, but irrigating the Sahara by pumping thousands of cubic miles of seawater uphill to grow salt-tolerant GMO crops that don't exist yet is not the place to start.
The Quaatara Depression is below sea level. If you could dig a sufficiently large tunnel or canal, you could not only irrigate based on gravity, but also generate vast quantities of hydro-electric power. You'd just run the water from the Mediterranian through the system.
Also, adding all that moisture to the atmosphere would radically increase the available moisture in the region.
The only cheaper ones I found were the archive drives, which use SMR, which is fine for backups and read-mostly workloads, but not really suitable for random access. Their normal drives were about the same as the NAS drives.
Oddly, when I was shopping for 8TB drives for my NAS recently, the HGST 7200rpm Helium drives were cheaper than the equivalent WD Reds or Seagates. So yeah, they're not always the most expensive out there. I think I paid $250 CAD each for the drives. The WDs and Seagates were about $15 more. So yeah, HGST isn't always the most expensive, especially if you shop.
Because it actually made sense 70 years ago. The manufacturers would sell the vehicles, but not provide the service/support/parts infrastructure that was required to actually service them (given the poor reliability). Putting the dealerships brought about the parts/service stuff that the dealerships weren't providing.
In the modern era, when vehicles are much more reliable, and there are parts/service infrastructure separate from the delaerships, it no longer matters. However, in small town america, the dealerships are often the larger businesses in town, and thus have a significant amount of clout when it comes to state lawmakers.
Ahh, but some people, of which I presume rogoshen1 is, realize that people from the other side of the aisle aren't always the enemy, but can in fact do things that you like. It's not "Us" vs "Them" it's all "Us" just that we may not agree 100% with some of the othe othe rparts of "us"
I think the ability to understand what the customer is saying/complaining about existing solutions is what has driven the innovation and growth at Google. The question is if this is still true.
The question is, who are the customers? For the most part, you, me, and John Q Public are the product, not the customers. In the modern era, Google is there to connect advertisers to relevant eyeballs, and to do so in a way that doesn't piss off said eyeballs.
> Technically, the iPhone wasn't any more innovative than what Palm had already created.
Claiming that the first iPhone wasn't more innovative than the equivalent palm at the time is akin to claiming that a Chevy Volt isn't any more innovative than a Yugo. The iPhone jumped two or three generations ahead of where any Palms I ever saw were. Better software, better screen, better touch interface, and so forth. You are correct in saying that the iPhone was evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, but to claim they're comparable is farcical.
At the commuter train/LRT level, there are many systems that are completely automated - no drivers at all. Granted, the switching isn't too complex, but they can be commanded to switch tracks and manage themselves with supervision done at a central control station.
A lot of these systems, the Vancouver Skytrain being the example I'm most familiar with, are more akin to full size model train sets. Yes, the trains have a certain level of autonomy, but they're still controlled and supervised from a central control centre. The autonomy is mostly ensuring they keep the specified distance from the train ahead of them, and get the heartbeat from the control centre.
Even speed limit enforcement has been automated away - if the train is coming too fast for the speed limit, the train automatically slows down. The unions generally hate this as it reduces the driver to a monkey. OTOH, the safety record of these systems is quite stellar, and most rail lines only experience it once before the system is rolled out on all the rolling stock.
Positive Train Control, which is what you're describing, has been proposed for close to a decade now, but still hasn't come to pass completely in North America. The recent Amtrak derailment south of Seattle was due to the driver not following the speed limits, and that the train and the tracks had not yet been enabled for PTC.
As you rightly point out, the main thing here is to build in layers of safety and security, to better improve the odds that you don't have the Swiss cheese effect.
I remember a number of years ago, when the Royal Hudson (CPR 2860, an oil fired steam locomotive) was being re-certified for mainline track use. One of the challenges was connecting modern safety equipment, including an EDR, to an 80 year old steam locomotive. They did it, but it did require a significant amount of ingenuity.
Any time i feel like my job is meaningless and/or futile, I just think about the poor SOB who installs the turn signals on BMWs, and then I don't feel so bad.
The ISR is not owned, nor controlled by either the government of Quebec or Canada. It is controlled by a privately operated single-desk marketing system owned/operated by the syrup producers within the province. yes, the single desk part of it is mandory, but beyond that there is no government oversight or control.
Then again, Toronto always consideres itself to be the center of the universe, and forgets that the country continues on beyond Thunder Bay.;)
As the old joke goes: How many Torontonians does it take to change a light bulb? Just one. He holds it in the socket while the world revolves around them.
The best maple syrup (due to a colder climate...) comes from eastern Canada,
I love how people often refer to Ontario and western Quebec as "Eastern Canada". Canada is a vast, vast, country, and Ontario, especially, is much closer to the middle than it is to the eastern side.
Also, the Canadian government's Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve(tm) (it's a real thing!) is intended to cover for exactly the type of (very temporary) shortage this would involve.
I hate to break it to you, but while the maple reserve does exist, it's not associated with the Canadian federal government, nor even the Quebec government. Instead, It's maintained by a federation of Quebec producers, and basically allows them to act as a Cartel when it comes to Maple Syrup.
This is especially true when it comes to password storage mechanisms. Chrome will outright refuse to enter username/password pairs into websites if the SSL certificate isn't perfect. It will do it for http, and working https, but won't do it for broken https. Yes, it's broken, but we the users should have the choice here, someof us are administerring gear on airgapped/firewalled networks where supporting the latest and greatest SSL standard isn't a huge priority, and/or getting updates to the old equipment is not going to happen for financial reasons, or because the provider simply no longer exists.
You're assuming that the enterprise is capable of running equipment capable of speaking https, and more importantly the modern versions thereof. Not everyone keeps updating to the latest and greatest, especialy when that's on a private network with no outside connectivity.
I run a wireless network for a non-profit, it's running a pair of Cisco WLC-4404s for the wireless controllers. I don't have the budget to replace them, and they work perfectly fine for the task we ask of them. You might say "go with ubiquiti! or Meraki, all of those cost more than what I already have, and what I paid, and often have fewer features.
Their admin interface simply can not handle a sha-256 certificate to secure its admin page. But that doesn't matter, because the only place that web page can be accessed from is the administration subnet. Yet the browsers bitch and complain and won't let me pick "Ignore it and remember this forever more" So what have I done? I setup an ngix proxy that connects to them via http, and releases it out over modern https. It's a stupid hack that serves no purpose, adds no security, and only serves to make the browsers happy.
What I should be able to do is check a couple of boxes and basically say "Yes, I know this is insecure as hell, and I don't care." I've already had to stop using chrome because it won't auto-fill passwords for anything except what is perfectly modern security. TLS 1.0? too bad. SHA1 certificates? too bad, so sad, go suck a lemon. So either I hack around it, or I use insecure passwords. both of which are worse solutions.
If you go back 20 years ago when the A380 was being proposed - Airbus confidently proclaimed that there would be a 1,300+ unit market for a huge four engine jet. Boeing predicted that, at best, there would be a 360 unit market.
I've always thought that the A380 was one of the greatest marketing coups in history. On the part of Boeing.
Back when all of this was being proposed, Boeing had their own conceptual super-jumbo that they were proposing (remember the huge flying wings and so forth?), they were proposing this kind of thing along with Airbus, the difference is that Boeing never actually booked an order,s ot hey didn't have to build it. This let them focus on the Dreamliner, further development of the 777, and so forth.
Airbus, on the other hand, did book the orders, and thus had to spend the billions of Euros it took to actually produce the aircraft.
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A lot of live HD distribution is still done in MPEG2. Why? The coding delay for MPEG2 is a lot lower than for h264/HVEC/whatever the latest fancy is. Not a big deal when dealing with canned material, but a huge factor in dealing with live material. It's the difference between an 18Mbps stream (for MPEG2 HD) vs 6Mbps (h.264), but also the difference between 0.5 seconds of encoding delay vs 2 or 3 seconds.
Also, the broadcast industry is incredibly stingy when it comes to spending money, especially capital expenditures. MPEG2 encoders are pretty cheap at this point, whereas MPEG4 are 10x the cost.
Who knew that the revolution would be lead by park rangers and weather forecasters?
And then we will all have to dine at The Taco Bell.
Unfortunately, I don't know if Starman was a hoopy frood... I didn't see his towel anywhere.
Yes and no. The upper stage for the Delta IV heavy is much more performant than the Falcon 9 second stage. While the F9 can throw more weight to LEO, it's less clear when it comes to direct geostationary insertion.
The other issue is that the F9/FH fairing is pretty close to being too small to actually use the FH's entire throw weight. The only way it could really actually launch the 60 tons or whatever would be if it was solid metal. A customer wanting to launch such a large load would alos have to pay for a new fairing in a new size, and then they would have to work out all the aerodynamics and stuff for the new fairing.
So yeah, as big of a fan of SpaceX as I am, it's not as clear cut as you're making it out to be.
Nuclear power is reliable, inexpensive (at least compared to solar + batteries), carbon free, and also the safest energy source we have.
Not sure what planet you're living on. Sure it's reasonably reliable. But I don't think anyone in their right mind would consider it inexpensive. Also, it's definitely not carbon free due to the immense amounts of concrete required to build the plants, never mind mine the Uranium and enrich it. But hey, don't let facts get in the way of your argument.
The jury is still out. Working at home allows you to complete tasks on your own time and in your own environment where you are presumably less distracted.
I'm absolutely the other way. At home is where all my distractions are: All my projects that are waiting for me to finish, my computers/games, my local pub, my cat, and so forth and so on. I get very little done while I'm at home, where as at work, the only distractions are from coworkers, and that I can deal with.
I am very pro-geoengineering, but irrigating the Sahara by pumping thousands of cubic miles of seawater uphill to grow salt-tolerant GMO crops that don't exist yet is not the place to start.
The Quaatara Depression is below sea level. If you could dig a sufficiently large tunnel or canal, you could not only irrigate based on gravity, but also generate vast quantities of hydro-electric power. You'd just run the water from the Mediterranian through the system.
Also, adding all that moisture to the atmosphere would radically increase the available moisture in the region.
The only cheaper ones I found were the archive drives, which use SMR, which is fine for backups and read-mostly workloads, but not really suitable for random access. Their normal drives were about the same as the NAS drives.
Oddly, when I was shopping for 8TB drives for my NAS recently, the HGST 7200rpm Helium drives were cheaper than the equivalent WD Reds or Seagates. So yeah, they're not always the most expensive out there. I think I paid $250 CAD each for the drives. The WDs and Seagates were about $15 more. So yeah, HGST isn't always the most expensive, especially if you shop.
If you're shucking drives, that's another matter.
Because it actually made sense 70 years ago. The manufacturers would sell the vehicles, but not provide the service/support/parts infrastructure that was required to actually service them (given the poor reliability). Putting the dealerships brought about the parts/service stuff that the dealerships weren't providing.
In the modern era, when vehicles are much more reliable, and there are parts/service infrastructure separate from the delaerships, it no longer matters. However, in small town america, the dealerships are often the larger businesses in town, and thus have a significant amount of clout when it comes to state lawmakers.
Wow, you've really drunk the kool-aid.
Shut up Dennis...
Ahh, but some people, of which I presume rogoshen1 is, realize that people from the other side of the aisle aren't always the enemy, but can in fact do things that you like. It's not "Us" vs "Them" it's all "Us" just that we may not agree 100% with some of the othe othe rparts of "us"
I think the ability to understand what the customer is saying/complaining about existing solutions is what has driven the innovation and growth at Google. The question is if this is still true.
The question is, who are the customers? For the most part, you, me, and John Q Public are the product, not the customers. In the modern era, Google is there to connect advertisers to relevant eyeballs, and to do so in a way that doesn't piss off said eyeballs.
> Technically, the iPhone wasn't any more innovative than what Palm had already created.
Claiming that the first iPhone wasn't more innovative than the equivalent palm at the time is akin to claiming that a Chevy Volt isn't any more innovative than a Yugo. The iPhone jumped two or three generations ahead of where any Palms I ever saw were. Better software, better screen, better touch interface, and so forth. You are correct in saying that the iPhone was evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, but to claim they're comparable is farcical.
At the commuter train/LRT level, there are many systems that are completely automated - no drivers at all. Granted, the switching isn't too complex, but they can be commanded to switch tracks and manage themselves with supervision done at a central control station.
A lot of these systems, the Vancouver Skytrain being the example I'm most familiar with, are more akin to full size model train sets. Yes, the trains have a certain level of autonomy, but they're still controlled and supervised from a central control centre. The autonomy is mostly ensuring they keep the specified distance from the train ahead of them, and get the heartbeat from the control centre.
Even speed limit enforcement has been automated away - if the train is coming too fast for the speed limit, the train automatically slows down. The unions generally hate this as it reduces the driver to a monkey. OTOH, the safety record of these systems is quite stellar, and most rail lines only experience it once before the system is rolled out on all the rolling stock.
Positive Train Control, which is what you're describing, has been proposed for close to a decade now, but still hasn't come to pass completely in North America. The recent Amtrak derailment south of Seattle was due to the driver not following the speed limits, and that the train and the tracks had not yet been enabled for PTC.
As you rightly point out, the main thing here is to build in layers of safety and security, to better improve the odds that you don't have the Swiss cheese effect.
I remember a number of years ago, when the Royal Hudson (CPR 2860, an oil fired steam locomotive) was being re-certified for mainline track use. One of the challenges was connecting modern safety equipment, including an EDR, to an 80 year old steam locomotive. They did it, but it did require a significant amount of ingenuity.
Any time i feel like my job is meaningless and/or futile, I just think about the poor SOB who installs the turn signals on BMWs, and then I don't feel so bad.
The ISR is not owned, nor controlled by either the government of Quebec or Canada. It is controlled by a privately operated single-desk marketing system owned/operated by the syrup producers within the province. yes, the single desk part of it is mandory, but beyond that there is no government oversight or control.
Then again, Toronto always consideres itself to be the center of the universe, and forgets that the country continues on beyond Thunder Bay. ;)
As the old joke goes: How many Torontonians does it take to change a light bulb? Just one. He holds it in the socket while the world revolves around them.
The best maple syrup (due to a colder climate...) comes from eastern Canada,
I love how people often refer to Ontario and western Quebec as "Eastern Canada". Canada is a vast, vast, country, and Ontario, especially, is much closer to the middle than it is to the eastern side.
Also, the Canadian government's Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve(tm) (it's a real thing!) is intended to cover for exactly the type of (very temporary) shortage this would involve.
I hate to break it to you, but while the maple reserve does exist, it's not associated with the Canadian federal government, nor even the Quebec government. Instead, It's maintained by a federation of Quebec producers, and basically allows them to act as a Cartel when it comes to Maple Syrup.
This is especially true when it comes to password storage mechanisms. Chrome will outright refuse to enter username/password pairs into websites if the SSL certificate isn't perfect. It will do it for http, and working https, but won't do it for broken https. Yes, it's broken, but we the users should have the choice here, someof us are administerring gear on airgapped/firewalled networks where supporting the latest and greatest SSL standard isn't a huge priority, and/or getting updates to the old equipment is not going to happen for financial reasons, or because the provider simply no longer exists.
You're assuming that the enterprise is capable of running equipment capable of speaking https, and more importantly the modern versions thereof. Not everyone keeps updating to the latest and greatest, especialy when that's on a private network with no outside connectivity.
I run a wireless network for a non-profit, it's running a pair of Cisco WLC-4404s for the wireless controllers. I don't have the budget to replace them, and they work perfectly fine for the task we ask of them. You might say "go with ubiquiti! or Meraki, all of those cost more than what I already have, and what I paid, and often have fewer features.
Their admin interface simply can not handle a sha-256 certificate to secure its admin page. But that doesn't matter, because the only place that web page can be accessed from is the administration subnet. Yet the browsers bitch and complain and won't let me pick "Ignore it and remember this forever more" So what have I done? I setup an ngix proxy that connects to them via http, and releases it out over modern https. It's a stupid hack that serves no purpose, adds no security, and only serves to make the browsers happy.
What I should be able to do is check a couple of boxes and basically say "Yes, I know this is insecure as hell, and I don't care." I've already had to stop using chrome because it won't auto-fill passwords for anything except what is perfectly modern security. TLS 1.0? too bad. SHA1 certificates? too bad, so sad, go suck a lemon. So either I hack around it, or I use insecure passwords. both of which are worse solutions.
End rant.
If you go back 20 years ago when the A380 was being proposed - Airbus confidently proclaimed that there would be a 1,300+ unit market for a huge four engine jet. Boeing predicted that, at best, there would be a 360 unit market.
I've always thought that the A380 was one of the greatest marketing coups in history. On the part of Boeing.
Back when all of this was being proposed, Boeing had their own conceptual super-jumbo that they were proposing (remember the huge flying wings and so forth?), they were proposing this kind of thing along with Airbus, the difference is that Boeing never actually booked an order,s ot hey didn't have to build it. This let them focus on the Dreamliner, further development of the 777, and so forth.
Airbus, on the other hand, did book the orders, and thus had to spend the billions of Euros it took to actually produce the aircraft.