I think you just inadvertently pointed out the key. SourceForge. Or, more generally, an active OS support community. If our valiant government consultant picks an open source package from J. Random Basement Boob, he may very well end up screwing himself.
From my reading of his explanation, he seemed intent on getting commercial support for the software, open source or not. I admit it's valid to want to pay for some assurance that if the software breaks, someone will be on hand to at least try to fix the problem. The OS movement doesn't seem to address this as much as it could; a lot of legit software mechanics could offer their services here.
The OS idea puts more stress on the fact that OS software is less likely to break because of peerage. Your support isn't supposed to have to be commercial; instead, if the software breaks, it's likely already been fixed by someone else, and you need merely get a patch from the same place you got the software. Compare this with commercial software, where you likely have to submit a bug to the company, and wait for the next version to come out, which you must pay for.
It's when your problem is not fixed, that you'll ever have a non-zero cost for OS software. The idea here is to either get your on-staff programmer to fix it, in which case it's already been budgeted - and yeah, I know in this case there isn't an on-staff programmer available - or ask for help from the community, in which case you likely spend some time waiting, and maybe feeling a little out of control.
In conclusion, it seems wise when selecting OS software to look at how "live" its support community is. SourceForge, for instance, has a nice way of telling this. Meanwhile, again, it's by all means proper to want commercial support for OS software, particularly if its vital to keep it running 24/7. If it's not as vital, and you can't or won't budget for an in-staff code wrangler, I would suggest something a bit less costly than full support - something to bail you out of that rare case of having to wait for a fix to a bug no one had seen yet. Anyone seen OS software insurance yet?
Other new commands: LIE Launch IE LMW Launch MS Word LME Launch MS Excel LMO Launch MS Outlook LMOV Launch MS Outlook Virus LCNR Launch Clippy for No Reason DPRN Display Pr0n SPOP Show IE Popup SPU Spam User SHDR Send Hard Drive Contents to Redmond RBT Reboot SBS Show Blue Screen
The Martian elevator didn't burn up. Earth's atmosphere is significantly more "there" than Mars', so maybe it would be enough to burn it up, or maybe it still wouldn't be enough.
Also, the Martian elevator was a long strand counterbalanced by an asteroid at the far end. The cable was effectively cut just beneath the asteroid, thus making it horrifically off-balanced.
Even so, I really like your idea of failsafes, particularly chopping the cable up. I'm not sure boosters could brake the cable enough to prevent serious damage - maybe they could. You'd certainly want boosters along the cable anyway, to push it out of the way of any really big rocks or satellites.
First of all, I used the right pi. I supposed a pencil was 0.50 cm wide, halved that to get the width of the nanotube strand listed, then halved that again to get its radius, 0.125 cm, which I rounded to 0.13cm (for ease, though, not for signifidigits). pi*r*r = 3.14 * 0.0169 = 0.053 cm^2, as I said. Close enough to your figure. Hey, who knows what kind of pencil they use at Science News...
Of course, I then said the line was 10^6km long, or 10^8cm long, which means in my universe there are 100 cms to the km for some reason. So yeah, I should burn for that. Meanwhile, though, you might want to run away from that 700000-kg carbon strand falling out of the sky. Yeck. Maybe a carbon nanotube strand is even less dense than a single nanotube? Or they don't use chiral nanotubes in such strands? Surely one of my assumptions had to be wrong...
KSR described the destruction of the Martian space elevator in - um - Green Mars, I think. Or maybe Red Mars. Anyway, his research seemed to be pretty good, so if you want to believe a fictional account, the elevator, severed at the top, would be dragged down to the planet by the weight below, falling faster and faster over a period of days. It would wrap around the planet 2.5 times in the Earth's case, and fall faster than it could burn up.
When it hits, it demolishes anything in a lane several meters wide. The lane will trace the equator, of course. Countries affected would include Borneo, Malaysia, a few Indonesian islands, Kenya, Uganda, Congo, Gabon, Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador.
Anyone in the forecasted strike zone would be well advised to get the hell outta there. But come back in a few days. Once everything's cooled off, you're now in possession of your very own diamond mine.
I suspect the authorities would try to work things in such a way that any material harvested from the fallen cable would be used to pay for construction of the replacement. That would be the biggest damage - financial loss of cheap transport between Earthside and space.
That's why the carbon nanotubes are such a big deal. In fact, they're THE deal. According to the Science News article, a nanotube strand half the width of a pencil can suspend 40,000 kg. The question, then, is how much such a strand would weigh, per km. If 100,000 km of it (that's how long it needs to be) weighs 40,000 kg or more, you're shot.
According to "Physical Properties of Carbon Nanotubes", the tubes can have varying densities (makes sense, when you understand what they look like). Let's pick the largest density listed on the page: 1.40 g/cm^3.
Assume a pencil is 0.50 cm wide. So our nanotube strand is 0.25 cm wide. Cross sectional area is 0.053 cm^2. So the total volume of one strand is 10^8 * 0.053 cm^3, or 5.3x10^6 cm^3. Its mass would be about 7.4x10^3 kg, then. Or in English, 7400 kg. Significantly less than 40,000 kg. This single strand could hold up three more strands just like it, AND bear another 10,000 kg of strains.
And of course, a space elevator would consist of thousands of these strands. Kim Stanley Robinson was right; this thing would be ridiculously stronger than needed.
There's probably a general name for the argument I'm about to use here.
It's futile to try to ban research of anything. You can warn about the dangers of such-and-such (which you did here, so this isn't a slam on you), you can discourage manufacture of certain products with a specific nefarious purpose, and you can withhold funding. But as for research, sooner or later someone's going to take the effort to figure out anything, as long as it "feels" useful enough, and sometimes it'll get researched just because it's there.
In other words, "it's dangerous" isn't sufficient reason to stay away from learning about something. Rather, it's an incentive to do even more research, on finding a cure for the secondary problem(s).
Based on the FAQ, it looks like you considered a lot of different possible options, and really did your homework. Are there any aspects of the project that weren't perhaps as optimal as you'd like, that you would have done differently? (Not counting things not under your control, like having to contend with Qwest.)
I took a course he taught at UT Austin. The final exam was oral, one-on-one, for about two hours or so. I walked into his office at the end of the hall, which was larger than the classroom was. Actually, I don't walk into the office; I walk into the waiting room leading to the office.
So there's this huge room, with two walls covered in bookshelves, filled with books, periodicals, publications, a picture of Dijkstra in his graduation robes, awards, etc., all neatly arranged. I get the feeling the Doctor has written half of what's shelved there. (Knuth wrote half of the rest, I reckon.)
Dr. Dijkstra sits me down, and after a quick chat, launches into the first problem. It's a proof, fairly simple. After presenting the problem, he sits down in the chair across from me, and waits, quietly and patiently. On me.
I got so flustered I ended up with a B. One of my great regrets.
Other things you could do with a palmtop
on
The Wireless Arcade
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Yeah, I'm gonna sound like a snob, but I'd really like to read a book while waiting instead of turning my brain off for yet another Tetris clone. Trouble is, many of the books I'd like to read are too big to fit nicely in one of my pockets. If only I could put them in a palmtop or cellphone... Sure, this method of entertainment is clever and cool, but geez, I play enough games already.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you just inadvertently pointed out the key. SourceForge. Or, more generally, an active OS support community. If our valiant government consultant picks an open source package from J. Random Basement Boob, he may very well end up screwing himself.
From my reading of his explanation, he seemed intent on getting commercial support for the software, open source or not. I admit it's valid to want to pay for some assurance that if the software breaks, someone will be on hand to at least try to fix the problem. The OS movement doesn't seem to address this as much as it could; a lot of legit software mechanics could offer their services here.
The OS idea puts more stress on the fact that OS software is less likely to break because of peerage. Your support isn't supposed to have to be commercial; instead, if the software breaks, it's likely already been fixed by someone else, and you need merely get a patch from the same place you got the software. Compare this with commercial software, where you likely have to submit a bug to the company, and wait for the next version to come out, which you must pay for.
It's when your problem is not fixed, that you'll ever have a non-zero cost for OS software. The idea here is to either get your on-staff programmer to fix it, in which case it's already been budgeted - and yeah, I know in this case there isn't an on-staff programmer available - or ask for help from the community, in which case you likely spend some time waiting, and maybe feeling a little out of control.
In conclusion, it seems wise when selecting OS software to look at how "live" its support community is. SourceForge, for instance, has a nice way of telling this. Meanwhile, again, it's by all means proper to want commercial support for OS software, particularly if its vital to keep it running 24/7. If it's not as vital, and you can't or won't budget for an in-staff code wrangler, I would suggest something a bit less costly than full support - something to bail you out of that rare case of having to wait for a fix to a bug no one had seen yet. Anyone seen OS software insurance yet?
At L2 and L3, the gravitational force inward is balanced by centripetal force outward.
...I was hoping for actual clothes.
Other new commands:
LIE Launch IE
LMW Launch MS Word
LME Launch MS Excel
LMO Launch MS Outlook
LMOV Launch MS Outlook Virus
LCNR Launch Clippy for No Reason
DPRN Display Pr0n
SPOP Show IE Popup
SPU Spam User
SHDR Send Hard Drive Contents to Redmond
RBT Reboot
SBS Show Blue Screen
The Martian elevator didn't burn up. Earth's atmosphere is significantly more "there" than Mars', so maybe it would be enough to burn it up, or maybe it still wouldn't be enough.
Also, the Martian elevator was a long strand counterbalanced by an asteroid at the far end. The cable was effectively cut just beneath the asteroid, thus making it horrifically off-balanced.
Even so, I really like your idea of failsafes, particularly chopping the cable up. I'm not sure boosters could brake the cable enough to prevent serious damage - maybe they could. You'd certainly want boosters along the cable anyway, to push it out of the way of any really big rocks or satellites.
Ow. Ow ow ow.
First of all, I used the right pi. I supposed a pencil was 0.50 cm wide, halved that to get the width of the nanotube strand listed, then halved that again to get its radius, 0.125 cm, which I rounded to 0.13cm (for ease, though, not for signifidigits). pi*r*r = 3.14 * 0.0169 = 0.053 cm^2, as I said. Close enough to your figure. Hey, who knows what kind of pencil they use at Science News...
Of course, I then said the line was 10^6km long, or 10^8cm long, which means in my universe there are 100 cms to the km for some reason. So yeah, I should burn for that. Meanwhile, though, you might want to run away from that 700000-kg carbon strand falling out of the sky. Yeck. Maybe a carbon nanotube strand is even less dense than a single nanotube? Or they don't use chiral nanotubes in such strands? Surely one of my assumptions had to be wrong...
KSR described the destruction of the Martian space elevator in - um - Green Mars, I think. Or maybe Red Mars. Anyway, his research seemed to be pretty good, so if you want to believe a fictional account, the elevator, severed at the top, would be dragged down to the planet by the weight below, falling faster and faster over a period of days. It would wrap around the planet 2.5 times in the Earth's case, and fall faster than it could burn up.
When it hits, it demolishes anything in a lane several meters wide. The lane will trace the equator, of course. Countries affected would include Borneo, Malaysia, a few Indonesian islands, Kenya, Uganda, Congo, Gabon, Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador.
Anyone in the forecasted strike zone would be well advised to get the hell outta there. But come back in a few days. Once everything's cooled off, you're now in possession of your very own diamond mine.
I suspect the authorities would try to work things in such a way that any material harvested from the fallen cable would be used to pay for construction of the replacement. That would be the biggest damage - financial loss of cheap transport between Earthside and space.
That's why the carbon nanotubes are such a big deal. In fact, they're THE deal. According to the Science News article, a nanotube strand half the width of a pencil can suspend 40,000 kg. The question, then, is how much such a strand would weigh, per km. If 100,000 km of it (that's how long it needs to be) weighs 40,000 kg or more, you're shot.
According to "Physical Properties of Carbon Nanotubes", the tubes can have varying densities (makes sense, when you understand what they look like). Let's pick the largest density listed on the page: 1.40 g/cm^3.
Assume a pencil is 0.50 cm wide. So our nanotube strand is 0.25 cm wide. Cross sectional area is 0.053 cm^2. So the total volume of one strand is 10^8 * 0.053 cm^3, or 5.3x10^6 cm^3. Its mass would be about 7.4x10^3 kg, then. Or in English, 7400 kg. Significantly less than 40,000 kg. This single strand could hold up three more strands just like it, AND bear another 10,000 kg of strains.
And of course, a space elevator would consist of thousands of these strands. Kim Stanley Robinson was right; this thing would be ridiculously stronger than needed.
substancial[sic] debates
It's not what you're thinking. They're people debating while on some substance. Happens all the time. Carry on.
Has anyone tried the Design Patterns Java Workbook by Steven John Metsker?
It's sitting on my desk right now. I'm liking it...
April 1st was 171 days ago, by my count. Or it's 194 days ahead.
So that means this article is nearly as far off the mark as it can be - it should have come about 11 days later.
I hold a patent on any usage of 'IANAL', that will be 299$ for the licensing. btw, what does IANAL mean?
It means you're anal.
Based on current naming conventions, this shouldn't be called StarLOGO.
It should be called J-Logo.
Then you need an even shorter name, that rolls off the tongue. I think you see where I'm going with this.
Ehh. I just use 160MB of it, and copy the rest to the other half. Doot-duh-doo...
There's probably a general name for the argument I'm about to use here.
It's futile to try to ban research of anything. You can warn about the dangers of such-and-such (which you did here, so this isn't a slam on you), you can discourage manufacture of certain products with a specific nefarious purpose, and you can withhold funding. But as for research, sooner or later someone's going to take the effort to figure out anything, as long as it "feels" useful enough, and sometimes it'll get researched just because it's there.
In other words, "it's dangerous" isn't sufficient reason to stay away from learning about something. Rather, it's an incentive to do even more research, on finding a cure for the secondary problem(s).
"Stream of conscienceness"? I keep trying to think of a riff off of this, but I can't for some reason. Maybe my stream of consciousness is dammed. 8^)
Based on the FAQ, it looks like you considered a lot of different possible options, and really did your homework. Are there any aspects of the project that weren't perhaps as optimal as you'd like, that you would have done differently? (Not counting things not under your control, like having to contend with Qwest.)
Mod parent up, I guess, but damn, I did NOT need that thought in my head...
I took a course he taught at UT Austin. The final exam was oral, one-on-one, for about two hours or so. I walked into his office at the end of the hall, which was larger than the classroom was. Actually, I don't walk into the office; I walk into the waiting room leading to the office.
So there's this huge room, with two walls covered in bookshelves, filled with books, periodicals, publications, a picture of Dijkstra in his graduation robes, awards, etc., all neatly arranged. I get the feeling the Doctor has written half of what's shelved there. (Knuth wrote half of the rest, I reckon.)
Dr. Dijkstra sits me down, and after a quick chat, launches into the first problem. It's a proof, fairly simple. After presenting the problem, he sits down in the chair across from me, and waits, quietly and patiently. On me.
I got so flustered I ended up with a B. One of my great regrets.
Actually, what you want is to gravity-enhance the cheerleader's uniform.
Yes, obviously in many people's cases, every other Friday is SysAdmin Depreciation Day.
Try sneezing. It's like an orgasm without the sex. ;-)
(Or the dinner & movie, or the having to call afterward, or the child support...)
Never fear. One of the lost pieces is called 'The Dead Troupe Member Sketch'. Should be worth a look.
Thath not a lithp either. Thith ith a lithp.
Yeah, I'm gonna sound like a snob, but I'd really like to read a book while waiting instead of turning my brain off for yet another Tetris clone. Trouble is, many of the books I'd like to read are too big to fit nicely in one of my pockets. If only I could put them in a palmtop or cellphone... Sure, this method of entertainment is clever and cool, but geez, I play enough games already.