lots of little ideas are better than one big one? I can go along with that. History bears it out.
Communism - meaning Marxism, not Leninism/Stalinism, has some merits but needs a method of making corrections, which it doesn't have. Adam Smith may have had a single big idea, but his big idea was to let lots of people with small ideas loose to try them out. So far it seems to be the best idea.
Still, a massive shift in one of the fundamentals of our economy, exchange of labor for money, by making labor essentially worthless, will take a lot of little ideas and some time to compensate for. And you had better hope that it doesn't take too long, or the intervening upheaval could destroy some of the institutions that make it all possible.
Brain didn't say he had the perfect way out. He said we are going to have a huge problem.
In one way, his "solution" is trite, a repetition of what every utopian dreamer has proposed before. That is to free people from working for a living so they can exercise their creativity. You got a problem with that? Oh, yeah, we have to get from here to there. Oops.
But anyone under 30 today had better be very concerned about alternatives, because with 50% unemployment comes insurrection. No, it won't be like the militias would like, with Minutemen fighting skirmishes agains the black-clad UN minions. It will be like East LA, Watts, or Detroit on hell night. Gangs and clans fighting each other, burning and looting their own neighborhoods.
I especially liked the bit where the "clergy" use pocket screwdrivers as a secret sign to identify themselves to each other. Something I do once in a while just for fun. I have never met anyone who knew what I was referring to, though.
In a follow-up report the Times reports that SAR does not appear to be propagated by casual contact. It takes continuous exposure, such as would be seen by family members or care-givers. This is reassuring, because if it were to be spread easily it could be a problem. The statement that neither virus nor bacterial agent can be identified is interesting. Exactly what is meant by "a previously unknown infectious agent" is unclear.
Epidemiologists have been watching for indications of a repeat of the 1918 Swine Flu and expect it to emanate from Southeast Asia, primarily because so many people live in close proximity to other animals, as in the farm animals live on the first floor and the family lives on the second floor.
Code Bloat - Not on the radar screen
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The Faded Sun
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· Score: 1
First, we are an operations shop, we don't do any code. But the apps side of the house probably doesn't give it a second thought. Most of their code is just-in-time, meaning the client says they need to create some new functions to support the marketing campaign that starts a week from Saturday, and the coders slam something out. So long as it works most of the time and doesn't bring the other apps down, they are happy. Average lifetime of an app here is a little more than 2 years. Remember, this is marketing support, not core business process.
Where you have business-critical applications you tend to find them based on commercial off-the-shelf packages like PeopleSoft, SAP, Comergent, Interlog etc. How do those companies deal with it? Your guess is as good as mine.
H-1B Legislation Moot - Offshoring is Happening
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The Faded Sun
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· Score: 1
I run a team of 11, managing iPlanet, Websphere, Weblogic etc infrastructure. Of those, only 3 are not either H-1B or converted from H-1B to green card permanent resident alien. But my company (a major computer services - e.g. outsourcing company) is in a frenzy to move work offshore. Canada, Spain, Brazil, India wherever labor is cheaper. The era of the H-1B is waning, the new era is offshore.
Since when did a programming language translate to
on
The Faded Sun
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· Score: 1
positive cash flow in billions of dollars?
Personally I can't think of one. Did Cobol? Did PL/I? How about Basic? C?
Database management systems (Oracle) or desktop publishing (Adobe) yes. Where does Microsoft make its money (ok, everywhere).
Viewing Sun's Q2FY03 form 10-Q, looks to me like they almost broke even (that's a loss son) on operations. Then took restructuring charges (a routine event with Sun) and a $2 billion write-down of goodwill to come up with a $2.5 billion *loss* the last quarter.
IBM's income in the latest quarter was just over $1 billion, and income from continuing operations (before extraordinary items like restructuring costs etc) was $1.9 billion.
Sun claims total book value of about $7 billion including $5 billion in cash and marketable securities. It has about 3 billion shares outstanding, so even at $4 per share it's market cap is about $12 billion (it's currently $3.30). When share price gets below $3 it makes market cap close to book value. Can you say hostile takeover?
Do you remember how fast Digital pissed away $7 billion in cash?
A scramjet is a supersonic combustion ramjet. A ramjet is a very simple (mechanically) jet engine that relies on the speed of the vehicle to force air into and compress air in the combustion chamber.
The key is the supersonic part. Conventional jet engines - all of them, pulse jets, turbojets, ramjets etc. - combust at subsonic velocities. That's a problem, because when a vehicle travels at supersonic velocity, it must slow the air coming into the engine to subsonic velocity (relative to the vehicle, that is). This requires complex inlet shapes, and the right shape varies as the speed of the vehicle does - and obviously there's the subsonic/supersonic transition to consider too. The variable geometry inlets that you see in vehicles like the SR71 are the means that engineers do this. Obviously it adds weight and comlexity, but it also limits the speed of the vehicle, because at some point you get a diminishing return, slowing the air causes drag, which becomes more of a problem as you go faster. Result, subsonic engines have a speed limit. The solution is supersonic combustion.
Supersonic combustion is a neat trick. The fluid mechanics courses courses I attended in engineering school, for the sake of convenience, basically viewed supersonic combustion as an oxymoron and not possible. After all, the flamefront moves as molecules collide, and molecules colliding is the definition of the speed of sound in that medium. Therefore you can't have combustion moving through a medium faster than the speed of sound in that medium.
So how does a scramjet work? Beats me, that's a miracle I was never exposed to. Another neat trick is that some scramjet designs do not even enclose the the combustion area, just shape the fuselage correctly. This is an esoteric field. The Russians used to be the leaders back in the cold war days. I guess they don't have enough cash to keep up the work now.
Rule number 1: make it as light as possible. Rule number 2: the chassis should be as stiff as possible
These two rules dictate that the most efficient design is a stressed-skin or monocoque chassis. That's what is used in advanced aircraft, F1, CART, IRL and passenger cars (where they call it "unibody").
This vehicle "features" a separate chassis and body. Not cool. Can you say shake shimmy rattle and twist? A separate body/chassis design won't can't be as stiff as a monocoque unless it's far heavier, and won't be as light unless it twists too much for good handling, and of course twisting will result in fatigue failure as well as creaks and rattles.
Of course, what is shown here is probably just a mock-up by an artist with little to no design expertise. In the end, the lessons they learn about design can be incorporated into a modern chassis design, it just takes more time and effort.
I wondered about that when I saw the shots of the rocket shortly before it hit the ground (no, not on the pad - 10 seconds later). In the photo of the assembly on the pad you can see the wings of the model, but in the final shots, even the ones in which the rocket is shown spiraling in the sky, the model isn't visible.
If the guidance system is programmed assuming the model is attached, and the model is not, it may not respond very well.
Someone ought to put in a good word for John R. Campbell. He did more to nurture SciFi than any other figure, as he ran and edited SciFi pulp mags in the 30's and 40's. These were the venues that provided the growth medium for many of the classic scifi writers.
You'd be unlikely to find the pieces. They'd be emulsified with the rest of the rocks, dirt,dogs, houses, trees, cars and asphalt from the road, and spread along a 1 to 30 mile by 300 yd locus.
If the 9 states' disagreement with the other 9 states settlement constitutes making rules that apply to other states, then what is the converse? Would not the settlement by 9 states, by being binding on all states (if such is the case) be violate the same rule?
You can't have it both ways, either there is a problem here - in which case there can be no settlement either way - or there is no problem here and the case continues to be resolvable either way.
Organisms evolve in response to the pressures on the population that reduce survival for individuals with certain traits, or enhance survival (ok reproduction) for others. In the current human population there are enormouse selective pressures from microorganisms. HIV, malaria, TB, cholera etc. If you think they are not changing the survival rates of certain populations, you need to do some research.
After reading the Cringely article, and then scanning the media summary of the States settlement proposal, I am very concerned about how Microsoft can declare open season on any "non-commercial" software product. The lack of legal standing on the part of the non-business entities - such as Gnu and other open source, non-profit organizations be they formal or not - seems to remain. Perhaps it is asking too much to expect that the States address what is apparently one of Microsoft's principle strategies, but without interoperability (i.e. open standards that are really adhered to, such as file, security, networking protocols etc.) there will be no interoperability. And that will effectivly end open source software.
I want to see: MS must disgorge illegally obtained profits; MS must be effectively constrained from engaging in the behaviours that were found to be illegal (here is where the States proposal is most clearly superior to the Justice department's proposal); and MS must provide access to all interfaces to all of its products, this information must be available to any entity that requests it and no internal MS group may have preferential treatment or have access to features, functions or interfaces that are not available at the same time to external entities.
I read all of Red Mars, it had some strong points but in general was too long. I read Blue Mars and was forcing myself by 1/3 of the way through. I read 2 chapters of Green Mars and couldn't keep it up. Boring. Characters and action no longer believable, slow (turgid), it reads like the author was hoping to get a money machine like the Wheel of Time novels going. Needs a good old-school editor.
Quoting the last line "``We don't have enough data on Mars to draw any clear conclusions about climate change,'' he said. "
But this does underline the fact that continued research on Mars and other planets has some value. If Mars were seeing long-term climatic change -- e.g. warming, then there is reason to believe that what we see on Earth is not solely human in origin.
I agree with your unstated opinion that the evidence that human intervention is causing global warming has yet to be supported by a preponderance of convincing evidence. There are far too many unknowns. However (and this is why more research is important) we may not know until the question is moot.
That's why they are willing to give up voting rights. Companies issue bonds when they don't want to dilute the stockholder's equity (and dividend checks).
Actually, secured creditors get theirs before the bondholders, but they may be secured by relatively worthless assets, like routers, switches and servers which devalue quickly. Bondholders are second class, as "unsecured creditors," anyone who holds accounts recievables on the bankrupt company is also lumped into this group.
Stockholders (steerage passengers in this metaphor) get stock, which they can sell for whatever they can get. Last I heard, excite@home was a penny stock...
What makes you think that $1000/mo for T1 is a reflection of the cost of providing that service? The telecoms have been notorious for keeping prices way up and raking in the dough for many years.
In my previous company (a Fortune 10 chemicals company) I was close to the IT people who negotiated big longlines contracts with MCI & AT&T. This was back in the late '80s. With the advent of MCI, AT&T's tarifs (remember, these were regulated pricing schemes) dropped considerably.
I think I remember hearing recently that T1 prices have not changed significantly in the past 5 to 10 years. When you consider the amount of "dark fiber" - unused capacity - out there, you can see that prices could be lower if providers thought that they could recoup the lost revenue with volume. But that would require a different business model, based on low-margin commodity markets instead of a high-margin captive market based on regulated monopolies.
So, T1 rates are overpriced, and the true cost of bandwidth is vastly lower.
Then think about @home's record of spewing cash like a gushing oil well, the purchase of Excite for $7 Billion (!?!!!) for one. And do you know how much revenue they are deriving from that one? That's right, they are losing money, it has no revenue at all! Is it not more likely that debt service is what's really pulling them under?
And another thing, we've seen in news stories that of the $50/subscriber that the cable comanies pull in for service, they send about $16, or 1/3 to @home. The question that should be asked is, is that comparable to pricing and cost ratios in other similar industries and markets?
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lots of little ideas are better than one big one? I can go along with that. History bears it out.
Communism - meaning Marxism, not Leninism/Stalinism, has some merits but needs a method of making corrections, which it doesn't have. Adam Smith may have had a single big idea, but his big idea was to let lots of people with small ideas loose to try them out. So far it seems to be the best idea.
Still, a massive shift in one of the fundamentals of our economy, exchange of labor for money, by making labor essentially worthless, will take a lot of little ideas and some time to compensate for. And you had better hope that it doesn't take too long, or the intervening upheaval could destroy some of the institutions that make it all possible.
Brain didn't say he had the perfect way out. He said we are going to have a huge problem.
In one way, his "solution" is trite, a repetition of what every utopian dreamer has proposed before. That is to free people from working for a living so they can exercise their creativity. You got a problem with that? Oh, yeah, we have to get from here to there. Oops.
But anyone under 30 today had better be very concerned about alternatives, because with 50% unemployment comes insurrection. No, it won't be like the militias would like, with Minutemen fighting skirmishes agains the black-clad UN minions. It will be like East LA, Watts, or Detroit on hell night. Gangs and clans fighting each other, burning and looting their own neighborhoods.
I especially liked the bit where the "clergy" use pocket screwdrivers as a secret sign to identify themselves to each other. Something I do once in a while just for fun. I have never met anyone who knew what I was referring to, though.
In a follow-up report the Times reports that SAR does not appear to be propagated by casual contact. It takes continuous exposure, such as would be seen by family members or care-givers. This is reassuring, because if it were to be spread easily it could be a problem. The statement that neither virus nor bacterial agent can be identified is interesting. Exactly what is meant by "a previously unknown infectious agent" is unclear.
Epidemiologists have been watching for indications of a repeat of the 1918 Swine Flu and expect it to emanate from Southeast Asia, primarily because so many people live in close proximity to other animals, as in the farm animals live on the first floor and the family lives on the second floor.
ROFL. Did me some good.
First, we are an operations shop, we don't do any code. But the apps side of the house probably doesn't give it a second thought. Most of their code is just-in-time, meaning the client says they need to create some new functions to support the marketing campaign that starts a week from Saturday, and the coders slam something out. So long as it works most of the time and doesn't bring the other apps down, they are happy. Average lifetime of an app here is a little more than 2 years. Remember, this is marketing support, not core business process.
Where you have business-critical applications you tend to find them based on commercial off-the-shelf packages like PeopleSoft, SAP, Comergent, Interlog etc. How do those companies deal with it? Your guess is as good as mine.
I run a team of 11, managing iPlanet, Websphere, Weblogic etc infrastructure. Of those, only 3 are not either H-1B or converted from H-1B to green card permanent resident alien. But my company (a major computer services - e.g. outsourcing company) is in a frenzy to move work offshore. Canada, Spain, Brazil, India wherever labor is cheaper. The era of the H-1B is waning, the new era is offshore.
positive cash flow in billions of dollars?
Personally I can't think of one. Did Cobol? Did PL/I? How about Basic? C?
Database management systems (Oracle) or desktop publishing (Adobe) yes. Where does Microsoft make its money (ok, everywhere).
I don't see Java as the engine of Sun's survival.
Viewing Sun's Q2FY03 form 10-Q, looks to me like they almost broke even (that's a loss son) on operations. Then took restructuring charges (a routine event with Sun) and a $2 billion write-down of goodwill to come up with a $2.5 billion *loss* the last quarter.
IBM's income in the latest quarter was just over $1 billion, and income from continuing operations (before extraordinary items like restructuring costs etc) was $1.9 billion.
Sun claims total book value of about $7 billion including $5 billion in cash and marketable securities. It has about 3 billion shares outstanding, so even at $4 per share it's market cap is about $12 billion (it's currently $3.30). When share price gets below $3 it makes market cap close to book value. Can you say hostile takeover?
Do you remember how fast Digital pissed away $7 billion in cash?
A scramjet is a supersonic combustion ramjet. A ramjet is a very simple (mechanically) jet engine that relies on the speed of the vehicle to force air into and compress air in the combustion chamber.
The key is the supersonic part. Conventional jet engines - all of them, pulse jets, turbojets, ramjets etc. - combust at subsonic velocities. That's a problem, because when a vehicle travels at supersonic velocity, it must slow the air coming into the engine to subsonic velocity (relative to the vehicle, that is). This requires complex inlet shapes, and the right shape varies as the speed of the vehicle does - and obviously there's the subsonic/supersonic transition to consider too. The variable geometry inlets that you see in vehicles like the SR71 are the means that engineers do this. Obviously it adds weight and comlexity, but it also limits the speed of the vehicle, because at some point you get a diminishing return, slowing the air causes drag, which becomes more of a problem as you go faster. Result, subsonic engines have a speed limit. The solution is supersonic combustion.
Supersonic combustion is a neat trick. The fluid mechanics courses courses I attended in engineering school, for the sake of convenience, basically viewed supersonic combustion as an oxymoron and not possible. After all, the flamefront moves as molecules collide, and molecules colliding is the definition of the speed of sound in that medium. Therefore you can't have combustion moving through a medium faster than the speed of sound in that medium.
So how does a scramjet work? Beats me, that's a miracle I was never exposed to. Another neat trick is that some scramjet designs do not even enclose the the combustion area, just shape the fuselage correctly. This is an esoteric field. The Russians used to be the leaders back in the cold war days. I guess they don't have enough cash to keep up the work now.
Post Comment
Rule number 1: make it as light as possible.
Rule number 2: the chassis should be as stiff as possible
These two rules dictate that the most efficient design is a stressed-skin or monocoque chassis. That's what is used in advanced aircraft, F1, CART, IRL and passenger cars (where they call it "unibody").
This vehicle "features" a separate chassis and body. Not cool. Can you say shake shimmy rattle and twist? A separate body/chassis design won't can't be as stiff as a monocoque unless it's far heavier, and won't be as light unless it twists too much for good handling, and of course twisting will result in fatigue failure as well as creaks and rattles.
Of course, what is shown here is probably just a mock-up by an artist with little to no design expertise. In the end, the lessons they learn about design can be incorporated into a modern chassis design, it just takes more time and effort.
I wondered about that when I saw the shots of the rocket shortly before it hit the ground (no, not on the pad - 10 seconds later). In the photo of the assembly on the pad you can see the wings of the model, but in the final shots, even the ones in which the rocket is shown spiraling in the sky, the model isn't visible.
If the guidance system is programmed assuming the model is attached, and the model is not, it may not respond very well.
How about The Never Ending Story?
Someone ought to put in a good word for John R. Campbell. He did more to nurture SciFi than any other figure, as he ran and edited SciFi pulp mags in the 30's and 40's. These were the venues that provided the growth medium for many of the classic scifi writers.
You'd be unlikely to find the pieces. They'd be emulsified with the rest of the rocks, dirt,dogs, houses, trees, cars and asphalt from the road, and spread along a 1 to 30 mile by 300 yd locus.
Any FUD is good FUD. Refutability is irrelevant.
If the 9 states' disagreement with the other 9 states settlement constitutes making rules that apply to other states, then what is the converse? Would not the settlement by 9 states, by being binding on all states (if such is the case) be violate the same rule?
You can't have it both ways, either there is a problem here - in which case there can be no settlement either way - or there is no problem here and the case continues to be resolvable either way.
But only a select group have access to this medicine.
Organisms evolve in response to the pressures on the population that reduce survival for individuals with certain traits, or enhance survival (ok reproduction) for others. In the current human population there are enormouse selective pressures from microorganisms. HIV, malaria, TB, cholera etc. If you think they are not changing the survival rates of certain populations, you need to do some research.
After reading the Cringely article, and then scanning the media summary of the States settlement proposal, I am very concerned about how Microsoft can declare open season on any "non-commercial" software product. The lack of legal standing on the part of the non-business entities - such as Gnu and other open source, non-profit organizations be they formal or not - seems to remain. Perhaps it is asking too much to expect that the States address what is apparently one of Microsoft's principle strategies, but without interoperability (i.e. open standards that are really adhered to, such as file, security, networking protocols etc.) there will be no interoperability. And that will effectivly end open source software.
I want to see: MS must disgorge illegally obtained profits; MS must be effectively constrained from engaging in the behaviours that were found to be illegal (here is where the States proposal is most clearly superior to the Justice department's proposal); and MS must provide access to all interfaces to all of its products, this information must be available to any entity that requests it and no internal MS group may have preferential treatment or have access to features, functions or interfaces that are not available at the same time to external entities.
I read all of Red Mars, it had some strong points but in general was too long. I read Blue Mars and was forcing myself by 1/3 of the way through. I read 2 chapters of Green Mars and couldn't keep it up. Boring. Characters and action no longer believable, slow (turgid), it reads like the author was hoping to get a money machine like the Wheel of Time novels going. Needs a good old-school editor.
Quoting the last line "``We don't have enough data on Mars to draw any clear conclusions about climate change,'' he said. "
But this does underline the fact that continued research on Mars and other planets has some value. If Mars were seeing long-term climatic change -- e.g. warming, then there is reason to believe that what we see on Earth is not solely human in origin.
I agree with your unstated opinion that the evidence that human intervention is causing global warming has yet to be supported by a preponderance of convincing evidence. There are far too many unknowns. However (and this is why more research is important) we may not know until the question is moot.
I'm on comcast. It's 11:54PM in the east.
That's why they are willing to give up voting rights. Companies issue bonds when they don't want to dilute the stockholder's equity (and dividend checks).
Actually, secured creditors get theirs before the bondholders, but they may be secured by relatively worthless assets, like routers, switches and servers which devalue quickly. Bondholders are second class, as "unsecured creditors," anyone who holds accounts recievables on the bankrupt company is also lumped into this group.
Stockholders (steerage passengers in this metaphor) get stock, which they can sell for whatever they can get. Last I heard, excite@home was a penny stock...
What makes you think that $1000/mo for T1 is a reflection of the cost of providing that service? The telecoms have been notorious for keeping prices way up and raking in the dough for many years.
In my previous company (a Fortune 10 chemicals company) I was close to the IT people who negotiated big longlines contracts with MCI & AT&T. This was back in the late '80s. With the advent of MCI, AT&T's tarifs (remember, these were regulated pricing schemes) dropped considerably.
I think I remember hearing recently that T1 prices have not changed significantly in the past 5 to 10 years. When you consider the amount of "dark fiber" - unused capacity - out there, you can see that prices could be lower if providers thought that they could recoup the lost revenue with volume. But that would require a different business model, based on low-margin commodity markets instead of a high-margin captive market based on regulated monopolies.
So, T1 rates are overpriced, and the true cost of bandwidth is vastly lower.
Then think about @home's record of spewing cash like a gushing oil well, the purchase of Excite for $7 Billion (!?!!!) for one. And do you know how much revenue they are deriving from that one? That's right, they are losing money, it has no revenue at all! Is it not more likely that debt service is what's really pulling them under?
And another thing, we've seen in news stories that of the $50/subscriber that the cable comanies pull in for service, they send about $16, or 1/3 to @home. The question that should be asked is, is that comparable to pricing and cost ratios in other similar industries and markets?