I guess I'm a fan of existing technology here, but I don't see a giganitic tractor beam anywhere in the next fifty years, nor do I see a laser being enough to sufficiently neutralize an extinction event 'roid anywhere in the near future either. I mean, lets keep it simple here-- Gulf War Bunker busters. We know nuclear weapons won't have a huge effect in a vacuume (or at least that's the theory) nor will a surface impact do much a whole lot of damage (supposively). Needless to say, landing somebody on it isn't exactly the best of ideas either... It got Bruce killed last time we tried that.
What we do have is ongoing project to make a bunker busting nuclear weapon, designed to penetrate multiple layers of reinforced armor deep under ground and detonate at a specific depth. Of course the first thing to do is increase the tonnage of this weapon and strap it onto a booster. The second thing would be to harden the fuck out of the penetration module since we're now dealing with reletivistic velocities. It might even be nessisary to slow the weapon down before final impact since it would be easy to pancake the weapon ue to the velocity differential between the missile and 'roid alone.
Penetration- The formentioned velocity will ultimately aid in penetration, though it'd probably be wise to hedge one's bets. For this, we'll borrow from existing technology again to get the weapon as deep as possible using a secondary nuclear device as a penetration aid, launched anywhere from a few hours to seconds before impact in order to 'prep' the impact site. Since I'm not a nuclear physisist, I don't know if one can 'shape' a nuclear detonation, but the effect would be similar to an anti-armor round breaching the surface for the follow-on penetrator. Multiple breaching charges may be desirable to help the weapon plow as deep as possible. If you wanted to get more exotic, equip em with drill heads to or even a laser to soften up the impact zone on it's way in, though I figure simple is best.
The weapon would be time delayed, used in concert with a number of other weapons as the astroid is 'seeded' with a volly or two. At time zero, the internally syncronized weapons would detonate, hopefully deep enough to fragment the killer astroid into a less killer one, possible smaller ones to be finished off my more vollies or other means.
I figure it's technology we have experience with, if not on that scale. We have plenty of nuclear weapons and that astroid has plenty of inertia, all things we can use to our advantage in dealing with it.
At least it's better than hoping for a government funded "Tractor Beam"
"It may take a celestial body hit to Earth' before governments take any meaningful steps to address this danger."
Wait a minute... Whose hands are being tied by an antispace weapons poliferation treaties again?? Bush had to dissolve one of those just to get a ballistic missile shield off the ground, let alone something that will actually project weapons into space. And when we do turn our backs on another one of these assnine treaties (and make no mistake, they are assinine), just remember that quote, because whining bitchasses will crawl out of the woodwork to label the US with emperialistic tendancies and world domination theories. AGAIN. We haven't even mentioned the tree-nazies absolute paranoia of putting nuclear anything into space.
I really don't think the government would mind implimenting this project and others like it. Half (if not more) of the problem is the sorry external opposition to such measures, in addition to those who will hammer the administration for ponying up the cash to make it a reality. As soon as they do, you'll hear the statistics of how unlikely it is an asteroid will hit and how we could be spending that money helping the childern!
Perhapse it's partially the fed's fault, but you have a lot of hipocrites out there complicating the issue by serveral magnitudes both inside and outside this country. That quote is ignorant and indicative of a lazy thought process considering their are a lot more parties involved in this- both domestic and ineternational -that desperatly need that wake-up call.
"The US Selective Service System is drawing up plans for a 'special skills draft'.
Yeah, and they draw up plans for a nuclear strike against the country Bwatswuni too, but that doesn't mean they'll ever see the light of day. Honestly, do we need to relive the Gulf War Draft sensationalistic hype again??
Gulf War Draft 2: IT Hell This time it's closer to home than ever... Rated PG-13
" In all of this it is clear that the Government can lose track of a lot of money easily and even large companies are not above a little fraud now and then."
Really. And in all of your exaustive research, how did you come to this conclusion? ESP? I mean screw facts, lets skip to assumption of guilt and be done with it. Obviously you know neither party is innocent here. After all, all governments are incompentent and all coporations are crooks, right? Well that's what you just said. Fuck, we should just appoint you to the supreme court since you apparently know who is already innocent and guilty in matters that have barely even been investigated.
Get real. This is nothing more than "He said/she said" at this point. Sure, somebody is to blame, but I'm fairly confident you don't know a damn thing about it, so go push your opinions off as facts somewhere else. Ain't creative jounalism grand, Michael Moore?
Get your pens and pencils out, because here's a great idea. Just remember me on your way to fame an fortune.
You/Your company subscribe to a service that offers retalitory services when you are hit by a DDoS attack. You recieve the attack and report it to the service, who traces the attck through multiple machines to it's origin, across multiple hops if nessisary. Firesupport, with it's beowolf clusters and all, open fires on the source with it's Wave Motion Cannon of DDOS attacks, forcing the attacker into submission. All for the low price of $19.99 a month!
It's a mere $20 but this seems right considering it's only software, and it only supports MP3...AND because you've already paid for the hardware????? 9_9'
It depends whose profit you're talking about, the user's or Microsoft's.
Splitting hairs. MS is making profit because average joe is by and large satisified with what the product does. If they were as disenfranchised as the average Linux fan-boy would have you believe, there'd have been an massive uprising against them a long time ago. In other words you can say Windows "hurts" the consumer, but obviously not enough to make Linux an attractive alternative for 80% of the world's population.
For this to be considered a 'race' you have to establish and end goal. So what's the goal here, smarty-pants? If your end goal is profitablility, the turtle lost a long time ago. Looking at the sheer amount of profits MS has created, it's doubtful Linux will EVER make up that margin. EVER. We're talking billions here. If your end goal is user-base, again MS has slaughtered Linux several times over. Unless they do something radically didfferent than what they're doing now, they'll never have the user share MS enjoys now.
Being a Tutrle implies that by a slow steady pace you'll beat the Hare's constantly distracted state. You may have noticed that MS has the focus of a freakin laser beam, regardless of how much you don't like them or how bumbling you think they are. When they fixate on soemthing, they tend to hammer away until it falls. So your saying MS has the speed (being a hare) while history shows they have focus against a focused, slower opponent (the turtle). So either you just pulled that parable out of your ass to sound smart/cool, or you're actually saying MS is a sure-fire win.
The first thing that springs to mind is that any kind of wiper wiping dust across could scratch the panels
And that was the first thing I thought of too, but then a simple rational hit me-- if you're going to end up writing off your multi-million dollar probe due to dust buildup anyway, you might as well scratch some solar panels and extend that life. Wait till it gets bad, dust, bad, dust... At that points there's no reason NOT to do it.
Weight is a legitimate issue, but then, how much could a wiper wiper assembly possibly weigh? Of course, everything had to be built to withstand the rigors of reentry, so who knows.
Nice to know that you can get blacklisted for suing the doctor that caused massive brain damage to your kid
And it's nice to know you're adept at expressing a biased, one-sided comment that absolutely destroys any credibilty you had in posting on this very complex topic of doctors and lawsuits.
Sorry, Carmack is full of BS. Story makes or breaks a game in more than a few cases. Take Halo. Without the excellent story and plot devices, Halo would have been nothing but another faceless FPS. A pretty one, but hardly the best seller it was for the XBox. Story drove that game. Story seperates Baldurs Gate 2, a masterpiece, from the gorgeous but hollow Neverwinter Nights. NWN has BG2 dead to rights on every point except one, and it's that point alone that elevates BG2 to legendary status.
Of course Carmack says story is not really that important... Look at the games he designs-- FPS almost exclusively without story. It's a pretty narrow vision to be making such sweeping judgements from and it hardly makes his word gospel.
Oh sure, they could enact something like this, but they're going to thave a hellva time proving actual intent to mislead. the lawers will be all over that point alone...
It may not actually be a bad thing... A smaller storage device may not be so costly for MS next console run, and besides-- 10gb is a tad overkill in most cases. Have YOU ran out yet (modders, be quiet)? I sure as hell haven't. All you need is enough for a few save games, OS/game swap-files for improved gaming performace and another section for a few MP3s. 2gb maybe, if that.
Also something nobody has brought up yet... Downloadable content. A smaller storage space means they're going to have to axe something (MP3s, downloadable content), or force you to juggle a much smaller user storage area. I saw some of it might be stored online, but I can't imagine enough space online to matter in those areas...
This is SO fucking BS. I'm not a huge Windows fan, but a decision like that by the EU is so freakin' sad it's pathetic. MS has the right to itegrate any feature they damn well want to into their own OS. If you don't like it, BUY ANOTHER DAMN OS. There is no rule that says an OS has to be limited to running the computer basics. It's like telling a car maker not to include A/C or power windows because they're too competitive. Now how assnine is that? About just as assnine as the EU enforcing a stripped down version of windows. Anti-trust is one thing. that's their business practices. The features they include within windows entirely another, which they have every right to add as they see fit. Punish them for anti-trust. Fine, but this is the saddest, laziest way i can think of to do it.
So who was the first to bitch about MS's anti-competitive practices with this one? When are you elitist opensource primadonnas* going to realize that MS can build anything it damn well wants to into it's OS? For fucks sake, you cry about MS security, well here's an extra layer of it built into the OS and we're alrady whining about anti-competitive practices. Will you people PLEASE buy some consistancy here???? And WTF are you worried about anyway? If MS is as bad as you say it is, the anti-virus community doesn't have a damn thing to worry about. MS added native file compression to windows. THAT software industry is alive and well. They added native CD burning. THAT industry is alive and well too. Media playback? Check. Firewall? Ditto.
Shut your gob for once. Please.
*Not all open-sourcers, but you know who you are. You probably just modded me down, infact.
And how many successful projects has Boeing overseen for the defense industry again? The difference between your hypothetical contractor and mine is that mine has produced a number of successful products for me over a long period of time; Products whose development has- by and large -more than paid for themselves.
If Boeing had been a chronic failure and funding black hole, I could see where this article (and you) were coming from. But fact is they aren't, so I'm chalking this one up to the price of doing business. Landers crash. Probes fail. Stealth helicopters flop. They cost money. It happens.
At least they can still use the design in movies and games:D
What was the point of that comment? Can you name me one "open source" helicopter that has ever succeeded in a tactical role, or did you just feel the need to slip that in there in order to feel more trendy here on slashdot? It's hard to suck-up to your audience more blatantly than that... Why didn't you just add "Imagine a beowulf cluster of those!" while your adding popular, yet ultimately pointless slashisms?
As far as the expendature goes, I'd rather them spend the money, even if it did ultimately fail to turn out a uselful end product. It's the cost of doing business when your looking for the ideal tactical advantage. Some will cost money and fail, while others, like the Tomahawk, Predator, F22 Raptor and JSF succeed. Don't get your panties in a bind, it happens. It sucked so they shut it down. And even in failure I'm sure they surmounted a number of engineering difficulties in designing the thing, stuff that can be applied to other projects that will succed because of Comanche's development. trying to stealth a helicopter has got to teach you something useful, which can be applied to existing helicopters.
Slashdot Mirror
Or at very least name a school after h-- ...eh, wrong meteor. Nevermind.
I guess I'm a fan of existing technology here, but I don't see a giganitic tractor beam anywhere in the next fifty years, nor do I see a laser being enough to sufficiently neutralize an extinction event 'roid anywhere in the near future either. I mean, lets keep it simple here-- Gulf War Bunker busters. We know nuclear weapons won't have a huge effect in a vacuume (or at least that's the theory) nor will a surface impact do much a whole lot of damage (supposively). Needless to say, landing somebody on it isn't exactly the best of ideas either... It got Bruce killed last time we tried that.
What we do have is ongoing project to make a bunker busting nuclear weapon, designed to penetrate multiple layers of reinforced armor deep under ground and detonate at a specific depth. Of course the first thing to do is increase the tonnage of this weapon and strap it onto a booster. The second thing would be to harden the fuck out of the penetration module since we're now dealing with reletivistic velocities. It might even be nessisary to slow the weapon down before final impact since it would be easy to pancake the weapon ue to the velocity differential between the missile and 'roid alone.
Penetration-
The formentioned velocity will ultimately aid in penetration, though it'd probably be wise to hedge one's bets. For this, we'll borrow from existing technology again to get the weapon as deep as possible using a secondary nuclear device as a penetration aid, launched anywhere from a few hours to seconds before impact in order to 'prep' the impact site. Since I'm not a nuclear physisist, I don't know if one can 'shape' a nuclear detonation, but the effect would be similar to an anti-armor round breaching the surface for the follow-on penetrator. Multiple breaching charges may be desirable to help the weapon plow as deep as possible. If you wanted to get more exotic, equip em with drill heads to or even a laser to soften up the impact zone on it's way in, though I figure simple is best.
The weapon would be time delayed, used in concert with a number of other weapons as the astroid is 'seeded' with a volly or two. At time zero, the internally syncronized weapons would detonate, hopefully deep enough to fragment the killer astroid into a less killer one, possible smaller ones to be finished off my more vollies or other means.
I figure it's technology we have experience with, if not on that scale. We have plenty of nuclear weapons and that astroid has plenty of inertia, all things we can use to our advantage in dealing with it.
At least it's better than hoping for a government funded "Tractor Beam"
"It may take a celestial body hit to Earth' before governments take any meaningful steps to address this danger."
Wait a minute... Whose hands are being tied by an antispace weapons poliferation treaties again?? Bush had to dissolve one of those just to get a ballistic missile shield off the ground, let alone something that will actually project weapons into space. And when we do turn our backs on another one of these assnine treaties (and make no mistake, they are assinine), just remember that quote, because whining bitchasses will crawl out of the woodwork to label the US with emperialistic tendancies and world domination theories. AGAIN. We haven't even mentioned the tree-nazies absolute paranoia of putting nuclear anything into space.
I really don't think the government would mind implimenting this project and others like it. Half (if not more) of the problem is the sorry external opposition to such measures, in addition to those who will hammer the administration for ponying up the cash to make it a reality. As soon as they do, you'll hear the statistics of how unlikely it is an asteroid will hit and how we could be spending that money helping the childern!
Perhapse it's partially the fed's fault, but you have a lot of hipocrites out there complicating the issue by serveral magnitudes both inside and outside this country. That quote is ignorant and indicative of a lazy thought process considering their are a lot more parties involved in this- both domestic and ineternational -that desperatly need that wake-up call.
Fight selective service??? We can't even fight who gets to post some of the assnine stories around here :P
"The US Selective Service System is drawing up plans for a 'special skills draft'.
Yeah, and they draw up plans for a nuclear strike against the country Bwatswuni too, but that doesn't mean they'll ever see the light of day. Honestly, do we need to relive the Gulf War Draft sensationalistic hype again??
Gulf War Draft 2: IT Hell
This time it's closer to home than ever...
Rated PG-13
" In all of this it is clear that the Government can lose track of a lot of money easily and even large companies are not above a little fraud now and then."
Really. And in all of your exaustive research, how did you come to this conclusion? ESP? I mean screw facts, lets skip to assumption of guilt and be done with it. Obviously you know neither party is innocent here. After all, all governments are incompentent and all coporations are crooks, right? Well that's what you just said. Fuck, we should just appoint you to the supreme court since you apparently know who is already innocent and guilty in matters that have barely even been investigated.
Get real. This is nothing more than "He said/she said" at this point. Sure, somebody is to blame, but I'm fairly confident you don't know a damn thing about it, so go push your opinions off as facts somewhere else. Ain't creative jounalism grand, Michael Moore?
Get your pens and pencils out, because here's a great idea. Just remember me on your way to fame an fortune.
:P
You/Your company subscribe to a service that offers retalitory services when you are hit by a DDoS attack. You recieve the attack and report it to the service, who traces the attck through multiple machines to it's origin, across multiple hops if nessisary. Firesupport, with it's beowolf clusters and all, open fires on the source with it's Wave Motion Cannon of DDOS attacks, forcing the attacker into submission. All for the low price of $19.99 a month!
Legal? Well...
Accurate? Um...
But the idea is cool as hell at least
Which denies the attacks ever existed dispite reporting them itself last year.
Yes, gotta love that first strike mentality the US employed 9/11. it was so effective that it brought both buildings down... Oh, wait...
But somehow he isn't a troll.
It's a mere $20 but this seems right considering it's only software, and it only supports MP3 ...AND because you've already paid for the hardware????? 9_9'
It depends whose profit you're talking about, the user's or Microsoft's.
Splitting hairs.
MS is making profit because average joe is by and large satisified with what the product does. If they were as disenfranchised as the average Linux fan-boy would have you believe, there'd have been an massive uprising against them a long time ago. In other words you can say Windows "hurts" the consumer, but obviously not enough to make Linux an attractive alternative for 80% of the world's population.
For this to be considered a 'race' you have to establish and end goal. So what's the goal here, smarty-pants? If your end goal is profitablility, the turtle lost a long time ago. Looking at the sheer amount of profits MS has created, it's doubtful Linux will EVER make up that margin. EVER. We're talking billions here. If your end goal is user-base, again MS has slaughtered Linux several times over. Unless they do something radically didfferent than what they're doing now, they'll never have the user share MS enjoys now.
Being a Tutrle implies that by a slow steady pace you'll beat the Hare's constantly distracted state. You may have noticed that MS has the focus of a freakin laser beam, regardless of how much you don't like them or how bumbling you think they are. When they fixate on soemthing, they tend to hammer away until it falls. So your saying MS has the speed (being a hare) while history shows they have focus against a focused, slower opponent (the turtle). So either you just pulled that parable out of your ass to sound smart/cool, or you're actually saying MS is a sure-fire win.
Which is it?
The first thing that springs to mind is that any kind of wiper wiping dust across could scratch the panels
And that was the first thing I thought of too, but then a simple rational hit me-- if you're going to end up writing off your multi-million dollar probe due to dust buildup anyway, you might as well scratch some solar panels and extend that life. Wait till it gets bad, dust, bad, dust... At that points there's no reason NOT to do it.
Weight is a legitimate issue, but then, how much could a wiper wiper assembly possibly weigh? Of course, everything had to be built to withstand the rigors of reentry, so who knows.
Nice to know that you can get blacklisted for suing the doctor that caused massive brain damage to your kid
And it's nice to know you're adept at expressing a biased, one-sided comment that absolutely destroys any credibilty you had in posting on this very complex topic of doctors and lawsuits.
And goes directly against the idea that nobody can own a fact.
You mean like an encyclopedia. We're not exactly establishing precedents here...
A set of encyclopedias? I guess winning free sex or a blowjob doesn't faze these guys anymore...
Sorry, Carmack is full of BS. Story makes or breaks a game in more than a few cases. Take Halo. Without the excellent story and plot devices, Halo would have been nothing but another faceless FPS. A pretty one, but hardly the best seller it was for the XBox. Story drove that game. Story seperates Baldurs Gate 2, a masterpiece, from the gorgeous but hollow Neverwinter Nights. NWN has BG2 dead to rights on every point except one, and it's that point alone that elevates BG2 to legendary status.
Of course Carmack says story is not really that important... Look at the games he designs-- FPS almost exclusively without story. It's a pretty narrow vision to be making such sweeping judgements from and it hardly makes his word gospel.
Oh sure, they could enact something like this, but they're going to thave a hellva time proving actual intent to mislead. the lawers will be all over that point alone...
- Sex
Naaaaaaaah.
It may not actually be a bad thing... A smaller storage device may not be so costly for MS next console run, and besides-- 10gb is a tad overkill in most cases. Have YOU ran out yet (modders, be quiet)? I sure as hell haven't. All you need is enough for a few save games, OS/game swap-files for improved gaming performace and another section for a few MP3s. 2gb maybe, if that.
Also something nobody has brought up yet... Downloadable content. A smaller storage space means they're going to have to axe something (MP3s, downloadable content), or force you to juggle a much smaller user storage area. I saw some of it might be stored online, but I can't imagine enough space online to matter in those areas...
This is SO fucking BS. I'm not a huge Windows fan, but a decision like that by the EU is so freakin' sad it's pathetic. MS has the right to itegrate any feature they damn well want to into their own OS. If you don't like it, BUY ANOTHER DAMN OS. There is no rule that says an OS has to be limited to running the computer basics. It's like telling a car maker not to include A/C or power windows because they're too competitive. Now how assnine is that? About just as assnine as the EU enforcing a stripped down version of windows. Anti-trust is one thing. that's their business practices. The features they include within windows entirely another, which they have every right to add as they see fit. Punish them for anti-trust. Fine, but this is the saddest, laziest way i can think of to do it.
Fucking lightweights.
So who was the first to bitch about MS's anti-competitive practices with this one? When are you elitist opensource primadonnas* going to realize that MS can build anything it damn well wants to into it's OS? For fucks sake, you cry about MS security, well here's an extra layer of it built into the OS and we're alrady whining about anti-competitive practices. Will you people PLEASE buy some consistancy here???? And WTF are you worried about anyway? If MS is as bad as you say it is, the anti-virus community doesn't have a damn thing to worry about. MS added native file compression to windows. THAT software industry is alive and well. They added native CD burning. THAT industry is alive and well too. Media playback? Check. Firewall? Ditto.
Shut your gob for once. Please.
*Not all open-sourcers, but you know who you are. You probably just modded me down, infact.
...Create a website that displays and exposes the source of the injustices commited against you, thereby cloaking yourself in percieved innocence?
And how many successful projects has Boeing overseen for the defense industry again? The difference between your hypothetical contractor and mine is that mine has produced a number of successful products for me over a long period of time; Products whose development has- by and large -more than paid for themselves.
:D
If Boeing had been a chronic failure and funding black hole, I could see where this article (and you) were coming from. But fact is they aren't, so I'm chalking this one up to the price of doing business. Landers crash. Probes fail. Stealth helicopters flop. They cost money. It happens.
At least they can still use the design in movies and games
"Open-source helicopter, anyone?"
What was the point of that comment? Can you name me one "open source" helicopter that has ever succeeded in a tactical role, or did you just feel the need to slip that in there in order to feel more trendy here on slashdot? It's hard to suck-up to your audience more blatantly than that... Why didn't you just add "Imagine a beowulf cluster of those!" while your adding popular, yet ultimately pointless slashisms?
As far as the expendature goes, I'd rather them spend the money, even if it did ultimately fail to turn out a uselful end product. It's the cost of doing business when your looking for the ideal tactical advantage. Some will cost money and fail, while others, like the Tomahawk, Predator, F22 Raptor and JSF succeed. Don't get your panties in a bind, it happens. It sucked so they shut it down. And even in failure I'm sure they surmounted a number of engineering difficulties in designing the thing, stuff that can be applied to other projects that will succed because of Comanche's development. trying to stealth a helicopter has got to teach you something useful, which can be applied to existing helicopters.