Since you sound like a Mac person, let me ask you this: What if Apple came out with their own massively powerful graphics editor, and then they told Adobe to take a hike because Photoshop was competing with their app on OS X. No one would stand for that. Yet everyone seems to accept it on the iPhone. It's unacceptable.
The only, and very valid reason, that is acceptable on the iPhone is because it is a completely undeveloped market, unlike OSX or Windows which are both very developed markets.
Ok, stop taking the drugs, they don't seem to be doing you any good. Seriously, get some fucking perspective please - there are degrees involved here, just as there are in speeding.
If I speed, I get a ticket and some points on my license. If I speed a lot and accumulate points, my license gets taken away from me and I get to take my test after my ban expires. If I speed in such a manner that my driving causes immediate risk to other persons, then it becomes a whole different ball game - if theres simply speed involved (eg I'm going 30mph over the limit rather than 5mph over the limit) then I get larger fines and an immediate ban. If there are other considerations, such as bad weather et al then I get charged with a whole other offence - dangerous driving. All of the above are things that I have to declare to my employers or prospective employers, especially if I drive on business.
If this person was simply giving copies away to friends, he wouldn't be facing these sorts of penalties. But he isn't. He took the risk. Him. I'm not going to cry for him.
Boo fucking hoo - Activision are well within their rights to take this person to the cleaners. There isn't any way I'm going to tow the Slashdot party line here, because its ludicrous.
'Ruining their life' is a risk they decided to take - break the law, you pay the consequences for a long time. Its called 'deterrent' but many people here seem to miss the point...
Why should a friggin' IT pro be doing COST ANALYSIS? Isn't that a management function? The IT pro is supposed to do IT. They're not business experts. Not only are they not qualified to slap together some well meaning but totally invalid cost/benefit analysis, but it's not even their job. That's the job of management. They're the ones with business degrees. They're supposed to know how to do that. Their job is to take information from the IT pro and compile it to get the cost/benefit.
I'm so sick of IT folks acting like they DO understand business and putting together risk analyses that are all gloom and doom.
"Sir, we need 7 redundant mail servers and 13 petabytes of storage! Otherwise, the email might go down and we might run out of space! Look I've computed the cost of our email being down, and while I'm just pulling these figures out of my ass, I think it means that we would lose a gagillion dollars! Or was that yen? Doesn't matter does it? It's a lot money!"
"But Joe, do you really think we need all that for my little pet shop?"
If you don't know enough about your businesses needs as an IT professional to be able to quantify your purchase requests, you don't deserve to call yourself an IT professional.
Experience - I used to work for Rolls Royce plc (the aero engine divison of Rolls Royce).
Turbofans are shrouded for a reason, if it was more efficient to unshroud them, they would be unshrouded because that shroud represents a hell of a lot of weight that an airline would most certainly not want to carry around.
The shroud plays two major parts - containment in the event of blade failure, where the fan loses a blade, and smoothing of the airflow through the engine. Having a smooth airflow through the engine reduces resistence significantly, and allows for better performance of the turbine itself, as well as cleaner air flow out of hte back of the engine. This can add as much as 5% benefit in terms of engine efficiency.
I would think that blade containment would be self explainatory, but incase it is not:
A Trent 900 turbofan (the powerplant for the A380, alongside the GP7200 from GE and P&W) rotates at between 2,900 rpm and 3,000 rpm. Your PW124, which powers regional aircraft such as the Fokker 50, has a maximum rpm of between 1,300 and 1,600rpm.
A Trent 900 has 24 116" fan blades, each weighing about 4 times that of the 5 blades the PW124 uses. Thats one fuckton load of potential energy you have there, when the engine is at full power - the tips of the blades are actually supersonic.
In the event of one of those blades leaving the hub, the shroud is designed to contain the entire blade and any ejecta caused by the separation event within the engine - the engine destroys itself but causes little or no damage to the rest of the aircraft. On a regional aircraft, the blades are light enough, small enough and slow enough that you can protect the body of the aircraft.
In any case, I think the very fact that there are many many turboprops in service today with regional airlines proves that 'passengers think turboprops look scary so airlines don't use them' is completely wrong, without having to go into all what I did.
It most certainly is not about looks. Airlines would use whatever they deem lowest cost.
The problem with turboprops is that they are most efficient at lower altitudes, which means more wind resistence on the fuselage. This basically limits them to short to short-medium sectors before they start becoming less efficient than larger turbofan aircraft.
I pretty much disagree with everything you said - theres very good reasons why RR, GE and P&W (plus all the lesser bit players in the civil engine market) produce primarily turbofans for the large civil aircraft market.
Firstly, turboprops still have the vibration issue that plagued piston engined aircraft. Sure, its drastically reduced, but it still raises the cabin noise level significantly over a turbofan - which means you need more sound reduction material to counteract it and bring cabin noise levels down, which means weight.
Secondly, turboprops are high power but only in certain bands - and increasing the size of the props to give a better power band is not easy, as it increases the strain on the gear box among other things. You seem to be under the impression that
Thirdly, because of the size of the props we are talking about, they need to be mounted on a high wing rather than a low wing. This means significantly added cost and more importantly weight, as you need to transfer the wing load down through the body of the aircraft to the undercarriage. Or you use wing mounted main gear, which has to be significantly larger than on low wing aircraft because you are now transfering the load a farther distance. Thats all extra weight to carry around.
Fourthly, turboprops aren't as powerful as you think - the A400M needs 4 TP400-D6 turboprops to lift a MTOW of 141 tonnes, or 311,000 lbs. An A330-200 has a MTOW of 230 tonnes, or 507,000 lbs with only two Trent 700s. And even then, the A400M only has a 3,800nm max (dependant on configuration), while the A330-200 will be topping out at 6,800nm.
In short, theres a damn good reason why the airline industry uses turbofans, and its not because they are shiney.
For a start, they seem to hinge their conclusions on per-seat-kilometer values, and then seem surprised at the outcome - per-seat-kilometer values miss significant aspects of the subject at hand:
1. Cargo - planes carry significant amounts of cargo today, on the piston engined aircraft of yesteryear it was pretty much 'passengers OR cargo, but not at the same time'. Thus the plane today is doing work that your plane of yesterday would be excluded from because you aren't getting a per-seat-kilometer value for it (no seats).
2. Range - planes today carry out some serious routes, with the top end of the scale actually topping out at between 8,000miles on a regular basis (there are longer routes, but they are less common). You won't be getting that in piston engined aircraft.
3. Reliability - jet engines are much more reliable than the piston engines of yesteryear, which is why we now have ETOPS (extended-range twin-engine operational performance standard) hitting 207 minutes. Thats three hours and twenty seven minutes distance from an airfield on one single engine. Try that in a piston engine aircraft of yesteryear.
4. Reliability - yes, its worth mentioning again. Jet engine aircraft can run sectors with minimal turn around, with minimal maintenance between sectors and with minimal top-ups of required fluids. Piston engined aircraft required a lot more in the way of coaxing and looking after on the ground between sectors. More time in maintenance means less time making money.
5. Longevity - there haven't been many piston engine aircraft that were built for two or three decades in passenger service (the DC-3 comes to mind, but not many others). Most piston engine passenger aircraft of the pre-war and immediate post-war period were designed to last only a few thousand hours, or a couple of years in passenger service.
Oh, and yes, I'm related to the aviation industry:)
Both SkyLab and this station are supposed to be disposable - besides, you simply attach a new segment each time you need to and exhaust that segments fuel supply boosting it to a good orbit.
Watch that 'relatively concrete, well-funded plan' go out the window after the elections. People like exciting NASA plans. People don't like paying for exciting NASA plans.
So all you are really saying is that you don't actually know how to admin XP at all? Telling XP that you will monitor your own anti-virus is a couple of clicks, and it will never bother you again.
Sounds like you just wanted an excuse to post the same old vitrol.
Do it - I emailed Alastair Reynolds regarding his work back when I first picked up the Revelation Space series. It wasn't at all creepy, and we ended up having a decent email conversation about a bunch of things.
Yeah, because theres no way in hell Slashdot would stoop as low as putting up a front page review of one of the most anticipated and talked about games of recent times, now is there? Everything has to be 'bought', or somehow otherwise underhand these days, otherwise someone just isn't happy.
Manned moon base - supported by Earth with regular cargo shipments
Self sustaining manned moon base - they can grow their own food, repair their own facilities and do not need support from Earth
Basic mining and refining of ore with support from Earth - the initial tools to do the job are brought up from Earth
Self sustaining basic mining - refined ore is used to produce replacement parts and new tools
Advanced mining - could be self sustaining, might not be
Basic large structure construction - possibly expanding the moonbase or building new vehicles for achieving lunar orbit
Advanced large structure construction - building lunar orbit to earth transfer vehicles in lunar orbit
Once you have completed that last stage, you have the basic plans for going anywhere in the solar system at a fraction of the price of new build from Earth. Yes, its a fantastic idea now if you simply say 'use the moon to build space ships', but not if you break it down into logical steps.
Of course, the idea that anyone is actually going to finance this is fantasy in and of itself...
You are repeating a common myth - yes, some tax dollars did go into the telecoms companies pockets, but by and large they themselves provide much more investment.
Firstly, as you note, the FCC charges significant sums of money for those frequencies - how exactly are the companies buying them to use supposed to make a return on their investment if they *don't* 'recharge' you?
Secondly, you really wouldn't like the alternative to FCC mandated frequency exclusivity...
Slashdot Mirror
Since you sound like a Mac person, let me ask you this: What if Apple came out with their own massively powerful graphics editor, and then they told Adobe to take a hike because Photoshop was competing with their app on OS X. No one would stand for that. Yet everyone seems to accept it on the iPhone. It's unacceptable.
The only, and very valid reason, that is acceptable on the iPhone is because it is a completely undeveloped market, unlike OSX or Windows which are both very developed markets.
Uhm, if they don't work out of the box, then by the very definition they aren't 'compatible apps'...
If you did, I might just go into the assassination business....
Ok, stop taking the drugs, they don't seem to be doing you any good. Seriously, get some fucking perspective please - there are degrees involved here, just as there are in speeding.
If I speed, I get a ticket and some points on my license. If I speed a lot and accumulate points, my license gets taken away from me and I get to take my test after my ban expires. If I speed in such a manner that my driving causes immediate risk to other persons, then it becomes a whole different ball game - if theres simply speed involved (eg I'm going 30mph over the limit rather than 5mph over the limit) then I get larger fines and an immediate ban. If there are other considerations, such as bad weather et al then I get charged with a whole other offence - dangerous driving. All of the above are things that I have to declare to my employers or prospective employers, especially if I drive on business.
If this person was simply giving copies away to friends, he wouldn't be facing these sorts of penalties. But he isn't. He took the risk. Him. I'm not going to cry for him.
Boo fucking hoo - Activision are well within their rights to take this person to the cleaners. There isn't any way I'm going to tow the Slashdot party line here, because its ludicrous.
'Ruining their life' is a risk they decided to take - break the law, you pay the consequences for a long time. Its called 'deterrent' but many people here seem to miss the point...
This shit gets '+5 Insightful' on Slashdot now? Now I know the wackos are in power...
Why should a friggin' IT pro be doing COST ANALYSIS? Isn't that a management function? The IT pro is supposed to do IT. They're not business experts. Not only are they not qualified to slap together some well meaning but totally invalid cost/benefit analysis, but it's not even their job. That's the job of management. They're the ones with business degrees. They're supposed to know how to do that. Their job is to take information from the IT pro and compile it to get the cost/benefit.
I'm so sick of IT folks acting like they DO understand business and putting together risk analyses that are all gloom and doom.
"Sir, we need 7 redundant mail servers and 13 petabytes of storage! Otherwise, the email might go down and we might run out of space! Look I've computed the cost of our email being down, and while I'm just pulling these figures out of my ass, I think it means that we would lose a gagillion dollars! Or was that yen? Doesn't matter does it? It's a lot money!"
"But Joe, do you really think we need all that for my little pet shop?"
If you don't know enough about your businesses needs as an IT professional to be able to quantify your purchase requests, you don't deserve to call yourself an IT professional.
Experience - I used to work for Rolls Royce plc (the aero engine divison of Rolls Royce).
Turbofans are shrouded for a reason, if it was more efficient to unshroud them, they would be unshrouded because that shroud represents a hell of a lot of weight that an airline would most certainly not want to carry around.
The shroud plays two major parts - containment in the event of blade failure, where the fan loses a blade, and smoothing of the airflow through the engine. Having a smooth airflow through the engine reduces resistence significantly, and allows for better performance of the turbine itself, as well as cleaner air flow out of hte back of the engine. This can add as much as 5% benefit in terms of engine efficiency.
I would think that blade containment would be self explainatory, but incase it is not:
A Trent 900 turbofan (the powerplant for the A380, alongside the GP7200 from GE and P&W) rotates at between 2,900 rpm and 3,000 rpm. Your PW124, which powers regional aircraft such as the Fokker 50, has a maximum rpm of between 1,300 and 1,600rpm.
A Trent 900 has 24 116" fan blades, each weighing about 4 times that of the 5 blades the PW124 uses. Thats one fuckton load of potential energy you have there, when the engine is at full power - the tips of the blades are actually supersonic.
In the event of one of those blades leaving the hub, the shroud is designed to contain the entire blade and any ejecta caused by the separation event within the engine - the engine destroys itself but causes little or no damage to the rest of the aircraft. On a regional aircraft, the blades are light enough, small enough and slow enough that you can protect the body of the aircraft.
In any case, I think the very fact that there are many many turboprops in service today with regional airlines proves that 'passengers think turboprops look scary so airlines don't use them' is completely wrong, without having to go into all what I did.
It most certainly is not about looks. Airlines would use whatever they deem lowest cost.
The problem with turboprops is that they are most efficient at lower altitudes, which means more wind resistence on the fuselage. This basically limits them to short to short-medium sectors before they start becoming less efficient than larger turbofan aircraft.
I pretty much disagree with everything you said - theres very good reasons why RR, GE and P&W (plus all the lesser bit players in the civil engine market) produce primarily turbofans for the large civil aircraft market.
Firstly, turboprops still have the vibration issue that plagued piston engined aircraft. Sure, its drastically reduced, but it still raises the cabin noise level significantly over a turbofan - which means you need more sound reduction material to counteract it and bring cabin noise levels down, which means weight.
Secondly, turboprops are high power but only in certain bands - and increasing the size of the props to give a better power band is not easy, as it increases the strain on the gear box among other things. You seem to be under the impression that
Thirdly, because of the size of the props we are talking about, they need to be mounted on a high wing rather than a low wing. This means significantly added cost and more importantly weight, as you need to transfer the wing load down through the body of the aircraft to the undercarriage. Or you use wing mounted main gear, which has to be significantly larger than on low wing aircraft because you are now transfering the load a farther distance. Thats all extra weight to carry around.
Fourthly, turboprops aren't as powerful as you think - the A400M needs 4 TP400-D6 turboprops to lift a MTOW of 141 tonnes, or 311,000 lbs. An A330-200 has a MTOW of 230 tonnes, or 507,000 lbs with only two Trent 700s. And even then, the A400M only has a 3,800nm max (dependant on configuration), while the A330-200 will be topping out at 6,800nm.
In short, theres a damn good reason why the airline industry uses turbofans, and its not because they are shiney.
For a start, they seem to hinge their conclusions on per-seat-kilometer values, and then seem surprised at the outcome - per-seat-kilometer values miss significant aspects of the subject at hand:
:)
1. Cargo - planes carry significant amounts of cargo today, on the piston engined aircraft of yesteryear it was pretty much 'passengers OR cargo, but not at the same time'. Thus the plane today is doing work that your plane of yesterday would be excluded from because you aren't getting a per-seat-kilometer value for it (no seats).
2. Range - planes today carry out some serious routes, with the top end of the scale actually topping out at between 8,000miles on a regular basis (there are longer routes, but they are less common). You won't be getting that in piston engined aircraft.
3. Reliability - jet engines are much more reliable than the piston engines of yesteryear, which is why we now have ETOPS (extended-range twin-engine operational performance standard) hitting 207 minutes. Thats three hours and twenty seven minutes distance from an airfield on one single engine. Try that in a piston engine aircraft of yesteryear.
4. Reliability - yes, its worth mentioning again. Jet engine aircraft can run sectors with minimal turn around, with minimal maintenance between sectors and with minimal top-ups of required fluids. Piston engined aircraft required a lot more in the way of coaxing and looking after on the ground between sectors. More time in maintenance means less time making money.
5. Longevity - there haven't been many piston engine aircraft that were built for two or three decades in passenger service (the DC-3 comes to mind, but not many others). Most piston engine passenger aircraft of the pre-war and immediate post-war period were designed to last only a few thousand hours, or a couple of years in passenger service.
Oh, and yes, I'm related to the aviation industry
Both SkyLab and this station are supposed to be disposable - besides, you simply attach a new segment each time you need to and exhaust that segments fuel supply boosting it to a good orbit.
Watch that 'relatively concrete, well-funded plan' go out the window after the elections. People like exciting NASA plans. People don't like paying for exciting NASA plans.
Seriously, there is nothing controversial about someone else not agreeing with you or your beliefs.
So all you are really saying is that you don't actually know how to admin XP at all? Telling XP that you will monitor your own anti-virus is a couple of clicks, and it will never bother you again.
Sounds like you just wanted an excuse to post the same old vitrol.
Do it - I emailed Alastair Reynolds regarding his work back when I first picked up the Revelation Space series. It wasn't at all creepy, and we ended up having a decent email conversation about a bunch of things.
Theres nothing illegal about having a monopoly on your own product - and no, that is not what Microsoft had.
Bioshock review - http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/12/1532229&from=rss
Vista review - http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/03/1744201
Yeah, because theres no way in hell Slashdot would stoop as low as putting up a front page review of one of the most anticipated and talked about games of recent times, now is there? Everything has to be 'bought', or somehow otherwise underhand these days, otherwise someone just isn't happy.
I don't think Google *needs* a reason - they are scrubbing it out of good will more than anything.
Improving services, sure, but preventing fraud?
Sure - AdWord fraud. Scrubbing logs quicker means less leeway for click fraud to be discovered.
Once you have completed that last stage, you have the basic plans for going anywhere in the solar system at a fraction of the price of new build from Earth. Yes, its a fantastic idea now if you simply say 'use the moon to build space ships', but not if you break it down into logical steps.
Of course, the idea that anyone is actually going to finance this is fantasy in and of itself...
You are repeating a common myth - yes, some tax dollars did go into the telecoms companies pockets, but by and large they themselves provide much more investment.
Wow, so much hate.
Firstly, as you note, the FCC charges significant sums of money for those frequencies - how exactly are the companies buying them to use supposed to make a return on their investment if they *don't* 'recharge' you?
Secondly, you really wouldn't like the alternative to FCC mandated frequency exclusivity...
Actually the BBC does not own most of its content - its produced by third parties and sold to the BBC.