You can't just 'knock something out of orbit,' like it's a porcelain vase on a mantelpiece. Orbits do not work that way! They're building a kill vehicle to blow up satellites.
They're still going to be in orbit, just in lots of little pieces.
No country wants to maintain them? What are you smoking?
The GPS system is launched and operated by the US Air Force, first and foremost for US military activities. It wasn't some magical pan-national committee that put the satellites into orbit and built the ground stations. And the USAF maintains them and modernizes them. If GPS goes offline, all those fancy GPS guided weapons go offline too.
As for redundancy... put two GPS receivers on your ship.
While I agree with your sentiment about the longevity of the rovers, I'm a little confused about your tank comment. The military has no problem using and maintaining old equipment when it's good for the job... the famous example of the B-52 comes to mind. Military equipment tends to go obsolete faster than robot probes, because it doesn't take years (sometimes decades) to deploy a new model.
I don't know. Porn is supposed to be one of the main drivers of technology, but I'm not sure if porn viewers are ready for things to be popping out of the screen at them.
OpenGL? Better? Sure, it was once. And it was going to be better than DirectX again, with the release of OpenGL 3.0. But then the Khronos group scrapped the Long Peaks draft to appease the CAD companies. Yes, there are extensions and with vendor specific extensions, OpenGL can do everything Direct3D can today. But after how many GL_NV_* extensions does OpenGL stop being a cohesive API?
Why not? Bandwidth caps are driven by saturation of ISPs' outbound links. If widespread topology-aware P2P arises, there may be a move to cut caps on internal network traffic, as it would be a way for ISPs to differentiate without really costing them anything. Of course, this doesn't apply if you're a poor soul living in an area with only one real broadband ISP.
That's a problem you have with any DRM. However, a system like the one described would be a fairly interesting way to deliver live content to subscribers without undue server load, especially if the underlying P2P system was network topology aware.
Sandboxing only needs to be done right once. Validating user input needs to be done right every time. I'm not saying don't validate your user input, but if your first line of defense is a fairly brittle mechanism, having extra protection is a good thing.
This isn't a Windows specific problem. The fundamental problem is the user/process model that's been popular since the inception of UNIX (maybe even earlier, I don't know enough about Multics to say): the idea that only users have identities and programs run under the identity (and permissions) of the user who runs it. If I'm running a game, there's no reason why it needs access to my tax spreadsheets, etc...
All software should be running under its own identity and access to user documents should be through standardized user interfaces... i.e., the 'File Open' dialog is actually a part of the OS not the application, and also grants temporary permissions in addition to just selecting a file.
We talk about the principle of 'least privilege' but in practice (with a few notable exceptions) the 'low-privilege' processes have the most important privileges of all: access to all our stuff.
What does XAML have to do with SVG? Hell if you're going to bitch about XAML, maybe you should complain about WinForms and MFC too. They're equally unrelated.
You know why people buy the XBox 360, and why the ZuneHD is surprisingly popular? Because they're good products. And if the Courier is as good as some of the leaks suggest, people will buy it too.
You can sit there with your eeePC, ranting about stupid consumers and your holy war against the Microsoft empire. The rest of us will carry on not caring.
Microsoft's stock doesn't need increase in value: unlike Google and Apple, they pay a regular dividend to their shareholders. If Google and Apple's stock doesn't go up, their shareholders don't make any money. And stock price itself is practically meaningless except relative to itself. The market capitalization of MSFT is substantially higher than AAPL or GOOG and if you compare their P/E ratios they're not that overvalued, unlike Google and Apple. What that means is as a shareholder you can buy MSFT stock today and the company's performance, and your consequent return, is immediately in line with what you paid for it. Buying Google and Apple stock is a basically a bet that those two companies are capable of 50%-100% growth over the next few years... or rather that you can find someone else who believes that. Note: I don't own stock in any of them.
The stock market is more complex than the high-growth tech stocks.
As for research, I used to agree with you, but they've finally announced a pretty significant application of a lot of their research: Project Natal. You may have heard of it.
Seriously? You could pick any country in the world to 'prove' that the US is behind in mobile technology and you picked Canada?
Maybe wireless service is good in Toronto, but in the rest of the country the three carriers (Wind doesn't count yet) SUCK. I think we're the only G20 country with worse cell service than the US.
However, as Canadian I have to agree with the GP. The US doesn't really have a manafacturing base anymore... not even for high-tech goods. Low-tech manafacturing is all China, Malaysia and Thailand. High-tech manafacturing is Korea, Japan and Taiwan. But the USA is still king of R&D. Some great research comes out of Canada, but level of funding for R&D is nowhere comparable to what is available in the US. I've worked for startups on both sides of the border and Canadian tech startups are like paupers in comparison.
most, pronounced/most/ –adjective, superl. of much or many with more as compar. 1. in the greatest quantity, amount, measure, degree, or number: to win the most votes. 2. in the majority of instances: Most operations are successful. 3. greatest, as in size or extent: the most talent.
Hope that helps. The English langauge isn't as hard as people say. Stick with it, and you'll figure it out eventually.
You need to keep up on the American political process. First, $1B is chump change when we're talking rocket development. But it's a moot point.
Obama will ask congress for an additoinal $1B in funding to build a heavy lift rocket. Congress will, as expected, decline to spend that amount of money on such 'frivolities' when they're desperately trying to pay for an expanded health care system and repay $1T spent digging holes in the ground.
I don't know why everybody is so shocked over this. Obama told everybody he'd kill the manned spaceflight program in his campaign. He's just following through.
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You can't just 'knock something out of orbit,' like it's a porcelain vase on a mantelpiece. Orbits do not work that way! They're building a kill vehicle to blow up satellites.
They're still going to be in orbit, just in lots of little pieces.
No country wants to maintain them? What are you smoking?
The GPS system is launched and operated by the US Air Force, first and foremost for US military activities. It wasn't some magical pan-national committee that put the satellites into orbit and built the ground stations. And the USAF maintains them and modernizes them. If GPS goes offline, all those fancy GPS guided weapons go offline too.
As for redundancy... put two GPS receivers on your ship.
While I agree with your sentiment about the longevity of the rovers, I'm a little confused about your tank comment. The military has no problem using and maintaining old equipment when it's good for the job... the famous example of the B-52 comes to mind. Military equipment tends to go obsolete faster than robot probes, because it doesn't take years (sometimes decades) to deploy a new model.
I don't know. Porn is supposed to be one of the main drivers of technology, but I'm not sure if porn viewers are ready for things to be popping out of the screen at them.
Windows Vista fully supports hardware accelerated OpenGL.
OpenGL? Better? Sure, it was once. And it was going to be better than DirectX again, with the release of OpenGL 3.0. But then the Khronos group scrapped the Long Peaks draft to appease the CAD companies. Yes, there are extensions and with vendor specific extensions, OpenGL can do everything Direct3D can today. But after how many GL_NV_* extensions does OpenGL stop being a cohesive API?
Why not? Bandwidth caps are driven by saturation of ISPs' outbound links. If widespread topology-aware P2P arises, there may be a move to cut caps on internal network traffic, as it would be a way for ISPs to differentiate without really costing them anything. Of course, this doesn't apply if you're a poor soul living in an area with only one real broadband ISP.
That's a problem you have with any DRM. However, a system like the one described would be a fairly interesting way to deliver live content to subscribers without undue server load, especially if the underlying P2P system was network topology aware.
Sandboxing only needs to be done right once. Validating user input needs to be done right every time. I'm not saying don't validate your user input, but if your first line of defense is a fairly brittle mechanism, having extra protection is a good thing.
This isn't a Windows specific problem. The fundamental problem is the user/process model that's been popular since the inception of UNIX (maybe even earlier, I don't know enough about Multics to say): the idea that only users have identities and programs run under the identity (and permissions) of the user who runs it. If I'm running a game, there's no reason why it needs access to my tax spreadsheets, etc...
All software should be running under its own identity and access to user documents should be through standardized user interfaces... i.e., the 'File Open' dialog is actually a part of the OS not the application, and also grants temporary permissions in addition to just selecting a file.
We talk about the principle of 'least privilege' but in practice (with a few notable exceptions) the 'low-privilege' processes have the most important privileges of all: access to all our stuff.
No, it seems the GGP is confusing XAML with VML.
Yes, it does. The trick is knowing HOW to boil it down to simple arithmetic.
An itemized breakdown of a $10,000 programming contract:
$1 for the simple arithmetic. $9,999 for knowing how to solve it using simple arithmetic.
Hell, you need statistics for everything. If I had my way you wouldn't be able to graduate high school without a good dollop of statistics.
What does XAML have to do with SVG? Hell if you're going to bitch about XAML, maybe you should complain about WinForms and MFC too. They're equally unrelated.
You know why people buy the XBox 360, and why the ZuneHD is surprisingly popular? Because they're good products. And if the Courier is as good as some of the leaks suggest, people will buy it too.
You can sit there with your eeePC, ranting about stupid consumers and your holy war against the Microsoft empire. The rest of us will carry on not caring.
What? No it shouldn't. What does the CIA have to offer climatology?
The articles talk about satellite data, but satellite data is collected by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), not the CIA.
Microsoft's stock doesn't need increase in value: unlike Google and Apple, they pay a regular dividend to their shareholders. If Google and Apple's stock doesn't go up, their shareholders don't make any money. And stock price itself is practically meaningless except relative to itself. The market capitalization of MSFT is substantially higher than AAPL or GOOG and if you compare their P/E ratios they're not that overvalued, unlike Google and Apple. What that means is as a shareholder you can buy MSFT stock today and the company's performance, and your consequent return, is immediately in line with what you paid for it. Buying Google and Apple stock is a basically a bet that those two companies are capable of 50%-100% growth over the next few years... or rather that you can find someone else who believes that. Note: I don't own stock in any of them.
The stock market is more complex than the high-growth tech stocks.
As for research, I used to agree with you, but they've finally announced a pretty significant application of a lot of their research: Project Natal. You may have heard of it.
I don't know, cross-licensing phone-related patents sounds pretty reasonable.
Yes, the patents for GSM are offered under RAND terms. i.e., a nominal (but not trivial) amount of money.
The lawsuit comes from the fact that Apple decided it was special and, unlikely everybody else, didn't have to pay.
Uh, no, those are the patents Apple claims Nokia is infringing on. Not the other way around.
I am sorely disappointed. I wanted a video of a Porsche towing a sled off a ramp.
Decades? You mean centuries: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=pirate
Guess what... the word means what it does. It's meant that for a very, very long time.
Seriously? You could pick any country in the world to 'prove' that the US is behind in mobile technology and you picked Canada?
Maybe wireless service is good in Toronto, but in the rest of the country the three carriers (Wind doesn't count yet) SUCK. I think we're the only G20 country with worse cell service than the US.
However, as Canadian I have to agree with the GP. The US doesn't really have a manafacturing base anymore... not even for high-tech goods. Low-tech manafacturing is all China, Malaysia and Thailand. High-tech manafacturing is Korea, Japan and Taiwan. But the USA is still king of R&D. Some great research comes out of Canada, but level of funding for R&D is nowhere comparable to what is available in the US. I've worked for startups on both sides of the border and Canadian tech startups are like paupers in comparison.
Hope that helps. The English langauge isn't as hard as people say. Stick with it, and you'll figure it out eventually.
You need to keep up on the American political process. First, $1B is chump change when we're talking rocket development. But it's a moot point.
Obama will ask congress for an additoinal $1B in funding to build a heavy lift rocket. Congress will, as expected, decline to spend that amount of money on such 'frivolities' when they're desperately trying to pay for an expanded health care system and repay $1T spent digging holes in the ground.
I don't know why everybody is so shocked over this. Obama told everybody he'd kill the manned spaceflight program in his campaign. He's just following through.