The computing world never turned into quite the dystopia that some feared, because the vertical integrators were mostly killed. Now, in the past I couldn't really care what Apple did because they were always a niche platform. But some disclosure: I hate the iPhone, I want it to die, or at least lose its dominant position. If the future of mobile computing is dominated by a company like Apple, then it's a bleak future. Say what you will about Microsoft's domination of the desktop, but they were never draconian like this.
In the past being a Windows dev was compared to serfdom. If that's true, then what's being an iPhone developer like?
Spur an interest in programmable platforms and maybe get people interested in being more than just a passive consumer of whatever crap Apple wants to shovel at them through iTunes.
No, it's the excuse of somebody with a fucking brain. If it's legal to carry around a weapon, you're going to call the cops on somebody doing that because YOU think he's going to kill somebody? What are the cops going to do? He's NOT DOING ANYTHING ILLEGAL. I'd hate to be a tree surgeon around you... you'd probably call the cops on me for carrying an axe because you think 'Oh noes! That man is an AXE MURDERER!' Also, the fact that you think the only reason somebody would carry around a weapon like that is to commit murder demonstrates a real lack of imagination. But, you're an idiot so that's not surprising.
Normally I try to be polite and respectful in postings. But this is really the stupidest thing I've read in weeks.
No, the question is 'will the Ares program be salvaged.' The answer is 'yes.' Now, I'm not saying that Ares I should be killed... or that it should be saved. But if you try to kill it, all the congresscritters whose districts are going to get money out of Ares I (the SRB components are built by Thiokol, for example), won't let you. If the NASA tries to replace it with something else, Congress will step in and earmark part of NASA's budget specifically for Ares development. NASA has sucked since Apollo, since congress saw the awe and wonder that space exploration inspired and realised it would be a great, unkillable jobs program.
Am I cynical? Yes. But NASA has been enormously hindered by congressional micromanagement over the years. And none of it has been for the benefit of the space program.
You can certainly argue that Ares I should be replaced by man-rating commercial boosters. Some would argue that it's cheaper to engineer a man-rated rocket from scratch than go back and redesign an existing one, but it's a complex issue that I certainly am not qualified to weigh in on. But that's something that requies a great deal of knowledge of aerospace engineering and the projects themselves to determine. On the other hand, Ares V, as intended, will have significantly higher payload capacity than any other other rocket around. Bigger than Saturn V. So the debate about replacing Ares V with something COTS is moot... there IS nothing COTS that will fill its role.
It is about Obama and Congress allocating say 1.5B, 1B, and then.5B for the next 3 years and sticking with it. Will they do it? Tough question to answer
Honestly, if congress just allocated some money and threw it at NASA with a 'go build X' mandate, that'd be perfect. The problem with NASA is congressional micromanagement. For example, Congress banned NASA from spending any money on development of VASIMR propulsion, or inflatable space habitats, both of which are key pieces of technology that should be a backbone future space development. But nope, no money, because of some special interest in some congresscritter's district somewhere, that has a vested interest in NASA using an inferior piece of technology.
No, being non-profit does not mean you are on the verge of bankruptcy. Bankruptcy would imply that they are no longer able to cover their debts, which is different from not making a profit.
The public funding of the transcontinental railroad was highly successful. Congress funded two companies, one starting from the east and one starting from the west, with a plan to join in the middle. Which was a great plan in theory- whichever company went the fastest would lay down more track and get paid more (mostly in land), before the two met. Unfortunately when the two did meet they both decided they liked the government funding so much they just went right on building. They built hundreds of miles of parallel tracks before congress ordered them to stop.
The situation originated because Amazon did not have the legal right to distribute copies of 1984 in the first place. They refunded the purchase, but they could hardly turn around and knowingly redistribute illegal copies. I mean, you can rightfully criticize them for the original circumstance, but to be fair it may have taken them 2 months to acquire the rights to legally restore those copies.
Pagerank isn't an important algorithm, it's an application of an important mathematical concept. Pagerank is just computing the limiting distribution of a specially constructed Markov chain, which is very important and has many applications beyond pagerank and 'popularity contests.'
Yes, it is notable that this wasn't published in 'some mathematics journal'. Pagerank is computing the limiting distribution of a discrete-time markov chain applied to webpages using a certain statistical model of hyperlinks. It makes no sense to talk of applying 'pagerank' to things other than webpages, because that's what makes pagerank special! As soon as you take pagerank out of the web-context, it's just a steady state analysis of a markov chain, which is a standard statistical technique covered in undergraduate statistics courses. It's like saying applying bayesian inference to a problem in ecology is using a 'spam filter.'
For me, this tells me that perhaps these researchers should wander over to their local mathematics department more often. They might find all sorts of goodies that mathematicians have developed in the past few centuries. Dr. Allesina might have discovered that there was no need to reverse engineer the algorithm, since the underlying mathematical principles have been well understood for over a hundred years. We might have a better understanding of the world if most sciences took mathematical models as seriously as physicists do.
Unfortunately, when I tried out Windows 7 RC earlier this year it downloaded and installed the correct video drivers automatically. In fact, I don't think I had to manually install any drivers at all...
More important, an inexpensive 80% solution will have a far greater impact than a more expensive 100% solution, for the same money invested. If it costs the same to coal plants in the country with solar-thermal tech as it does to replace half the coal plants with pure solar-thermal or photovoltaic, then you're better off with the 80% solution. The hybrid approach eliminates 80% of solar usage whereas the 100% solution only eliminates 50%. But any practical person can see this.
The problem with environmentalism is that it has traditionally been a bastion of idealists, and idealists are not necessarily very practical people. However, this is changing.
Spin has been used for a long time, as a stabilization mechanism. I'll give you that a straight, 2 or 3 axis wobble would be very difficult to keep under control. However, if you use a liquid motor and don't completely damp pogo affects, combine that with spin, you're now dispersing the laser beam over a large 2-D skin area.
As for energy absorbed by your fuel... you're pumping a ton of LOX and LH2 at -200C through the cooling system every few seconds. That can absorb a lot of heat. Don't forget you're dealing with rocket engines that are working at thousands of degrees and producing gigawatts of power. Every square foot of internal surface area in a liquid rocket engine after the combustion chamber needs 10-15MW of active cooling. So we know regenerative working works VERY well.
Your exhaust gasses are traveling 10-12 times faster than the speed of sound, away from the rocket. Inducing shockwaves in the exhaust to interfere with the rocket motor isn't going to do much. And these are gasses that just came out of the back of a gigawatt rocket motor... how much do you think a megawatt laser is really going to do to them?
A hole in your LOX capillaries is far worse than a hole in your LH2. The LH2 will just vent, the LOX will probably light the aluminum skin of your missile on fire. LOX is very, very dangerous stuff.
Liquid rocket engines already pump their cryogenic fuel through similar capillaries in their exhaust nozzles for cooling. Those nozzles are coping with the heat given off by a rocket engine operating in the GIGAWATT power range, so a puny MW laser isn't going to stop them.
As for heating, that's not really a problem. The turbopumps are designed to cope with that. That's why rocket engines are complex and expensive.
Uhh, not really. There's a difference between suborbital and orbital reentry.
Orbital reentry is very hot, because you're starting off going ridiculously fast. The reentry process is really a protracted aerobraking maneuver. That produces a lot of heat since you have a lot of kinetic energy to burn off.
Suborbital reentry, especially unpowered, is very easy. You're in an object that's just falling through the sky. It won't get particularly hot, since aerodynamic drag keeps it from picking up any appreciable speed. Terminal velocity may seem fast to you, but it's got nothing on a 30,000km/h LEO.
You're screwed if you're a ground target. On the other hand, a lot of laser systems (although not necessarily this one) are aimed at intercepting missiles. Missiles have more options...
First, a missile can spin. That help keeps the laser off one spot. Next is to introduce a wobble - difficult to do, although with modern control systems not completely impossible - that also keeps the laser hitting a varying spot. Lastly, if your rocket has a cryogenic fuel (i.e., LOX + LH2), you can pump your fuel through capillaries under the skin of your rocket before entering the rocket motor. That'll absorb whatever energy the laser does impart. Of course, that doesn't work with a ballistic missile after its ascent stage... but at that point you're hopefully relying on decoys.
Oh, and I should add that in Linux you have no access to the GPU. So you only have the Cell's 250GFlops of programmable performance, unless you're a game developer.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know, Apple hasn't really cared about consistent enforcement of App Store rules in the past.
The computing world never turned into quite the dystopia that some feared, because the vertical integrators were mostly killed. Now, in the past I couldn't really care what Apple did because they were always a niche platform. But some disclosure: I hate the iPhone, I want it to die, or at least lose its dominant position. If the future of mobile computing is dominated by a company like Apple, then it's a bleak future. Say what you will about Microsoft's domination of the desktop, but they were never draconian like this.
In the past being a Windows dev was compared to serfdom. If that's true, then what's being an iPhone developer like?
Spur an interest in programmable platforms and maybe get people interested in being more than just a passive consumer of whatever crap Apple wants to shovel at them through iTunes.
No, it's the excuse of somebody with a fucking brain. If it's legal to carry around a weapon, you're going to call the cops on somebody doing that because YOU think he's going to kill somebody? What are the cops going to do? He's NOT DOING ANYTHING ILLEGAL. I'd hate to be a tree surgeon around you... you'd probably call the cops on me for carrying an axe because you think 'Oh noes! That man is an AXE MURDERER!' Also, the fact that you think the only reason somebody would carry around a weapon like that is to commit murder demonstrates a real lack of imagination. But, you're an idiot so that's not surprising.
Normally I try to be polite and respectful in postings. But this is really the stupidest thing I've read in weeks.
No, the question is 'will the Ares program be salvaged.' The answer is 'yes.' Now, I'm not saying that Ares I should be killed... or that it should be saved. But if you try to kill it, all the congresscritters whose districts are going to get money out of Ares I (the SRB components are built by Thiokol, for example), won't let you. If the NASA tries to replace it with something else, Congress will step in and earmark part of NASA's budget specifically for Ares development. NASA has sucked since Apollo, since congress saw the awe and wonder that space exploration inspired and realised it would be a great, unkillable jobs program.
Am I cynical? Yes. But NASA has been enormously hindered by congressional micromanagement over the years. And none of it has been for the benefit of the space program.
You can certainly argue that Ares I should be replaced by man-rating commercial boosters. Some would argue that it's cheaper to engineer a man-rated rocket from scratch than go back and redesign an existing one, but it's a complex issue that I certainly am not qualified to weigh in on. But that's something that requies a great deal of knowledge of aerospace engineering and the projects themselves to determine. On the other hand, Ares V, as intended, will have significantly higher payload capacity than any other other rocket around. Bigger than Saturn V. So the debate about replacing Ares V with something COTS is moot... there IS nothing COTS that will fill its role. It is about Obama and Congress allocating say 1.5B, 1B, and then .5B for the next 3 years and sticking with it. Will they do it? Tough question to answer
Honestly, if congress just allocated some money and threw it at NASA with a 'go build X' mandate, that'd be perfect. The problem with NASA is congressional micromanagement. For example, Congress banned NASA from spending any money on development of VASIMR propulsion, or inflatable space habitats, both of which are key pieces of technology that should be a backbone future space development. But nope, no money, because of some special interest in some congresscritter's district somewhere, that has a vested interest in NASA using an inferior piece of technology.
Perhaps they should just let private individuals do it for them. ELF season!
Electrical engineering makes mother earth cry!
I wouldn't blame it on 'government' as a concept. The Russians recently blew up a hydro plant. They're just naturally good at making things go boom.
No, being non-profit does not mean you are on the verge of bankruptcy. Bankruptcy would imply that they are no longer able to cover their debts, which is different from not making a profit.
The public funding of the transcontinental railroad was highly successful. Congress funded two companies, one starting from the east and one starting from the west, with a plan to join in the middle. Which was a great plan in theory- whichever company went the fastest would lay down more track and get paid more (mostly in land), before the two met. Unfortunately when the two did meet they both decided they liked the government funding so much they just went right on building. They built hundreds of miles of parallel tracks before congress ordered them to stop.
I've always found that (true) story hilarious.
The situation originated because Amazon did not have the legal right to distribute copies of 1984 in the first place. They refunded the purchase, but they could hardly turn around and knowingly redistribute illegal copies. I mean, you can rightfully criticize them for the original circumstance, but to be fair it may have taken them 2 months to acquire the rights to legally restore those copies.
Isn't that a sign of the apocalypse?
Pagerank isn't an important algorithm, it's an application of an important mathematical concept. Pagerank is just computing the limiting distribution of a specially constructed Markov chain, which is very important and has many applications beyond pagerank and 'popularity contests.'
Yes, it is notable that this wasn't published in 'some mathematics journal'. Pagerank is computing the limiting distribution of a discrete-time markov chain applied to webpages using a certain statistical model of hyperlinks. It makes no sense to talk of applying 'pagerank' to things other than webpages, because that's what makes pagerank special! As soon as you take pagerank out of the web-context, it's just a steady state analysis of a markov chain, which is a standard statistical technique covered in undergraduate statistics courses. It's like saying applying bayesian inference to a problem in ecology is using a 'spam filter.'
For me, this tells me that perhaps these researchers should wander over to their local mathematics department more often. They might find all sorts of goodies that mathematicians have developed in the past few centuries. Dr. Allesina might have discovered that there was no need to reverse engineer the algorithm, since the underlying mathematical principles have been well understood for over a hundred years. We might have a better understanding of the world if most sciences took mathematical models as seriously as physicists do.
Unfortunately, when I tried out Windows 7 RC earlier this year it downloaded and installed the correct video drivers automatically. In fact, I don't think I had to manually install any drivers at all...
More important, an inexpensive 80% solution will have a far greater impact than a more expensive 100% solution, for the same money invested. If it costs the same to coal plants in the country with solar-thermal tech as it does to replace half the coal plants with pure solar-thermal or photovoltaic, then you're better off with the 80% solution. The hybrid approach eliminates 80% of solar usage whereas the 100% solution only eliminates 50%. But any practical person can see this.
The problem with environmentalism is that it has traditionally been a bastion of idealists, and idealists are not necessarily very practical people. However, this is changing.
Spin has been used for a long time, as a stabilization mechanism. I'll give you that a straight, 2 or 3 axis wobble would be very difficult to keep under control. However, if you use a liquid motor and don't completely damp pogo affects, combine that with spin, you're now dispersing the laser beam over a large 2-D skin area.
As for energy absorbed by your fuel... you're pumping a ton of LOX and LH2 at -200C through the cooling system every few seconds. That can absorb a lot of heat. Don't forget you're dealing with rocket engines that are working at thousands of degrees and producing gigawatts of power. Every square foot of internal surface area in a liquid rocket engine after the combustion chamber needs 10-15MW of active cooling. So we know regenerative working works VERY well.
Your exhaust gasses are traveling 10-12 times faster than the speed of sound, away from the rocket. Inducing shockwaves in the exhaust to interfere with the rocket motor isn't going to do much. And these are gasses that just came out of the back of a gigawatt rocket motor... how much do you think a megawatt laser is really going to do to them?
A hole in your LOX capillaries is far worse than a hole in your LH2. The LH2 will just vent, the LOX will probably light the aluminum skin of your missile on fire. LOX is very, very dangerous stuff.
Liquid rocket engines already pump their cryogenic fuel through similar capillaries in their exhaust nozzles for cooling. Those nozzles are coping with the heat given off by a rocket engine operating in the GIGAWATT power range, so a puny MW laser isn't going to stop them.
As for heating, that's not really a problem. The turbopumps are designed to cope with that. That's why rocket engines are complex and expensive.
Uhh, not really. There's a difference between suborbital and orbital reentry.
Orbital reentry is very hot, because you're starting off going ridiculously fast. The reentry process is really a protracted aerobraking maneuver. That produces a lot of heat since you have a lot of kinetic energy to burn off.
Suborbital reentry, especially unpowered, is very easy. You're in an object that's just falling through the sky. It won't get particularly hot, since aerodynamic drag keeps it from picking up any appreciable speed. Terminal velocity may seem fast to you, but it's got nothing on a 30,000km/h LEO.
And he left the economy in such a disaster that it took almost fifteen years to crawl out of the hole.
You're screwed if you're a ground target. On the other hand, a lot of laser systems (although not necessarily this one) are aimed at intercepting missiles. Missiles have more options...
First, a missile can spin. That help keeps the laser off one spot. Next is to introduce a wobble - difficult to do, although with modern control systems not completely impossible - that also keeps the laser hitting a varying spot. Lastly, if your rocket has a cryogenic fuel (i.e., LOX + LH2), you can pump your fuel through capillaries under the skin of your rocket before entering the rocket motor. That'll absorb whatever energy the laser does impart. Of course, that doesn't work with a ballistic missile after its ascent stage... but at that point you're hopefully relying on decoys.
Should I stop caring about Burger King because I can't run Linux on a Whopper?
Of course you can't. That's what NetBSD is for!
Oh, and I should add that in Linux you have no access to the GPU. So you only have the Cell's 250GFlops of programmable performance, unless you're a game developer.