Not the National Model Railroading Institute, but Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging. It seems the general public was frightened by the "N" word.
Chip H.
Re:I dont want to steal their thunder..
on
Titan's Alien Thunder
·
· Score: 4, Informative
For example the camera on the $4 billion Cassini mission is only 1 megapixel - if we had a larger number of smaller, cheaper missions, would we be there now with a much better imaging system.
The Mars rovers only have 1-megapixel cameras too, but those pictures look pretty darned good. It's all about the quality of the design and the parts that go into it, mostly, the lens and the size of the imager chip. Read more at msnbc.
With enough warning, the US forces will be able to concentrate troops in a location to defeat the enemy. How? Military flash mobs -- a message goes out to small units to meet at a certain GPS coordinate at a certain time. In the case of needing heavy armor, the lead time would have to be even longer due to the limited numbers of Abrams available. But in the short term, the gap can be filled with ground-attack craft such as rotary-wing aircraft and A-10 Thunderbolt II's.
The idea is to distribute decision making, such as what ocurred in Afghanistan, and to Keep It Simple, by using robust technologies such as email and web browsers.
The big problem that the troops encountered in Iraq was outrunning the capabilities of the microwave-based communications systems. They even outran line-of-sight communications.
One solution to that would be to plant "trees" in the desert. The idea would be to air-drop large numbers of communications relays that would have a spike on the bottom. When it hits the ground, the spike keeps it upright, and the batteries run it for a couple of days. The "trees" form a resiliant packet-driven communications mesh much like the internet.
It'll probably be no surprise to most people that the major costs of your cable bill are the content on the various channels. ESPN is apparently a huge cost to offer -- they charge way more than anyone else. The answer would be to offer channels a-la-carte, an idea I personally like. But then there'll be screams of pain when people find out how much it costs to get their sports fix. So we have the current "bundling" scheme, where the costs of the high-dollar channels are spread amongst the lower cost channels (Lifetime, We, Home Shopping, etc).
Now on Discovery Channel: Volcanos, Earth's big zits.
Chip H.
The libraries will make/break a language
on
Java 1.5 vs C#
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The included libraries will make/break a language, and right now, the.NET libraries are much easier to use. Partly because they were designed "as a whole" and don't have a lot of cruft in them (yet). And partly because the MS on-line help is vastly superior to JDoc (does Sun not believe in code samples?).
The biggest weakness I see in the.NET framework is that 90% of it uses concrete implementations. Because they didn't use an Interface-driven design, they now have to fall back on the Win32 style of appending "-ex" to class names when they want to improve them, rather than letting a dynamic loader find the class the developer needs.
Even so, the Visual Studio IDE is so far ahead of any of the Java IDEs (Eclipse comes closest), that it's probably Microsoft's single best competitive advantage.
Didn't Daimler Chrysler learn anything from the famous Moose Test ? This is where some Swedish journalists easily put an A-class on it's side in their standard Moose (called an Elk there) avoidance test.
This article shows the results of a lack of career planning & training for managers in IT.
All too often, an IT manager is a programmer whose technical skills were weak or out of date, and so got pushed into middle managment. They then are responsible for making decisions that affect the success of the project. All without any additional training on how to be a manager. It's a situation just waiting for the Peter Principle to kick in.
Everyone agrees that managing programmers is like herding cats, so throwing these people in there without any training or mentoring is just asking for trouble. Sometimes it results in money being wasted. In the case of an air traffic control system, it results in dangerous flying conditions and possible loss of life.
These are nothing but contingency plans. The pentagon is full of them. There are large groups of people whose job it is to dream this stuff up and plan appropriate responses. Just in case.
When Saddam invaded Kuwait, US Central Command just dug out the Iraq-Invades-A-Smaller-Neighbor plan and tweaked it to fit the exact situation. (Read Gen. Schwartzkopf's autobiography for the details).
I'm, uhhh, one of those who has a small plastic container of Mt. St. Helens ash tucked away in the attic somewhere.
Dad had gone on a sales call to Tektronix in Oregon and brought it back for me. It was pretty cool at the time -- I was a junior in high school on the east coast, and since there aren't a lot of volcanos around here, it was quite the novelty.
With ~16,000 processors now, and over 130,000 when it goes into production, getting all those CPUs to talk to one another is quite a challenge. Did they use infiniband? Or a proprietary interconnect, perhaps?
The OKLP, in cooperation with the Green and Constitution Parties, is encouraging their membership to leave the presidential portion of the ballot blank.
Having the OpenOffice XML file become a standard would be bad because it then prevents you from improving the product.
This is the same problem that Microsoft is facing with MS-Office -- they can't make any changes that would break the file format (since customers bitched about the file format changing all the time), thus, you aren't seeing any super-duper new features come out.
Source: Joel Spolsky's interview with ITConversations.com
The site says that after your flight, you'll have a dinner where you'll be presented with your astronaut wings. I can see some resentment from the established astronaut/cosmonaut/taikonaut corps to this.
How much do you want to bet that the requirements for receiving your wings will be raised by 100km or so?
Slashdot Mirror
What's with the minitower? I thought Sun workstations were traditionally in the "pizza box" form factor.
Chip H.
Not the National Model Railroading Institute, but Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
It seems the general public was frightened by the "N" word.
Chip H.
For example the camera on the $4 billion Cassini mission is only 1 megapixel - if we had a larger number of smaller, cheaper missions, would we be there now with a much better imaging system.
The Mars rovers only have 1-megapixel cameras too, but those pictures look pretty darned good. It's all about the quality of the design and the parts that go into it, mostly, the lens and the size of the imager chip. Read more at msnbc.
Chip H.
With enough warning, the US forces will be able to concentrate troops in a location to defeat the enemy. How? Military flash mobs -- a message goes out to small units to meet at a certain GPS coordinate at a certain time. In the case of needing heavy armor, the lead time would have to be even longer due to the limited numbers of Abrams available. But in the short term, the gap can be filled with ground-attack craft such as rotary-wing aircraft and A-10 Thunderbolt II's.
The idea is to distribute decision making, such as what ocurred in Afghanistan, and to Keep It Simple, by using robust technologies such as email and web browsers.
The big problem that the troops encountered in Iraq was outrunning the capabilities of the microwave-based communications systems. They even outran line-of-sight communications.
One solution to that would be to plant "trees" in the desert. The idea would be to air-drop large numbers of communications relays that would have a spike on the bottom. When it hits the ground, the spike keeps it upright, and the batteries run it for a couple of days. The "trees" form a resiliant packet-driven communications mesh much like the internet.
Chip H.
Mr. Passport, meet Mr. Hammer.
Chip H.
(Someone is sure not to get this -- RFID chips are typically in glass microcapsules, and even if they're not, silicon is sort of brittle)
Can someone post the text of the article? My company's firewall won't allow non-port 80 sites to be opened, even for outgoing traffic.
Slashdot editors: Please look for this in the future before including links. Thanks.
Chip H.
It'll probably be no surprise to most people that the major costs of your cable bill are the content on the various channels. ESPN is apparently a huge cost to offer -- they charge way more than anyone else. The answer would be to offer channels a-la-carte, an idea I personally like. But then there'll be screams of pain when people find out how much it costs to get their sports fix. So we have the current "bundling" scheme, where the costs of the high-dollar channels are spread amongst the lower cost channels (Lifetime, We, Home Shopping, etc).
Chip H.
Collector: Bring out yer dead American Programmers!
Man with body: Here's one.
Collector: That'll be ninepence.
Not-quite-dead programmer: I'm not dead.
Collector: What?
Man with body: Nothing. There's your ninepence.
Not-quite-dead programmer: I'm not dead.
Collector: 'Ere, he says he's not dead.
Man with body: Yes he is.
Not-quite-dead programmer: I'm not.
Collector: He isn't.
Man with body: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
Not-quite-dead programmer: I'm getting better.
Man with body: No you're not, you'll be stone dead in a moment.
Collector: Well, I can't take him like that. It's against regulations.
Not-quite-dead programmer: I don't want to go on the cart.
Man with body: Oh, don't be such a baby.
Collector: I can't take him.
Not-quite-dead programmer: I feel fine.
Man with body: Oh, do me a favor.
Collector: I can't.
Man with body: Well, can you hang around for a couple of minutes? He won't be long.
Collector: I promised I'd be at the Robinsons'. They've lost nine today.
Man with body: Well, when's your next round?
Collector: Thursday.
Not-quite-dead programmer: I think I'll go for a walk.
Man with body: You're not fooling anyone, you know. Isn't there anything you could do?
Not-quite-dead programmer: I feel happy. I feel happy.
[whack]
Mike was also one of the early adopters of Java within IBM.
Chip H.
Now on Discovery Channel: Volcanos, Earth's big zits.
Chip H.
The included libraries will make/break a language, and right now, the .NET libraries are much easier to use. Partly because they were designed "as a whole" and don't have a lot of cruft in them (yet). And partly because the MS on-line help is vastly superior to JDoc (does Sun not believe in code samples?).
.NET framework is that 90% of it uses concrete implementations. Because they didn't use an Interface-driven design, they now have to fall back on the Win32 style of appending "-ex" to class names when they want to improve them, rather than letting a dynamic loader find the class the developer needs.
The biggest weakness I see in the
Even so, the Visual Studio IDE is so far ahead of any of the Java IDEs (Eclipse comes closest), that it's probably Microsoft's single best competitive advantage.
Chip H.
Why not put a digicam in the iPod, much like a cell-phone camera? You could then skip the part about adapters, USB cables, etc.
Chip H.
- TSA employees who say "Enjoy your flight" in a genuinely cheerful manner after body-cavity searching me.
- A flight that leaves on time.
- More than just a bag of pretzels thrown on my tray by a surly flight attendant -- I want my snacks served by Heidi Klum (or other supermodel).
Chip H.
Didn't Daimler Chrysler learn anything from the famous Moose Test ? This is where some Swedish journalists easily put an A-class on it's side in their standard Moose (called an Elk there) avoidance test.
Chip H.
This article shows the results of a lack of career planning & training for managers in IT.
All too often, an IT manager is a programmer whose technical skills were weak or out of date, and so got pushed into middle managment. They then are responsible for making decisions that affect the success of the project. All without any additional training on how to be a manager. It's a situation just waiting for the Peter Principle to kick in.
Everyone agrees that managing programmers is like herding cats, so throwing these people in there without any training or mentoring is just asking for trouble. Sometimes it results in money being wasted. In the case of an air traffic control system, it results in dangerous flying conditions and possible loss of life.
Chip H.
1) P2P: 0%
2) iTunes: 0%
3) Creative Commons: 8% (When MP3.com was up)
4) Own CDs: 91%
5) Friends: 1% (Dad's 78 RPM Louis Armstrongs)
So, I'm a thief because I encoded some music from a format that hasn't been sold since the late 1950's. Send me to jail (jury trial, please)
Chip H.
These are nothing but contingency plans. The pentagon is full of them. There are large groups of people whose job it is to dream this stuff up and plan appropriate responses. Just in case.
When Saddam invaded Kuwait, US Central Command just dug out the Iraq-Invades-A-Smaller-Neighbor plan and tweaked it to fit the exact situation. (Read Gen. Schwartzkopf's autobiography for the details).
Chip H.
I'm, uhhh, one of those who has a small plastic container of Mt. St. Helens ash tucked away in the attic somewhere.
Dad had gone on a sales call to Tektronix in Oregon and brought it back for me. It was pretty cool at the time -- I was a junior in high school on the east coast, and since there aren't a lot of volcanos around here, it was quite the novelty.
Chip H.
Will Sony be re-releasing the titles that were shipped with their non-conforming copy protection scheme?
Chip H.
"SOA" is marketing-speak for whatever it is they're selling this week.
Last week, it meant web-services.
Chip H.
With ~16,000 processors now, and over 130,000 when it goes into production, getting all those CPUs to talk to one another is quite a challenge. Did they use infiniband? Or a proprietary interconnect, perhaps?
Chip H.
The OKLP, in cooperation with the Green and Constitution Parties, is encouraging their membership to leave the presidential portion of the ballot blank.
http://lp.org/lpnews/0411/oklahoma-nota.html
Chip H.
Guess I'd better not take this up...
Although if Elizabeth Hurley wants to, that's OK by me.
Chip H.
Having the OpenOffice XML file become a standard would be bad because it then prevents you from improving the product.
This is the same problem that Microsoft is facing with MS-Office -- they can't make any changes that would break the file format (since customers bitched about the file format changing all the time), thus, you aren't seeing any super-duper new features come out.
Source: Joel Spolsky's interview with ITConversations.com
Chip H.
The site says that after your flight, you'll have a dinner where you'll be presented with your astronaut wings. I can see some resentment from the established astronaut/cosmonaut/taikonaut corps to this.
How much do you want to bet that the requirements for receiving your wings will be raised by 100km or so?
Chip H.