Deflecting the asteroid so that it misses the keyhole (~300km) is much easier than deflecting it so that it misses the earth (~13000km).
Not necessarily. It all depends on when you intercept it. When the asteroid is near the earth changing its path by 300km might actually be rather hard. On the other hand, if the asteroid is in the middle of space changing where it will go is pretty easy.
When you're inserting a probe into orbit around a planet, you can completely change what orbit it will end up in with a tiny blast of the maneuvering thrusters if you're still months or years away. If you wait until you're in orbit, then you might need something the size of a Saturn V to change the orbit in the same way.
In any case, waiting a few months before taking action seems prudent - asteroids are popping up all the time and there is no way to know if they are worth pursuing until you collect data. No harm in planning for the ability to intercept asteroids in general, but it seems a bit premature to go after this one in particular.
Yup, I had a friend whose son was going to go to college to learn how to create video games. I tried to express my concern to his parents that perhaps his line of thinking was that because he liked playing video games he would no doubt like creating them, and that wasn't at all likely to be true.
I don't think the kid had written a line of code in his life, and sure enough after four years at considerable expense he's still working retail jobs. I've suggested that he get involved in FOSS projects to build experience and reputation, and he really has no interest in it. He certainly spends lots of time playing MMORPGs, though.
Not everybody is really cut out for programming. Even those who are find themselves at a big disadvantage with the outsourcing trends. I think the key is that in this day and age nobody can afford to do something where they struggle to be mediocre - find something you're good at and do it!
How is a cell phone conversation on a bus/train any different from ordinary conversation, other than contributing half as much noise to the environment?
Good point - just dumping a second galaxy on top of our own in some other universe would put too much mass in the center. Maybe as you suggest if constants were different it would be more sparse and we'd have more mass outside.
If you allow for a much larger number of nearby branes then maybe gas that is gravitationally coupled to the galaxy might work. Gas might fall from voids and tend to orbit a galaxy in our universe, but since it doesn't interact non-gravitationally it wouldn't clump as much near the center. Of course, that requires the gas to be spread across many different universes, or it would still clump up. Then, if there is so much background mass all over the place that can't clump up, then would that tend to prevent galaxies from forming in the first place? I don't really know enough about the dark matter problem to answer that offhand...
By only allowing the users to get access to the network through the "close firends" a member of the RIAA that gets access to the network can only monitor the firend that invited him/her. This means that you only have to trust the ones you invite and don't have to worry about them later inviting som random stranger they met on the internet.
Yup. That's why private intelligence companies never know when animal rights groups are up to something - because they only talk to their friends, and that nice fellow who seems so passionate about saving animals must be a friend.
Oh, and you don't even need to subvert somebody's trust to defeat this system. If you figure out that somebody is sharing a file (perhaps from traffic on some other network or other behavior), then you just plant a trojan on their PC and you instantly know what all their friends are doing. Now you can get warrants to plant trojans on their computers, and so on.
The whole thing sounds about as anonymous as bitorrent with a "closed" tracker. If you want security you need onion routing or some other technique so that nobody knows exactly who they're talking to, or who is hosting a file.
Not really. If I'm running a.onion site sharing data on tor, nobody realizes it. Even if somebody could reach me in a single connection, they'll still be given a route to take through multiple hops. The sites one hop away have no idea that I'm the last hop, or that I'm running a.onion site.
With this system, if I share files all my friends know about it, and I know about what files they're sharing. That means that none of us have plausible deniability, and we could be called on to testify against each other. If somebody bugs my computer, they can know everything being hosted on my friends' computers.
If we were all hosting files on.onion sites, or on eepsites, or via bittorrent over tor, or whatever, then none of us would be able to tell what.onion site belonged to our friends unless we shared that with each other. A trojan on one of our PCs would likewise not be able to tell what was going on beyond what was on our own PC, or anything communicated via side-channels.
And yes, poorly designed bitorrent clients can leak data over TOR, assuming that they have any data to leak.
Well, what did the authors mean by "nonprofit educational uses" then? By your argument there is no such thing, but if there were no such thing then the people who wrote the laws would not have written them in a way that suggests that there is such a thing as nonprofit educational use.
So, the obvious conclusion is that the fact that people have a profit motive behind receiving an education doesn't diminish the fact that public education is a non-profit activity.
A 1980 calculus book was probably 3- or 4-spot-color with maybe a full color page or two in each chapter.
It might surprise you that the cost of printing in full color probably hasn't dropped much since 1980. The reason that textbooks were printed in spot color back then had nothing to do with technology, and everything to do with not spending $100 on a book when you could do the same thing for $30.
The "sizzle" you talk about is exactly the sort of marketing stuff that this article was coming down on - we're ignoring the content and focusing instead on stuff that sells books but does little to educate.
When there was a teacher's strike the year I was to start algebra we went to the local library and took out some 20 year old textbook, and it worked just fine. I occasionally read in my evenings a collection of college-accessible essays on mathematics that was just black and white print from 50 years prior, and learned quite a bit from it. The key to learning isn't fancy print, but self-motivation.
And why would a kid be motivated to learn math and science anyway? They'd get paid far more to play with accounting standards and crash the stock market once a decade, or to do marketing. Companies have learned a long time ago that in our society you aren't rewarded for building the better widget - you get rewarded for marketing, legal maneuvers, and playing with your numbers.
I'm not convinced that old textbooks are a problem even in physics and other sciences. Sure, if you're talking 30 years that is going to be problematic for some topics, but not much has changed in 10 years at the elementary level. If you're teaching Newtonian mechanics then nothing has changed in 200 years.
The problem with not allowing "let's move on" is that it isn't very compatible with standard curricula. If you're expected to cover some set of topics to prepare for the next course in the series then you can't spend an indefinite period of time trying to figure things out.
Otherwise all a kid has to do is ask "so, why is it that the galaxy stays together when there is so little visible mass?" and now you spend 30 years trying to finish the day's topic.
I suspect that the parent's point was that the reason that NK is run by a dictator was because of a stalemate in a war fought between the US, Russia, and China 60 years ago. The government of NK since then has only been able to operate in accordance with Chinese allowances. The last time NK started giving China a hard time they just shut off their oil for a few days.
Just saying "we don't like you, you can't have it" isn't going to work.
Well, that isn't completely certain yet - we can always see how the inspections go. However, if they still end up stonewalling there is always the invasion option. Main issue there is likely attacks on South Korea - even if their territory doesn't end up being used in the attack.
There is no reason that the world has to settle for a solution that the dictators in charge of North Korea are willing to accept.
If I were a sociopath in charge of NK, I'd probably keep oppressing my people and building nukes to extort foreign aid, because I'd realize that everybody else is too afraid to stop me. If I thought that other nations were actually willing to stop me, then I'd probably act differently in the interest of self-preservation.
You'd think that somebody coming out with version 2 of a security-sensitive browser extension would deploy it in a manner that would ensure auto-updates. I searched in the Chrome Web Store and there was no sign of this. You have to install it directly from their website. That means that it won't auto-update, and I need to remember to install/maintain it on every Chrome profile I have (no auto-syncing).
I'd rather not have to guess or check whether any particular browser I'm using has the extension installed and up-to-date...
There are other possible ways that the same phenomena could lead to different outcomes. How about this one - galaxies/clusters are composed of stars and hot gas, and that's it - there is no dark matter. However, we exist in a multiverse with many parallel universes overlaying ours but interacting only through gravity. Since matter in different universes attracts each other, galaxies in one universe tend to be piled on top of galaxies in other universes. Much of the mass of any cluster/galaxy is in the hot gas.
Now, let's take the bullet cluster. Let's explain that by the collision of 4 clusters in three universes. Universe A is ours, and B and C are others that are close by and interact gravitationally. Two of the clusters are in A (call them 1 and 2), one is in B (call it 3), and one is in C (call it 4). 1 and 3 overlap, and 2 and 4 overlap. When they cross paths, the hot gas in 1 and 2 interact via electromagnetism, and the hot gas in 3 and 4 only interact gravitationally and aren't slowed down as much. In the end the gas in our universe in clusters 1 and 2 ends up in the middle, and the gas in 3 and 4 are visible as dark matter on the outside.
As the second example let's consider this collision. Let's explain that using 4 clusters in two universes, again with A being ours and B being another one. Clusters 1 and 2 are in ours, and 3 and 4 are in B. 1 and 3 overlap, as do 2 and 4. In this scenario the hot gasses in 1 and 2 interact, and so do the hot gases in 3 and 4. That means that the hot gases all end up in the middle in all 4, and the stars all fly past each other and end up on the outside. So, this time we see hot gas in the middle, plus a lot of dark matter, which is all the hot gas in 3 and 4.
So, we can have "dark matter" behaving in two different ways, not because of any difference in the matter itself, but rather a difference in the space in which it exists.
No doubt somebody much smarter than me has thought up something like this already, and perhaps shot it full of holes as well.
True, but look at the comparisons. The closest thing you'll find to a Prius is probably a Camry. The Prius has a little less room, and is a few k more for the same options. You can spend $28k on a Camry, and you can spend a little over $30k on a Prius. You can also get down close to $20k on a Camry if you skimp, and I'm guessing the Prius is available for under $25k if you skimp.
I think the issue with the Volt is that even with subsidies it is $12k more than any comparably configured alternative. You can't compare a Volt to a BMW in features.
Probably because in Europe they actually use clean diesel fuel. All those EPA laws that resulted in smog reduction on cars were never applied to diesel, because of lobbying by the trucking industry. If you applied the same standards to diesel fuel as unleaded it would be plenty clean.
I'd go with Gentoo, but for the same reasons. Gentoo gives you a bit more control, and it has a big tradition of tinkering (switching out sysvinit implementations, kernels, and so on). I think it is also more maintainable - you can let the system take care of the stuff you aren't messing with at the moment.
It depends. If your goal is to teach them how to launch Thunderbird and Chrome, then using a standard desktop distro is obviously the best choice. However, if your goal is to teach them how linux works under the hood, then you can't hide away all the details behind a nice GUI.
I'd start them out on a mainstream distro. However, if the goal really is to teach them something then you have to make them actually mess with config files, or alternate sysvinit implementations, and so on. Personally I'd recommend Gentoo for that.
I'd probably start them on Ubuntu to get them used to a desktop Linux experience. However, if your goal is to teach people Linux from a systems development/engineering standpoint, you can't stay with any of the top-3 distros. You'll learn about as much about Linux using Ubuntu/Arch/Mint as you will using an Android phone or a Tivo. These distros try to hide away the details of the OS, which is nice for deploying it in schools or businesses, but not good for learning.
Once they're comfortable with the basic concepts I'd switch them to Gentoo, and make them do the full install procedure. If they get really comfortable with it then make them redo it, but now with systemd and dracut, or maybe running heavily hardened. Then have them install prefix on their Windows or OSX boxes. Basically the goal is to keep challenging the basic assumptions and broadening their experience base.
You could argue that Gentoo is less productive since you have to spend more time fiddling with it. However, if your goal is to teach them how things actually work, that is a good thing. You could get by using it as their primary system, but if you don't want to have any drop in productivity they should be doing all of this stuff on a spare PC, or at least they should have access to a spare running Windows/Ubuntu for when they hose their system.
When you're all done you might very well decide to go with some other distro to reduce the amount of fiddling around, but anybody proficient at tinkering with Gentoo is not going to find it difficult to use Arch or Ubuntu. They might end up being frustrated at the lack of control, but if they're comfortable with Gentoo there is no reason they couldn't stick with it.
I was chatting with a guy who used to be an engineer at a phone company. They were digitizing phonemes and had the problem that fast speech couldn't be processed quickly enough. So, they just put a slight delay (much less than this) on the sidetone channel. Apparently by tuning the delay they could make somebody talk as fast or as slow as they wanted to.
I'll have to try it too; I'm skeptical. I'll put something together to make a 0.2 second delay and output to headphones. Can anybody recommend some software that already does (or can be configured to do) this?
Sure, the lousy conference call system we have at work anytime somebody has a speakerphone unmuted. I can assure you the effect is quite real. I go to run a meeting and want to rip the hair off of my head trying to talk sounding like a drunkard while hearing my voice echoing back 1/4th of a second later. Fortunately said software also has a mute function on individual lines controlled by me if I'm running the meeting, and visual feedback on which line is causing the problem...
You need to program your entire game as if it was a particle system.
I suspect this is the heart of the issue. If you write a game for the xbox and get it working just fine, it will just be a hack to get it to work on the ps3. I doubt most studios will do a complete rewrite.
Perhaps if they did things the other way around it might go better, but in the end they don't care if their game is spectacular on the PS3 - only that it is comparable to all the other hacked-together games on the PS3. In fact, they'd probably prefer that everybody just bought the xbox version so that they wouldn't have to bother with the ps3 at all.
That's what I like about PC gaming. I upgraded my system and went back and installed games that I had used before, but cranked their settings to the max. With PC gaming you almost always have backwards compatibility (well, to the DOS/EMS/XMS days), and things just keep getting better.
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Deflecting the asteroid so that it misses the keyhole (~300km) is much easier than deflecting it so that it misses the earth (~13000km).
Not necessarily. It all depends on when you intercept it. When the asteroid is near the earth changing its path by 300km might actually be rather hard. On the other hand, if the asteroid is in the middle of space changing where it will go is pretty easy.
When you're inserting a probe into orbit around a planet, you can completely change what orbit it will end up in with a tiny blast of the maneuvering thrusters if you're still months or years away. If you wait until you're in orbit, then you might need something the size of a Saturn V to change the orbit in the same way.
In any case, waiting a few months before taking action seems prudent - asteroids are popping up all the time and there is no way to know if they are worth pursuing until you collect data. No harm in planning for the ability to intercept asteroids in general, but it seems a bit premature to go after this one in particular.
Yup, I had a friend whose son was going to go to college to learn how to create video games. I tried to express my concern to his parents that perhaps his line of thinking was that because he liked playing video games he would no doubt like creating them, and that wasn't at all likely to be true.
I don't think the kid had written a line of code in his life, and sure enough after four years at considerable expense he's still working retail jobs. I've suggested that he get involved in FOSS projects to build experience and reputation, and he really has no interest in it. He certainly spends lots of time playing MMORPGs, though.
Not everybody is really cut out for programming. Even those who are find themselves at a big disadvantage with the outsourcing trends. I think the key is that in this day and age nobody can afford to do something where they struggle to be mediocre - find something you're good at and do it!
I'm fine with banning cell phones in restaurants as long as you ban conversation as well.
I don't get why cell phones get classified differently than anything else...
How is a cell phone conversation on a bus/train any different from ordinary conversation, other than contributing half as much noise to the environment?
Good point - just dumping a second galaxy on top of our own in some other universe would put too much mass in the center. Maybe as you suggest if constants were different it would be more sparse and we'd have more mass outside.
If you allow for a much larger number of nearby branes then maybe gas that is gravitationally coupled to the galaxy might work. Gas might fall from voids and tend to orbit a galaxy in our universe, but since it doesn't interact non-gravitationally it wouldn't clump as much near the center. Of course, that requires the gas to be spread across many different universes, or it would still clump up. Then, if there is so much background mass all over the place that can't clump up, then would that tend to prevent galaxies from forming in the first place? I don't really know enough about the dark matter problem to answer that offhand...
By only allowing the users to get access to the network through the "close firends" a member of the RIAA that gets access to the network can only monitor the firend that invited him/her. This means that you only have to trust the ones you invite and don't have to worry about them later inviting som random stranger they met on the internet.
Yup. That's why private intelligence companies never know when animal rights groups are up to something - because they only talk to their friends, and that nice fellow who seems so passionate about saving animals must be a friend.
Oh, and you don't even need to subvert somebody's trust to defeat this system. If you figure out that somebody is sharing a file (perhaps from traffic on some other network or other behavior), then you just plant a trojan on their PC and you instantly know what all their friends are doing. Now you can get warrants to plant trojans on their computers, and so on.
The whole thing sounds about as anonymous as bitorrent with a "closed" tracker. If you want security you need onion routing or some other technique so that nobody knows exactly who they're talking to, or who is hosting a file.
Not really. If I'm running a .onion site sharing data on tor, nobody realizes it. Even if somebody could reach me in a single connection, they'll still be given a route to take through multiple hops. The sites one hop away have no idea that I'm the last hop, or that I'm running a .onion site.
With this system, if I share files all my friends know about it, and I know about what files they're sharing. That means that none of us have plausible deniability, and we could be called on to testify against each other. If somebody bugs my computer, they can know everything being hosted on my friends' computers.
If we were all hosting files on .onion sites, or on eepsites, or via bittorrent over tor, or whatever, then none of us would be able to tell what .onion site belonged to our friends unless we shared that with each other. A trojan on one of our PCs would likewise not be able to tell what was going on beyond what was on our own PC, or anything communicated via side-channels.
And yes, poorly designed bitorrent clients can leak data over TOR, assuming that they have any data to leak.
Well, what did the authors mean by "nonprofit educational uses" then? By your argument there is no such thing, but if there were no such thing then the people who wrote the laws would not have written them in a way that suggests that there is such a thing as nonprofit educational use.
So, the obvious conclusion is that the fact that people have a profit motive behind receiving an education doesn't diminish the fact that public education is a non-profit activity.
A 1980 calculus book was probably 3- or 4-spot-color with maybe a full color
page or two in each chapter.
It might surprise you that the cost of printing in full color probably hasn't dropped much since 1980. The reason that textbooks were printed in spot color back then had nothing to do with technology, and everything to do with not spending $100 on a book when you could do the same thing for $30.
The "sizzle" you talk about is exactly the sort of marketing stuff that this article was coming down on - we're ignoring the content and focusing instead on stuff that sells books but does little to educate.
When there was a teacher's strike the year I was to start algebra we went to the local library and took out some 20 year old textbook, and it worked just fine. I occasionally read in my evenings a collection of college-accessible essays on mathematics that was just black and white print from 50 years prior, and learned quite a bit from it. The key to learning isn't fancy print, but self-motivation.
And why would a kid be motivated to learn math and science anyway? They'd get paid far more to play with accounting standards and crash the stock market once a decade, or to do marketing. Companies have learned a long time ago that in our society you aren't rewarded for building the better widget - you get rewarded for marketing, legal maneuvers, and playing with your numbers.
I'm not convinced that old textbooks are a problem even in physics and other sciences. Sure, if you're talking 30 years that is going to be problematic for some topics, but not much has changed in 10 years at the elementary level. If you're teaching Newtonian mechanics then nothing has changed in 200 years.
The problem with not allowing "let's move on" is that it isn't very compatible with standard curricula. If you're expected to cover some set of topics to prepare for the next course in the series then you can't spend an indefinite period of time trying to figure things out.
Otherwise all a kid has to do is ask "so, why is it that the galaxy stays together when there is so little visible mass?" and now you spend 30 years trying to finish the day's topic.
I suspect that the parent's point was that the reason that NK is run by a dictator was because of a stalemate in a war fought between the US, Russia, and China 60 years ago. The government of NK since then has only been able to operate in accordance with Chinese allowances. The last time NK started giving China a hard time they just shut off their oil for a few days.
Just saying "we don't like you, you can't have it" isn't going to work.
Well, that isn't completely certain yet - we can always see how the inspections go. However, if they still end up stonewalling there is always the invasion option. Main issue there is likely attacks on South Korea - even if their territory doesn't end up being used in the attack.
There is no reason that the world has to settle for a solution that the dictators in charge of North Korea are willing to accept.
If I were a sociopath in charge of NK, I'd probably keep oppressing my people and building nukes to extort foreign aid, because I'd realize that everybody else is too afraid to stop me. If I thought that other nations were actually willing to stop me, then I'd probably act differently in the interest of self-preservation.
You'd think that somebody coming out with version 2 of a security-sensitive browser extension would deploy it in a manner that would ensure auto-updates. I searched in the Chrome Web Store and there was no sign of this. You have to install it directly from their website. That means that it won't auto-update, and I need to remember to install/maintain it on every Chrome profile I have (no auto-syncing).
I'd rather not have to guess or check whether any particular browser I'm using has the extension installed and up-to-date...
There are other possible ways that the same phenomena could lead to different outcomes. How about this one - galaxies/clusters are composed of stars and hot gas, and that's it - there is no dark matter. However, we exist in a multiverse with many parallel universes overlaying ours but interacting only through gravity. Since matter in different universes attracts each other, galaxies in one universe tend to be piled on top of galaxies in other universes. Much of the mass of any cluster/galaxy is in the hot gas.
Now, let's take the bullet cluster. Let's explain that by the collision of 4 clusters in three universes. Universe A is ours, and B and C are others that are close by and interact gravitationally. Two of the clusters are in A (call them 1 and 2), one is in B (call it 3), and one is in C (call it 4). 1 and 3 overlap, and 2 and 4 overlap. When they cross paths, the hot gas in 1 and 2 interact via electromagnetism, and the hot gas in 3 and 4 only interact gravitationally and aren't slowed down as much. In the end the gas in our universe in clusters 1 and 2 ends up in the middle, and the gas in 3 and 4 are visible as dark matter on the outside.
As the second example let's consider this collision. Let's explain that using 4 clusters in two universes, again with A being ours and B being another one. Clusters 1 and 2 are in ours, and 3 and 4 are in B. 1 and 3 overlap, as do 2 and 4. In this scenario the hot gasses in 1 and 2 interact, and so do the hot gases in 3 and 4. That means that the hot gases all end up in the middle in all 4, and the stars all fly past each other and end up on the outside. So, this time we see hot gas in the middle, plus a lot of dark matter, which is all the hot gas in 3 and 4.
So, we can have "dark matter" behaving in two different ways, not because of any difference in the matter itself, but rather a difference in the space in which it exists.
No doubt somebody much smarter than me has thought up something like this already, and perhaps shot it full of holes as well.
Dear god, have you actually read into diesel emissions in the USA? US Diesels are CLEANER than European diesel engines.
Did you read my post? I'm not talking about engines - I'm talking about the fuel...
True, but look at the comparisons. The closest thing you'll find to a Prius is probably a Camry. The Prius has a little less room, and is a few k more for the same options. You can spend $28k on a Camry, and you can spend a little over $30k on a Prius. You can also get down close to $20k on a Camry if you skimp, and I'm guessing the Prius is available for under $25k if you skimp.
I think the issue with the Volt is that even with subsidies it is $12k more than any comparably configured alternative. You can't compare a Volt to a BMW in features.
Probably because in Europe they actually use clean diesel fuel. All those EPA laws that resulted in smog reduction on cars were never applied to diesel, because of lobbying by the trucking industry. If you applied the same standards to diesel fuel as unleaded it would be plenty clean.
I'd go with Gentoo, but for the same reasons. Gentoo gives you a bit more control, and it has a big tradition of tinkering (switching out sysvinit implementations, kernels, and so on). I think it is also more maintainable - you can let the system take care of the stuff you aren't messing with at the moment.
It depends. If your goal is to teach them how to launch Thunderbird and Chrome, then using a standard desktop distro is obviously the best choice. However, if your goal is to teach them how linux works under the hood, then you can't hide away all the details behind a nice GUI.
I'd start them out on a mainstream distro. However, if the goal really is to teach them something then you have to make them actually mess with config files, or alternate sysvinit implementations, and so on. Personally I'd recommend Gentoo for that.
I'd probably start them on Ubuntu to get them used to a desktop Linux experience. However, if your goal is to teach people Linux from a systems development/engineering standpoint, you can't stay with any of the top-3 distros. You'll learn about as much about Linux using Ubuntu/Arch/Mint as you will using an Android phone or a Tivo. These distros try to hide away the details of the OS, which is nice for deploying it in schools or businesses, but not good for learning.
Once they're comfortable with the basic concepts I'd switch them to Gentoo, and make them do the full install procedure. If they get really comfortable with it then make them redo it, but now with systemd and dracut, or maybe running heavily hardened. Then have them install prefix on their Windows or OSX boxes. Basically the goal is to keep challenging the basic assumptions and broadening their experience base.
You could argue that Gentoo is less productive since you have to spend more time fiddling with it. However, if your goal is to teach them how things actually work, that is a good thing. You could get by using it as their primary system, but if you don't want to have any drop in productivity they should be doing all of this stuff on a spare PC, or at least they should have access to a spare running Windows/Ubuntu for when they hose their system.
When you're all done you might very well decide to go with some other distro to reduce the amount of fiddling around, but anybody proficient at tinkering with Gentoo is not going to find it difficult to use Arch or Ubuntu. They might end up being frustrated at the lack of control, but if they're comfortable with Gentoo there is no reason they couldn't stick with it.
I was chatting with a guy who used to be an engineer at a phone company. They were digitizing phonemes and had the problem that fast speech couldn't be processed quickly enough. So, they just put a slight delay (much less than this) on the sidetone channel. Apparently by tuning the delay they could make somebody talk as fast or as slow as they wanted to.
I'll have to try it too; I'm skeptical. I'll put something together to make a 0.2 second delay and output to headphones. Can anybody recommend some software that already does (or can be configured to do) this?
Sure, the lousy conference call system we have at work anytime somebody has a speakerphone unmuted. I can assure you the effect is quite real. I go to run a meeting and want to rip the hair off of my head trying to talk sounding like a drunkard while hearing my voice echoing back 1/4th of a second later. Fortunately said software also has a mute function on individual lines controlled by me if I'm running the meeting, and visual feedback on which line is causing the problem...
You need to program your entire game as if it was a particle system.
I suspect this is the heart of the issue. If you write a game for the xbox and get it working just fine, it will just be a hack to get it to work on the ps3. I doubt most studios will do a complete rewrite.
Perhaps if they did things the other way around it might go better, but in the end they don't care if their game is spectacular on the PS3 - only that it is comparable to all the other hacked-together games on the PS3. In fact, they'd probably prefer that everybody just bought the xbox version so that they wouldn't have to bother with the ps3 at all.
That's just the penalty for being different...
That's what I like about PC gaming. I upgraded my system and went back and installed games that I had used before, but cranked their settings to the max. With PC gaming you almost always have backwards compatibility (well, to the DOS/EMS/XMS days), and things just keep getting better.