Its less efficient because the hot water after condensation goes out the rear of the engine. Ship steam turbine engines reuse that heat. Go look up the specific heat of water, and calculate how much it takes to go from 20 degree C (ambient water temp, actually it might be lower) to 100 degrees C (right on the cusp of boiling). That energy adds up FAST. I said in an earlier post though it would be appropriate for nuclear propulsion because the extra fuel used isn't really a problem (you run out in 5 years instead of 13) but the engine could run much faster.
Ahem. Where you getting the steam from, buddy? If you are burning something, you need an oxidizer as well(a torpedo runs underwater...). And I strongly suspect this engine isn't as fuel efficient as standard piston or turbines anyway. Its SIMPLER, but probably not more efficient.
Also, with this kind of antennae tech effectively unlimited radio bandwidth is possible. You could cram as many access points as you wanted into an area and they'd all work without interference.
No, even another aircraft wouldn't be able to jam it if the antennae is a phase array. As long as the signal processors know approximately where the source is they can "focus" the antennae right on it because as the wave travels its phase changes, letting you measure distances.(in 3 dimensions, unless the other aircraft is VERY close this antennae would ignore any emissions coming from it completely)
In a similar manner the antennae can generate the beam so that it focuses most of the energy on the target aircraft, ignoring everyone else. Jamming is a thing of the past with this sort of technology. There was a/. article a month back about a company that has a prototype wireless AP using this. As I mentioned earlier, all these amplifiers and dsp boards might be vulnerable to some sort of emp weapon, though (though there's ways to protect them against that).
Oh, two more things. Why would this tech be faster? Well, a couple reasons but a big one is the heat generated by this engine as it converts steam to work is dissipated right into the water. No cooling radiator needed or condenser. Just crank that nuclear pile up to 11 and all the heat gets carried away by the engine itself. Remember, the main limit to how fast an engine can run is how quickly it can dissipate the heat it is producing. Instead of props, driveshafts, transmissions, multibladed delicate steam turbines that have to run with pure distilled water, you have a nuclear pile and a giant heat exchanger steam generator, with the steam coming off that thing going right outside to the engines which are basically more efficient steam rockets.
Why would it be noisy? Well, cavitation is caused by air bubbles forming around rapidly moving propellors, and is a big source of noise. I can't imagine how noisy an enormous quantity of steam bubbles would be, but I'm guessing it would be pretty loud.
Well, matching speeds with the fighter may be a little beyond conceivable tech After all, instead of doing that why not just give the aircraft enough range to reach anywhere in the world from a few bases on land, or VTOL capability? It would definitely be easier. Yes I suppose its conceivable to build a nuclear powered hydrofoil carrier thats basically a scaled up racer, but almost unbelievably expensive.
But it would certainly help if the carrier were closer to the speed of the fighter, perhaps.
The idea is the carrier plus some destroyers for defense would race ahead of the fleet when needed (so the carrier effectively could cover more territory, sending its airplanes farther) or to surprise the enemy. Well, perhaps "surprise" is the wrong word...but its about intimidation. Other world leaders will have to draw much bigger circles around this kind of carrier to represent its strike radius.
Obviously when it runs low on jet fuel or ammo the ship would need to return to its tenders. As for carriers being sunk, this happened all the time in WW2. Those aircraft carriers were pretty big, and they still went down (admittedly not the size of a Nimitz class but at least half that).
As for sinkage, well, to effectively destroy a carrier you merely have to disable its propulsion system (screws or rudder). Once that happens its just a floating piece of metal of little miliary importance as most heavy aircraft cannot be launched without enough airflow over the flight deck.
"zero possibility of being hijacked by the enemy". THAT possibility already exists. Its quite simple. You have say 2 flash memory cards (or other solid storage device where the contents are sealed), stored in a sealed metal housing with a circuit board and a small controller. A tiny wire antennae feeds atmospheric radio noise...essentially a completely random source...to the chip. It fills the 2 cards up with this string of numbers. When it comes time to deploy the aircraft, one card is plugged into the remote console, one card into the aircraft. COMPLETELY impossible to hack, as all communications would be encryted using this one time pad. No, not even quantum computers can break this kind of code.
As for jamming : a high frequency beam is directed from an antennae dish on the plane to a satellite. As long as the satellite is intact, and knows approximately where the aircraft is it can effectively ignore all other sources of EMF. There is absolutely no way to jam this kind of link(short of detonating nukes in the atmosphere, or as of yet nonexistant conventional emp weapons.). Physical destruction of the satellite is a possibility...a very powerful missile or laser on the ground could do it. Still, a more sophisticated system would use other remote aircraft circling in the sky as communications relays, again not jammable. And anyways, if the comunications are jammed of course it won't fire any weapons, instead going to some preprogrammed contingency (perhaps circle or fly low to the ground til it needs to return to base?)
As for sentient unmanned aircraft...well, at that point I think I'd be more worried about losing control of the world entirely rather than a few random bombings. Once sentient computers are possible it is pretty reasonable to assume humanity's trek is effectively over. (whether or not humans go on living, they won't be relevant)
Well, I'm sure somone else has noted this : a nuclear energy source like on a warship would be perfect for supplying the steam. By venting the secondary steam from the boilers directly into the water like this you could easily get ten times the power with the same size engine (though you'd need more higher output reactors) I am sure an engine like this would be EXTREMELY noisy, so the warship would have a set of these steam jets it could fire up when it needs to move somewhere fast, and some quieter source when submarines are a worry. Imagine an aircraft carrier and a few destroyer escorts with flank speeds in excess of 70 knots (it would have to have hydrofoils as well, because otherwise the hull speed would be to limiting. Yes I'm aware it might be decades before a carrier this sexy is built, if ever). Sure it would be vulnerable to torpedoes, but the idea is it could be a MUCH more threatening weapon with this kind of speed. It could patrol a larger area, escape from danger, and have a certain intimidation factor when its located somewhere since it could arrive suddenly, launch a strike force, and depart before the enemy was aware.
As long as were speculating, imagine an even more effective weapon, a ship loaded full of missiles and rocket launched drone strike aircraft (so no human pilots risked. Yes I'm aware that such aircraft might be say, half as effective as human piloted planes but if they cost 1/4 as much to build its a MUCH more effective weapon. It could very well be cheaper to turn out somewhat dumb long range missiles and semi-reusable drones by the thousands, with no additional pilot training needed. The "pilots" would be a group of technicians behind consoles far from the battle, with embedded computing in the planes doing most of the flying, the human being just to pull the trigger. Without all the risks of training pilots and maintaining aircraft (the planes would be stored in sealed containers until needed, with a small set used for training) and the fact that these planes don't need nearly the quality control in manufacturing (if you lose 10% of them in a mission due to shoddy construction but they cost half as much or less to build its definitely worth the trade off) you'd have a better solution than at the present.
Why isn't this done already? Well, in the 1970s and earlier where most of the present airplanes were designed, communications technology and computers were not good enough or reliable enough. Today, most of the money is spent on operations and on a couple of new aircraft. Also, the current leadership is made up of pilots, who don't want to be replaced by scrawny pasty faced techs sitting at control stations. Finally, there's a current bandwidth problem : military communication satalleits don't have the capacity for the hundreds or thousands of video links needed.
By your logic we should rip out all those big, complex computers and go back to slide rules and paper charts. "Ships don't fight, men do". Anyways HUGE decreases in the complements of warships have already happened : who says it can't be done even more. Yes of course current bleeding edge complex systems have problems, but so do large groups of humans. Maybe some of those complex computer systems will fail when the ship takes a hit...but a bunch of the men are almost guaranteed to give out.
Anyway you're confusing the issue : fundamentally there's no reason warships can't be made to run with even smaller complements. Having more 19 year old warm bodies already doesn't help much, with current tech its already more about the skills of the experts than brute muscle. There already aren't very many physical functions that can't be done better with a machine. This doesn't mean the CURRENT plan isn't being messed up : corrupt congressmen and pork belly defense contractors can screw up any military. Maybe the current investment in off the shelf computing (because its WAAAY to expensive for the military to develop this tech itself) is a bad one, but trying to reduce the men needed isn't.
The navy is even entertaining the idea of going all the way to a completely unmanned, remote controlled missile launching platform. This would be GREATLY more cost effective, which is the point. Sure a robotic ship might have problems, the men guiding it might not be as effective sitting in front of monitors hundreds of miles away. But that isn't the point. The most effective military is the one that accomplishes the most using the fewest resources. If it cost 1/10 the operational expenses to keep an automated warship ready (the vessel would be in storage most of the time, the crew of 20 operators or so training using a cheap stripped down version of it) yet it has 3 times the firepower of a conventional ship (no crewspace, just missile tubes and engines) then its a HUGE improvement. So what if you lose a few, at the reduced costs the navy could probably afford to build five for every current cruiser or destroyer.
Yes, I forgot that it was VMS the DEC guys were working on. I do know that the client/server architecture it uses (explorer and most NT services are "clients" of an underlying kernal, so if they crash the underlying system keeps running) is similar to Unix. I suspect that the NT kernel might even be better written than Linux (face it, it was written by experienced developers from top schools and there were dozens of em, with clear design goals set by their boss vs. a hacker who just wanted to write his own Unix clone). I don't have access to the code to do a comparion, obviously, but it wouldn't surprise me. From what I read in Showstoppers, 16 bit APP support, while done semi-natively, is done with a translation system that translates the API calls. It is basically emulation, and the developers despaired for a while when it seemed like they were training the OS to run certain progrms (not a general case emulator like they wanted). That is also how XP runs DOS stuff. Believe it or not, Microsoft has known their OSes sucked for a long time, and spent over a hundred million paying NT develepors to correct this (just for the initial development of 1.0. I suspect the tab is over a billion now).
Their main problem now is that they feel they have to add too many features to keep selling new versions, which greatly increases complexity. This is why their software gets more and more bloated, and why new versions still have many bugs. Their other problem is they basically own their target markets, and to grow any further have to try other sectors, which may not even be profitable ideas. For instance, making web browsers may never be profitable for Microsoft.
As for using NT in mission critical systems...well, depends on HOW mission critical. While it might be fine for archiving, say, medical data its not good enough to control the electronics of a radiation machine. Nor is it good enough for regulating the cooling system of a nuclear power plant, though it might be fine for running the visitor log at the guard shack. And while it might be fine for the interactive TV system on an airliner, its not for the fly by wire firmware. For this stuff NO OS is acceptable, it has to be written very carefully from scratch, with the software kept as simple as possible. Instead of using multiple threads, the developers will often break the different tasks into different cpus (so that way if one crashes, the other physical chips will keep running). For extreme cases (a rocket?) there will be 3 or more computer systems, each completely independent and running firmware written by completely isolated developers (often in different countries) from a central spec. If one of the computers disagrees, the others will override it.
Cringly is not very well informed in his article. He assumes Windows XP/2k ect are still built on top of DOS. Actually, if he'd read Showstoppers he'd know that the NT kernal was written from scratch, by a group of developers from Digital Equipment Co who set up essentially an independent shop within microsoft to make it. This is why NT is far more stable than earlier versions. The NT kernal is very similar to Unix in how it operates, and essentially is just as good. Also, if he'd read the book he'd know that the DOS command prompt is done via emulation, as well as legacy program support. The core of the system remains NT even when the emulator is running. Anyone who's actually used XP or 2k would find that the vast majority of problems are related to the underlying hardware drivers (this is the ONLY reason why Unix is more stable on some systems, because people building Unix servers use very solid hardware) or to the overlying windowing interface.
Just to take the opposing view for the sake of argument, lets assume apple ISN'T in bed with Big Media. Maybe, just maybe, they simply don't want to get sued for blatantly supporting what appears to be and usually is piracy (a p2p app). C'mon, its not like you can't just use any mac p2p app like you're doing already, they just don't want you writing a program using their API for the explicit purpose of piracy. Why? Because they are a monster big corporation in an oligopoly with the RIAA? Or maybe they just don't want to be named in the lawsuit. I know what most slashdotters think, but I don't think its the truth.
Be interesting to know how much faster the hardware has to be to record the full 1080i HDTV stream (or will Tivo cheat and downsample?). Its 20megabits a second I believe, and already comes compressed so the requirements may not be that high. Probably just need a much bigger hard disk.
What moron voted this troll "insightful". Does ANYONE here remember the second law of thermodynamics? Nevermind...
A muscle is just a heat engine like anything else, with a lot less versatility and lower efficiency than a good combustion engine. A muscle really oxidizes its fuel like man-made engines, though its limited to very specific hydrocarbons it can process and has to do it molecule by molecule to keep the temperature down.
The matrix thing didn't make any sense because of this, and it wasn't supposed to. A far better explanation which the directors had in the original script was that the matrix grew humans for their minds, to use as cheap cpu units. Your brain helps the machines do their thinking (with its excess capacity). This also explains why some can "hack" the matrix...part of the calculations are being done IN your head, so if you screw with em you can "exploit". Just like counter strike, your brain is NOT a safe client and wallhacks and speedcheats are apparently possible. Would be a hilarious spoof if Neo was dodging bullets and the agents start calling him a lamer.
First, it HAS been done before so its lame to say "I don't know if he has totally put thought into the external effects of the device.". So the idea CAN work, the question is whether or not the man will get the funding to finish it.
Second, the only real jetpack requires a special suit to protect your legs from this heat, and is just as noisy, so neither claim you made is correct.
Without materials that don't yet exist (MAYBE carbon nanotubes would have the strength/weight ratio) "explosion proofing" an airliner isn't possible. It has to be light to FLY. Doh! Then you talk about making it hypersonic...guess what, every gram you shave off in payload reduces fuel consumption. Besides, even if you could make it out of super-strong materials shaped explosives and other devices could still destroy it.
And the atomic bomb has contributed to peaceful productive commerce and business how? All of fission has led to very little in real business value. Due to fear nuclear power has been a complete loss, and nuclear weapons are a waste product that require funding taxed from thousands of productive businesses to be built.
Yes, I'm aware many modern gadgets rely on principles inherent in modern, not classical, physics : everything from the laser to the smoke detector. And in the future it may become more viable to get our power from nuclear (reprocessing) fission due to the many limits and drawbacks with oil.
On the one hand, this obviously is an example of extreme overreaction and paranoia, they do have a point here.
Open wireless nets where anyone can log in without any trail left (other than the hacker must be physically close to the AP OR have a high gain antennae and be miles away) would allow someone to be truly anonymous online. They could trade in kiddey porn, hack poorly secured computer systems, say nasty things about federal employees...all the usual suspects that piss the government off. The government doesn't like this, and is using the umbrella of "homeland security" to do something about it. It has absolutely nothing to do with terrorism (face it : any computer that controls anything truly important probably isn't connected to the internet or has extensive protection).
Perhaps when the $route resolves to multiple receipients (like Riker to Crusher or "Picard to crew") all receive the message. Presumably there is some spam protection, though, or you could say "me to everyone" and the system would spam everyone with my message.
First, a brief recap. "The Singularity" is a paper by Vernor Vinge which makes an observation. The author noted that the rate of change is in fact accelerating exponentially. He predicted that rather dramatic consequences will result when change reaches the vertical part of the exponential curve, rounding the bend per say. Humans simply will not be able to keep up with things or have any influence whatsoever as new life with greatly improved intelligence goes on to dominate the planet and then the reachable universe.
This observation is quite well supported by other evidence. Current obstacles : human stubborness and delusions of their own grandeur, relative technological difficulty, human delusion of some mystical secret "soul" to prevent such a thing will be cleared away by one means or another.
I say 'will' because trying to stop something like this would be like a group of humans deciding to end their expansion by refusing to reproduce. Someone else would, and dominate the future.
Remember, the improved intelligent life, whatever form they take, will be in reality humanity's children. Random evolution won't bring it about : creating better intelligence will require a vast organized effort, whether it be designing circuitry or modifying the genetics of existing people. The new life, whether it be a baby with special genes or a learning machine that must be taught from the basics onward will require the same parenting process the current people alive must give to their children to carry on the legacy.
Unlike the popular view, I see this as a positive step. Yes, biological humans will probably die away eventually...but this need not be a violent process, or any more cruel than the deaths of current humans by their own bodies.
The solar system and the galaxy belong to these descendents, as it should be.
Unfortunatly, this level of ignorance is why I am cutting back on slashdot. Not only do you have no reason to believe this stripped down cell will be dangerous, its very likely a bacterium like this existed...and was driven extinct by a more complex version. You're basically implying that with some random tinkering we could create a life form able to supplant existing life on earth. This isn't reasonable.
Its rather interesting to contrast what the Swedes are doing with advanced optics versus what we Americans are. The Swedes are taking pictures of the sun : we're developing a weapon that can destroy airborne targets with high energy beams of death.
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Its less efficient because the hot water after condensation goes out the rear of the engine. Ship steam turbine engines reuse that heat. Go look up the specific heat of water, and calculate how much it takes to go from 20 degree C (ambient water temp, actually it might be lower) to 100 degrees C (right on the cusp of boiling). That energy adds up FAST. I said in an earlier post though it would be appropriate for nuclear propulsion because the extra fuel used isn't really a problem (you run out in 5 years instead of 13) but the engine could run much faster.
Umm yeah, you go electrolysis boy. Do you have ANY clue how much energy that would take? It would be perhaps 1/100 as efficient as current submarines.
Ahem. Where you getting the steam from, buddy? If you are burning something, you need an oxidizer as well(a torpedo runs underwater...). And I strongly suspect this engine isn't as fuel efficient as standard piston or turbines anyway. Its SIMPLER, but probably not more efficient.
Also, with this kind of antennae tech effectively unlimited radio bandwidth is possible. You could cram as many access points as you wanted into an area and they'd all work without interference.
No, even another aircraft wouldn't be able to jam it if the antennae is a phase array. As long as the signal processors know approximately where the source is they can "focus" the antennae right on it because as the wave travels its phase changes, letting you measure distances.(in 3 dimensions, unless the other aircraft is VERY close this antennae would ignore any emissions coming from it completely) In a similar manner the antennae can generate the beam so that it focuses most of the energy on the target aircraft, ignoring everyone else. Jamming is a thing of the past with this sort of technology. There was a /. article a month back about a company that has a prototype wireless AP using this. As I mentioned earlier, all these amplifiers and dsp boards might be vulnerable to some sort of emp weapon, though (though there's ways to protect them against that).
Oh, two more things. Why would this tech be faster? Well, a couple reasons but a big one is the heat generated by this engine as it converts steam to work is dissipated right into the water. No cooling radiator needed or condenser. Just crank that nuclear pile up to 11 and all the heat gets carried away by the engine itself. Remember, the main limit to how fast an engine can run is how quickly it can dissipate the heat it is producing. Instead of props, driveshafts, transmissions, multibladed delicate steam turbines that have to run with pure distilled water, you have a nuclear pile and a giant heat exchanger steam generator, with the steam coming off that thing going right outside to the engines which are basically more efficient steam rockets. Why would it be noisy? Well, cavitation is caused by air bubbles forming around rapidly moving propellors, and is a big source of noise. I can't imagine how noisy an enormous quantity of steam bubbles would be, but I'm guessing it would be pretty loud.
Well, matching speeds with the fighter may be a little beyond conceivable tech After all, instead of doing that why not just give the aircraft enough range to reach anywhere in the world from a few bases on land, or VTOL capability? It would definitely be easier. Yes I suppose its conceivable to build a nuclear powered hydrofoil carrier thats basically a scaled up racer, but almost unbelievably expensive. But it would certainly help if the carrier were closer to the speed of the fighter, perhaps.
The idea is the carrier plus some destroyers for defense would race ahead of the fleet when needed (so the carrier effectively could cover more territory, sending its airplanes farther) or to surprise the enemy. Well, perhaps "surprise" is the wrong word...but its about intimidation. Other world leaders will have to draw much bigger circles around this kind of carrier to represent its strike radius. Obviously when it runs low on jet fuel or ammo the ship would need to return to its tenders. As for carriers being sunk, this happened all the time in WW2. Those aircraft carriers were pretty big, and they still went down (admittedly not the size of a Nimitz class but at least half that). As for sinkage, well, to effectively destroy a carrier you merely have to disable its propulsion system (screws or rudder). Once that happens its just a floating piece of metal of little miliary importance as most heavy aircraft cannot be launched without enough airflow over the flight deck.
"zero possibility of being hijacked by the enemy". THAT possibility already exists. Its quite simple. You have say 2 flash memory cards (or other solid storage device where the contents are sealed), stored in a sealed metal housing with a circuit board and a small controller. A tiny wire antennae feeds atmospheric radio noise...essentially a completely random source...to the chip. It fills the 2 cards up with this string of numbers. When it comes time to deploy the aircraft, one card is plugged into the remote console, one card into the aircraft. COMPLETELY impossible to hack, as all communications would be encryted using this one time pad. No, not even quantum computers can break this kind of code.
As for jamming : a high frequency beam is directed from an antennae dish on the plane to a satellite. As long as the satellite is intact, and knows approximately where the aircraft is it can effectively ignore all other sources of EMF. There is absolutely no way to jam this kind of link(short of detonating nukes in the atmosphere, or as of yet nonexistant conventional emp weapons.). Physical destruction of the satellite is a possibility...a very powerful missile or laser on the ground could do it. Still, a more sophisticated system would use other remote aircraft circling in the sky as communications relays, again not jammable. And anyways, if the comunications are jammed of course it won't fire any weapons, instead going to some preprogrammed contingency (perhaps circle or fly low to the ground til it needs to return to base?)
As for sentient unmanned aircraft...well, at that point I think I'd be more worried about losing control of the world entirely rather than a few random bombings. Once sentient computers are possible it is pretty reasonable to assume humanity's trek is effectively over. (whether or not humans go on living, they won't be relevant)
Well, I'm sure somone else has noted this : a nuclear energy source like on a warship would be perfect for supplying the steam. By venting the secondary steam from the boilers directly into the water like this you could easily get ten times the power with the same size engine (though you'd need more higher output reactors) I am sure an engine like this would be EXTREMELY noisy, so the warship would have a set of these steam jets it could fire up when it needs to move somewhere fast, and some quieter source when submarines are a worry. Imagine an aircraft carrier and a few destroyer escorts with flank speeds in excess of 70 knots (it would have to have hydrofoils as well, because otherwise the hull speed would be to limiting. Yes I'm aware it might be decades before a carrier this sexy is built, if ever). Sure it would be vulnerable to torpedoes, but the idea is it could be a MUCH more threatening weapon with this kind of speed. It could patrol a larger area, escape from danger, and have a certain intimidation factor when its located somewhere since it could arrive suddenly, launch a strike force, and depart before the enemy was aware.
As long as were speculating, imagine an even more effective weapon, a ship loaded full of missiles and rocket launched drone strike aircraft (so no human pilots risked. Yes I'm aware that such aircraft might be say, half as effective as human piloted planes but if they cost 1/4 as much to build its a MUCH more effective weapon. It could very well be cheaper to turn out somewhat dumb long range missiles and semi-reusable drones by the thousands, with no additional pilot training needed. The "pilots" would be a group of technicians behind consoles far from the battle, with embedded computing in the planes doing most of the flying, the human being just to pull the trigger. Without all the risks of training pilots and maintaining aircraft (the planes would be stored in sealed containers until needed, with a small set used for training) and the fact that these planes don't need nearly the quality control in manufacturing (if you lose 10% of them in a mission due to shoddy construction but they cost half as much or less to build its definitely worth the trade off) you'd have a better solution than at the present.
Why isn't this done already? Well, in the 1970s and earlier where most of the present airplanes were designed, communications technology and computers were not good enough or reliable enough. Today, most of the money is spent on operations and on a couple of new aircraft. Also, the current leadership is made up of pilots, who don't want to be replaced by scrawny pasty faced techs sitting at control stations. Finally, there's a current bandwidth problem : military communication satalleits don't have the capacity for the hundreds or thousands of video links needed.
By your logic we should rip out all those big, complex computers and go back to slide rules and paper charts. "Ships don't fight, men do". Anyways HUGE decreases in the complements of warships have already happened : who says it can't be done even more. Yes of course current bleeding edge complex systems have problems, but so do large groups of humans. Maybe some of those complex computer systems will fail when the ship takes a hit...but a bunch of the men are almost guaranteed to give out.
Anyway you're confusing the issue : fundamentally there's no reason warships can't be made to run with even smaller complements. Having more 19 year old warm bodies already doesn't help much, with current tech its already more about the skills of the experts than brute muscle. There already aren't very many physical functions that can't be done better with a machine. This doesn't mean the CURRENT plan isn't being messed up : corrupt congressmen and pork belly defense contractors can screw up any military. Maybe the current investment in off the shelf computing (because its WAAAY to expensive for the military to develop this tech itself) is a bad one, but trying to reduce the men needed isn't.
The navy is even entertaining the idea of going all the way to a completely unmanned, remote controlled missile launching platform. This would be GREATLY more cost effective, which is the point. Sure a robotic ship might have problems, the men guiding it might not be as effective sitting in front of monitors hundreds of miles away. But that isn't the point. The most effective military is the one that accomplishes the most using the fewest resources. If it cost 1/10 the operational expenses to keep an automated warship ready (the vessel would be in storage most of the time, the crew of 20 operators or so training using a cheap stripped down version of it) yet it has 3 times the firepower of a conventional ship (no crewspace, just missile tubes and engines) then its a HUGE improvement. So what if you lose a few, at the reduced costs the navy could probably afford to build five for every current cruiser or destroyer.
Yes, I forgot that it was VMS the DEC guys were working on. I do know that the client/server architecture it uses (explorer and most NT services are "clients" of an underlying kernal, so if they crash the underlying system keeps running) is similar to Unix. I suspect that the NT kernel might even be better written than Linux (face it, it was written by experienced developers from top schools and there were dozens of em, with clear design goals set by their boss vs. a hacker who just wanted to write his own Unix clone). I don't have access to the code to do a comparion, obviously, but it wouldn't surprise me. From what I read in Showstoppers, 16 bit APP support, while done semi-natively, is done with a translation system that translates the API calls. It is basically emulation, and the developers despaired for a while when it seemed like they were training the OS to run certain progrms (not a general case emulator like they wanted). That is also how XP runs DOS stuff. Believe it or not, Microsoft has known their OSes sucked for a long time, and spent over a hundred million paying NT develepors to correct this (just for the initial development of 1.0. I suspect the tab is over a billion now).
Their main problem now is that they feel they have to add too many features to keep selling new versions, which greatly increases complexity. This is why their software gets more and more bloated, and why new versions still have many bugs. Their other problem is they basically own their target markets, and to grow any further have to try other sectors, which may not even be profitable ideas. For instance, making web browsers may never be profitable for Microsoft.
As for using NT in mission critical systems...well, depends on HOW mission critical. While it might be fine for archiving, say, medical data its not good enough to control the electronics of a radiation machine. Nor is it good enough for regulating the cooling system of a nuclear power plant, though it might be fine for running the visitor log at the guard shack. And while it might be fine for the interactive TV system on an airliner, its not for the fly by wire firmware. For this stuff NO OS is acceptable, it has to be written very carefully from scratch, with the software kept as simple as possible. Instead of using multiple threads, the developers will often break the different tasks into different cpus (so that way if one crashes, the other physical chips will keep running). For extreme cases (a rocket?) there will be 3 or more computer systems, each completely independent and running firmware written by completely isolated developers (often in different countries) from a central spec. If one of the computers disagrees, the others will override it.
Cringly is not very well informed in his article. He assumes Windows XP/2k ect are still built on top of DOS. Actually, if he'd read Showstoppers he'd know that the NT kernal was written from scratch, by a group of developers from Digital Equipment Co who set up essentially an independent shop within microsoft to make it. This is why NT is far more stable than earlier versions. The NT kernal is very similar to Unix in how it operates, and essentially is just as good. Also, if he'd read the book he'd know that the DOS command prompt is done via emulation, as well as legacy program support. The core of the system remains NT even when the emulator is running. Anyone who's actually used XP or 2k would find that the vast majority of problems are related to the underlying hardware drivers (this is the ONLY reason why Unix is more stable on some systems, because people building Unix servers use very solid hardware) or to the overlying windowing interface.
Just to take the opposing view for the sake of argument, lets assume apple ISN'T in bed with Big Media. Maybe, just maybe, they simply don't want to get sued for blatantly supporting what appears to be and usually is piracy (a p2p app). C'mon, its not like you can't just use any mac p2p app like you're doing already, they just don't want you writing a program using their API for the explicit purpose of piracy. Why? Because they are a monster big corporation in an oligopoly with the RIAA? Or maybe they just don't want to be named in the lawsuit. I know what most slashdotters think, but I don't think its the truth.
Be interesting to know how much faster the hardware has to be to record the full 1080i HDTV stream (or will Tivo cheat and downsample?). Its 20megabits a second I believe, and already comes compressed so the requirements may not be that high. Probably just need a much bigger hard disk.
What moron voted this troll "insightful". Does ANYONE here remember the second law of thermodynamics? Nevermind...
A muscle is just a heat engine like anything else, with a lot less versatility and lower efficiency than a good combustion engine. A muscle really oxidizes its fuel like man-made engines, though its limited to very specific hydrocarbons it can process and has to do it molecule by molecule to keep the temperature down.
The matrix thing didn't make any sense because of this, and it wasn't supposed to. A far better explanation which the directors had in the original script was that the matrix grew humans for their minds, to use as cheap cpu units. Your brain helps the machines do their thinking (with its excess capacity). This also explains why some can "hack" the matrix...part of the calculations are being done IN your head, so if you screw with em you can "exploit". Just like counter strike, your brain is NOT a safe client and wallhacks and speedcheats are apparently possible. Would be a hilarious spoof if Neo was dodging bullets and the agents start calling him a lamer.
First, it HAS been done before so its lame to say "I don't know if he has totally put thought into the external effects of the device.". So the idea CAN work, the question is whether or not the man will get the funding to finish it.
Second, the only real jetpack requires a special suit to protect your legs from this heat, and is just as noisy, so neither claim you made is correct.
Without materials that don't yet exist (MAYBE carbon nanotubes would have the strength/weight ratio) "explosion proofing" an airliner isn't possible. It has to be light to FLY. Doh! Then you talk about making it hypersonic...guess what, every gram you shave off in payload reduces fuel consumption. Besides, even if you could make it out of super-strong materials shaped explosives and other devices could still destroy it.
And the atomic bomb has contributed to peaceful productive commerce and business how? All of fission has led to very little in real business value. Due to fear nuclear power has been a complete loss, and nuclear weapons are a waste product that require funding taxed from thousands of productive businesses to be built.
Yes, I'm aware many modern gadgets rely on principles inherent in modern, not classical, physics : everything from the laser to the smoke detector. And in the future it may become more viable to get our power from nuclear (reprocessing) fission due to the many limits and drawbacks with oil.
On the one hand, this obviously is an example of extreme overreaction and paranoia, they do have a point here.
Open wireless nets where anyone can log in without any trail left (other than the hacker must be physically close to the AP OR have a high gain antennae and be miles away) would allow someone to be truly anonymous online. They could trade in kiddey porn, hack poorly secured computer systems, say nasty things about federal employees...all the usual suspects that piss the government off. The government doesn't like this, and is using the umbrella of "homeland security" to do something about it. It has absolutely nothing to do with terrorism (face it : any computer that controls anything truly important probably isn't connected to the internet or has extensive protection).
Perhaps when the $route resolves to multiple receipients (like Riker to Crusher or "Picard to crew") all receive the message. Presumably there is some spam protection, though, or you could say "me to everyone" and the system would spam everyone with my message.
First, a brief recap. "The Singularity" is a paper by Vernor Vinge which makes an observation. The author noted that the rate of change is in fact accelerating exponentially. He predicted that rather dramatic consequences will result when change reaches the vertical part of the exponential curve, rounding the bend per say. Humans simply will not be able to keep up with things or have any influence whatsoever as new life with greatly improved intelligence goes on to dominate the planet and then the reachable universe. This observation is quite well supported by other evidence. Current obstacles : human stubborness and delusions of their own grandeur, relative technological difficulty, human delusion of some mystical secret "soul" to prevent such a thing will be cleared away by one means or another. I say 'will' because trying to stop something like this would be like a group of humans deciding to end their expansion by refusing to reproduce. Someone else would, and dominate the future. Remember, the improved intelligent life, whatever form they take, will be in reality humanity's children. Random evolution won't bring it about : creating better intelligence will require a vast organized effort, whether it be designing circuitry or modifying the genetics of existing people. The new life, whether it be a baby with special genes or a learning machine that must be taught from the basics onward will require the same parenting process the current people alive must give to their children to carry on the legacy. Unlike the popular view, I see this as a positive step. Yes, biological humans will probably die away eventually...but this need not be a violent process, or any more cruel than the deaths of current humans by their own bodies. The solar system and the galaxy belong to these descendents, as it should be.
Unfortunatly, this level of ignorance is why I am cutting back on slashdot. Not only do you have no reason to believe this stripped down cell will be dangerous, its very likely a bacterium like this existed...and was driven extinct by a more complex version. You're basically implying that with some random tinkering we could create a life form able to supplant existing life on earth. This isn't reasonable.
That's the whole point of the noise being random : there's no pattern to get used to.
Its rather interesting to contrast what the Swedes are doing with advanced optics versus what we Americans are. The Swedes are taking pictures of the sun : we're developing a weapon that can destroy airborne targets with high energy beams of death.