"XP itself(which is actually highly configurable with transparent windows menus etc -- google it -- but why the hell did microsoft keep such a flexible UI so locked down with that lame Blue and Green for so long?)"
Because if people could make XP less ugly, there would be absolutely no demand for Vista. As it is, Vista is XP with added eye-candy. Gigabytes of it.
The total mass is probably much larger than the mass of its larger objects. Remember the Oort cloud is supposed to be very large and, thus, very sparse. You can have a couple solar systems worth of mass out there and it would still look like a pretty good vacuum. There would be no distant Jupiter (not a hot one, at least) and no dark star, but that would not preclude the total mass of the cloud from exceeding the mass of the rest of the solar system.
To put it simply, nobody knows its mass and all estimates amount to not much more than educated guesses. I tend to guess it has a lot of mass, but we won't have a good clue until later this century, at least.
I think the press has the duty of disclosing those names in responsible fashion. The web is somewhat of a permanent public record. You obviously won't like if someone published the fact that you were accused - or arrested - of possessing kiddy-porn and fail completely to update the page when you are cleared of all accusations.
In that regard, it would be smarter to allow on-line publishing, but holding the publisher responsible for updating the page if charges are dropped and applying steep penalties for failing that obligation. The same could apply for print media - it could be free to disclose names, as long as they reserve at least equal (ideally, multiple) space for updates if the person is not found guilty. Then, publishing a name becomes a gamble, as they would risk having to put several whole pages saying "sorry, that guy was innocent".
I have seen a good couple people whose careers were ruined when the press jumped to conclusions (a School here in São Paulo is the example that comes to my mind)
Did he try to contact Nintendo about licensing those games and Nintendo? Did Nintendo say they were not interested in marketing them anymore? Did the manufacturer (NRTRADE) tried anything these lines?
I know it sucks not being able to play some games because of neglect (or poor contracts - what if, say, the score composer was entitled some money for every copy distributed? Would Nintendo owe money because someone pirated the game?) but breaking laws is not an acceptable substitute from fixing them.
You know the drill: register as a voter, vote wisely. If that doesn't fix it, write to your representatives. If that doesn't fix it either, become a candidate and base your platform on fixing copyright. Some hard work is ahead, but someone has to start doing it. Unfortunately, I can't help much, as I am not a US citizen and I don't even live in the US.
Sure, but even a thousand-fold increase in processing power would not allow a Dell x86 box to serve thousands of 3270s simultaneously. I will concede that the z10 is remarkable, but it's not nearly remarkable enough to carry a zBigIron on its back alone. The difference is not in the processors, but in what goes around them. Mainframes are finely tuned for that kind of use.
And that, you will agree with me, is what makes them particularly beautiful machines. they are elegant.
"I am planning their destruction, a VM that runs on Intel hardware but responds just like a mainframe, it is software that could be sold for nothing and then all the mainframe apps could be moved to it and IBM would be finished, dead toast."
Too late. Hercules is there. And you can run it under OpenVZ.
But don't expect to get five 9's out of a Dell box.
"The cost savings could easily justify the expense of the mainframe, assuming that you are an institution that uses 1000 or more commodity servers."
Except that they may have to run Windows on 1000 commodity servers.
I know... I know... When you go Windows you enter a world of pain, but some PHBs really do insist on it. Let's just say a mainframe is an elegant tool for a more civilized time.
Using a mainframe as a cluster is not exactly the best way to harvest its power. Mainframes are not very fast thinkers - their CPUs are relatively slow. What they really do really well is to move data around very quickly and without disturbing the CPUs. A virtual cluster of Linux virtual boxes is no faster than the mainframe itself. The only major advantage a virtual cluster like this has is that all boxes share the same physical memory and data transfers between them would be wicked fast.
Of course, you won't be hot-swapping CPUs or doing five 9's on a x86 box anytime soon (although Unisys has made lots of progress in this direction, I refuse to take their "superservers" seriously as they come with pinball preinstalled and no serious computer should come with it). Mainframes are in a completely different league.
"Here's an even better idea: The HTML DOM would be the View, the Javascript would be the Controller, and the server would be the Model! I'll bet I'm the first one to think of that..."
I have a better one. Let the combination of DOM and JavaScript be a view - a smart one indeed, that can do a lot of stuff to the data it's presented by... the controller, that resides in the server, along with the... model, that's persisted somewhere I can't care less about.
Seriously. Fix what's broken. The implementations are slow. Many lazy programmers refuse to learn more than one language and insist every language should look like theirs favorite.
What is the problem with using more than one language? Too much to learn?
I would find it easier to believe that a cautious process is being followed if this were not the same entity that flew shuttles manned for the first flight.
I agree the thing is being designed as we write and that design changes should be expected, but this is a major change on an already worse-than-promised launch system (it lifts less than originally promised) that proves to be quite heavy. I would not be surprised if there were dampeners from the start and that they had to be made larger because numeric analysis pointed that way, but they had to be introduced later because the design was originally flawed. It looks bad any way we attempt to spin it. What confidence can we have the computer models are right this time?
And could you refrain in the name-calling? The discussion could be a lot more productive if we employed our brains in more constructive ways.
What if you coil the fuel and oxidizer lines? This way, the oscillation will not change line pressure that much and the pogo effect could be somewhat reduced.
And, keep in mind, they are talking about the solid rocket. I am not aware of pogo oscillation in solids. But I am not a rocket scientist, only a humble professional engineer.
Well... We have to be cautious here. The Saturn V flew, I think, less than 10 times. The shuttle solids flew a couple hundred times (there are two in every shuttle). This design is derived from the shuttle ones and should, by now, be thoroughly understood. They have a far longer track record than the Saturn series. I am baffled someone did not predict the vibration problem before day 1.
Besides, there is no way to build a Saturn V now. The factories and processes that built the parts are gone. It would have to be redesigned. The whole point is, it would not need to be redesigned from scratch and could follow a pattern that, it seems, worked better than this.
Sure the Saturn V had a lot of stuff that was responsible for reducing vibration, but the solids always, as any shuttle astronaut may tell you, had vibration problems far greater than pure liquid fuel rockets and that, probably, includes the Saturn series. They always describe the ride to be really smooth when they separate from the SRBs.
What I find interesting is that the solid stage is derived from the shuttle SRBs and, after a couple hundred launches, those things should be very well understood and dampeners should be designed into it since day 1.
While I am not a rocket scientist, I am an engineer with a strong background on difficult and complicated projects (nothing approaching this, of course). I can safely tell you, from the symptoms I am observing, it appears lots of design decisions are being done on faith.
I remember how startled I was when it came to me that, for more than a hundred flights, nobody ever inspected the underside of an in-orbit shuttle for tile damage. It was not until Columbia's accident that sufficient will was summoned to inspect a shuttle for damage after lift-off. This is a classic symptom of trusting too much your technology and not bothering to check if you really grok how it works - if reality agrees with your models. Any astronaut with a maneuvering unit could have done a quick check and taken a few pictures on any (well most, because not all flights carried the required equipment) mission in those hundred or so that happened before Columbia.
I cannot tell if this dampeners are a surprise addition, but, like I said, as a seasoned engineer, I suspect any surprises. My guts tell me someone should take a good look into it and consider design alternatives. No amount of lipstick can make a pig fly (I know... With pigs the problem is not in flying, but in landing them safely) and if what you are building turns out a pig, the sooner you realize this, the better.
NASA owes this to the folks that will bet their lives on the equipment.
That's great. Use a solid rocket to save a couple bucks, then add 1600 pounds of dead weight (not dead, really, but still needed because the solids vibrate too much) to make the thing work.
This Ares thing is getting more shuttle-ish by the minute.
Would the Apollo survivors please come back from retirement? Looks like the new folks are having some trouble with the problems you already solved.
I know the whole Ares thing is to reuse shuttle parts, but it seems that there is very little left from the shuttle that's worth saving and even less that's being saved. The Ares V core is wider, the solids are longer... Couldn't they just build an improved Saturn V and pretend the shuttle never happened?
It really depends on the architecture of the GPU's processing elements. An Intel Larrabee would have little trouble with Java. A Cell SPU port would be a bitch to do.
"As someone who has designed, analyzed, built, and ground-tested a lunar mining machine, I call B.S."
Yeah... Right.
How much materials is it able to extract before dust jams the gears? For how long does it run under the extreme heat/cold cycles? How maintenance-free is it? How many people and spare parts do you need to operate it? For how long does it have to run before it gives you a ton of, say, Aluminum or Titanium? Can it run during nights? Is energy supply the only limiting factor?
Just to point out: I own an IBM z-50 that ran BSD until the day the keyboard stopped working (I may still repair it someday). It ran on a MIPS processor and, while somewhat limited (memory only went to 48 MB, the MIPS processor was slow and parts of the hardware were not supported) it ran for 10 solid hours on one full charge. The machine was built 10 years ago.
There is a huge advantage going without Intel. Software stacks like Linux/Gnome/OpenOffice/Firefox go great lengths into marrying a fully functional desktop environment with x86-independence for any company willing to take the plunge.
Slashdot Mirror
Paraphrasing the original:
"Make a product or it never happened"
Every bit as much as I care about the mass of the Oort cloud.
"XP itself(which is actually highly configurable with transparent windows menus etc -- google it -- but why the hell did microsoft keep such a flexible UI so locked down with that lame Blue and Green for so long?)"
Because if people could make XP less ugly, there would be absolutely no demand for Vista. As it is, Vista is XP with added eye-candy. Gigabytes of it.
Like I said, we will know in a couple decades.
And any estimate that can range between 380 and 5 is not an estimate. It more closely resembles a wild guess than an educated one.
If it stays around 5 Earth masses for a couple decades, I may start to respect it.
But what if it's for the lawyers new Porsche? I'm confused.
The total mass is probably much larger than the mass of its larger objects. Remember the Oort cloud is supposed to be very large and, thus, very sparse. You can have a couple solar systems worth of mass out there and it would still look like a pretty good vacuum. There would be no distant Jupiter (not a hot one, at least) and no dark star, but that would not preclude the total mass of the cloud from exceeding the mass of the rest of the solar system.
To put it simply, nobody knows its mass and all estimates amount to not much more than educated guesses. I tend to guess it has a lot of mass, but we won't have a good clue until later this century, at least.
Ultimately, in any democracy (and don't even start saying the US is not one) the people can choose their representatives in the legislative branch.
Yes. In the end, the responsibility is in your hands.
So, it's up to you to engage in politics or leave it to whoever wants to do it for whatever shady reasons they may want to.
Disobeying the law and playing victim won't get you far. At least, not as far as actively engaging in changing the law.
Why can't I mod something "tragic"?
I think the press has the duty of disclosing those names in responsible fashion. The web is somewhat of a permanent public record. You obviously won't like if someone published the fact that you were accused - or arrested - of possessing kiddy-porn and fail completely to update the page when you are cleared of all accusations.
In that regard, it would be smarter to allow on-line publishing, but holding the publisher responsible for updating the page if charges are dropped and applying steep penalties for failing that obligation. The same could apply for print media - it could be free to disclose names, as long as they reserve at least equal (ideally, multiple) space for updates if the person is not found guilty. Then, publishing a name becomes a gamble, as they would risk having to put several whole pages saying "sorry, that guy was innocent".
I have seen a good couple people whose careers were ruined when the press jumped to conclusions (a School here in São Paulo is the example that comes to my mind)
Did he try to contact Nintendo about licensing those games and Nintendo? Did Nintendo say they were not interested in marketing them anymore? Did the manufacturer (NRTRADE) tried anything these lines?
I know it sucks not being able to play some games because of neglect (or poor contracts - what if, say, the score composer was entitled some money for every copy distributed? Would Nintendo owe money because someone pirated the game?) but breaking laws is not an acceptable substitute from fixing them.
You know the drill: register as a voter, vote wisely. If that doesn't fix it, write to your representatives. If that doesn't fix it either, become a candidate and base your platform on fixing copyright. Some hard work is ahead, but someone has to start doing it. Unfortunately, I can't help much, as I am not a US citizen and I don't even live in the US.
Sure, but even a thousand-fold increase in processing power would not allow a Dell x86 box to serve thousands of 3270s simultaneously. I will concede that the z10 is remarkable, but it's not nearly remarkable enough to carry a zBigIron on its back alone. The difference is not in the processors, but in what goes around them. Mainframes are finely tuned for that kind of use.
And that, you will agree with me, is what makes them particularly beautiful machines. they are elegant.
"I am planning their destruction, a VM that runs on Intel hardware but responds just like a mainframe, it is software that could be sold for nothing and then all the mainframe apps could be moved to it and IBM would be finished, dead toast."
Too late. Hercules is there. And you can run it under OpenVZ.
But don't expect to get five 9's out of a Dell box.
"The cost savings could easily justify the expense of the mainframe, assuming that you are an institution that uses 1000 or more commodity servers."
Except that they may have to run Windows on 1000 commodity servers.
I know... I know... When you go Windows you enter a world of pain, but some PHBs really do insist on it. Let's just say a mainframe is an elegant tool for a more civilized time.
Using a mainframe as a cluster is not exactly the best way to harvest its power. Mainframes are not very fast thinkers - their CPUs are relatively slow. What they really do really well is to move data around very quickly and without disturbing the CPUs. A virtual cluster of Linux virtual boxes is no faster than the mainframe itself. The only major advantage a virtual cluster like this has is that all boxes share the same physical memory and data transfers between them would be wicked fast.
Of course, you won't be hot-swapping CPUs or doing five 9's on a x86 box anytime soon (although Unisys has made lots of progress in this direction, I refuse to take their "superservers" seriously as they come with pinball preinstalled and no serious computer should come with it). Mainframes are in a completely different league.
"Here's an even better idea: The HTML DOM would be the View, the Javascript would be the Controller, and the server would be the Model! I'll bet I'm the first one to think of that..."
I have a better one. Let the combination of DOM and JavaScript be a view - a smart one indeed, that can do a lot of stuff to the data it's presented by... the controller, that resides in the server, along with the... model, that's persisted somewhere I can't care less about.
Seriously. Fix what's broken. The implementations are slow. Many lazy programmers refuse to learn more than one language and insist every language should look like theirs favorite.
What is the problem with using more than one language? Too much to learn?
Didn't Nvidia just license some IP from Transmeta?
I would find it easier to believe that a cautious process is being followed if this were not the same entity that flew shuttles manned for the first flight.
I agree the thing is being designed as we write and that design changes should be expected, but this is a major change on an already worse-than-promised launch system (it lifts less than originally promised) that proves to be quite heavy. I would not be surprised if there were dampeners from the start and that they had to be made larger because numeric analysis pointed that way, but they had to be introduced later because the design was originally flawed. It looks bad any way we attempt to spin it. What confidence can we have the computer models are right this time?
And could you refrain in the name-calling? The discussion could be a lot more productive if we employed our brains in more constructive ways.
What if you coil the fuel and oxidizer lines? This way, the oscillation will not change line pressure that much and the pogo effect could be somewhat reduced.
And, keep in mind, they are talking about the solid rocket. I am not aware of pogo oscillation in solids. But I am not a rocket scientist, only a humble professional engineer.
Well... We have to be cautious here. The Saturn V flew, I think, less than 10 times. The shuttle solids flew a couple hundred times (there are two in every shuttle). This design is derived from the shuttle ones and should, by now, be thoroughly understood. They have a far longer track record than the Saturn series. I am baffled someone did not predict the vibration problem before day 1.
Besides, there is no way to build a Saturn V now. The factories and processes that built the parts are gone. It would have to be redesigned. The whole point is, it would not need to be redesigned from scratch and could follow a pattern that, it seems, worked better than this.
Sure the Saturn V had a lot of stuff that was responsible for reducing vibration, but the solids always, as any shuttle astronaut may tell you, had vibration problems far greater than pure liquid fuel rockets and that, probably, includes the Saturn series. They always describe the ride to be really smooth when they separate from the SRBs.
What I find interesting is that the solid stage is derived from the shuttle SRBs and, after a couple hundred launches, those things should be very well understood and dampeners should be designed into it since day 1.
While I am not a rocket scientist, I am an engineer with a strong background on difficult and complicated projects (nothing approaching this, of course). I can safely tell you, from the symptoms I am observing, it appears lots of design decisions are being done on faith.
I remember how startled I was when it came to me that, for more than a hundred flights, nobody ever inspected the underside of an in-orbit shuttle for tile damage. It was not until Columbia's accident that sufficient will was summoned to inspect a shuttle for damage after lift-off. This is a classic symptom of trusting too much your technology and not bothering to check if you really grok how it works - if reality agrees with your models. Any astronaut with a maneuvering unit could have done a quick check and taken a few pictures on any (well most, because not all flights carried the required equipment) mission in those hundred or so that happened before Columbia.
I cannot tell if this dampeners are a surprise addition, but, like I said, as a seasoned engineer, I suspect any surprises. My guts tell me someone should take a good look into it and consider design alternatives. No amount of lipstick can make a pig fly (I know... With pigs the problem is not in flying, but in landing them safely) and if what you are building turns out a pig, the sooner you realize this, the better.
NASA owes this to the folks that will bet their lives on the equipment.
That's great. Use a solid rocket to save a couple bucks, then add 1600 pounds of dead weight (not dead, really, but still needed because the solids vibrate too much) to make the thing work.
This Ares thing is getting more shuttle-ish by the minute.
Would the Apollo survivors please come back from retirement? Looks like the new folks are having some trouble with the problems you already solved.
I know the whole Ares thing is to reuse shuttle parts, but it seems that there is very little left from the shuttle that's worth saving and even less that's being saved. The Ares V core is wider, the solids are longer... Couldn't they just build an improved Saturn V and pretend the shuttle never happened?
I bet Kerosene/LOX would be cheaper too.
It really depends on the architecture of the GPU's processing elements. An Intel Larrabee would have little trouble with Java. A Cell SPU port would be a bitch to do.
Never, ever, repeat this joke again.
"As someone who has designed, analyzed, built, and ground-tested a lunar mining machine, I call B.S."
Yeah... Right.
How much materials is it able to extract before dust jams the gears? For how long does it run under the extreme heat/cold cycles? How maintenance-free is it? How many people and spare parts do you need to operate it? For how long does it have to run before it gives you a ton of, say, Aluminum or Titanium? Can it run during nights? Is energy supply the only limiting factor?
My turn to call B.S.
Just to point out: I own an IBM z-50 that ran BSD until the day the keyboard stopped working (I may still repair it someday). It ran on a MIPS processor and, while somewhat limited (memory only went to 48 MB, the MIPS processor was slow and parts of the hardware were not supported) it ran for 10 solid hours on one full charge. The machine was built 10 years ago.
There is a huge advantage going without Intel. Software stacks like Linux/Gnome/OpenOffice/Firefox go great lengths into marrying a fully functional desktop environment with x86-independence for any company willing to take the plunge.