For 2001, Clarke picked up Saturn. The monolith was in Iapetus.
Only the movie (and subsequent books) mentions Jupiter. It makes sense, as more people watched the movie than read the book. In the book, they use Jupiter to accelerate Discovery towards Saturn, but Kubrick (IIRC) thought this would confuse the audience (like the Bowman meeting with the monolith in the hotel room after the psychedelic trip would be readily understood) and Saturn was dropped. Douglas Trumbull used the techniques developed during this in Silent Running.
It's all fairly well explained in 2010 (the book).
And, BTW, when Cassini passes through the plume, it will be close to vacuum, barely detectable.
oops... "I also fail to see how we could blame the commission for the failure of the efforts the FAA, NORAD and CIA made to sabotage the investigation" should read like "I also fail to see how we could blame the commission for its failure considering the efforts the FAA, NORAD and CIA made to sabotage the investigation"
Too much editing and too little proofreading can do a lot of damage.
I also fail to see how we could blame the commission for the failure of the efforts the FAA, NORAD and CIA made to sabotage the investigation. It's the willingness to surround itself in this National Security mantle of secrecy that makes this government so dangerous. Invoking national security provisions to block public investigations should be a last resort and should carry a stiff penalty - like making some officials ineligible - to ensure it's only used when it's really needed.
I sincerely hope that, once this administration is over, all this can be examined in greater detail.
"they're forcing republicans to reveal some of their shadier motives"
Using the political process to reveal the motives behind some deals is fair game.
In Brazil there is a much maligned mechanism, where representatives can cast votes in secret. It has been frequently abused and, frankly, sounds really bad, but it actually makes sense in one circumstance: it is a simple way to free the representative from any party limitations and to prevent the party from punishing said representative for disagreeing with the party orientation.
A better mechanism is needed, sure, but we shouldn't forget the reasons why it exists.
BTW, I am curious. What happens to a party-X representative that helps to kill a party-X president's veto? What kinds of disciplinary action can a party-X take on a representative that violates party instructions?
"Of course, the funny thing is that they could just wait a year. All three of the remaining Presidential candidates are against waterboarding."
It makes a powerful political statement to stand up against torture, even if it's bound to fail. It also makes a powerful statement to just sit and do nothing about it and hope the next president maintains his/her current opinion on torture.
"The problem is that the Americans have a two-party system and the one the president belongs to generally has plenty votes to block the two-thirds thing easily."
This would be less of a problem if representatives had the assurance they would never get elected again if they vote in favor of such dangerous nonsense as presidential vetoes on bills that are, in the end, about investigating president's misdeeds.
Any democracy's fate (oh invisible-all-mighty-mythical-being-of-choice please enlighten the unavoidable trolls that insist the US is a republic and excludes being a democracy) rests ultimately in the hands of an informed electorate.
And, while we are discussing it, it really should be easier to get rid of such a bad president. Bush would never survive 6 months as a prime-minister. As it is now, it will be decades before any meaningful fraction of the damage can be corrected.
Let's say acceleration is no big deal and it is possible to cross any distance in a reasonable amount of time.
Then the traveling salesman solution could be possible in that, if "unibtainium wishalloy" is not needed in one place, all they would do is to pack up and go to the next planet in their trade route. Chances are they would sell or barter something in every stop. Since the time outside the spaceship would not be on the same scales as the time inside it, every trade would have to be decided on the spot, because you can't assume some price point on your next stop.
And that's why I like the idea of FTL travel - because the universe is an incredibly boring place without it.
I don't think it even gets to that. What he is complaining is that, for years, they developed on super high-end machines and, by the time the game was ready to ship, that kind of performance would be available to ordinary users. He is troubled by the simple fact the world does not work like this anymore and performance leaps don't happen the way they did before.
The other problem is he can't design a game that runs on a otherwise fairly decent current computer.
Not OBL or other leaders themselves, nor their closest aides, but I bet some of their followers may have the knowledge to do so and the willingness to help them further their objectives.
As for the bunch of PS3's, it's easy to imagine them sitting on someone's living room.
Or maybe they could buy time on a zombie net of Windows machines. Not as effective, but there ate millions of them around.
"All terrorists obviously have access to the advanced nuclear engineering and simulation capabilities necessary to create a plutonium implosion device"
Just about anyone can hook up a cluster of PS3's running Linux.
And, AFAIK, the first implosion devices were built with slide-rules. The tricky part is to write the simulation software.
Singularity happened when the original Longhorn codebase got so extense, so massive, so mind-boggingly big, unimaginably huge, truly, really and absolutely humongous, it collapsed into its gravity well.
It became a very small, but incredibly dense OS. It really serves no useful purpose besides the promise of being the perfect embedded OS for write-only storage devices.
In the meantime, the survivors had to start Vista from scratch and this catastrophic event is what really delayed Vista's launch date. All the fancy features shown in 2003 were carefully removed as not to provoke another collapse of the codebase.
Tell that to all the folks running Linux on modded XBox 360s.
If the hardware maker is really into screwing the user, something phone makers will consider business as usual, they will do it regardless of what users want.
Actually, the part that deserved the informative mod is the one that said that everyone knew that. I had no idea, before reading the post, that so many people knew about anisotropic particles and unbalanced liquid flows caused by electric fields applied to aqueous suspensions of them.;-P
"If you don't want your OS to become the dominant OS in the PC market, yes."
Windows' dominance has pretty little to do with Windows per se. Microsoft got lucky (and that "luck" is remarkably disputable as it seems possible they set IBM up) when they launched Windows 3 and abandoned OS/2 development to rename OS/2 3.0 as NT. Windows 3, 3.1, WfW were very popular partly because software makers embraced them. Shortly after that, Microsoft inked highly desirable exclusive deals with OEMs and _that_, not Windows, like the clever deal with IBM about exclusivity and PC-DOS that allowed the clone industry to exist, was key to their position in the market now.
Very little changed.
If Linux is ever to get the dominance Microsoft enjoys today, the key is not R&D but the relationship with OEMs and software makers.
Well... OS 7.5 and the PPC transition is remembered as the lowest point in Mac stability. I worked in a mixed shop and I can tell you that Win 95 was as stable as 7.5. Which is not to say much, of course. Both sucked if compared to our Solaris boxes.
BTW, at that time, Linux was just starting to get ready. I doubt it could do much, but it was making an effort.
Worst of all - the rover just discovered what appears to be an artifact left by aliens seconds before rover, artifact and surroundings are are vaporized by high speed impactor.
That, for some odd reason, shares the same mission name with the now dead rover.
Slashdot Mirror
For 2001, Clarke picked up Saturn. The monolith was in Iapetus.
Only the movie (and subsequent books) mentions Jupiter. It makes sense, as more people watched the movie than read the book. In the book, they use Jupiter to accelerate Discovery towards Saturn, but Kubrick (IIRC) thought this would confuse the audience (like the Bowman meeting with the monolith in the hotel room after the psychedelic trip would be readily understood) and Saturn was dropped. Douglas Trumbull used the techniques developed during this in Silent Running.
It's all fairly well explained in 2010 (the book).
And, BTW, when Cassini passes through the plume, it will be close to vacuum, barely detectable.
oops... "I also fail to see how we could blame the commission for the failure of the efforts the FAA, NORAD and CIA made to sabotage the investigation" should read like "I also fail to see how we could blame the commission for its failure considering the efforts the FAA, NORAD and CIA made to sabotage the investigation"
Too much editing and too little proofreading can do a lot of damage.
I also fail to see how we could blame the commission for the failure of the efforts the FAA, NORAD and CIA made to sabotage the investigation. It's the willingness to surround itself in this National Security mantle of secrecy that makes this government so dangerous. Invoking national security provisions to block public investigations should be a last resort and should carry a stiff penalty - like making some officials ineligible - to ensure it's only used when it's really needed.
I sincerely hope that, once this administration is over, all this can be examined in greater detail.
"they're forcing republicans to reveal some of their shadier motives"
Using the political process to reveal the motives behind some deals is fair game.
In Brazil there is a much maligned mechanism, where representatives can cast votes in secret. It has been frequently abused and, frankly, sounds really bad, but it actually makes sense in one circumstance: it is a simple way to free the representative from any party limitations and to prevent the party from punishing said representative for disagreeing with the party orientation.
A better mechanism is needed, sure, but we shouldn't forget the reasons why it exists.
BTW, I am curious. What happens to a party-X representative that helps to kill a party-X president's veto? What kinds of disciplinary action can a party-X take on a representative that violates party instructions?
"Of course, the funny thing is that they could just wait a year. All three of the remaining Presidential candidates are against waterboarding."
It makes a powerful political statement to stand up against torture, even if it's bound to fail. It also makes a powerful statement to just sit and do nothing about it and hope the next president maintains his/her current opinion on torture.
This is a very necessary "waste of time".
"The problem is that the Americans have a two-party system and the one the president belongs to generally has plenty votes to block the two-thirds thing easily."
This would be less of a problem if representatives had the assurance they would never get elected again if they vote in favor of such dangerous nonsense as presidential vetoes on bills that are, in the end, about investigating president's misdeeds.
Any democracy's fate (oh invisible-all-mighty-mythical-being-of-choice please enlighten the unavoidable trolls that insist the US is a republic and excludes being a democracy) rests ultimately in the hands of an informed electorate.
And, while we are discussing it, it really should be easier to get rid of such a bad president. Bush would never survive 6 months as a prime-minister. As it is now, it will be decades before any meaningful fraction of the damage can be corrected.
Let's say acceleration is no big deal and it is possible to cross any distance in a reasonable amount of time.
Then the traveling salesman solution could be possible in that, if "unibtainium wishalloy" is not needed in one place, all they would do is to pack up and go to the next planet in their trade route. Chances are they would sell or barter something in every stop. Since the time outside the spaceship would not be on the same scales as the time inside it, every trade would have to be decided on the spot, because you can't assume some price point on your next stop.
And that's why I like the idea of FTL travel - because the universe is an incredibly boring place without it.
I do a lot of thinking for others. People call it consulting.
I don't think it even gets to that. What he is complaining is that, for years, they developed on super high-end machines and, by the time the game was ready to ship, that kind of performance would be available to ordinary users. He is troubled by the simple fact the world does not work like this anymore and performance leaps don't happen the way they did before.
The other problem is he can't design a game that runs on a otherwise fairly decent current computer.
And he implies that it's our fault.
Wouldn't comparing cats and dogs be a kind of apples to oranges comparison?
It means the allergies are winning, right?
It may be simpler than that - it may be that there is nobody else in the house to call 911 when you suffer an accident.
And I am not willing to spend time designing an experiment to check that.
Not OBL or other leaders themselves, nor their closest aides, but I bet some of their followers may have the knowledge to do so and the willingness to help them further their objectives.
As for the bunch of PS3's, it's easy to imagine them sitting on someone's living room.
Or maybe they could buy time on a zombie net of Windows machines. Not as effective, but there ate millions of them around.
"Perhaps he's not a corporate drone that values the "good of the company" above truth."
Yeah... Right. OOXML _is_ an excellent standard.
"All terrorists obviously have access to the advanced nuclear engineering and simulation capabilities necessary to create a plutonium implosion device"
Just about anyone can hook up a cluster of PS3's running Linux.
And, AFAIK, the first implosion devices were built with slide-rules. The tricky part is to write the simulation software.
Noble gases don't burn. They are electrically charged and accelerated out of the ship.
And, like every singularity, it sucks.
Singularity happened when the original Longhorn codebase got so extense, so massive, so mind-boggingly big, unimaginably huge, truly, really and absolutely humongous, it collapsed into its gravity well.
It became a very small, but incredibly dense OS. It really serves no useful purpose besides the promise of being the perfect embedded OS for write-only storage devices.
In the meantime, the survivors had to start Vista from scratch and this catastrophic event is what really delayed Vista's launch date. All the fancy features shown in 2003 were carefully removed as not to provoke another collapse of the codebase.
"the cost goes up exponentially with the number of "9"s that the business asks for"
That's to be expected. Five "9"s is about 10 times more reliable than four.
Tell that to all the folks running Linux on modded XBox 360s.
If the hardware maker is really into screwing the user, something phone makers will consider business as usual, they will do it regardless of what users want.
Actually, the part that deserved the informative mod is the one that said that everyone knew that. I had no idea, before reading the post, that so many people knew about anisotropic particles and unbalanced liquid flows caused by electric fields applied to aqueous suspensions of them. ;-P
"If you don't want your OS to become the dominant OS in the PC market, yes."
Windows' dominance has pretty little to do with Windows per se. Microsoft got lucky (and that "luck" is remarkably disputable as it seems possible they set IBM up) when they launched Windows 3 and abandoned OS/2 development to rename OS/2 3.0 as NT. Windows 3, 3.1, WfW were very popular partly because software makers embraced them. Shortly after that, Microsoft inked highly desirable exclusive deals with OEMs and _that_, not Windows, like the clever deal with IBM about exclusivity and PC-DOS that allowed the clone industry to exist, was key to their position in the market now.
Very little changed.
If Linux is ever to get the dominance Microsoft enjoys today, the key is not R&D but the relationship with OEMs and software makers.
Well... OS 7.5 and the PPC transition is remembered as the lowest point in Mac stability. I worked in a mixed shop and I can tell you that Win 95 was as stable as 7.5. Which is not to say much, of course. Both sucked if compared to our Solaris boxes.
BTW, at that time, Linux was just starting to get ready. I doubt it could do much, but it was making an effort.
Worst of all - the rover just discovered what appears to be an artifact left by aliens seconds before rover, artifact and surroundings are are vaporized by high speed impactor.
That, for some odd reason, shares the same mission name with the now dead rover.
"You can even run Web servers on port 90210 if you like."
I don't think that part would work, but I wouldn't stop him from trying.