The only reason the shuttle is the way it is is politics.
Space operations have four distinct needs:
1- send people up (vehicle needs a safe abort-to-surface option, at least until abort-to-space is good enough) 2- bring people down (vehicle must be able to re-enter atmosphere from orbit and be meatware-friendly) 3- send cargo up (vehicle does not need to return, nor have a safe abort-to-surface mechanism) 4- bring cargo down (vehicle must be able to re-enter atmosphere, but not to be human-safe)
1 and 2 can be done with smaller, re-usable vehicles. 3 may need bigger non-reusable ones. 4 can use any re-entry vehicle that fits the cargo. If there is a spare seat, a human-safe one will do.
The only mission for a Shuttle-sized vehicle would be to bring down large stuff. IIRC, it was never used for that (as the cost of doing it would be prohibitively expensive when compared to launching a new one).
I don't think the JDK is that complex. There are a couple native executables and a whole lot of.class and.jar files that can be compiled as soon as the JRE is up and running.
While configure is hairy and ugly, building a JDK from source does not need to be complicated. If it is, something else is broken.
They can still stay at the ISS and ride a Soyuz down.
And it's not even clear how serious the damage is. It may be easily repairable.
What really shocked me is that it took more than 100 flights and a lost vehicle with crew to get someone to inspect the underside of the shuttle for damage.
There is a limited number of ways you can build a minimalistic touchscreen phone. It can't have any size - there is too big and too small to be practical (although a larger one with decent voice dialing via a Bluetooth earset would be perfect for me, but I digress). You can't make it too thin either, or it will break when you sit on it. You can't put more buttons, because the screen will have to be smaller (and it will no longer be a minimalistic touchscreen phone). There are limited ways to do it. I personally think all desktop monitors are too much alike - from your arguments, it can be said the whole industry is full of pirates.
The LG Prada looks too much iPhone-ish. Still, nobody here is accusing LG of piracy.
Yeah, right - they have three buttons on the front. That makes it an entirely different phone.
Ironically, Prada has a huge problem with pirates.
And piracy is good, as it helps contain global warming.
I agree with the performance complaints, but, remember, Sun is not in the megahertz game.
Sun sells servers that are dependable, that seldom, if ever, fail and whose uptime has to be measured in years not months. Even if their processors do not lead the MIPS and GFLOPS race, their performance is well balanced and I never saw a Sun box I could say is slow compared to other machines of same vintage. Fortune 1000 companies pay big money for machines that don't fail and they get what they pay for.
I would say surviving thanks to the colossal inertia created by a huge body of non-portable software is hardly a sign of elegance. Had one generation of x86 broken the binary compatibility with the previous five generations, it would be as dead as the Itanic (with which Intel did more or less just that).
Had the early x86 been harder to port from CP/M it would not enjoy the lots of applications that were ported to PC-DOS. Many other computers of the time that took more advanced (and less legacy-compatible) approaches failed.
It's interesting AMD is the one to be blamed for the survival of the x86 in the 64-bit generation... And that Intel tried to kill it.
Also, I would be very surprised if a modern PC could boot CP/M 86 without an emulator.
CP/M 80 ran on 8080, 8085 and Z80 computers. I had one with an 8085A (IIRC, maybe 8080) for some time, but my main CP/M box was an Apple II with a Videx board and a Microsoft Softcard with a Z80 (Z80H, IIRC). It's a pity Microsoft insists on making software - their hardware has always been superb.
Some programs may have required a Z80, but I don't remember any.
I wouldn't say that. On proper hardware, it's fast enough.
What I would point out is that x86 processors are incredibly crude, crufty and rather antiquated, retaining, even in the 64 bit implementations, features that were used in the lowly 8088/8086. In fact there was a time a selling point of the processors was that 8080/8085 assembly code assembled and ran correctly on 16-bit hardware. I would not be surprised if lots of CP/M software did have their first PC-DOS versions by little more than a straight recompile (or reassemble).
It's a shame we are still using it instead of the much nicer and modern architectures that came after it.
You know... there is more to processors than Intel and AMD.
"Unfortunately, getting the average American to understand things like beatpaths and the like is not bloody likely. It'd be dead in the water because people would think it was a way to try and control the outcome of the election."
In fact, it is. It's a way to make the results show what people really wanted;-)
It tends to be unpractical when you have more than a handful candidates. Last election, here in Brazil, we had a dozen candidates running for president and I can imagine the nightmare it would be to explain them how to do it.
And the voting machines would have to be scrapped. Our current ones would create a user interface problem.
Maybe. If direct irradiation causes a bigger push (it depends on the surface being volatile enough), I would not recommend that. For rocky or metallic bodies, it may be a very good approach. We would have to do the math.
It's been observed that any dictatorship requires a permanent state of emergency or war. Based on this, all kinds of law and basic rights can be disrespected based on the higher requirement of national security. If it lasts long enough, the whole society can also be shaped in ways that suppress as much as possible any willingness or ability to resist. While the US is not a dictatorship and many Americans can see what is wrong, what can happen (yes - it can get far worse than it is now) and take some action - organizing themselves, registering as voters and voting (please, by all means, _do_ vote - it's _your_ government, not something imposed on you)
I would recommend extreme care on the next elections.
Remember "checks and balances". You need a whole lot more of them.
There is no need to keep nukes in space. You can always launch the interceptor when needed. A ground launch only adds a couple minutes to the trip, so, in the end, its influence is irrelevant. Not only that, but weapons on the ground can be much more easily upgraded and serviced than weapons in space.
The first destructive effect is caused by the radiated energy itself, but most of the destructive power of an atmospheric nuclear detonation comes from the quick heating and displacement of huge quantities of air that creates the explosive shock-wave.
In space, only the radiated energy of the detonation remains. While it would be sufficient to deflect an asteroid, a nuke is nowhere near as destructive in deep space than it is on Earth.
Yet, the guts of a current Mac are more or less exactly like the guts of my HP notebook, which is not ugly, but, certainly, is far less pretty than any MacBook.
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What if something happens to the rescue mission shuttle? ;-)
One has to wonder how many Soyuz capsules are ready for launch in the next couple weeks.
The only reason the shuttle is the way it is is politics.
Space operations have four distinct needs:
1- send people up (vehicle needs a safe abort-to-surface option, at least until abort-to-space is good enough)
2- bring people down (vehicle must be able to re-enter atmosphere from orbit and be meatware-friendly)
3- send cargo up (vehicle does not need to return, nor have a safe abort-to-surface mechanism)
4- bring cargo down (vehicle must be able to re-enter atmosphere, but not to be human-safe)
1 and 2 can be done with smaller, re-usable vehicles. 3 may need bigger non-reusable ones. 4 can use any re-entry vehicle that fits the cargo. If there is a spare seat, a human-safe one will do.
The only mission for a Shuttle-sized vehicle would be to bring down large stuff. IIRC, it was never used for that (as the cost of doing it would be prohibitively expensive when compared to launching a new one).
I don't think the JDK is that complex. There are a couple native executables and a whole lot of .class and .jar files that can be compiled as soon as the JRE is up and running.
While configure is hairy and ugly, building a JDK from source does not need to be complicated. If it is, something else is broken.
They can still stay at the ISS and ride a Soyuz down.
And it's not even clear how serious the damage is. It may be easily repairable.
What really shocked me is that it took more than 100 flights and a lost vehicle with crew to get someone to inspect the underside of the shuttle for damage.
It should have been done in the very first EVA.
Come on.
There is a limited number of ways you can build a minimalistic touchscreen phone. It can't have any size - there is too big and too small to be practical (although a larger one with decent voice dialing via a Bluetooth earset would be perfect for me, but I digress). You can't make it too thin either, or it will break when you sit on it. You can't put more buttons, because the screen will have to be smaller (and it will no longer be a minimalistic touchscreen phone). There are limited ways to do it. I personally think all desktop monitors are too much alike - from your arguments, it can be said the whole industry is full of pirates.
The LG Prada looks too much iPhone-ish. Still, nobody here is accusing LG of piracy.
Yeah, right - they have three buttons on the front. That makes it an entirely different phone.
Ironically, Prada has a huge problem with pirates.
And piracy is good, as it helps contain global warming.
I suppose there will be './configure && make && make install' versions of both the JDK and the JRE.
Eventually.
I agree with the performance complaints, but, remember, Sun is not in the megahertz game.
Sun sells servers that are dependable, that seldom, if ever, fail and whose uptime has to be measured in years not months. Even if their processors do not lead the MIPS and GFLOPS race, their performance is well balanced and I never saw a Sun box I could say is slow compared to other machines of same vintage. Fortune 1000 companies pay big money for machines that don't fail and they get what they pay for.
I would say surviving thanks to the colossal inertia created by a huge body of non-portable software is hardly a sign of elegance. Had one generation of x86 broken the binary compatibility with the previous five generations, it would be as dead as the Itanic (with which Intel did more or less just that).
Had the early x86 been harder to port from CP/M it would not enjoy the lots of applications that were ported to PC-DOS. Many other computers of the time that took more advanced (and less legacy-compatible) approaches failed.
It's interesting AMD is the one to be blamed for the survival of the x86 in the 64-bit generation... And that Intel tried to kill it.
Also, I would be very surprised if a modern PC could boot CP/M 86 without an emulator.
CP/M 80 ran on 8080, 8085 and Z80 computers. I had one with an 8085A (IIRC, maybe 8080) for some time, but my main CP/M box was an Apple II with a Videx board and a Microsoft Softcard with a Z80 (Z80H, IIRC). It's a pity Microsoft insists on making software - their hardware has always been superb.
Some programs may have required a Z80, but I don't remember any.
Maybe because every year more ARMs and MIPS processors are sold than x86 ones. They are far from dead.
And no. There is a lot left in SPARC. The T2 is not the end of it.
BTW, my 166 MHz Ultra 1 was way faster than any 500MHz Pentium III of the time.
IA64 as in Itanic?
I wouldn't say that. On proper hardware, it's fast enough.
What I would point out is that x86 processors are incredibly crude, crufty and rather antiquated, retaining, even in the 64 bit implementations, features that were used in the lowly 8088/8086. In fact there was a time a selling point of the processors was that 8080/8085 assembly code assembled and ran correctly on 16-bit hardware. I would not be surprised if lots of CP/M software did have their first PC-DOS versions by little more than a straight recompile (or reassemble).
It's a shame we are still using it instead of the much nicer and modern architectures that came after it.
You know... there is more to processors than Intel and AMD.
"Unfortunately, getting the average American to understand things like beatpaths and the like is not bloody likely. It'd be dead in the water because people would think it was a way to try and control the outcome of the election."
;-)
In fact, it is. It's a way to make the results show what people really wanted
It tends to be unpractical when you have more than a handful candidates. Last election, here in Brazil, we had a dozen candidates running for president and I can imagine the nightmare it would be to explain them how to do it.
And the voting machines would have to be scrapped. Our current ones would create a user interface problem.
"Sisko > Picard > Kirk > Archer > * > Janeway"
Picard > Sisko > Kirk >= Archer >> Janeway.
"the illusion of freedom thing, and fake-emergency isn't really necessary."
OK, but it makes keeping the sheeple happy a lot easier...
If all candidates are bad, you should vote for the lesser of all evils.
If all evils are equal, you should consider running yourself.
It's painfully obvious what happens when the people leaves politics to politicians.
I used to love the joke that says "the world is going toward an equilibrium of the superpowers: Eurasia, Eastasia and Oceania."
Now I find it scary.
Maybe. If direct irradiation causes a bigger push (it depends on the surface being volatile enough), I would not recommend that. For rocky or metallic bodies, it may be a very good approach. We would have to do the math.
True, but depending on where they hit (and the speed) they can be a mess to clean up. ;-)
It's been observed that any dictatorship requires a permanent state of emergency or war. Based on this, all kinds of law and basic rights can be disrespected based on the higher requirement of national security. If it lasts long enough, the whole society can also be shaped in ways that suppress as much as possible any willingness or ability to resist. While the US is not a dictatorship and many Americans can see what is wrong, what can happen (yes - it can get far worse than it is now) and take some action - organizing themselves, registering as voters and voting (please, by all means, _do_ vote - it's _your_ government, not something imposed on you)
I would recommend extreme care on the next elections.
Remember "checks and balances". You need a whole lot more of them.
There is no need to keep nukes in space. You can always launch the interceptor when needed. A ground launch only adds a couple minutes to the trip, so, in the end, its influence is irrelevant. Not only that, but weapons on the ground can be much more easily upgraded and serviced than weapons in space.
It would be completely different.
The first destructive effect is caused by the radiated energy itself, but most of the destructive power of an atmospheric nuclear detonation comes from the quick heating and displacement of huge quantities of air that creates the explosive shock-wave.
In space, only the radiated energy of the detonation remains. While it would be sufficient to deflect an asteroid, a nuke is nowhere near as destructive in deep space than it is on Earth.
Well... In theory, at least, there is a point in time the nuke will again intersect with Earth orbit. It's only a matter of time until it comes back.
On the other hand, it could take a good couple million years.
Agreed.
But I wouldn't suppose they could develop any form of sophisticated intelligence beyond a dolphin or whale.
Yet, the guts of a current Mac are more or less exactly like the guts of my HP notebook, which is not ugly, but, certainly, is far less pretty than any MacBook.
It will be if you ask your candidates about their positions. It's not their fault not to have a position on something few people care about.