OTOH, MS software and national security is probably not a life-or-death issue. At least, I hope it's not.
So, when a U.S. Navy missile cruiser has to be towed back to port because it's computers running MS Windows have crashed it's not life and death? What about the Dept. of Homeland Security using Microsoft products for their servers and workstations? How about the network operations centers and shore bases of the Navy using Microsoft for the servers and workstations?
Come on, Microsoft is wide spread and pervasive throughout the U.S. government. The State Department couldn't issue visa's because Welchia, which could be prevented by patching or anti-virus software, infected their network. An offline nuclear reactor had safety systems fail that were running Windows. Just what OS do you suppose the Army and Marine Corps battle computers are running? What would happen in a war if our enemy penetrated those battle networks with a worm of some sort? How much more do you need to be convinced that depending on seriously flawed software in the government is not only dangerous to national security but also a "matter of life and death".
Wow and here all this time I thought databases stored data.
First off, the industry still hasn't fully defined what a portal is yet. But, given that, most web and intranet developers and architects agree that a portal is used to expose internal backoffice systems to external users and for content aggregation. That does not require a database, nor does it require storing data. That's what those backoffice systems do. One of the things I really appreciate in Sun's portal (compared to say IBM, Plumtree, CA, etc.) is that I don't have to have a SQL database sitting there to run my portal. There is a datastore under the covers in the Identity Manager tools, but that isn't the same as a complex database implementation. I don't need any DBA's to support my Sun based intranet portal, and I get SSO out of it while I'm at it. So, no, you don't need an Oracle database to run this suite. Speaking as a guy who has architected intranet portals I like the fact that I don't have to have an enterprise database to run my portal. So, maybe you should get some experience with portals, at least, before talking about em. Oh, and I have implemented portals from IBM (WebSphere), CA (CleverPath, used to be Jasmine II), and OpenText, as well as Sun ONE. And actually, most corporations would prefer to move away from Oracle because they are bloody expensive and not the best database platform around. In fact, IBM has now overtaken Oracle in the database space and let me tell you that UDB DB2 8 is quite capable and about 60% the cost of Oracle. Which is hurting Oracle, and they know it. And then we look at the cost of Oracle and RAC on Linux vs. DB2 UDB, Solaris or AIX and Veritas and suddenly Linux ain't such a great choice.
Not because Linux isn't stable or Linux itself is expensive. But because Oracle and RAC is bloody expensive, and isn't nearly as impressive as Oracle and Dell would like you to think it is. Teradata, Sybase IQ Multiplex and IBM DB2 UDB provide similar capabilities for a lot lower price. Not to mention that Oracle RAC sucks up a CPU just for the cluster interconnect.
Re:Welcome To The New World, Geek Fewl...
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RIAA Bits
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Take a fresh look @ Microsoft as the IBM of the new millenium and it starts to become clear
A bit off topic, but possibly interesting. I work with IBM quite a bit and some of the folks I know at IBM have been there 15, 20, or more years. Every single one them says that Microsoft is going down the same path that IBM was on in the 1970's and 1980's. Not one of them believe that Microsoft will succeed at their monopoly any more than IBM did. And they all feel strongly that if Microsoft doesn't learn the lesson and change course the company will be in as much trouble or more as IBM was in, in the early 90's.
And let's not forget some of the other Grand Masters from the golden age. Asimov's Foundation and Robot stories are absolutely fantastic work. "Nightfall" is probably the best short SF story ever, although "Lifeline" ranks a close second (my personal opinions, feel free to disagree). Ben Bova wrote some good stuff too. And "Doc" Smith created the space opera. When you just want some whiz-bang escapism his books are great way to do it. You might not like his literary style, but "Doc" Smith's grammar was perfect, except when his characters needed to speak, and his stories flowed. They are fun to read too. Which is more than I can say for a lot of the pretentious crap that passes itself off as SF these days. Much of it is turgid, stilted and boring. The characters don't sound like real people.
Give me a classic by Heinlein, Asimov, Bova, Pournell or Dickson any day over most of the wannabe stuff we see today. Without their work SF wouldn't be the same. I'd rather be captivated by imagination than bored to tears by fancy writing, thanks very much.
Really, if you're living in a Star Trek world reading about starships wouldn't be any great novelty or mental exercise. I guess we're close enough to that reality now that less people are excited by sci-fi writers' imaginings.
Actually, I don't think that's it at all. We aren't living in the SF reality, because the pace of change is still accelerating, and it shows no sign of stopping. Consider nano technology and genetic engineering as just two examples of really interesting change in the world today. The real probelm, I think, is that the change has been so fast and sudden that the human race got scared. It wants a bit of safety and stability. Unfortunately, that extinctive desire to stabilize and keep the status quo is likely to lead to the death of the human race. Biology is about competition at it's most basic level. If we reach the end of competition the race will die out and evolution will replace us with something that is ready for the next round of competition.
But the interesting ideas of the near future are in communication and thought -- things that will change *us*
Of the "modern" writers, I like Greg Bear best. He is actually exploring the new frontiers of science, like genetics and evolution in "Darwin's Radio" but keeping to the tradition of great SF writing. Take a single idea about something new and explore how it impacts society and people. Gordon Dickson, a bit older, did the same thing in The Childe Cycle stories.
It's entirely possible that some grand upheaval could yet undermine global corporate hegemony.
It's only a matter of time until the current order changes. There is something out there waiting to change it that we can't even see. If you look back through history, every time a civilization reached a point of diminishing returns something came along to overthrow it and bring about new opportunities for change, competition and growth. Look at the Greek culture, Rome, the various Chinese dynasties, the Medieval Europeans, the Victorian World, the USSR. When each of them reached the point where they no longer served the human drive for growth, change and competition the factors allowing the creation of a stable environment were removed.
Today's environment is ripe for change. My vote is for cheap space exploitation to arrive, totally changing the dynamic. I don't think it's that far off, the question who will make it happen. Sadly (sad from my perspective, I'm an American) I don't think it will be the U.S. that makes it happen.
I'll grant that a lot of the gadgets described as futuristic then exist now.
One of the things I always found great about science fiction is that the best stories weren't about the gadgets. The best SF writers took one speculative idea and turned it into a story. They explored how the world and people would be different because of that idea. But at the core, the story was about..... people, just like any other great story. I'm talking about authors like Heinlein, Asimov, Clark, Pournelle, Gordon Dickson, Greg Bear, and Jules Verne.
And when you go back and read their stories again sometimes the science and the gadgets are dated, but the great stories stand the test of time. "Stranger in a Strange Land", the Foundation Trilogy, "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea", the Childe cycle, "2001: A Space Odyssey" will always be great reads, because they don't depend on the gadgets.
The last century was the century of steel. The next century will be the century of carbon.
Hopefully this century will be the century of energy. Learning how to move energy between its various forms in order to gain the benefits of a closed system rather than our current open system would do more for productivity, standard of living and quality of life than any other single advance in science, technology and engineering I can think of.
Unfortunately some people wouldn't believe me without the equations and the answers in black and white. Sorry for insulting anyone's intelligence who understands how acceleration and velocity work.
Actually, you don't have to use the cable for propulsion. All you have to do is harness the energy of the descending elevator in order to propel the ascending elevator. The largest quantity of energy expended is in getting the cable and the "top" elevator into space in the first place. I would expect that once you get the cable past 36,000 km above the earth the cable would mostly pull itself up from that point on.
Unfortunately I only took the physics needed for a computer engineering degree while in college. What I know of advanced physics comes from reading for fun and pleasure. So, I do know that my answer is right, but can't easily prove it myself. I'm sure I could find the answer using Google pretty quickly.
The ascent is going to be very very slow. Imagine going at 100km/h, a speed that would impress most normal elevator designers. 15 days for the ascent, 15 more for the descent. (Admittedly the descent could be done quicker).
It isn't going to be even close to 15 days to get to the top. Some very simple physics tells us that if we accelerated at 1 g for 1 second we would be traveling at a velocity of 9.8 meters per second (gravity on earth equals 9.8 m/s/s). If we then traveled at that constant speed we would reach the top of the cable in a little more than 11 days (do the math and see). Since we are operating under the influence of the earth's gravitational well we couldn't just accelerate for one second and then coast at constant velocity.
However, much more likely is that we will accelerate the "elevator" at 1/10 g to the halfway point and then decelerate it at 1/10 g to the top. And if we have two "elevators", one going up and one going down, it will be basically a system with little to no external energy requirement. Initially we have to invest the amount of energy required to lift one elevator and the other components needed for the station in orbit. Then we have to expend the energy to put the cable in place. Once that is done we start the top elevator down and voila we have the energy to start the bottom elevator accelerating up. There's a bunch of engineering involved to do this, but it's overall pretty basic physics.
If you do the math you will see that if we accelerate at 1/10 g to the halfway point, then decelerate at 1/10 g to the top, it will take a very short time to travel 100,000 km to the top of the elevator.
Let's round 9.8 m/s/s to 10 m/s/s to make our life easy. This isn't accurate, but it makes the equations much simpler. So, 1/10 g is 1 m/s/s. The formula for velocity while accelerating is:
v=a*t where v=velocity, a=acceleration and t=time.
So, while accelerating at 1/10 g after 10 seconds we are traveling at a velocity of 10 meters per second, or 36 kilometers per hour, or 21.6 miles per hour. The next question is how far have we traveled? That formula is:
d=.5*a*t^2 where d=distance.
So at the end of those same 10 seconds we have traveled 50 meters. So, how do we figure out how long it takes to get to the halfway point? Simple substitution:
50,000 km =.5 * 1 m/s * t^2
Now solve like any other algebra equation. Remember to convert kilometers to meters.
t^2 = 50,000,000/.5*1
So t= 10,000 seconds, or roughly 2.8 hours traveling at a velociy of 10,000 meters per second (36,000 km/hr or 21600 mph). When we decelerate everything becomes negative and it takes the same amount of time to go from a velocity of 36,000 kph to 0 as it did to accelerate to that velocity. If you aren't sure just substitute a negative value for acceleration of -1 m/s/s and check me:-).
Bottom line, with a 1/10 g acceleration you will reach the top of the "elevator" in less than 6 hours, assuming constant acceleration. In all likelihood we won't accelerate constantly because our vehicle would burn up in the atmosphere. Probably we will boost to a constant velocity, flip at the halfway point and decelerate when needed. Even doing that we will reach the top in less than a day.
And we will generate all the energy needed for acceleration and deceleration within the system. Pretty neat!
The difference between then and now is that the U.S. was competing against another superpower.
I should have been clearer. I didn't specifically mean the U.S. and NASA. I meant to give that as an example of how you create the project and the budget. I think that the Manhattan Project and the Apollo Space Program are two of the best examples of how you build a project to do something that has never been done before.
I agree that the U.S. today probably can't achieve this, or any other major scientific/exploratory advance. Sadly, while a significant segment of the population of the U.S. is still eager to take risks, to learn and to grow, the oligarchy that runs this country is unwilling to go out on a limb because it might jeopardize their political future and let some other ultra-cautious member of the oligarchy replace them.
No, he didn't actually build one. He designed it because he was hospitalized and bedridden in the 30's. He described it fully in "Stranger in a Strang Land".
Re:Looks like the pointy haired boss at work again
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So how exactly do you come up with a budget for a project that calls for an unknown (but massive) amount of nonexistanium, delivered to orbit no less?
The same way that NASA came up with the budget for the space program in the early 50's and 60's. They had to create a huge number of things that did not exist in order to put a man on the moon. From things as mundane as food and drink and holders that could be used while weightless to as science fictiony as computers small enough to fit in an Apollo space craft. Somehow they managed to not only do all of that, but to budget for it as well. Not only that, all of that R&D was very good for the economy, returning, depending on who you believe, as much as $7 to the economy for every dollar spent.
Most of the "Golden Age of Sci Fi" writers were/are scientists and engineers. The things they wrote/write about actually have some basis in physics. Heinlein spent days and sometimes weeks
calculating orbits by hand (this was before the advent of the PC, remember), for example. Much of our scientific and engineering achievement today was first written about by Sci Fi authors, including personal computers, world wide networks, men traveling in outerspace, satellites, genetic engineering, waterbeds and much more. I personally hope we continue building what Sci Fi writers write about. Idealism and dreams lead to greatness. Pragmatism and "being realistic" lead to boredom and stagnation.
Well, here's an example based on one person's experience. My organization is converting its TDM PBX system to IP Telephony and VOIP. We are completely packet switched IP for voice from the phone across our entire WAN to the PSTN circuits connecting us to our ILEC. We have not implemented QoS at all at this point. My phone is separated from the PSTN circuits by a T-1 point to point circuit that also carries the traffic of about 65 developers, sys admins and DBA's back to the main data center. We have about 1100 phones in our voice network, spread across 5 different locations. We only have PSTN circuits in our data center. 300 of those phones are in a high volume call center.
So, here's what I've observed over the past couple of days since we implemented. There is no noticable lag or latency. There is no jitter or echo on the line. People I speak to who are outside our network tell me that the call sounds like a very high quality cell phone call. I expect that as soon as QoS is implemented even that slight lack of quality (compared to PBX telephony) will be gone.
My practical experience is that packet switched voice is going to work like a champ. It's only a matter of time until all voice travels that way. Of course I may be biased, since I am the system architect who drove the project to replace our current PBX solution for voice.:-)
Traditional telephony lets people talk at a great distance and travels over telco lines. And gets taxed.
VoIP lets people talk at a great distance and travels over telco lines. And does not get taxed.
What is the difference? A matter of what the encoder/decoders look like? A matter of historical roots of VoIP emerging from a (presumed) free technology?
Actually, if you have to pay taxes/fees on VOIP then you are paying double. Basically, whatever sort of broadband service I have has fees and taxes imposed by regulation and law. In fact, on my cable broadband I pay the following:
Franchise fee
PPV franchise fee
Utility tax
FCC user fee
So, the point is, I'm already paying taxes and fees. What the established telco providers want to do is force these fees on VoIP providers to ensure that you will continue using the telco for your phone service. You will continue doing that because it will no longer be advantageous for you to use VoIP since you will be double taxed for the use of one line. Right now I pay taxes for two lines because I use two lines, a traditional telephone line and cable based broadband.
If I were to eliminate the traditional telephone line and only use 1 line, the cable broadband, why should I be taxed and charged fees twice?
Actually, if you think about it, the bugs are not new, just our knowledge that the bug exists. And the new WebDAV proved that the bad guys find some of the bugs before the good guys. Imagine how bad SQL Slammer would have been if it was written and released BEFORE there was a bug report published and patches available.
There are really two separate issues here, RedHat is addressing one, and everybody is screaming about the other. The issue that RedHat is tackling is ease of use and standards. In order for Linux to succeed in the corporate world, it has to have a set of standards for everything, including the user interface. Especially for corporate desktops. Corporate sys admins really don't have the time or the inclination to custom configure the Linux UI and then roll it out to all the users. What they will want is a UI that follows a reasonable standard. They can then tune/tweak the few things necessary for their environment.
The issue everyone is howling about is choice in computing. It's still there. If you prefer not to use a distro built for the masses, go get Slackware or one of the other distros that is aimed at the niche, do it yourself, user community. If you don't like RedHat's implementation of KDE or Gnome, but you like the distro otherwise, then install RedHat without KDE and Gnome. Then download them and build them yourself.
But don't confuse standards with choice. If we don't have standards then Linux will fail ultimately as anything but an edge server and hobbyist desktop. RedHat is trying to create a standard without eliminating choice.
Well said, thanks. It's not that hard to become a reasonably capable security administrator.... IF you were already a capable system administrator to start with. And no, I don't mean that you can install the OS, create some users and reboot the box without consulting a manual. Medium to large organizations that have UNIX platforms they are maintaining with their own internal personnel have all the expertise on staff already to develop one or two competent security administrators. No need to go out and hire consultants or purchase shiny boxes (unless, of course, the shiny box does something you need it to do and is the cost effective choice).
Your system is not secure if someone else is in control of your security platforms (this is a perfectly valid argument for excluding any Windows product from a security role). So, if at all possible, do not rely on consultants or contractors, nor on closed source platforms.
No offense to our commercial IDS friends, but their products are over-priced and underwhelming. The key in network security is not how much money you spend, or getting commercial products that the Gartner whores recommend. The key is people who understand networks and security, and products that actually do the job. And, when you go to your management and tell them you want to spend $10,000 instead of the $100,000 that the consultant said it would cost, and you point out that you can do the same, or better, job, your manager will be happy too.
Switches can, and do, mangle packets, even when mirroring. By configuring your IDS to be "stealthy", putting the NIC into promiscuous mode, and using a simple hub at the gateway, you can capture all traffic that crosses the network boundary. Besides that, why bother putting a layer 2 switch between your firewall interface and your public internet routers? Which is one of the obvious locations for your IDS? The other really obvious location being in your DMZ?
It's not a spanning tree nightmare at all. A firewall sits at the boundary of two networks, network A and network B, let's say. Firewall Interface A connects to hub A which connects to network A. IDS A is also connected to hub A. And ditto for B. This is Firewall Design 101. Since, generally, Firewalls, on at least one side, are connected to the Public Internet, your network on that side is not going to be gigE.
Slashdot Mirror
OTOH, MS software and national security is probably not a life-or-death issue. At least, I hope it's not.
So, when a U.S. Navy missile cruiser has to be towed back to port because it's computers running MS Windows have crashed it's not life and death? What about the Dept. of Homeland Security using Microsoft products for their servers and workstations? How about the network operations centers and shore bases of the Navy using Microsoft for the servers and workstations?
Come on, Microsoft is wide spread and pervasive throughout the U.S. government. The State Department couldn't issue visa's because Welchia, which could be prevented by patching or anti-virus software, infected their network. An offline nuclear reactor had safety systems fail that were running Windows. Just what OS do you suppose the Army and Marine Corps battle computers are running? What would happen in a war if our enemy penetrated those battle networks with a worm of some sort? How much more do you need to be convinced that depending on seriously flawed software in the government is not only dangerous to national security but also a "matter of life and death".
Portals store data.
Wow and here all this time I thought databases stored data.
First off, the industry still hasn't fully defined what a portal is yet. But, given that, most web and intranet developers and architects agree that a portal is used to expose internal backoffice systems to external users and for content aggregation. That does not require a database, nor does it require storing data. That's what those backoffice systems do. One of the things I really appreciate in Sun's portal (compared to say IBM, Plumtree, CA, etc.) is that I don't have to have a SQL database sitting there to run my portal. There is a datastore under the covers in the Identity Manager tools, but that isn't the same as a complex database implementation. I don't need any DBA's to support my Sun based intranet portal, and I get SSO out of it while I'm at it. So, no, you don't need an Oracle database to run this suite. Speaking as a guy who has architected intranet portals I like the fact that I don't have to have an enterprise database to run my portal. So, maybe you should get some experience with portals, at least, before talking about em. Oh, and I have implemented portals from IBM (WebSphere), CA (CleverPath, used to be Jasmine II), and OpenText, as well as Sun ONE. And actually, most corporations would prefer to move away from Oracle because they are bloody expensive and not the best database platform around. In fact, IBM has now overtaken Oracle in the database space and let me tell you that UDB DB2 8 is quite capable and about 60% the cost of Oracle. Which is hurting Oracle, and they know it. And then we look at the cost of Oracle and RAC on Linux vs. DB2 UDB, Solaris or AIX and Veritas and suddenly Linux ain't such a great choice.
Not because Linux isn't stable or Linux itself is expensive. But because Oracle and RAC is bloody expensive, and isn't nearly as impressive as Oracle and Dell would like you to think it is. Teradata, Sybase IQ Multiplex and IBM DB2 UDB provide similar capabilities for a lot lower price. Not to mention that Oracle RAC sucks up a CPU just for the cluster interconnect.
Take a fresh look @ Microsoft as the IBM of the new millenium and it starts to become clear
A bit off topic, but possibly interesting. I work with IBM quite a bit and some of the folks I know at IBM have been there 15, 20, or more years. Every single one them says that Microsoft is going down the same path that IBM was on in the 1970's and 1980's. Not one of them believe that Microsoft will succeed at their monopoly any more than IBM did. And they all feel strongly that if Microsoft doesn't learn the lesson and change course the company will be in as much trouble or more as IBM was in, in the early 90's.
And let's not forget some of the other Grand Masters from the golden age. Asimov's Foundation and Robot stories are absolutely fantastic work. "Nightfall" is probably the best short SF story ever, although "Lifeline" ranks a close second (my personal opinions, feel free to disagree). Ben Bova wrote some good stuff too. And "Doc" Smith created the space opera. When you just want some whiz-bang escapism his books are great way to do it. You might not like his literary style, but "Doc" Smith's grammar was perfect, except when his characters needed to speak, and his stories flowed. They are fun to read too. Which is more than I can say for a lot of the pretentious crap that passes itself off as SF these days. Much of it is turgid, stilted and boring. The characters don't sound like real people.
Give me a classic by Heinlein, Asimov, Bova, Pournell or Dickson any day over most of the wannabe stuff we see today. Without their work SF wouldn't be the same. I'd rather be captivated by imagination than bored to tears by fancy writing, thanks very much.
Really, if you're living in a Star Trek world reading about starships wouldn't be any great novelty or mental exercise. I guess we're close enough to that reality now that less people are excited by sci-fi writers' imaginings.
Actually, I don't think that's it at all. We aren't living in the SF reality, because the pace of change is still accelerating, and it shows no sign of stopping. Consider nano technology and genetic engineering as just two examples of really interesting change in the world today. The real probelm, I think, is that the change has been so fast and sudden that the human race got scared. It wants a bit of safety and stability. Unfortunately, that extinctive desire to stabilize and keep the status quo is likely to lead to the death of the human race. Biology is about competition at it's most basic level. If we reach the end of competition the race will die out and evolution will replace us with something that is ready for the next round of competition.
But the interesting ideas of the near future are in communication and thought -- things that will change *us*
Of the "modern" writers, I like Greg Bear best. He is actually exploring the new frontiers of science, like genetics and evolution in "Darwin's Radio" but keeping to the tradition of great SF writing. Take a single idea about something new and explore how it impacts society and people. Gordon Dickson, a bit older, did the same thing in The Childe Cycle stories.
It's entirely possible that some grand upheaval could yet undermine global corporate hegemony.
It's only a matter of time until the current order changes. There is something out there waiting to change it that we can't even see. If you look back through history, every time a civilization reached a point of diminishing returns something came along to overthrow it and bring about new opportunities for change, competition and growth. Look at the Greek culture, Rome, the various Chinese dynasties, the Medieval Europeans, the Victorian World, the USSR. When each of them reached the point where they no longer served the human drive for growth, change and competition the factors allowing the creation of a stable environment were removed.
Today's environment is ripe for change. My vote is for cheap space exploitation to arrive, totally changing the dynamic. I don't think it's that far off, the question who will make it happen. Sadly (sad from my perspective, I'm an American) I don't think it will be the U.S. that makes it happen.
I'll grant that a lot of the gadgets described as futuristic then exist now.
One of the things I always found great about science fiction is that the best stories weren't about the gadgets. The best SF writers took one speculative idea and turned it into a story. They explored how the world and people would be different because of that idea. But at the core, the story was about ..... people, just like any other great story. I'm talking about authors like Heinlein, Asimov, Clark, Pournelle, Gordon Dickson, Greg Bear, and Jules Verne.
And when you go back and read their stories again sometimes the science and the gadgets are dated, but the great stories stand the test of time. "Stranger in a Strange Land", the Foundation Trilogy, "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea", the Childe cycle, "2001: A Space Odyssey" will always be great reads, because they don't depend on the gadgets.
You need something to push off of
Correct, I was forgetting basic physics. Unfortunately it's been a long time since I took physics, so....
I do think that my basic assumption that the system should not be a net energy user after the initial lift of mass is correct.
The last century was the century of steel. The next century will be the century of carbon.
Hopefully this century will be the century of energy. Learning how to move energy between its various forms in order to gain the benefits of a closed system rather than our current open system would do more for productivity, standard of living and quality of life than any other single advance in science, technology and engineering I can think of.
Unfortunately some people wouldn't believe me without the equations and the answers in black and white. Sorry for insulting anyone's intelligence who understands how acceleration and velocity work.
Actually, you don't have to use the cable for propulsion. All you have to do is harness the energy of the descending elevator in order to propel the ascending elevator. The largest quantity of energy expended is in getting the cable and the "top" elevator into space in the first place. I would expect that once you get the cable past 36,000 km above the earth the cable would mostly pull itself up from that point on.
Unfortunately I only took the physics needed for a computer engineering degree while in college. What I know of advanced physics comes from reading for fun and pleasure. So, I do know that my answer is right, but can't easily prove it myself. I'm sure I could find the answer using Google pretty quickly.
There's also a space elevator in some Heinlein's later work. Specifically there is the 'Kenya Beanstalk' in "Friday", which was clearly an elevator.
The ascent is going to be very very slow. Imagine going at 100km/h, a speed that would impress most normal elevator designers. 15 days for the ascent, 15 more for the descent. (Admittedly the descent could be done quicker).
It isn't going to be even close to 15 days to get to the top. Some very simple physics tells us that if we accelerated at 1 g for 1 second we would be traveling at a velocity of 9.8 meters per second (gravity on earth equals 9.8 m/s/s). If we then traveled at that constant speed we would reach the top of the cable in a little more than 11 days (do the math and see). Since we are operating under the influence of the earth's gravitational well we couldn't just accelerate for one second and then coast at constant velocity.
However, much more likely is that we will accelerate the "elevator" at 1/10 g to the halfway point and then decelerate it at 1/10 g to the top. And if we have two "elevators", one going up and one going down, it will be basically a system with little to no external energy requirement. Initially we have to invest the amount of energy required to lift one elevator and the other components needed for the station in orbit. Then we have to expend the energy to put the cable in place. Once that is done we start the top elevator down and voila we have the energy to start the bottom elevator accelerating up. There's a bunch of engineering involved to do this, but it's overall pretty basic physics.
If you do the math you will see that if we accelerate at 1/10 g to the halfway point, then decelerate at 1/10 g to the top, it will take a very short time to travel 100,000 km to the top of the elevator.
Let's round 9.8 m/s/s to 10 m/s/s to make our life easy. This isn't accurate, but it makes the equations much simpler. So, 1/10 g is 1 m/s/s. The formula for velocity while accelerating is:
.5 * 1 m/s * t^2
:-).
v=a*t where v=velocity, a=acceleration and t=time.
So, while accelerating at 1/10 g after 10 seconds we are traveling at a velocity of 10 meters per second, or 36 kilometers per hour, or 21.6 miles per hour. The next question is how far have we traveled? That formula is:
d=.5*a*t^2 where d=distance.
So at the end of those same 10 seconds we have traveled 50 meters. So, how do we figure out how long it takes to get to the halfway point? Simple substitution:
50,000 km =
Now solve like any other algebra equation. Remember to convert kilometers to meters.
t^2 = 50,000,000/.5*1
So t= 10,000 seconds, or roughly 2.8 hours traveling at a velociy of 10,000 meters per second (36,000 km/hr or 21600 mph). When we decelerate everything becomes negative and it takes the same amount of time to go from a velocity of 36,000 kph to 0 as it did to accelerate to that velocity. If you aren't sure just substitute a negative value for acceleration of -1 m/s/s and check me
Bottom line, with a 1/10 g acceleration you will reach the top of the "elevator" in less than 6 hours, assuming constant acceleration. In all likelihood we won't accelerate constantly because our vehicle would burn up in the atmosphere. Probably we will boost to a constant velocity, flip at the halfway point and decelerate when needed. Even doing that we will reach the top in less than a day.
And we will generate all the energy needed for acceleration and deceleration within the system. Pretty neat!
The difference between then and now is that the U.S. was competing against another superpower.
I should have been clearer. I didn't specifically mean the U.S. and NASA. I meant to give that as an example of how you create the project and the budget. I think that the Manhattan Project and the Apollo Space Program are two of the best examples of how you build a project to do something that has never been done before.
I agree that the U.S. today probably can't achieve this, or any other major scientific/exploratory advance. Sadly, while a significant segment of the population of the U.S. is still eager to take risks, to learn and to grow, the oligarchy that runs this country is unwilling to go out on a limb because it might jeopardize their political future and let some other ultra-cautious member of the oligarchy replace them.
No, he didn't actually build one. He designed it because he was hospitalized and bedridden in the 30's. He described it fully in "Stranger in a Strang Land".
So how exactly do you come up with a budget for a project that calls for an unknown (but massive) amount of nonexistanium, delivered to orbit no less?
The same way that NASA came up with the budget for the space program in the early 50's and 60's. They had to create a huge number of things that did not exist in order to put a man on the moon. From things as mundane as food and drink and holders that could be used while weightless to as science fictiony as computers small enough to fit in an Apollo space craft. Somehow they managed to not only do all of that, but to budget for it as well. Not only that, all of that R&D was very good for the economy, returning, depending on who you believe, as much as $7 to the economy for every dollar spent.
calculating orbits by hand (this was before the advent of the PC, remember), for example. Much of our scientific and engineering achievement today was first written about by Sci Fi authors, including personal computers, world wide networks, men traveling in outerspace, satellites, genetic engineering, waterbeds and much more. I personally hope we continue building what Sci Fi writers write about. Idealism and dreams lead to greatness. Pragmatism and "being realistic" lead to boredom and stagnation.
Well, here's an example based on one person's experience. My organization is converting its TDM PBX system to IP Telephony and VOIP. We are completely packet switched IP for voice from the phone across our entire WAN to the PSTN circuits connecting us to our ILEC. We have not implemented QoS at all at this point. My phone is separated from the PSTN circuits by a T-1 point to point circuit that also carries the traffic of about 65 developers, sys admins and DBA's back to the main data center. We have about 1100 phones in our voice network, spread across 5 different locations. We only have PSTN circuits in our data center. 300 of those phones are in a high volume call center.
So, here's what I've observed over the past couple of days since we implemented. There is no noticable lag or latency. There is no jitter or echo on the line. People I speak to who are outside our network tell me that the call sounds like a very high quality cell phone call. I expect that as soon as QoS is implemented even that slight lack of quality (compared to PBX telephony) will be gone.
My practical experience is that packet switched voice is going to work like a champ. It's only a matter of time until all voice travels that way. Of course I may be biased, since I am the system architect who drove the project to replace our current PBX solution for voice. :-)
Traditional telephony lets people talk at a great distance and travels over telco lines. And gets taxed.
VoIP lets people talk at a great distance and travels over telco lines. And does not get taxed.
What is the difference? A matter of what the encoder/decoders look like? A matter of historical roots of VoIP emerging from a (presumed) free technology?
Actually, if you have to pay taxes/fees on VOIP then you are paying double. Basically, whatever sort of broadband service I have has fees and taxes imposed by regulation and law. In fact, on my cable broadband I pay the following:
- Franchise fee
- PPV franchise fee
- Utility tax
- FCC user fee
So, the point is, I'm already paying taxes and fees. What the established telco providers want to do is force these fees on VoIP providers to ensure that you will continue using the telco for your phone service. You will continue doing that because it will no longer be advantageous for you to use VoIP since you will be double taxed for the use of one line. Right now I pay taxes for two lines because I use two lines, a traditional telephone line and cable based broadband.If I were to eliminate the traditional telephone line and only use 1 line, the cable broadband, why should I be taxed and charged fees twice?
Actually, if you think about it, the bugs are not new, just our knowledge that the bug exists. And the new WebDAV proved that the bad guys find some of the bugs before the good guys. Imagine how bad SQL Slammer would have been if it was written and released BEFORE there was a bug report published and patches available.
There are really two separate issues here, RedHat is addressing one, and everybody is screaming about the other. The issue that RedHat is tackling is ease of use and standards. In order for Linux to succeed in the corporate world, it has to have a set of standards for everything, including the user interface. Especially for corporate desktops. Corporate sys admins really don't have the time or the inclination to custom configure the Linux UI and then roll it out to all the users. What they will want is a UI that follows a reasonable standard. They can then tune/tweak the few things necessary for their environment.
The issue everyone is howling about is choice in computing. It's still there. If you prefer not to use a distro built for the masses, go get Slackware or one of the other distros that is aimed at the niche, do it yourself, user community. If you don't like RedHat's implementation of KDE or Gnome, but you like the distro otherwise, then install RedHat without KDE and Gnome. Then download them and build them yourself.
But don't confuse standards with choice. If we don't have standards then Linux will fail ultimately as anything but an edge server and hobbyist desktop. RedHat is trying to create a standard without eliminating choice.
Well said, thanks. It's not that hard to become a reasonably capable security administrator.... IF you were already a capable system administrator to start with. And no, I don't mean that you can install the OS, create some users and reboot the box without consulting a manual. Medium to large organizations that have UNIX platforms they are maintaining with their own internal personnel have all the expertise on staff already to develop one or two competent security administrators. No need to go out and hire consultants or purchase shiny boxes (unless, of course, the shiny box does something you need it to do and is the cost effective choice).
Your system is not secure if someone else is in control of your security platforms (this is a perfectly valid argument for excluding any Windows product from a security role). So, if at all possible, do not rely on consultants or contractors, nor on closed source platforms.
No offense to our commercial IDS friends, but their products are over-priced and underwhelming. The key in network security is not how much money you spend, or getting commercial products that the Gartner whores recommend. The key is people who understand networks and security, and products that actually do the job. And, when you go to your management and tell them you want to spend $10,000 instead of the $100,000 that the consultant said it would cost, and you point out that you can do the same, or better, job, your manager will be happy too.
Switches can, and do, mangle packets, even when mirroring. By configuring your IDS to be "stealthy", putting the NIC into promiscuous mode, and using a simple hub at the gateway, you can capture all traffic that crosses the network boundary. Besides that, why bother putting a layer 2 switch between your firewall interface and your public internet routers? Which is one of the obvious locations for your IDS? The other really obvious location being in your DMZ?
It's not a spanning tree nightmare at all. A firewall sits at the boundary of two networks, network A and network B, let's say. Firewall Interface A connects to hub A which connects to network A. IDS A is also connected to hub A. And ditto for B. This is Firewall Design 101. Since, generally, Firewalls, on at least one side, are connected to the Public Internet, your network on that side is not going to be gigE.