There are the other devices on the rover besides the wheels that in a pinch might come in handy. Maybe it could push itself with its rock sampling equipment.
The NASA and JPL gang is quite clever, my bet is that they work this out.
Why-oh-why-oh-why are we so @#$% obsessed with this single-winner-take-all model!?!
Because in the airliner business in many instances there can be only one winner. In the late '60's there was a market between the narrow bodies and the 747. Lockheed built the L1011 (the last airliner they built). McDonanld Douglas jumped in 18 months after them with the Me Too! Me Too! DC-10 and gave away the store to American Airlines to undercut Lockheed. Both companies bled cash fighting each other. It killed Lockheed and was teh beginning of the end for Micky D's commercial business (although it took decades they lost market share consistently that whole time.
Boeing pulled back on the Super Jumbo because they saw two alternatices (HSCT and long thin fuel efficient) and there was the risk of Airbus coming in like Douglas did (Boeing started on full double deck before Airbus) and taking away all potential for profitability.
The nightmare scenario of it going down is more likely because it is now the biggest bang for the terrorist. They want a CNN news splash that you just don't get with a car bomb anymore. 100,000 gallons of fuel makes a fireball 10X the size of a 757's 10,000 gallons.
In the more mundane system failure, weather or pilot error induced incident, the scaling factor is more likely to overwhelm emergency infrastructure. Since many of the served routes are to huge metropolitan areas (e.g. London, Hong Kong) the stakes are high.
I think that there is a good chance that it would violate some Anti-Trust laws
...and this has slowed MS down before? It is factored into their business decisions I am sure, but rather in their estimates of how long and how hard their lawyers will need to stall, deflect, drag out the proceedings before they accomplish their goal.
A zebra gets a few kicks in on while a lion has it by the throat, but a betting man will put his money on the lion.
Everyone knows current computers and consumer electronics work using magic blue smoke. If the smoke escapes your device no longer works. Overclockers are very clumsy about letting out the blue smoke and sell their processors (depleted of magic) on e-bay under dubious accounts.
Quantum computers will use red smoke (the Rubium cloud). Will we call the hobbiests that push the limits of these machines Quark shakers?
And like a good software demo we see the first 0.001% of the real stuff...then there is some voodoo and black magic...a "real exerience" (in this case Iceland hot cocoa) and then reaching "the goal" (lumbering out of the water somewhere in New Jersey).
Like the software demo, only a fool would take it for reality.
And that is a good thing...despite these software glitches cars are SIGNIFACTLY safer today due to computers:
ABS Braking
Structural Analysis software
Vehicle dynamics / handling simulation
CFD analysis for tires (they are quite efficient pumps really)
If cars are going to go fly by wire they need to be tested and maintained like airplanes instead of like disposable consumer electronics...but in balance computers have made cars safer.
Easy! Connect an unprotected windows box up to the internet, call it Socrates and the dead for thousands of years will write loads. WaNt s0me Pen1s en1argeMenT Cre4m?
Talk about making oneself flamebait. Christ proposed that people be kind, good, generous, loving to each other...(Not because it was required for salvation but because it demonstrated you appreciation for the grace of God).
So, giving your fellow man your time, energy and expertise over the internet is a Christian thing to do.
Be an open source contributor! Be a Christian Communists.
You're on the right track....this is a matter of national security. About the only export our country has anymore are weaponry and our pop culture (music, movies...).
I think I'll burn some middle-eastern petroleum in my German engineered car (manufactured in Mexico), have a piece of Central America grown fruit, flip on the SE Asian fabricated TV and watch some good old american network news.
In addition to the terrorist tactical usage there is the political...for example that damn wall blocking off people's homes from their olive orchards or other places of work.
Sad that I had to scroll through dozens of off topic posts to hit the first true Insightful.
Adding a third dimension (layering) or a ?fourth? (Quantum Computing) could potentially keep Moore's law alive for another half century. Then there are transister replacements such as nano switches using light...insert your innovative or emerging technology of choice here
So you could have a paper making the point that world hunger can be eliminated by harvesting cheese from the moon. As long as the flow, grammer, spelling... met some criteria it is "good".
As a tool for grading English Composition 101 to weed out gramatical problems fine. For any other field, evaluating the thought process going into a work (does it make a cogent point) is the the profs job. Poor grammer and sloppy papers are an obstacle toward that end, not the measuring stick to evaluate a student's performance.
Is there that big of a market for mobile internet to have sites double design, one for PCs, one for 320x240 mobile internet devices?
This is a great opportunity really. A site that plays nice on a mobile device may have a market differentiator from other sites. If they considered the audience...
Suppose some enterprising person networked fast food restaurants in a major metro area and made it easy to browse menues and arrange delivery/pick-up.
A hookup site for nightclubs for people that are already out on the town.
Sports sight geared toward current event...live stats on your PDA while you are at the game
Fishing story bragging site..."The Kings are at 95 feet just off Port Angelus...hitting on red and silver spoons"
A niche in mobile oriented site is wide open and would have a steady/captive audience which would be a good market base for some advertisers.
Sadly it has come to that at EDS. There are pockets of competence (I rub shoulders with a few), but over the last 10 years Dick Brown and other stock option milking Texans have squeezed it out of the corporation.
This sort of about face should be no surprise. In Brown's last year before they sent him on his way tens of millions richer he explained a 1st quarter shortfall was due to the desktop services area which was impossible to make profitable and expecting a very short analyst attention span touted desktop services as the turn around strategy for a soft 3rd and 4th quarter.
Frankly I bet any of EDS' other employees could have been half as incompetent for 1/100th the compensation.
Charge some rediculous fee for companies that patent software (often for ideas that are 25 years old).
These funds could then be used to publish information in IEEE...encouraging the reuse and the adoption of standards, and freeing the creative juices to flow for solving NEW problems rather than reinventing pointers, !=, and do while constructs without infringing on someones patent.
It would be interesting to see if the US Gov latches onto this technology. They are backlogged with translation activities in our Homeland Security activities and are taking the approach of training WASP folks to speak and translate languages (Arabic, Pashtun...) with many subtle and culturally colorful elements rather than seeking the many immigrants in this country already fluent in these languages.
There are elements on the inside that would rather send them all off to internment camps rather than embracing their cultural heritage and using the diverse US melting pot to make us more resilient and intelligent in our understanding of our friends and enemies around the world.
In Michigan you have a choice of itemizing all of your out of state purchases, or pay an estimated amount based on your income. I may be ignorant of the datails of the law, but I would think the second would offer some degree of indemnity. I don't want to keep the records of all my ebay, amazon,....transactions.
All that matters is that you say that the trains run on time, and keep repeating this over and over again until people actually believe it.
It helps if your speach has been distilled and market tested (preferably with tax dollars). All extemperanious speach must be limited to platitudes.
It helps if it is presented with a blue background with the word for the day printed on it.
It helps if you have journalist paid (preferably with tax dollars) to go on the talk shows after your speach repeating the word of the day over and over.
It helps to have sage grey haired men from "research" institutions with very official and patriotic names (must include at least two of the following; American, Freedom, Heritage, Freedom, Liberty...) nodding and saying how refreshing it is to have bold and brave leadership espousing the virtues of the word for the day.
Finally it helps that there are enough suckers that are sufficiently convinced to parrot the same message as indisputable truth because their prefered media outlets (consolidated to 3 or 4 owning companies) have so broadly covered the issue.
Although you can't take that old rotoray with you to the beach, after 50 years there is probably no degradation in performance and it won't drop calls. I won't be dumping my land line any time soon!
I own the patent on a SAVE command, but since someone else has the patent on a pull down "File" menu, I just let it slide. You all have my permission to keep saving your files for free!
Slashdot Mirror
The NASA and JPL gang is quite clever, my bet is that they work this out.
There has been no word as of yet from Woods however.
Because in the airliner business in many instances there can be only one winner. In the late '60's there was a market between the narrow bodies and the 747. Lockheed built the L1011 (the last airliner they built). McDonanld Douglas jumped in 18 months after them with the Me Too! Me Too! DC-10 and gave away the store to American Airlines to undercut Lockheed. Both companies bled cash fighting each other. It killed Lockheed and was teh beginning of the end for Micky D's commercial business (although it took decades they lost market share consistently that whole time.
Boeing pulled back on the Super Jumbo because they saw two alternatices (HSCT and long thin fuel efficient) and there was the risk of Airbus coming in like Douglas did (Boeing started on full double deck before Airbus) and taking away all potential for profitability.
Its a floor wax / Its a dessert topping!
In the more mundane system failure, weather or pilot error induced incident, the scaling factor is more likely to overwhelm emergency infrastructure. Since many of the served routes are to huge metropolitan areas (e.g. London, Hong Kong) the stakes are high.
...and this has slowed MS down before? It is factored into their business decisions I am sure, but rather in their estimates of how long and how hard their lawyers will need to stall, deflect, drag out the proceedings before they accomplish their goal.
A zebra gets a few kicks in on while a lion has it by the throat, but a betting man will put his money on the lion.
Quantum computers will use red smoke (the Rubium cloud). Will we call the hobbiests that push the limits of these machines Quark shakers?
If the abuse of the courts is so obvious why wait for an IBM counter suit.
Like the software demo, only a fool would take it for reality.
And that is a good thing...despite these software glitches cars are SIGNIFACTLY safer today due to computers:
If cars are going to go fly by wire they need to be tested and maintained like airplanes instead of like disposable consumer electronics...but in balance computers have made cars safer.
Easy! Connect an unprotected windows box up to the internet, call it Socrates and the dead for thousands of years will write loads. WaNt s0me Pen1s en1argeMenT Cre4m?
Talk about making oneself flamebait. Christ proposed that people be kind, good, generous, loving to each other...(Not because it was required for salvation but because it demonstrated you appreciation for the grace of God).
So, giving your fellow man your time, energy and expertise over the internet is a Christian thing to do.
Be an open source contributor! Be a Christian Communists.
I think I'll burn some middle-eastern petroleum in my German engineered car (manufactured in Mexico), have a piece of Central America grown fruit, flip on the SE Asian fabricated TV and watch some good old american network news.
In addition to the terrorist tactical usage there is the political...for example that damn wall blocking off people's homes from their olive orchards or other places of work.
Adding a third dimension (layering) or a ?fourth? (Quantum Computing) could potentially keep Moore's law alive for another half century. Then there are transister replacements such as nano switches using light...insert your innovative or emerging technology of choice here
So you could have a paper making the point that world hunger can be eliminated by harvesting cheese from the moon. As long as the flow, grammer, spelling
As a tool for grading English Composition 101 to weed out gramatical problems fine. For any other field, evaluating the thought process going into a work (does it make a cogent point) is the the profs job. Poor grammer and sloppy papers are an obstacle toward that end, not the measuring stick to evaluate a student's performance.
This is a great opportunity really. A site that plays nice on a mobile device may have a market differentiator from other sites. If they considered the audience...
Suppose some enterprising person networked fast food restaurants in a major metro area and made it easy to browse menues and arrange delivery/pick-up.
A hookup site for nightclubs for people that are already out on the town.
Sports sight geared toward current event...live stats on your PDA while you are at the game
Fishing story bragging site..."The Kings are at 95 feet just off Port Angelus...hitting on red and silver spoons"
A niche in mobile oriented site is wide open and would have a steady/captive audience which would be a good market base for some advertisers.
This sort of about face should be no surprise. In Brown's last year before they sent him on his way tens of millions richer he explained a 1st quarter shortfall was due to the desktop services area which was impossible to make profitable and expecting a very short analyst attention span touted desktop services as the turn around strategy for a soft 3rd and 4th quarter.
Frankly I bet any of EDS' other employees could have been half as incompetent for 1/100th the compensation.
Charge some rediculous fee for companies that patent software (often for ideas that are 25 years old).
These funds could then be used to publish information in IEEE...encouraging the reuse and the adoption of standards, and freeing the creative juices to flow for solving NEW problems rather than reinventing pointers, !=, and do while constructs without infringing on someones patent.
There are elements on the inside that would rather send them all off to internment camps rather than embracing their cultural heritage and using the diverse US melting pot to make us more resilient and intelligent in our understanding of our friends and enemies around the world.
In Michigan you have a choice of itemizing all of your out of state purchases, or pay an estimated amount based on your income. I may be ignorant of the datails of the law, but I would think the second would offer some degree of indemnity. I don't want to keep the records of all my ebay, amazon, ....transactions.
It helps if your speach has been distilled and market tested (preferably with tax dollars). All extemperanious speach must be limited to platitudes.
It helps if it is presented with a blue background with the word for the day printed on it.
It helps if you have journalist paid (preferably with tax dollars) to go on the talk shows after your speach repeating the word of the day over and over.
It helps to have sage grey haired men from "research" institutions with very official and patriotic names (must include at least two of the following; American, Freedom, Heritage, Freedom, Liberty...) nodding and saying how refreshing it is to have bold and brave leadership espousing the virtues of the word for the day.
Finally it helps that there are enough suckers that are sufficiently convinced to parrot the same message as indisputable truth because their prefered media outlets (consolidated to 3 or 4 owning companies) have so broadly covered the issue.
Although you can't take that old rotoray with you to the beach, after 50 years there is probably no degradation in performance and it won't drop calls. I won't be dumping my land line any time soon!
I own the patent on a SAVE command, but since someone else has the patent on a pull down "File" menu, I just let it slide. You all have my permission to keep saving your files for free!