The objective behind the Tu-4 project was not to "increase their egos", rather, to kick-start Soviet large bomber design and production process. Your post reflects some shallow comments made by some authors in the aviation history literature, but from many points, the Tu-4 Bull project was immensely successful.The Russians, even though they once pioneered the heavy bomber concept with the early "Ilya Muromets", never had long range, heavy bombers during World Word II; and they suffered because of this. The USAAF and RAF had four-engined, heavy bombers throughout the war and used them effectively; but the Russians had to make do with Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik and a host of other light attack aircraft, and some slightly larger designs like the Petlyakov Pe-2. Several attempts at producing larger momber designs flopped miserably.
Some clever industrialist (probably not Stalin himself) saw that the best starting point would probably be duplicating a successful long range bomber design, and the Soviets duplicated the B-29, as you correctly pointed out, to the smallest screw. Rumor has it that a hole in the tail section, caused by a flak hit, was exactly duplicated by the Soviets in hundreds of Tu-4s produced.
Now you might argue that the B-29 and hence Tu-4 was outdated by 1947, but the very valuable expertise gained by Tu-4 project allowed the Russians to design and built very capable bomber aircraft that scared the US military throughout the Cold War. After the Tu-4, Soviet aircraft industry produced many very good designs that held up very successfully against their Western counterparts.
Note to nitpickers: Yes, I know Ilya Muromets has been designed by Sikorsky, who later immigrated to the US. It's a Russian design nevertheless. --
This rumor is complete bullshit. Iranians never had the F-16, although the US had made the blunder of selling them 80 F-14 Tomcats during the Shah era, 6 or 8 of them equipped with the ultra-powerful AN/AWG-9 radar that comes standard with the US Tomcats. During the Iran-Iraq war, the Iranians used these aircraft as fast and agile AWACS aircraft, figuring out that using the radar's long range capabilities will be much more useful and safer than sending it into direct combat. Even after almost 20 years of US embargoes, several F-14s still fly with the Iranian Air Force, despite US intelligence officers' claims every year "that existing F-14s have been cannibalized to provide spares to the flyable ones over the years, and none can fly as of today". Actually the Iranians get their kicks by flying them over Tehran every year in anniversary celebrations in front of US reporters and camera crews. They apparently can build some spare parts and expendables for F-14s, but mostly the aircraft are kept flyable by cannibalizing the others.
This blunder has been haunting the US military for a long time. Not wanting to miss the chance of shooting down an F-14 and get a nice, shiny medal, a trigger-happy commander on USS Vincennes shot down the Iranian airliner with a Standard missile, killing 290 people. One of my friends, an Iranian grad student here in the US, happens to be a distant relative of someone killed aboard the plane.
Loading an aircraft full of dead people and let it be shot down? Give me a break.
Umm, I guess they want to pay him because the company he created basically defined what a successful e-commerce operation should look like, beat much larger competitors hands down, and has been providing excellent service to bookworms like me all around the planet. They only recently screwed up with the "one-click" litigation issue. --
Re:Thermopylae (Offtopic)
on
Gates of Fire
·
· Score: 1
Very cool site, Costas. Way to go. At least a Web page with both Greek and Turkish flags together without the use of phrases like "barbarian, subhuman invaders" etc. However, I wonder what the comments will look like when number of members increase. You have a very tough job ahead of you. My guess is that you will spend most of your free time cleansing the forums. --
Umm, hello? DSL works perfectly over here at 1.6Mb/s. There are technologies which are substantially faster than analog modems, and consumers already have access to them. The only problem is to get that service to all customers, which is a problem area with at least DSL and cable for the time being. Perhaps LEO satellite access companies (Teledesic etc) will change the picture.
I don't think using power lines to transmit data will work. It has been extensively studied before by the British, and it flopped. Plus, the fact that the company did not even bother testing it on the actual power grid before letting out all the hype tells lots about the competency and the motive of the company. Had someone really discovered a feasible way of transmitting data over power lines reliably, VCs and bigger corporations would have queued to fund them. --
Incredible Linux stock craze going on..
on
VA Reprices Again
·
· Score: 3
I have posted this to another thread, but since Linux stocks are relevant here, I will just re-post.
I submitted this as a story, but it was rejected. I believe it's very interesting and demonstrates the Linux stock craze in the markets very well. Check this out:
A bunch of people on Yahoo chat boards touted a company called Perle Systems; which makes I/O cards and equipment, as the company behind Perl. To make matters worse, the company released a news article about Linux drivers for their products to hype the stock further. Thousands of crazy day traders flocked to buy the stock just because the ticker symbol is PERL and they thought it was Linux-related, and the stock is now up 200% in one day.
The company owns Specialix, which made multiport serial cards, and all they did was to put in a press release that announced the availability of Specialix Linux drivers that have already been around for about five years now. --
I submitted this as a story, but it was rejected. I believe it's very interesting and demonstrates the Linux stock craze in the markets very well. Check this out:
A bunch of people on Yahoo chat boards touted a company called Perle Systems; which makes I/O cards and equipment, as the company behind Perl. Thousands of crazy day traders flocked to buy the stock just because the ticker symbol is PERL and they thought it was Linux-related, and the stock is now up 200% in one day.
Go check the stock "PERL" if you don't believe. --
Thermal/IR imaging on tanks and armored vehicles is usually in the form of a CRT or oculars which you look into.
Displaying images on transparent glass has been done for more than 40 years now, on gunsights and recently HUDs in fighter jets. The HUDs on military aircraft do not project a complete moving picture, but numbers and symbology, to allow the pilot to keep his eyes on the target during combat.
So the technology is there for projecting images to transparent glass. Nothing new there. I don't think it will be possible to retrofit a HUD in a car without significant modification in the windshield just like you said. --
Wow..This is the second reply this week from a celebrity, my posts got replies from both Michael K. Johnson and now you. Just wait I get the attention of Alan Cox and ultimately Linus..
Seriously though, I am a Muslim but I have been raised in the most secular Islamic country in the world, Turkey. This might have shaped my notion of Islamic laws and the Shari'a.
Secular Muslim societies may choose not to use the Shari'a as the base of their legal framework, but that doesn't change the fact that such a base exists. Devout Muslims in secular socities will still recognize the Shari'a and consider themselves bound by the requirements the Shari'a places on individuals, even if they are living in a society which doesn't adhere to the Shari'a's communal rules.
This is right on. What I'm saying is that the content of Shari'a is highly subject to interpretation of the clergy. A devout Muslim only responsible for obeying what's written in the Koran plus Sunna, but even Sunna is not very clear. I doubt refusing the Shari'a as a replacement for law makes one an infidel.
To summarize, I agree with your points; Shari'a exists, and it's indeed used as the basis of all laws in non-secular Islamic countries. I don't believe it justifies the use of the phrase "Islamic laws" for Shari'a. Our religion has been associated with so many negative things over the years (seen any action flicks recently where the terrorist is not a Muslim or a Russian??) that I just could not stand hearing people believe that Islam orders the punishment of thieves by dismembering the hands. This is simply not true.
Thanks for the discussion, and good luck in your IPO. As if you needed any. --
My understanding is that one can get executed in China for almost anything committed against the state; or interpreted to be that way. I have read a story of two thieves executed because of stealing four lightbulbs from the landing lights of a nearby airport. Other posts have some interesting examples, too.
As for people being able to read this from China, I doubt it. --
Even Islamic law is not as bad as this. You merely lose your hand.
There is no such thing as "Islamic law". The Holy Koran is not a law book. The thing that's being called "Islamic law" by non-secular Islamic countries (Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iran) is a merely a bunch of terrible laws, conjured by some mullahs based on their false interpretation of Koran. It is more of a repressive tool rather than a law-i.e. adultery is a crime in so-called "Islamic" Saudi Arabia, yet male members of the royal family can easily build huge harems by importing European models without any punishment. You can easily, legally and safely hire a prostitute in a posh Iranian hotel by simply arranging a "mu'ta", a temporary Islamic marriage made up by Iranian interpreters of Koran.
Koran is interpreted differently by secular Islamic countries and their law system is devoi of any references to Islam.
The story about Chevy Nova has been dismissed as an urban legend, but I guess there was a similar, and more real story about another car called Seat Malaga, a compact Spanish car. "Malaga" sounds very much like "malakas", a very common phrase in Greek slang with various meanings, ranging from "stupid" to "wanker". I remember reading that the Spanish company, Seat, seriously considering using an alternate name for the car in the Greek market. I don't know much more about it, though. Perhaps a Greek friend can enlighten us. --
You probably already know that this method is called "URL rewriting"; and comes standard with many server-side programming technologies, Java servlets come to mind. Of course, it probably would not be a problem to implement them with any good server and server-side programming technology combination. I agree to your points, and the pros and cons of the technology probably could not be summarized better.
I don't really understand all the negative publicity about cookies. URL rewriting is an alternative when session information is kept only for a short time, and there is no reliable way of keeping persistent state information on the client's browser other than cookies. I believe it's possible to keep temporary session state using cookies set to expire in a very short time, but there is still a need for cookies for keeping persistent state. --
There have been several references to the mysterious Australian radar which can detect Stealth aircraft. I think a clarification is needed on the operating principles of this radar.
As far as I remember, this specific radar used to be called "JINDALEE" by the Australians, and it's an "over-the-horizon" radar, which works by bouncing the radar signals off the low layers of the atmosphere to see over the horizon. The radar required seperate transmitter and receiver arrays with some distance between them (sometimes called a "bistatic" configuration) and hence could detect stealth aircraft, since the receiver array could pick up radar echoes scattered by the special shape of the body of Stealth aircraft. --
A Russian aviation fan, who naturally happens to be a fanatic Serb supporter, put up a page about US and Allied losses in the Kosovo campaign.
Check the site out for more information about the F-117 loss, and other claimed US and Allied losses. The F-117 is credited to SA-6 missiles in this page.
Both the F-117 and B-2 fly with special fittings when they are not in combat duty. In the F-117 this is in the form of small rectangular boxes over the wings. These fittings increase the radar cross-section of the airplane and make it equal to an ordinary civilian plane; to make friendly skies safer to fly by allowing the planes to be tracked by air traffic control, just like every other plane.
Plus, you don't want everyone on the fair grounds to learn about the capabilities of the plane. If you're interested in the topic, just compare the cockpit photos of the Mig-29 demonstrated to the West in 1989, and Mig-29s in actual service with the Russian Air Force. You will be amazed to see how they dumbed down the cockpit layout so that the first Western smart-ass to see the photos would say "Gee, Russians are using 1950s technology in these."
It is amazing how this little known security feature causes people to downplay the capabilities of these aircraft. I remember back when a bunch of F-117s came to Turkey; the armed forces and civilian air traffic control boasted how they could easily detect the so-called "stealth" fighters. As the Iraqi and Serbian can tell, it is not that easy without the fittings. --
'Wild Weasels' are A4 pilots on anti-SAM duty. They draw SAM radar and fire AMRAMs to blow them up.
Wild Weasels are not "A4" pilots. Wild Weasel duty has been flown by different types of planes in the US arsenal-most recently the F-4G Phantom(which is purpose built for this duty), and F-16s. F-4G has been used in the Gulf War, but I don't think it's still in use as a Wild Weasel aircraft.
It is true that radar operators are scared and illuminate targets for a short time, fire their missiles and turn the radar off. While this seems to be an extremely dumb idea, not all SAMs rely on radar guidance throughout the flight, and Iraqis scored on numerous US and Allied aircraft using this method in the Gulf War.
The primary anti-radar missile in use by the US now is called HARM, not "AMRAM". AIM-120 AMRAAM is a different beast, a BVR(beyond visual range) medium-range air-to-air missile. HARM was used in the Gulf War, and most recently HARMs were quite useful in reducing rabid Milosevic's air defense radars to scrap metal. --
and what they are doing now, as well as a few details of how Microsoft tried to sink them. Can anyone show me where these details in the article are? I read the article several times, but could not find them. Looking at the pictures carefully did not help much either. I don't want to join the discussion of whether Amiga is dead or not. But now that people started attaching anti-Microsoft remarks to completely irrelevant articles , I wonder what will come next. --
Intel does not need IP cores, and I don't think Intel will ever enter the business of IP. IP is a completely different line of business than embedded processors. IMHO, had Intel wished to enter the IP business, they could have made low-power x86 IP cores available in a very short time, and wipe a sizable portion of the market-there are lots of companies surviving by only selling x86 compatible IP cores. So let's not use "IP core" as a synonym for embedded processors.
Intel has acquired one of the best embedded processor families when it got Digital's chip business: The StrongARM, which already powers some Internet appliances-(Rebel.com's NetWinder comes to mind. So they already have a very nice line of embedded processors for all sorts of applications. Timna is obviously not targeted at the general embedded applications market. It's rather an ultra-cheap processor for inexpensive PC's and x86 compatible network appliances. I believe it will be positioned against National Semiconductor's Geode, an Internet appliance on-a-chip, a great chip that's almost a complete PC. Intel has all the reasons to be scared of Geode, and VIA's own inexpensive integrated x86 processors, since Asian producers will start using them in large numbers when the Internet appliance business takes off. With a high quality, free operating system like Linux, and a cheap x86 processor combining CPU, multimedia and memory interface on a single chip, opportunities abound for companies which want to build Internet appliances.
And there are lots of processors in the embedded market which can TCP/IP quite well, along with a host of other capabilities required in today's applications. It's not like the embedded processor market is desperately waiting for Intel to come up with a line of powerful processors. The examples you give, Z80 and 8051, are not contenders in the Internet appliance market; although very advanced derivatives of these exist, which can be used for many purposes. EZ80, just out from Zilog, for example, is completely backwards compatible with Z80, and has its own TCP/IP stack.
Please make sure to check Geode out. You will be impressed. --
On top of that, the plane was so far ahead of its time there STILL aren't any faster planes... 30 years later.
Umm, there still are not any faster unclassified aircraft. Rumors about "Aurora" abound, plus I don't think the US would have retired Blackbird without a viable replacement.
This is a point to think about. If Intel's investments in Linux companies will slow down or stop Linux development for alternative platforms, then it's not good for Linux in general. --
Etymology of "nerd"and "geek"
on
Geeks vs. Nerds
·
· Score: 2
IEEE Spectrum has a very nice section about interesting words that show up in the electrical engineering discipline. I remember reading an article discussing the etymology of the word "nerd" in a past issue, perhaps a couple of years ago. It suggested that the word probably originated at MIT and was a derivative of "knurd". Some people thought that the word was first coined as "knurd" since it was the reverse of "drunk", hence somebody who does not drink and party. I don't remember the details, but it was very entertaining and informative.
Any ideas/knowledge about the origins of these two words "geek" and "nerd"?? --
What makes you think that Allah is a word that the NSA would need to listen for? He's the God we believe in. Almost every Muslim mentions his name numerous times throughout the day, and good luck to NSA if they are actually monitoring for any phrase containing his holy name. They will need boatloads of signal processing power.
Get over this, guys. Smart people do not have racial stereotypes and prejudices. Slashdot is all about smart people and free exchange of opinions. The word "Allah" has no more relation to terrorism or anything illegal than, say, "Jesus", or "Jehovah". --
Slashdot Mirror
The objective behind the Tu-4 project was not to "increase their egos", rather, to kick-start Soviet large bomber design and production process. Your post reflects some shallow comments made by some authors in the aviation history literature, but from many points, the Tu-4 Bull project was immensely successful.The Russians, even though they once pioneered the heavy bomber concept with the early "Ilya Muromets", never had long range, heavy bombers during World Word II; and they suffered because of this. The USAAF and RAF had four-engined, heavy bombers throughout the war and used them effectively; but the Russians had to make do with Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik and a host of other light attack aircraft, and some slightly larger designs like the Petlyakov Pe-2. Several attempts at producing larger momber designs flopped miserably.
Some clever industrialist (probably not Stalin himself) saw that the best starting point would probably be duplicating a successful long range bomber design, and the Soviets duplicated the B-29, as you correctly pointed out, to the smallest screw. Rumor has it that a hole in the tail section, caused by a flak hit, was exactly duplicated by the Soviets in hundreds of Tu-4s produced.
Now you might argue that the B-29 and hence Tu-4 was outdated by 1947, but the very valuable expertise gained by Tu-4 project allowed the Russians to design and built very capable bomber aircraft that scared the US military throughout the Cold War. After the Tu-4, Soviet aircraft industry produced many very good designs that held up very successfully against their Western counterparts.
Note to nitpickers: Yes, I know Ilya Muromets has been designed by Sikorsky, who later immigrated to the US. It's a Russian design nevertheless.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming in January 2000.
This rumor is complete bullshit. Iranians never had the F-16, although the US had made the blunder of selling them 80 F-14 Tomcats during the Shah era, 6 or 8 of them equipped with the ultra-powerful AN/AWG-9 radar that comes standard with the US Tomcats. During the Iran-Iraq war, the Iranians used these aircraft as fast and agile AWACS aircraft, figuring out that using the radar's long range capabilities will be much more useful and safer than sending it into direct combat. Even after almost 20 years of US embargoes, several F-14s still fly with the Iranian Air Force, despite US intelligence officers' claims every year "that existing F-14s have been cannibalized to provide spares to the flyable ones over the years, and none can fly as of today". Actually the Iranians get their kicks by flying them over Tehran every year in anniversary celebrations in front of US reporters and camera crews. They apparently can build some spare parts and expendables for F-14s, but mostly the aircraft are kept flyable by cannibalizing the others.
This blunder has been haunting the US military for a long time. Not wanting to miss the chance of shooting down an F-14 and get a nice, shiny medal, a trigger-happy commander on USS Vincennes shot down the Iranian airliner with a Standard missile, killing 290 people. One of my friends, an Iranian grad student here in the US, happens to be a distant relative of someone killed aboard the plane.
Loading an aircraft full of dead people and let it be shot down? Give me a break.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming in January 2000.
Yahoo uses Java servlets extensively for some portions of the site. Sun site is completely Java and servlets.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming in January 2000.
Umm, I guess they want to pay him because the company he created basically defined what a successful e-commerce operation should look like, beat much larger competitors hands down, and has been providing excellent service to bookworms like me all around the planet. They only recently screwed up with the "one-click" litigation issue.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming in January 2000.
Very cool site, Costas. Way to go. At least a Web page with both Greek and Turkish flags together without the use of phrases like "barbarian, subhuman invaders" etc. However, I wonder what the comments will look like when number of members increase. You have a very tough job ahead of you. My guess is that you will spend most of your free time cleansing the forums.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming in January 2000.
This is one of the best brief interpretations of the Signal 11 Posting Algorithm. Moderators, will you please moderate this post up?
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming in January 2000.
Umm, hello? DSL works perfectly over here at 1.6Mb/s. There are technologies which are substantially faster than analog modems, and consumers already have access to them. The only problem is to get that service to all customers, which is a problem area with at least DSL and cable for the time being. Perhaps LEO satellite access companies (Teledesic etc) will change the picture.
I don't think using power lines to transmit data will work. It has been extensively studied before by the British, and it flopped. Plus, the fact that the company did not even bother testing it on the actual power grid before letting out all the hype tells lots about the competency and the motive of the company. Had someone really discovered a feasible way of transmitting data over power lines reliably, VCs and bigger corporations would have queued to fund them.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming in January 2000.
I have posted this to another thread, but since Linux stocks are relevant here, I will just re-post.
I submitted this as a story, but it was rejected.
I believe it's very interesting and demonstrates the Linux stock craze in the markets very well.
Check this out:
A bunch of people on Yahoo chat boards touted a company called Perle Systems; which makes I/O cards and equipment, as the company behind Perl. To make matters worse, the company released a news article about Linux drivers for their products to hype the stock further. Thousands of crazy day traders flocked to buy the stock just because the ticker symbol is PERL and they thought it was Linux-related, and the stock is now up 200% in one day.
Go check the stock "PERL" if you don't believe.
The company owns Specialix, which made multiport serial cards, and all they did was to put in a press release that announced the availability of Specialix Linux drivers that have already been around for about five years now.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming in January 2000.
I submitted this as a story, but it was rejected.
I believe it's very interesting and demonstrates the Linux stock craze in the markets very well.
Check this out:
A bunch of people on Yahoo chat boards touted a company called Perle Systems; which makes I/O cards and equipment, as the company behind Perl. Thousands of crazy day traders flocked to buy the stock just because the ticker symbol is PERL and they thought it was Linux-related, and the stock is now up 200% in one day.
Go check the stock "PERL" if you don't believe.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming in January 2000.
Thermal/IR imaging on tanks and armored vehicles is usually in the form of a CRT or oculars which you look into.
Displaying images on transparent glass has been done for more than 40 years now, on gunsights and recently HUDs in fighter jets. The HUDs on military aircraft do not project a complete moving picture, but numbers and symbology, to allow the pilot to keep his eyes on the target during combat.
So the technology is there for projecting images to transparent glass. Nothing new there. I don't think it will be possible to retrofit a HUD in a car without significant modification in the windshield just like you said.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming in January 2000.
Wow..This is the second reply this week from a celebrity, my posts got replies from both Michael K. Johnson and now you. Just wait I get the attention of Alan Cox and ultimately Linus..
Seriously though, I am a Muslim but I have been raised in the most secular Islamic country in the world, Turkey. This might have shaped my notion of Islamic laws and the Shari'a.
Secular Muslim societies may choose not to use the Shari'a as the base of their legal framework, but that doesn't change the fact that such a base exists. Devout Muslims in secular socities will still recognize the Shari'a and consider themselves bound by the requirements the Shari'a places on individuals, even if they are living in a society which doesn't adhere to the Shari'a's communal rules.
This is right on. What I'm saying is that the content of Shari'a is highly subject to interpretation of the clergy. A devout Muslim only responsible for obeying what's written in the Koran plus Sunna, but even Sunna is not very clear. I doubt refusing the Shari'a as a replacement for law makes one an infidel.
To summarize, I agree with your points; Shari'a exists, and it's indeed used as the basis of all laws in non-secular Islamic countries. I don't believe it justifies the use of the phrase "Islamic laws" for Shari'a. Our religion has been associated with so many negative things over the years (seen any action flicks recently where the terrorist is not a Muslim or a Russian??) that I just could not stand hearing people believe that Islam orders the punishment of thieves by dismembering the hands. This is simply not true.
Thanks for the discussion, and good luck in your IPO. As if you needed any.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming in January 2000.
My understanding is that one can get executed in China for almost anything committed against the state; or interpreted to be that way. I have read a story of two thieves executed because of stealing four lightbulbs from the landing lights of a nearby airport. Other posts have some interesting examples, too.
As for people being able to read this from China, I doubt it.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming in January 2000.
Even Islamic law is not as bad as this. You merely lose your hand.
There is no such thing as "Islamic law". The Holy Koran is not a law book. The thing that's being called "Islamic law" by non-secular Islamic countries (Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iran) is a merely a bunch of terrible laws, conjured by some mullahs based on their false interpretation of Koran. It is more of a repressive tool rather than a law-i.e. adultery is a crime in so-called "Islamic" Saudi Arabia, yet male members of the royal family can easily build huge harems by importing European models without any punishment. You can easily, legally and safely hire a prostitute in a posh Iranian hotel by simply arranging a "mu'ta", a temporary Islamic marriage made up by Iranian interpreters of Koran.
Koran is interpreted differently by secular Islamic countries and their law system is devoi of any references to Islam.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming in January 2000.
The story about Chevy Nova has been dismissed as an urban legend, but I guess there was a similar, and more real story about another car called Seat Malaga, a compact Spanish car. "Malaga" sounds very much like "malakas", a very common phrase in Greek slang with various meanings, ranging from "stupid" to "wanker". I remember reading that the Spanish company, Seat, seriously considering using an alternate name for the car in the Greek market. I don't know much more about it, though. Perhaps a Greek friend can enlighten us.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming in January 2000.
You probably already know that this method is called "URL rewriting"; and comes standard with many server-side programming technologies, Java servlets come to mind. Of course, it probably would not be a problem to implement them with any good server and server-side programming technology combination. I agree to your points, and the pros and cons of the technology probably could not be summarized better.
I don't really understand all the negative publicity about cookies. URL rewriting is an alternative when session information is kept only for a short time, and there is no reliable way of keeping persistent state information on the client's browser other than cookies. I believe it's possible to keep temporary session state using cookies set to expire in a very short time, but there is still a need for cookies for keeping persistent state.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming in January 2000.
There have been several references to the mysterious Australian radar which can detect Stealth aircraft. I think a clarification is needed on the operating principles of this radar.
As far as I remember, this specific radar used to be called "JINDALEE" by the Australians, and it's an "over-the-horizon" radar, which works by bouncing the radar signals off the low layers of the atmosphere to see over the horizon. The radar required seperate transmitter and receiver arrays with some distance between them (sometimes called a "bistatic" configuration) and hence could detect stealth aircraft, since the receiver array could pick up radar echoes scattered by the special shape of the body of Stealth aircraft.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming in January 2000.
A Russian aviation fan, who naturally happens to be a fanatic Serb supporter, put up a page about US and Allied losses in the Kosovo campaign.
Check the site out for more information about the F-117 loss, and other claimed US and Allied losses. The F-117 is credited to SA-6 missiles in this page.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming in January 2000.
Both the F-117 and B-2 fly with special fittings when they are not in combat duty. In the F-117 this is in the form of small rectangular boxes over the wings. These fittings increase the radar cross-section of the airplane and make it equal to an ordinary civilian plane; to make friendly skies safer to fly by allowing the planes to be tracked by air traffic control, just like every other plane.
Plus, you don't want everyone on the fair grounds to learn about the capabilities of the plane. If you're interested in the topic, just compare the cockpit photos of the Mig-29 demonstrated to the West in 1989, and Mig-29s in actual service with the Russian Air Force. You will be amazed to see how they dumbed down the cockpit layout so that the first Western smart-ass to see the photos would say "Gee, Russians are using 1950s technology in these."
It is amazing how this little known security feature causes people to downplay the capabilities of these aircraft. I remember back when a bunch of F-117s came to Turkey; the armed forces and civilian air traffic control boasted how they could easily detect the so-called "stealth" fighters. As the Iraqi and Serbian can tell, it is not that easy without the fittings.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming in January 2000.
'Wild Weasels' are A4 pilots on anti-SAM duty. They draw SAM radar and fire AMRAMs to blow them up.
Wild Weasels are not "A4" pilots. Wild Weasel duty has been flown by different types of planes in the US arsenal-most recently the F-4G Phantom(which is purpose built for this duty), and F-16s. F-4G has been used in the Gulf War, but I don't think it's still in use as a Wild Weasel aircraft.
It is true that radar operators are scared and illuminate targets for a short time, fire their missiles and turn the radar off. While this seems to be an extremely dumb idea, not all SAMs rely on radar guidance throughout the flight, and Iraqis scored on numerous US and Allied aircraft using this method in the Gulf War.
The primary anti-radar missile in use by the US now is called HARM, not "AMRAM". AIM-120 AMRAAM is a different beast, a BVR(beyond visual range) medium-range air-to-air missile. HARM was used in the Gulf War, and most recently HARMs were quite useful in reducing rabid Milosevic's air defense radars to scrap metal.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming in January 2000.
and what they are doing now, as well as a few details of how Microsoft tried to sink them. Can anyone show me where these details in the article are? I read the article several times, but could not find them. Looking at the pictures carefully did not help much either. I don't want to join the discussion of whether Amiga is dead or not. But now that people started attaching anti-Microsoft remarks to completely irrelevant articles , I wonder what will come next.
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Intel does not need IP cores, and I don't think Intel will ever enter the business of IP. IP is a completely different line of business than embedded processors. IMHO, had Intel wished to enter the IP business, they could have made low-power x86 IP cores available in a very short time, and wipe a sizable portion of the market-there are lots of companies surviving by only selling x86 compatible IP cores. So let's not use "IP core" as a synonym for embedded processors.
Intel has acquired one of the best embedded processor families when it got Digital's chip business: The StrongARM, which already powers some Internet appliances-(Rebel.com's NetWinder comes to mind. So they already have a very nice line of embedded processors for all sorts of applications. Timna is obviously not targeted at the general embedded applications market. It's rather an ultra-cheap processor for inexpensive PC's and x86 compatible network appliances. I believe it will be positioned against National Semiconductor's Geode, an Internet appliance on-a-chip, a great chip that's almost a complete PC. Intel has all the reasons to be scared of Geode, and VIA's own inexpensive integrated x86 processors, since Asian producers will start using them in large numbers when the Internet appliance business takes off. With a high quality, free operating system like Linux, and a cheap x86 processor combining CPU, multimedia and memory interface on a single chip, opportunities abound for companies which want to build Internet appliances.
And there are lots of processors in the embedded market which can TCP/IP quite well, along with a host of other capabilities required in today's applications. It's not like the embedded processor market is desperately waiting for Intel to come up with a line of powerful processors. The examples you give, Z80 and 8051, are not contenders in the Internet appliance market; although very advanced derivatives of these exist, which can be used for many purposes. EZ80, just out from Zilog, for example, is completely backwards compatible with Z80, and has its own TCP/IP stack.
Please make sure to check Geode out. You will be impressed.
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On top of that, the plane was so far ahead of its time there STILL aren't any faster planes... 30 years later.
Umm, there still are not any faster unclassified aircraft. Rumors about "Aurora" abound, plus I don't think the US would have retired Blackbird without a viable replacement.
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This is a point to think about. If Intel's investments in Linux companies will slow down or stop Linux development for alternative platforms, then it's not good for Linux in general.
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BluetoothCentral.com
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IEEE Spectrum has a very nice section about interesting words that show up in the electrical engineering discipline. I remember reading an article discussing the etymology of the word "nerd" in a past issue, perhaps a couple of years ago. It suggested that the word probably originated at MIT and was a derivative of "knurd". Some people thought that the word was first coined as "knurd" since it was the reverse of "drunk", hence somebody who does not drink and party. I don't remember the details, but it was very entertaining and informative.
Any ideas/knowledge about the origins of these two words "geek" and "nerd"??
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What makes you think that Allah is a word that the NSA would need to listen for? He's the God we believe in. Almost every Muslim mentions his name numerous times throughout the day, and good luck to NSA if they are actually monitoring for any phrase containing his holy name. They will need boatloads of signal processing power.
Get over this, guys. Smart people do not have racial stereotypes and prejudices. Slashdot is all about smart people and free exchange of opinions. The word "Allah" has no more relation to terrorism or anything illegal than, say, "Jesus", or "Jehovah".
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