Then why did leaders in the south itself argue that the war was over slavery? Slashdot's servers aren't large enough to hold all the speeches, quotes, and letters made by southern politicians to that effect. The south did not argue only that they should be allowed to own slaves in the south, but that laws against owning slaves in northern states were unconstitutional and that they should be allowed to expand the institution into new states.
Lincoln's political moves regarding slavery were a reflection in part on his need to keep the north unified at a time when, for instance, Irish immigrants in NYC were holding race riots. Freeing slaves was not a universally popular idea in the north by any means, while preservation of the Union was a unifying theme.
In the vector mode tests using G4 and G5 it looks like CPU throughput is the bottleneck, not memory, that appears to be their conclusion. So for the vectorized version of the application - the one they're obviously *really* interested in - extrapolation will be easier.
1. They weren't using a compiler optimized for the G5, and expect performance to increase when they have that opportunity.
2. Dual G5s appear to scale better than dual P4s. They're getting close to 2x performance with the dual G5s, much better than most folks are used to with SMP systems.
They give a hoot because it can help predict the performance of higher MHz machines when they become available.
So when some NASA folks who use Jet3D are buying hardware a year from now and see they can buy a 3 GHz G5 or a 4.4 GHz P4 they'll be able to extrapolate performance to some degree.
As they point out, no such Fortran compiler for the G5 exists yet. Making it rather difficult for them to make that comparision.
As they also point out, if you'd be so kind as to RTFA, this is Part I of their benchmarking effort. They'll undertake Part II later, when additional tools are available.
These folks aren't benchmarking for the public, they're benchmarking so that agency folks using this particular modelling software can make informed purchasing decisions.
Designer of the PDP-8 - perhaps one of the most economical and aesthetically pleasing designs of all time. Designer of the PDP-11 which led to the VAX.
DEC was 2nd largest computer manufacturer for years.
Add to this his more recent accomplishments and I have no doubt he has more knowledge about computer design than everyone posting here put together.
Don Petit said just the opposite in an interview, that the custom-fitted recliners were far more comfortable than the shuttle seats, which he described as being about as comfortable as a commercial airliner's seat (more room, though.)
You sound just like B. Gentry Lee when, as a science brat at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, when some of us had the chance to take him hiking up the Columbia Gorge the day after he'd given a talk at the museum.
He was the project manager of Galileo at the time, if my memory serves. If not, then whichever of the various exploratory vehicles that was first designed to go up on an conventional booster, then redesigned per NASA dictum to fit in the shuttle, then redesigned again after the Challenger blew up and a whole new set of safety-related design constraints were put into place.
Of course in the story it was decided that the weight penalty of actually taking the mail to the moon to be franked was excessive so a little fraud was perpetrated instead...
When I was a kid laws mandating seat belts in cars didn't exist (much less those requiring you wear them) nor was there any legislation in regard to designing cars to standard levels of survivability during an accident.
And in the last three or so decades we've seen automobile deaths drop slightly while miles driven and drivers driving have roughly doubled (NYT sometime last week)
That's a worthwhile accomplishment, largely due to government regulation.
As to why open source doesn't sell itself, nothing sells itself, not even sex, that's why streetwalkers walk the street rather than wait at home for johns to knock on the door.
And having legislation require agencies to consider open source legislation will introduce many IT types to the possibilities. Think of it as government marketing of a concept to its agencies.
Government is also a large-scale purchaser of off-the-shelf products, and this is what the bill is targetted at.
The Multnomah County Educational Support District, Oregon has, for instance, switched to using Linux for file servers, mail, etc etc. They claim substantial annual savings, not just in license fees but in headcount as they've found Unix-like servers to take less time to sysadmin overall than Windows servers.
Likewise many copies of Office and other off-the-shelf software are used in state agencies.
One big hole in off-the-shelf software is in the realm of GIS. There's nothing to realistically compete with ESRIs offerings (if you think Grass is sufficient, go smoke some)
Yes, the savings to be had for mundane applications and servers is tiny compared to the money spent for complex custom software but a penny saved is a penny earned, as a wise man once said. A million dollars saved is a bunch of teachers or policemen or fireman who aren't laid off, which given the current state of affairs in Oregon is something we can't afford to ignore.
The City of Portland Water Bureau will forgive excess water bills due to undetected leaks or the like if you show that you've fixed the problem. Often leaks aren't detectable and a large water bill is the first clue the homeowner sees (western Oregon is very wet, water water everywhere)
Your explanation is incorrect. Hiroshima was picked because it was one of the few industrial cities that hadn't been wiped out by the earlier incindiery attacks.
The problem was literally one of finding targets that were intact enough to demonstrate the bomb's power and to tangibly impact what little was left of Japan's industry.
As far as the "thousands of American lives were saved" argument... the evidence is strong that Japan would've surrendered beforehand if the Emperor's personal safety and ceremonial role in Japanese life were preserved. The US had rejected such offers but after the bombs were dropped did accept them. And note that Hirohito's son is Emperor yet today...
Generals Eisenhower and Marshall (the top dog) both opposed dropping the bomb on Japan, as Rhodes explains in the book (and as Ike wrote in his ghost-written autobiography)
Richard Rhodes wouldn't disagree with Feynman's comments, I imagine. There were a bunch of details to work out - the theoretical people did a ton of work - but they weren't of applied science variety.
They were doing a lot of modelling of phenonema in order to help them design elements like the exposive lenses that compressed the plutonium to critical mass.
The end result wasn't the unknown, it was how to build a device to deliver the end result (and how to machine plutonium, or breed sufficient quantities of plutonium in the first place, or separate U235 from U238, etc)
"engineering" but engineering done by many of the brightest physicists alive at the time.
You wouldn't ask why he didn't discuss the espionage around atomic bomb development nor the motivation to continue development after the war in the first volume.
Because much of "Dark Sun" is devoted to those two topics and to their effects on the Soviet nuclear weapons program and the Cold War.
The heavy fuel tank wasn't an issue, it's jettisoned before they reach orbit. However you're right that Columbia could not have reached the ISS. NASA states that the two orbits were different enough that it would've required a main engine burn to achieve, and of course there's no main engine fuel once the shuttle's in orbit. The reentry burn only slows the shuttle by about 175 mph and doesn't require the massive thrust generated by the main engines, and the small engines used to control attitude, dock, etc are... puny.
Getting a shuttle up there in a week seems impossible. NASA has stated "no way", and I believe them.
Well... as of this morning NASA is focusing on the foam hit as being the most likely cause, so I don't think red herring status is appropriate.
It turns out the shuttle was on the pad during drenching rainstorms and there's (NASA) speculation that ice may've built up. Given that the piece of foam that broke off was near the strut that attaches the shuttle proper to the external fuel tank, with the strut surrounded by foam, it's possible that water could've accumulated there. Which would've frozen once the tank was filled with LOX and liquid hydrogen.
If the chunk that fell off contained a lot of ice it would've been a lot heavier than foam alone. And the engineering analysis that was done apparently only looked at the case where the foam was foam alone.
This is all in today's NYT and my local paper (which goes to bed later than our edition of the Times as I'm on the West Coast) and all comes straight from NASA.
In Europe, at least, we have Napolean and Hitler to thank for this.
For instance, Sweden didn't switch to driving on the right until the late 70s or early 80s. Why did they continue driving on the left while Norway had switched to driving on the right in the 1940s?
Germany occupied Norway while Sweden managed to stay out of the War.
New Scientist had a wonderful article about the whole left/right side driving issue many years ago. In France the switch took place after the French Revolution (why? figure it out yourself, with the following hint: it had to do with not wanting to appear wealthy).
Then Napolean forcibly exported the habit to much of Europe, just as he exported the legal system developed in France while he ran the show.
I once called 911 on a kid stealing stuff from my unlocked car stored in my unlocked garage, and the cops caught him (more precisely the german shepard they brought to the scene caught him).
The fact that my car and garage was unlocked did not matter. Kid was charged with thievin' and burglin' (a "II" and "III" low-level charge in each case since he'd only managed to run off with a book). Served a month and three years pro.
Now... the fact that the garage was unlocked meant he wasn't charged with "breaking and entering" (or perhaps in my state's legal code a burglin' charge with a lower number, i.e. higher on the felony food chain).
The law does not view unlocked doors as being tacit permission to enter someone's home or garage, nor to remove their property.
Why should an open relay or otherwise unsecure system be treated otherwise? Theft of service is theft of service.
Not that I'm advocating one relay mail from unknown systems! Obviously in today's world if you do so you'll quickly have your system hijacked by people you can't track down. But the hijackers are still... hijackers.
You have it backwards. The BIOS maker isn't telling the MB maker their customers aren't important.
The BIOS maker knows the MB maker holds their customers to be important, so asks the MB "what do you need?" Assuming that the MB wants to make their customers happy and will ask for features that will make them happy.
The GM analogy if flawed. The BIOS manufacturer is more like a piston rod manufacturer than GM. GM decides what kind of engines their customers desire and specs piston rods accordingly. The flow is top-down (customer -> GM -> piston rod manufacturer). Just as it is with the BIOS maker (customer -> computer manufacturer -> MB maker -> BIOS maker + chipset maker etc)
This is one of the FUNNIEST examples of what happens on Slashdot when people don't read the article that I've seen in a LONG time.
People are shouting "I won't buy a car with such a recording device" or "this is a blatant example of government intrustion into privacy" etc etc.
What's being missed - though it is clearly stated in the article - is that companies like GM and Ford have included data recorders in newer cars for some time now. As part of the airbag system.
So the issue isn't whether or not such recorders are going to be standard issue on future cars. They're already standard issue on many current cars.
The issue is whether or not the industry should adopt a data standard for the devices so that information may be more easily shared, by safety researchers among other things.
As to whether or not those experts arguing that information on deceleration may be useful in the field after an accident are right or not... they may be wrong.
But they're a hell of a lot more likely to be right than your typical pimply-faced Slashdot poster.
Internal injuries are often caused by the deceleration involved in an accident - there are secondary collisions between your internal organs and your rib cage etc. These can cause non-obvious injuries.
However... if the magnitude of deceleration is known, one can predict fairly reliabily whether or not serious internal organ damage has occurred.
This is the kind of scenario they're talking about.
Slashdot Mirror
Then why did leaders in the south itself argue that the war was over slavery? Slashdot's servers aren't large enough to hold all the speeches, quotes, and letters made by southern politicians to that effect. The south did not argue only that they should be allowed to own slaves in the south, but that laws against owning slaves in northern states were unconstitutional and that they should be allowed to expand the institution into new states.
Lincoln's political moves regarding slavery were a reflection in part on his need to keep the north unified at a time when, for instance, Irish immigrants in NYC were holding race riots. Freeing slaves was not a universally popular idea in the north by any means, while preservation of the Union was a unifying theme.
Lincoln picked his fights and moved cautiously.
Which is why I said "to some degree", of course.
In the vector mode tests using G4 and G5 it looks like CPU throughput is the bottleneck, not memory, that appears to be their conclusion. So for the vectorized version of the application - the one they're obviously *really* interested in - extrapolation will be easier.
Except that
1. They weren't using a compiler optimized for the G5, and expect performance to increase when they have that opportunity.
2. Dual G5s appear to scale better than dual P4s. They're getting close to 2x performance with the dual G5s, much better than most folks are used to with SMP systems.
They give a hoot because it can help predict the performance of higher MHz machines when they become available.
So when some NASA folks who use Jet3D are buying hardware a year from now and see they can buy a 3 GHz G5 or a 4.4 GHz P4 they'll be able to extrapolate performance to some degree.
As they point out, no such Fortran compiler for the G5 exists yet. Making it rather difficult for them to make that comparision.
As they also point out, if you'd be so kind as to RTFA, this is Part I of their benchmarking effort. They'll undertake Part II later, when additional tools are available.
These folks aren't benchmarking for the public, they're benchmarking so that agency folks using this particular modelling software can make informed purchasing decisions.
They were only using one of the G5 processors, RTFA
They benchmarked against the 3 Ghz Xeon, not the 2 Ghz, which you'd know if you paid attention before posting.
Designer of the PDP-8 - perhaps one of the most economical and aesthetically pleasing designs of all time. Designer of the PDP-11 which led to the VAX.
:) :)
DEC was 2nd largest computer manufacturer for years.
Add to this his more recent accomplishments and I have no doubt he has more knowledge about computer design than everyone posting here put together.
Plus, I've met him, so nah-nah-nah!
Don Petit said just the opposite in an interview, that the custom-fitted recliners were far more comfortable than the shuttle seats, which he described as being about as comfortable as a commercial airliner's seat (more room, though.)
You sound just like B. Gentry Lee when, as a science brat at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, when some of us had the chance to take him hiking up the Columbia Gorge the day after he'd given a talk at the museum.
He was the project manager of Galileo at the time, if my memory serves. If not, then whichever of the various exploratory vehicles that was first designed to go up on an conventional booster, then redesigned per NASA dictum to fit in the shuttle, then redesigned again after the Challenger blew up and a whole new set of safety-related design constraints were put into place.
in "The Man Who Sold The Moon".
...
Of course in the story it was decided that the weight penalty of actually taking the mail to the moon to be franked was excessive so a little fraud was perpetrated instead
When I was a kid laws mandating seat belts in cars didn't exist (much less those requiring you wear them) nor was there any legislation in regard to designing cars to standard levels of survivability during an accident.
And in the last three or so decades we've seen automobile deaths drop slightly while miles driven and drivers driving have roughly doubled (NYT sometime last week)
That's a worthwhile accomplishment, largely due to government regulation.
As to why open source doesn't sell itself, nothing sells itself, not even sex, that's why streetwalkers walk the street rather than wait at home for johns to knock on the door.
And having legislation require agencies to consider open source legislation will introduce many IT types to the possibilities. Think of it as government marketing of a concept to its agencies.
Government is also a large-scale purchaser of off-the-shelf products, and this is what the bill is targetted at.
The Multnomah County Educational Support District, Oregon has, for instance, switched to using Linux for file servers, mail, etc etc. They claim substantial annual savings, not just in license fees but in headcount as they've found Unix-like servers to take less time to sysadmin overall than Windows servers.
Likewise many copies of Office and other off-the-shelf software are used in state agencies.
One big hole in off-the-shelf software is in the realm of GIS. There's nothing to realistically compete with ESRIs offerings (if you think Grass is sufficient, go smoke some)
Yes, the savings to be had for mundane applications and servers is tiny compared to the money spent for complex custom software but a penny saved is a penny earned, as a wise man once said. A million dollars saved is a bunch of teachers or policemen or fireman who aren't laid off, which given the current state of affairs in Oregon is something we can't afford to ignore.
The City of Portland Water Bureau will forgive excess water bills due to undetected leaks or the like if you show that you've fixed the problem. Often leaks aren't detectable and a large water bill is the first clue the homeowner sees (western Oregon is very wet, water water everywhere)
Your explanation is incorrect. Hiroshima was picked because it was one of the few industrial cities that hadn't been wiped out by the earlier incindiery attacks.
... the evidence is strong that Japan would've surrendered beforehand if the Emperor's personal safety and ceremonial role in Japanese life were preserved. The US had rejected such offers but after the bombs were dropped did accept them. And note that Hirohito's son is Emperor yet today ...
The problem was literally one of finding targets that were intact enough to demonstrate the bomb's power and to tangibly impact what little was left of Japan's industry.
As far as the "thousands of American lives were saved" argument
Generals Eisenhower and Marshall (the top dog) both opposed dropping the bomb on Japan, as Rhodes explains in the book (and as Ike wrote in his ghost-written autobiography)
Richard Rhodes wouldn't disagree with Feynman's comments, I imagine. There were a bunch of details to work out - the theoretical people did a ton of work - but they weren't of applied science variety.
They were doing a lot of modelling of phenonema in order to help them design elements like the exposive lenses that compressed the plutonium to critical mass.
The end result wasn't the unknown, it was how to build a device to deliver the end result (and how to machine plutonium, or breed sufficient quantities of plutonium in the first place, or separate U235 from U238, etc)
"engineering" but engineering done by many of the brightest physicists alive at the time.
You wouldn't ask why he didn't discuss the espionage around atomic bomb development nor the motivation to continue development after the war in the first volume.
Because much of "Dark Sun" is devoted to those two topics and to their effects on the Soviet nuclear weapons program and the Cold War.
The heavy fuel tank wasn't an issue, it's jettisoned before they reach orbit. However you're right that Columbia could not have reached the ISS. NASA states that the two orbits were different enough that it would've required a main engine burn to achieve, and of course there's no main engine fuel once the shuttle's in orbit. The reentry burn only slows the shuttle by about 175 mph and doesn't require the massive thrust generated by the main engines, and the small engines used to control attitude, dock, etc are ... puny.
Getting a shuttle up there in a week seems impossible. NASA has stated "no way", and I believe them.
Well ... as of this morning NASA is focusing on the foam hit as being the most likely cause, so I don't think red herring status is appropriate.
It turns out the shuttle was on the pad during drenching rainstorms and there's (NASA) speculation that ice may've built up. Given that the piece of foam that broke off was near the strut that attaches the shuttle proper to the external fuel tank, with the strut surrounded by foam, it's possible that water could've accumulated there. Which would've frozen once the tank was filled with LOX and liquid hydrogen.
If the chunk that fell off contained a lot of ice it would've been a lot heavier than foam alone. And the engineering analysis that was done apparently only looked at the case where the foam was foam alone.
This is all in today's NYT and my local paper (which goes to bed later than our edition of the Times as I'm on the West Coast) and all comes straight from NASA.
In Europe, at least, we have Napolean and Hitler to thank for this.
For instance, Sweden didn't switch to driving on the right until the late 70s or early 80s. Why did they continue driving on the left while Norway had switched to driving on the right in the 1940s?
Germany occupied Norway while Sweden managed to stay out of the War.
New Scientist had a wonderful article about the whole left/right side driving issue many years ago. In France the switch took place after the French Revolution (why? figure it out yourself, with the following hint: it had to do with not wanting to appear wealthy).
Then Napolean forcibly exported the habit to much of Europe, just as he exported the legal system developed in France while he ran the show.
I once called 911 on a kid stealing stuff from my unlocked car stored in my unlocked garage, and the cops caught him (more precisely the german shepard they brought to the scene caught him).
... the fact that the garage was unlocked meant he wasn't charged with "breaking and entering" (or perhaps in my state's legal code a burglin' charge with a lower number, i.e. higher on the felony food chain).
... hijackers.
The fact that my car and garage was unlocked did not matter. Kid was charged with thievin' and burglin' (a "II" and "III" low-level charge in each case since he'd only managed to run off with a book). Served a month and three years pro.
Now
The law does not view unlocked doors as being tacit permission to enter someone's home or garage, nor to remove their property.
Why should an open relay or otherwise unsecure system be treated otherwise? Theft of service is theft of service.
Not that I'm advocating one relay mail from unknown systems! Obviously in today's world if you do so you'll quickly have your system hijacked by people you can't track down. But the hijackers are still
You have it backwards. The BIOS maker isn't telling the MB maker their customers aren't important.
The BIOS maker knows the MB maker holds their customers to be important, so asks the MB "what do you need?" Assuming that the MB wants to make their customers happy and will ask for features that will make them happy.
The GM analogy if flawed. The BIOS manufacturer is more like a piston rod manufacturer than GM. GM decides what kind of engines their customers desire and specs piston rods accordingly. The flow is top-down (customer -> GM -> piston rod manufacturer). Just as it is with the BIOS maker (customer -> computer manufacturer -> MB maker -> BIOS maker + chipset maker etc)
This is one of the FUNNIEST examples of what happens on Slashdot when people don't read the article that I've seen in a LONG time.
... they may be wrong.
People are shouting "I won't buy a car with such a recording device" or "this is a blatant example of government intrustion into privacy" etc etc.
What's being missed - though it is clearly stated in the article - is that companies like GM and Ford have included data recorders in newer cars for some time now. As part of the airbag system.
So the issue isn't whether or not such recorders are going to be standard issue on future cars. They're already standard issue on many current cars.
The issue is whether or not the industry should adopt a data standard for the devices so that information may be more easily shared, by safety researchers among other things.
As to whether or not those experts arguing that information on deceleration may be useful in the field after an accident are right or not
But they're a hell of a lot more likely to be right than your typical pimply-faced Slashdot poster.
No, actually, there are two speeds they take people to the hospital:
Speed 1: ambulance speed
Speed 2: helicopter speed
Airlift's expensive and not used unless extremely serious and life-threatening injuries are obvious.
Internal injuries are often caused by the deceleration involved in an accident - there are secondary collisions between your internal organs and your rib cage etc. These can cause non-obvious injuries.
... if the magnitude of deceleration is known, one can predict fairly reliabily whether or not serious internal organ damage has occurred.
However
This is the kind of scenario they're talking about.