Although firmware upgrades could be a very positive thing for users, providing ways to customise and improve a device, they're also open to abuse.
Apart from being a means to ship an inferior product earlier, this opens up an opportunity to control the consumer by messing with the normal product purchasing process. By doing this, the traditional rules of competition can be blurred enough for a company to succeed where it otherwise would not have.
The software industry has featured this idea for a while in a few forms: you buy the software, but then you don't really own it because you are just licenced to use it. Or you buy the software, but have to apply a critical update that comes with a licence change that changes it into something you wouldn't have purchased in the first place. Now, the hardware manufacturers can get in on the act, throwing the old rule book out the window. Companies will do anything to get ahead if they think they can get away with it. They're not people and have no sense of wrong or right - just a sense of profit or loss.
It would have to be a very lightweight weapon. Perhaps something biological?
This kind of system might also expose a new hole in the defenses we have against terrorist or criminal acts. Imagine trying to defend a building against this. It's small enough to hide and launch from anywhere, has enough range to be launched from outside a ground based barrier, but is launched close enough to a target to reach it (or near enough for a chemical or bio-weapon) before large air defense systems become useful. Would this thing even show up on radar as a threat? It might look a lot like a bird, especially if the radio control signals are just assumed to be part of the ambient radio noise you'd get in a built up area.
Other posters have pointed out that this device doesn't change the action, but I think it would be good to be able to control that as well as tuning. When I change to open G tuning, it's often because I want to use a slide, and for this I prefer a much higher action.
Re:Only so much carbon...
on
Space Burial
·
· Score: 1
I think both my calculations and the O.P's calculations are correct - they are just based on a different set of assumptions. The O.P. assumed that people would be stacked vertically, but I assumed that they wouldn't be.
You don't "have to use a cube" - it's just a choice. I think it would be mean to make all those people stand on top of each other. Of course that's all academic anyway, because standing side by side would be no fun either, and besides, who would nail the box shut if everyone was on the inside? Somewhere out there an alien bulk meat transportation company representative is reading this thread and adding up the potential profits...
Re:Only so much carbon...
on
Space Burial
·
· Score: 2, Informative
that box would have to be about 3/4 mile per side
That doesn't sound right, so I've done my own quick calculation in metric. I'm assuming that the average size of a person is 50cm by 30cm (~1 foot 8 inches by 1 foot), that there are about 6 billion people, and that all of them are standing up in the box. These assumptions should be near enough, and make it easy to do without a calculator.
area per person = 0.50m * 0.30m = 0.15m^2
total area = 0.15m^2 * 6.0E9 = 9.0E8m^2
length per box side = sqrt(0.9E8m^2) = 3.0E4m = 30km
This is a lot more that 3/4 mile per side - more like 19 miles per side.
I mean geez, Howard, if you're going to send troops to Iraq to support an unpopular war, couldn't you at least get some financial benefit from it?
During the lead up to the war, it was assumed by a lot of Australians that part of Howard's eagerness to get involved was due to an expectation of being rewarded with favourable terms in the upcoming trade agreement. I don't think he ever admitted that this was a motive, though.
What he did say quite explicitly, however, was that we needed to get involved in the Iraq invasion and occupation to show support to the USA in return for access to US intelligence data in the future. Is US intelligence data worth anything at all? Sometimes it amazes me how blatantly wrong and stupid our leaders can be, and how much of it we are willing to tolerate. Australians just don't seem to give shit.
Yikes, I've just been modded insightful. Mum, if you're reading this, I want to tell you I don't have any special insight into the porn business. Really, I promise.
I would expect that the porn industry would have a much more difficult time if they did want to take the same stance as the music business. Can you imagine US politicians standing up and proudly supporting them in the same way as they do for the music distributors?
When you operate at the fringes of your country's moral and legal tolerance, surely the last thing you want to do is attract attention or get involved in legal battles? Of course many will argue (correctly IMNSHO) that the music distribution also pushes the boundaries of morality and legality, but the key difference is that their core business is not directly about sex. Janet Jackson gave us a clear demonstration last week of just how hung up a good proportion of the USA is. In many other nations, this incident would have barely raised any eyebrows, but in the US it's apparently world war three.
Like it or not, the RIAA's campaigning has won over much public support or acceptance - for every slashdotter who sees them as a menace, there's probably a large number of other people who see them as perfectly reasonable. But pornographers wouldn't get that kind of response and they know it. They're more likely to get themselves shut down than anything else if they raise a stink. As much as I'd like to think their attitude is because the porn business is more enlightened, I think their real motive is more likely just self-protection.
The full x86 instruction set is large and complicated (some of the complexity because of its history). Adding an OS like Linux and all the hardware for a PC just adds a whole lot more stuff for a student to have to deal with.
If this is a learning exercise, wouldn't it make sense to reduce the clutter of the environment (OS, PC hardware) and isolate the learning to only what is relevant. Why not start with a simple 8 bit microcontroller like an Atmel AVR, TI MSP430 or prehaps Cypress PSOC? Once the teaching mission has been accomplished and students are comfortable with programming concepts and basic computer architecture ideas, step up to using a higher level language like C on these micro's, then step up to the PC environment including an OS like Linux. At that point, the learning options expand greatly.
This plan lets students acquire a deeper understanding at first, because they can explore the microcontroller completely - it is simple enough for a beginner individual to understand every aspect of its operation, unlike a PC. As a bonus, there is a great sense of accomplishment in fully understanding something instead of partially understanding it, and a stronger feeling of connectedness if you can make a micro do something physical.
Those of us whose introduction to computing was through simpler machines like the Apple II (it even came with a full circuit diagram!) must know what I'm talking about. I don't know if I'd be nearly as interested as I was in my youth if I were just starting out in computing today and my introduction was a PC. I'd probably just use it to play games, like most kids seem to do.
Without wishing to be unnecessarily macabre, we do have to consider the worst case possibilities.
Suits probably won't provide much protection against contamination of Mars if the vehicle the astronauts are travelling in does what other spacecraft seem to do on approach to Mars: collide with the planet at high velocity. The insides of people, even if heated by atmospheric entry, are full of micro-organisms.
NASA have employed a very cunning plan - send Spirit as a decoy, wait until they're sure the Martian army are screwing around with it, then land Opportunity on the opposite side of the planet.
Your hands probably have a problem in this particular situation becuase you have to grip the handle bars continuously, restricting the circulation through them. You're generating heat, but you just can't get enough to your hands. This does sound like a good application for these gloves - replacing a natural function of your body that is prevented from working normally.
If they're not covered well, I would imagine your ears get cold too. They've got a nice large surface area (relative to their mass) for the wind to take heat away from.
Bush's moon and mars plan seem like such a comprehensive change for NASA that they might also have a serious impact on the ESA. With NASA's budget redirected into the new plan, will the ESA pick up the slack with greater involvement in the ISS beyond the ATV? Or will they have a significant involvement in the moon and mars plan - maybe using the ATV to supply a moon base? It would be a shame for them to spend a fortune developing the ATV, only to be told that it was no longer needed because the ISS was no longer maintainable due to a lack of US funds.
Going to Mars is no more of a feel good excercise than the European explorers sailing to the New World or Lewis and Clark's journey.
Even though the travels of these explorers pushed back the boundaries of the known world, and were incredibly brave, there are significant differences to a mars campaign.
Firstly, there is the issue of motive and purpose. The Europeans that sailed west were initially looking for new routes to places they had already been to - just looking for faster ways to make money. Later explorers and colonists were motivated by a desire to exploit known resources. The benefits were well understood and there were limited doubts about the practicality of exploiting them. In other words, there was (as the parent post suggests) a whole lot more value involved than just going there. But a manned trip to mars is different matter and there is nothing so special there that we want that we need to send people for.You might argue that there is potential - maybe minerals, or maybe preservation of the species by putting people into a mars colony. But we are not expecting or aiming to do these things. We are just going because it seems like a cool thing to do. This is entirely different to the explorers you mentioned - they didn't do it just for its own sake or even for lofty long term goals, but for reasons of short term or at least foreseeable gain.
Secondly, there is the scale and type of risk involved. Sailing to the new world was very risky, and those undertaking the journey knew that they may not survive. But at least they had some reasonable expectation that they could survive by their own wits if necessary. They had no reason to expect that there would be no air to breathe, no fish in the ocean, no water to drink, or no way to get home. But on mars, we know full well that the environment is incredibly hostile and that survival is impossible without a lot of support. The distance from earth to mars measured in time may be about the same as the distance from Europe to the new world, but its importance is magnified immensely. What's different for us is that we can avoid these problems by not sending humans.
Jumping from a politically motivated announcement of a first journey to mars straight to the value of colonization is quite a leap.
Colonization of Mars may well be our destiny, or a requirement for our long term survival, but it is still far fetched enough that it is not a sensible motivation for the risk of a trip to mars now. One day we will want to take that first step, but why now when the costs and risks are so high, and the reward so intangible? Why not walk first, then run later? Those who believe we are about to colonize mars should talk to those who genuinely believed we would all have flying cars by 2000. In reality, I expect that real colonization of mars is a very long way off - many generations - and that it won't happen without a good motive.
The messages linked to state that the Hubble service mission was cancelled purely for safety reasons, and that "Only ISS missions will be carried out in the future" out of concern for shuttle inspection procedures. The general purpose space shuttle has been reduced to only being used for one particular type of mission - it's useful life is effectively over.
The space telescope is a science project that has produced a lot of valuable information. There is some risk involved in a mission to service it, but there is not known to be a high probability of failure.
The newly announced mission to mars also has a science component, but is also largely a human exploration project. Without sending people, we could still get great science done by sending robots, especially if we were to spend the same amount of money as we are willing to spend to send humans. Sending people is a feel-good exercise, yet for this we are willing to take on great risks. The chances that some harm (if not death) will come to the astronauts looks very high. Even with the kind of technology we might be able to develop over the next 30 years there are still some serious inherent risks that will not be overcome.
It's an interesting contrast:- for science we are apparently not willing to take any risk, but for the sake of a feel good exercise we are willing to take an enourmous risk.
You'll love this guy. He still hasn't taken me up on my "nuclear challenge". I wonder why?;-)
Reminds me of
this nuclear challenge. During the debate over RTGs in the Cassini probe, Dr. Bernard Cohen challenged Ralph Nader to eat as much caffeine as he would plutonium. Eating a gram of caffeine would kill you fairly quickly.
In Australia, it's typically around AUD$50-60 per month (USD$39-46) for 128k ADSL, often with hard download caps of around 1 - 5 gig depending on provider. Lately the ADSL prices and conditions have been improving considerably with lots of new players in the market, but who knows how long they'll last. Some are even offering 'unlimited' downloads, where of course 'unlimited' doesn't necessarily mean unlimited, but means soft caps - bandwidth is throttled back to dial up speeds after a certain download volume.
Unfortunately service is not available everywhere, with ADSL not available in many places or cable not available in many. Often the only choice for many users is one provider, Telstra, who's prices and service are far from competitive. They charge AUD$111/month for 512k ADSL capped at 3G, with any data over this limit costing AUD$139 per GB (yes really, $139). Or if you are a low volume user you could go for their AUD$50/month plan and pay an extra AUD$199 (~USD$155) per gig, right from the first byte. Still think you're getting screwed in Canada?
There is heaps of information about the Australian broadband scene at Whirlpool.
The article suggests that this is the first time this type of problem has been scientifically studied. As far as I know this kind of problem has been very thoroughly studied for aerospace purposes: a planet's atmosphere is the pond, and a spacecraft is the stone. A google search for 'skip trajectory' shows up lots of serious research.
The greatest human endeavor in a five hundred years is about to be announced
I hardly think George Bush's election campaign is worthy of this kind of description. Sure, it's an endeavour, and possibly almost human, but greatest in 500 years?
If you are travelling from a country that participates in a visa waiver program (e.g. Australia), you don't need to get your finger print checked. This is on the assumption that such countries will have biometric information recorded in the passport by October of this year. I'm guessing this means any Australian travelling to the US for less that 90 days that doesn't want to have to apply for a visa will need to replace their current passport (probably at considerable expense).
Between now and October, however, a traveller with a passport from a visa waiver qualifying country can get in without ever being finger-printed. The message from the US government could not be clearer: if you are going to commit acts of terrorism, don't tell us you are going to stay longer that 90 days when you first enter the country, and please make sure you do this before the next Federal election.
Slashdot Mirror
Although firmware upgrades could be a very positive thing for users, providing ways to customise and improve a device, they're also open to abuse. Apart from being a means to ship an inferior product earlier, this opens up an opportunity to control the consumer by messing with the normal product purchasing process. By doing this, the traditional rules of competition can be blurred enough for a company to succeed where it otherwise would not have.
The software industry has featured this idea for a while in a few forms: you buy the software, but then you don't really own it because you are just licenced to use it. Or you buy the software, but have to apply a critical update that comes with a licence change that changes it into something you wouldn't have purchased in the first place. Now, the hardware manufacturers can get in on the act, throwing the old rule book out the window. Companies will do anything to get ahead if they think they can get away with it. They're not people and have no sense of wrong or right - just a sense of profit or loss.
It would have to be a very lightweight weapon. Perhaps something biological?
This kind of system might also expose a new hole in the defenses we have against terrorist or criminal acts. Imagine trying to defend a building against this. It's small enough to hide and launch from anywhere, has enough range to be launched from outside a ground based barrier, but is launched close enough to a target to reach it (or near enough for a chemical or bio-weapon) before large air defense systems become useful. Would this thing even show up on radar as a threat? It might look a lot like a bird, especially if the radio control signals are just assumed to be part of the ambient radio noise you'd get in a built up area.
I have already laid claim to that area, in triplicate.
Maybe Kodak can still thrive, if they successfully re-invent themselves as a provider of OLED technology. They've already got a number of licencees.
Other posters have pointed out that this device doesn't change the action, but I think it would be good to be able to control that as well as tuning. When I change to open G tuning, it's often because I want to use a slide, and for this I prefer a much higher action.
I think both my calculations and the O.P's calculations are correct - they are just based on a different set of assumptions. The O.P. assumed that people would be stacked vertically, but I assumed that they wouldn't be.
You don't "have to use a cube" - it's just a choice. I think it would be mean to make all those people stand on top of each other. Of course that's all academic anyway, because standing side by side would be no fun either, and besides, who would nail the box shut if everyone was on the inside? Somewhere out there an alien bulk meat transportation company representative is reading this thread and adding up the potential profits...
That doesn't sound right, so I've done my own quick calculation in metric. I'm assuming that the average size of a person is 50cm by 30cm (~1 foot 8 inches by 1 foot), that there are about 6 billion people, and that all of them are standing up in the box. These assumptions should be near enough, and make it easy to do without a calculator.
This is a lot more that 3/4 mile per side - more like 19 miles per side.
During the lead up to the war, it was assumed by a lot of Australians that part of Howard's eagerness to get involved was due to an expectation of being rewarded with favourable terms in the upcoming trade agreement. I don't think he ever admitted that this was a motive, though.
What he did say quite explicitly, however, was that we needed to get involved in the Iraq invasion and occupation to show support to the USA in return for access to US intelligence data in the future. Is US intelligence data worth anything at all? Sometimes it amazes me how blatantly wrong and stupid our leaders can be, and how much of it we are willing to tolerate. Australians just don't seem to give shit.
Yikes, I've just been modded insightful. Mum, if you're reading this, I want to tell you I don't have any special insight into the porn business. Really, I promise.
I would expect that the porn industry would have a much more difficult time if they did want to take the same stance as the music business. Can you imagine US politicians standing up and proudly supporting them in the same way as they do for the music distributors?
When you operate at the fringes of your country's moral and legal tolerance, surely the last thing you want to do is attract attention or get involved in legal battles? Of course many will argue (correctly IMNSHO) that the music distribution also pushes the boundaries of morality and legality, but the key difference is that their core business is not directly about sex. Janet Jackson gave us a clear demonstration last week of just how hung up a good proportion of the USA is. In many other nations, this incident would have barely raised any eyebrows, but in the US it's apparently world war three.
Like it or not, the RIAA's campaigning has won over much public support or acceptance - for every slashdotter who sees them as a menace, there's probably a large number of other people who see them as perfectly reasonable. But pornographers wouldn't get that kind of response and they know it. They're more likely to get themselves shut down than anything else if they raise a stink. As much as I'd like to think their attitude is because the porn business is more enlightened, I think their real motive is more likely just self-protection.
The full x86 instruction set is large and complicated (some of the complexity because of its history). Adding an OS like Linux and all the hardware for a PC just adds a whole lot more stuff for a student to have to deal with.
If this is a learning exercise, wouldn't it make sense to reduce the clutter of the environment (OS, PC hardware) and isolate the learning to only what is relevant. Why not start with a simple 8 bit microcontroller like an Atmel AVR, TI MSP430 or prehaps Cypress PSOC? Once the teaching mission has been accomplished and students are comfortable with programming concepts and basic computer architecture ideas, step up to using a higher level language like C on these micro's, then step up to the PC environment including an OS like Linux. At that point, the learning options expand greatly.
This plan lets students acquire a deeper understanding at first, because they can explore the microcontroller completely - it is simple enough for a beginner individual to understand every aspect of its operation, unlike a PC. As a bonus, there is a great sense of accomplishment in fully understanding something instead of partially understanding it, and a stronger feeling of connectedness if you can make a micro do something physical.
Those of us whose introduction to computing was through simpler machines like the Apple II (it even came with a full circuit diagram!) must know what I'm talking about. I don't know if I'd be nearly as interested as I was in my youth if I were just starting out in computing today and my introduction was a PC. I'd probably just use it to play games, like most kids seem to do.
Without wishing to be unnecessarily macabre, we do have to consider the worst case possibilities.
Suits probably won't provide much protection against contamination of Mars if the vehicle the astronauts are travelling in does what other spacecraft seem to do on approach to Mars: collide with the planet at high velocity. The insides of people, even if heated by atmospheric entry, are full of micro-organisms.
I'm always sure to mention mine. Has got me some really interesting job offers...
NASA have employed a very cunning plan - send Spirit as a decoy, wait until they're sure the Martian army are screwing around with it, then land Opportunity on the opposite side of the planet.
Knowing how to store data for a long time might not help you much if you can't read it back in 20 years because some twisted DRM scheme stops you.
Your hands probably have a problem in this particular situation becuase you have to grip the handle bars continuously, restricting the circulation through them. You're generating heat, but you just can't get enough to your hands. This does sound like a good application for these gloves - replacing a natural function of your body that is prevented from working normally.
If they're not covered well, I would imagine your ears get cold too. They've got a nice large surface area (relative to their mass) for the wind to take heat away from.
Bush's moon and mars plan seem like such a comprehensive change for NASA that they might also have a serious impact on the ESA. With NASA's budget redirected into the new plan, will the ESA pick up the slack with greater involvement in the ISS beyond the ATV? Or will they have a significant involvement in the moon and mars plan - maybe using the ATV to supply a moon base? It would be a shame for them to spend a fortune developing the ATV, only to be told that it was no longer needed because the ISS was no longer maintainable due to a lack of US funds.
Even though the travels of these explorers pushed back the boundaries of the known world, and were incredibly brave, there are significant differences to a mars campaign.
Firstly, there is the issue of motive and purpose. The Europeans that sailed west were initially looking for new routes to places they had already been to - just looking for faster ways to make money. Later explorers and colonists were motivated by a desire to exploit known resources. The benefits were well understood and there were limited doubts about the practicality of exploiting them. In other words, there was (as the parent post suggests) a whole lot more value involved than just going there. But a manned trip to mars is different matter and there is nothing so special there that we want that we need to send people for.You might argue that there is potential - maybe minerals, or maybe preservation of the species by putting people into a mars colony. But we are not expecting or aiming to do these things. We are just going because it seems like a cool thing to do. This is entirely different to the explorers you mentioned - they didn't do it just for its own sake or even for lofty long term goals, but for reasons of short term or at least foreseeable gain.
Secondly, there is the scale and type of risk involved. Sailing to the new world was very risky, and those undertaking the journey knew that they may not survive. But at least they had some reasonable expectation that they could survive by their own wits if necessary. They had no reason to expect that there would be no air to breathe, no fish in the ocean, no water to drink, or no way to get home. But on mars, we know full well that the environment is incredibly hostile and that survival is impossible without a lot of support. The distance from earth to mars measured in time may be about the same as the distance from Europe to the new world, but its importance is magnified immensely. What's different for us is that we can avoid these problems by not sending humans.
Jumping from a politically motivated announcement of a first journey to mars straight to the value of colonization is quite a leap. Colonization of Mars may well be our destiny, or a requirement for our long term survival, but it is still far fetched enough that it is not a sensible motivation for the risk of a trip to mars now. One day we will want to take that first step, but why now when the costs and risks are so high, and the reward so intangible? Why not walk first, then run later? Those who believe we are about to colonize mars should talk to those who genuinely believed we would all have flying cars by 2000. In reality, I expect that real colonization of mars is a very long way off - many generations - and that it won't happen without a good motive.
The messages linked to state that the Hubble service mission was cancelled purely for safety reasons, and that "Only ISS missions will be carried out in the future" out of concern for shuttle inspection procedures. The general purpose space shuttle has been reduced to only being used for one particular type of mission - it's useful life is effectively over.
The space telescope is a science project that has produced a lot of valuable information. There is some risk involved in a mission to service it, but there is not known to be a high probability of failure.
The newly announced mission to mars also has a science component, but is also largely a human exploration project. Without sending people, we could still get great science done by sending robots, especially if we were to spend the same amount of money as we are willing to spend to send humans. Sending people is a feel-good exercise, yet for this we are willing to take on great risks. The chances that some harm (if not death) will come to the astronauts looks very high. Even with the kind of technology we might be able to develop over the next 30 years there are still some serious inherent risks that will not be overcome.
It's an interesting contrast:- for science we are apparently not willing to take any risk, but for the sake of a feel good exercise we are willing to take an enourmous risk.
Reminds me of this nuclear challenge. During the debate over RTGs in the Cassini probe, Dr. Bernard Cohen challenged Ralph Nader to eat as much caffeine as he would plutonium. Eating a gram of caffeine would kill you fairly quickly.
I think you misspelt suppository.
In Australia, it's typically around AUD$50-60 per month (USD$39-46) for 128k ADSL, often with hard download caps of around 1 - 5 gig depending on provider. Lately the ADSL prices and conditions have been improving considerably with lots of new players in the market, but who knows how long they'll last. Some are even offering 'unlimited' downloads, where of course 'unlimited' doesn't necessarily mean unlimited, but means soft caps - bandwidth is throttled back to dial up speeds after a certain download volume.
Unfortunately service is not available everywhere, with ADSL not available in many places or cable not available in many. Often the only choice for many users is one provider, Telstra, who's prices and service are far from competitive. They charge AUD$111/month for 512k ADSL capped at 3G, with any data over this limit costing AUD$139 per GB (yes really, $139). Or if you are a low volume user you could go for their AUD$50/month plan and pay an extra AUD$199 (~USD$155) per gig, right from the first byte. Still think you're getting screwed in Canada?
There is heaps of information about the Australian broadband scene at Whirlpool.
The article suggests that this is the first time this type of problem has been scientifically studied. As far as I know this kind of problem has been very thoroughly studied for aerospace purposes: a planet's atmosphere is the pond, and a spacecraft is the stone. A google search for 'skip trajectory' shows up lots of serious research.
I hardly think George Bush's election campaign is worthy of this kind of description. Sure, it's an endeavour, and possibly almost human, but greatest in 500 years?
If you are travelling from a country that participates in a visa waiver program (e.g. Australia), you don't need to get your finger print checked. This is on the assumption that such countries will have biometric information recorded in the passport by October of this year. I'm guessing this means any Australian travelling to the US for less that 90 days that doesn't want to have to apply for a visa will need to replace their current passport (probably at considerable expense).
Between now and October, however, a traveller with a passport from a visa waiver qualifying country can get in without ever being finger-printed. The message from the US government could not be clearer: if you are going to commit acts of terrorism, don't tell us you are going to stay longer that 90 days when you first enter the country, and please make sure you do this before the next Federal election.