We've got 60 years of data, and there is little doubt, the trend has been 'up' over that 60 years. Depending on who you listen to, mother earth has been around for either 6000 years (intelligent design types), or between 4 and 6 billion years (scientific community). Archeological records tend to indicate we are leaving an ice age, and turned that corner on the order of 10,000 years ago. The trend has been 'up' ever since.
So, with a statistical sample of 60 data points, out of potentially billions (scientific types), or at a minimum thousands (intelligent design types), you want to jump to rash conclusions? Factor in that those 60 data points are not even a representative sample, but a small cluster from the very tail end of the period, with it being quite well established that the trend has been 'up' for around 10,000 years (scientific types), or 'all thru time' for the intelligent design types, why is it even a surprise that we may get a localized high within this small sample ? The reality is, looking at the big picture, it would be news if we did NOT have a localized high, that would point to a possible change in the trend of the last 10,000 years.
There are a hell of a lot of ways that 'good science' can be done with regard to researching climate change, but this is NOT one of them. Anyone with half an understanding of statistics, and a rudimentary understanding of the concept of 'been warming up since the depth of the ice age', would understand that a localized high mean temperature is EXPECTED at the front end of the data set. When we have a large enough sample to understand the harmonic changes, and the long term trend, then we can draw conclusions based on a single in/outlier, but, with only 60 localized data points in the sample, and no basis to measure harmonic changes (there's been a few ice ages over the millenia, but our data set doesn't go back to cover the swings), we have no data on which to base conclusions other than reactionary spew designed to get press coverage.
Then again, why does it not surprise me that this kind of thing gets front page news in a population that loves to play the lottery too. The single biggest growth industry in north america seems to be casinos, kind of proves that the population certainly doesn't understand statistical relavence.
Therein shows how you misunderstand the concept. A journalist reports facts. Sometimes in the case of events, it's hard to validate all the facts, but a journalist makes a bona fide attempt to validate them. As soon as 'opinion' gets into the mix, it's not journalism, it's editorialism. Most of the 'blogsphere' is totally ignorant of this difference, and somehow think that thier editorialism should be protected as 'freedom of speech'. Ask any major newspaper about it, they are 'free' to publish any editorial they want, but, they are also free to accept the consequences of those editorials. A journalist reporting facts will not be subject to slander suits, an editorial publishing opinion will as one example.
In the case you describe, somebody reporting an 'opinion' you agree with, is by definition not a journalist. There are more examples, take for example the 'embedded' folks overseas. Although they may be attempting to report facts, there is editorial content imposed (censorship). By definition, this is not journalism, it's editorials. This goes to the heart of freedom and journalism. A press that is not free to report facts, is not a free press. The laws regarding freedom of the press, and protection of journalism, apply to just that, journalism, reporting of facts. They have NOTHING to do with editorials, where opinion is overlaid (and sometimes disguised as) the facts.
There's not a lot of blogs out there that practise journalism, but, quite a significant number chock full of many opinionated editorials. By definition, they do not deserve any of the protections of 'freedom of the press', there's not a fact to be found in most of them. Hell, most of them wouldn't know a fact if it was staring them in the face.
Defining a journalist is simple, go to dictionary.com, and you'll see, its 'one who keeps a journal'. Further refine that, and look at what a 'journal' is, and you'lll see, it's a record of events kept regularily.
The real issue here is, most reporters these days are actually writing editorials, not journals. The difference is, a journalist reports the facts, with no interpretation, an editorial adds interpretation of the facts.
This is the little detail that confuses the entire 'blogsphere'. They dont understand the difference between a journal, and an editorial. They believe they should gain the protections of a journalist, for writing editorials. Even in the mainstream press, all of the larger organizations fully understand the difference. If a paper publishes what they believe to be facts, after properly attempting to validate them as facts, that's journalism, and subject to the protections of a journalist attempting to dilligently report on events. On the other hand, if they publish an editorial, that's an editorial, and the paper can/will be held fully liable for it's implications.
I've never seen a blog that is a 'journal', pretty much all of them are editorials. Like it or not, editorialism is a very powerful media, but, like journalism, with the power comes responsibility. If you are going to publish an 'opinion', you should be prepared to face the consequences. There's a HUGE difference between journalism and editorialism, and the press industry has known understood this difference for a very long time. It's only the bloggers that are confused, they somehow think that editorialism is the same as journalism, and it's not, not even close.
This article just goes to show how silly the 'grants game' is when it comes to this type of space mission. The deep impact mission was planned and built when analysis of the rocks was 'in vogue', so it was 'justified' by analyzing ejecta etc from the impact, to determine asteroid composition. Now the ESA boys are contemplating a mission nearly identical, but political times have changed, and 'impacts' is the hot button for getting first priority on grants, so, instead of marking the 'composition analysis' as the primary objective, they mark the 'trajectory change' as the primary objective, and presto, the same mission goes to the top of the heap in the grants pile.
If you think about this even semi rationally, look at the data from the Deep Impact mission. The trajectory of the rock prior to impact was quite well known, well enough, an intercept course could be plotted and executed. Does anybody think that nobody at nasa thought to measure trajectory AFTER the impact, and possibly calculate trajectory changes of the target rock? This is a mission that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and that's extremely valuable information, available for the taking after the impact. I'm quite sure that while the primary investigators on Deep Impact are all wrapped up in analyzing ejecta data, there are secondary investigators measuring and calculating trajectory changes.
The proposed ESA mission is basically Deep Impact Version 2.0, a more refined variant than version 1. Version 1 (executed by Nasa) intended to hit the target rock, and studying ejecta was labelled as the 'primary' objective. In Version 2, the objective is to hit the target rock much more precisely, relabel the 'primary data' as that of the trajectory change, and re-label the ejecta data as 'secondary'. The end result is, a mission plan that hits more political hot buttons (reference the data collection re-labelling), its easier to get grants for impactor related investigation today.
The reality is, this mission is a logical follow on which builds on the success of Deep Impact. The re-labelling of primary mission goals is just an artifact of the political process required to procure funding, the 'grants game'. The data regarding target object composition will still be collected in various forms, and it'll still get analyzed, just as trajectory data is still being collected and analyzed from the Deep Impact mission.
If the stockpiles did exist, they would have been used on the US forces to slow/stop the invasion. That is after all the reason such weapons are built, no ?
It may cost $80 billion to get $30 billion of gold into orbit, but if it only costs you half a billion to launch the shuttle into orbit then it is most certainly worth going to get it.
If the shuttle was still allowed to take a load back from orbit (or it was even allowed to fly at all), it could carry 40,000 pounds back to earth. There's 14.58 troy ounces in a pound, and gold runs int he $450 an ounce range these days. 40,000 * 14.58 * 450 = ~262 million.
If gold ingots were available, 99.9 pure, in orbit, free for the taking, it would still not be anywhere near worth going up to fetch them with the shuttle. At a half billion of direct operating cost (before you factor in it needs to be replace after 50 flights), the gold returned still barely equates to half the mission cost.
Sometimes the phrase 'worth it's weight in gold' means 'just not worth it'.
Actually, $10 per mile is quite reasonable depending on the jet. It's a little high for a low end lear or citation, a little low for a G5, and about right for something like a hawker. I've flown lots of equipment that charges out well over $10 a mile.
Well, maybe you need to feel 'protected'. When I go sailing, I kind of enjoy the freedom of being 500 miles offshore, and slave to nobody's rules. There's also a significant number of islands one can sail up to, which have similar circumstances. You can toss the anchor, row the dingy ashore, and experience what real 'freedom' is all about.
Then again, you could choose to live your life scared to death that 'pirates' may take over your little boat world, and go hide under uncle sam's skirt to prevent it.
Licensing is just a silly artifact of local regulatory requirements. Yes, voyager was unlicensed, nobody on earth has the jurasdiction to claim ownership of the spectrum out where it is. On the recieving end, no license is required to recieve the signal, and even if it was, there's plenty of places on this planet where nobody has jurasdiction to regulate such things. It's trivial to put an hf link on a couple of boats, set em half way around the world from each other, in the open ocean, and claim 'unlicensed', and actually get reliable communications. Since they are on the high seas, there is no regulatory body with jurasdiction, and they can use whatever spectrum they want, however they want.
This whole business of 'records' for wireless transmissions is just so silly, a game of 'mine is bigger than yours'. Until these folks are actually communicating with stuff that's farther from this planet than geostationary orbit, then, there's already plenty of folks communicating without wires, over distances far greater than 137 miles, as part of normal everyday operations, so common in fact, nobody thinks twice about it. For one off custom setups, well, there's a couple of little robots traversing around mars that do it daily. For highly specialized 'record breaking' stuff, look out to cassini and beyond.
It wont matter, cuz since you are arriving at the same place you left from, they will really fool you, and leave the luggage on the ground, just carry it from departures to arrivals while you are off on the flight.
The problem is risk. Just because you've screened the candidates to find people who are least likely to be bothered by the small spaces, doesn't mean that they won't crack. Placing a crew under those conditions for three years or so (especially when the crew will get some tastes of freedom on Mars) is one heck of a gamble to take
That attitude is precisely what marks the difference between the america of the 60's, which put a man on the moon, and the america of today...
Depends on what country you are in, but, for most countries, yes. There are moves afoot to change that in some of them these days.
In it's current form, probably nothing wrong with that book in the usa today. But, change the title to "the terrorist guide to computer compromise", with no change of the contents, and it'll surely earn you a one way ticket to a beachfront resort in cuba...
The kernel should be very small and only implement the security policies and handle communications between devices.
This is all fine and dandy in theory, but, out here in the real world, device drivers still have to talk to hardware directly. When a device driver sends commands to hardware that will effectively pre-empt data bus operations at the hardware level (outside of cpu control), you have to sit back and go 'gotta trust the driver code'. Unless the kernel has full knowledge of the consequences of all hardware i/o operations, it's really pointless to run it thru a mapping layer so that the kernel actually does the io on behalf of a higher level program.
I remember once many years ago, somebody showing me a shiny new install of WindowNT, and they were telling me it was a secure, crash proof box. I chuckled, and took a look at some of the installed hardware. I then proceeded to sit down, start 'debug', write a value to one video port, and another value to another video port. Screen went blank, machine sat there for a while, then it reset. It's not hard to set a video card into a state where it's going to assert wait on the memory bus until an event occurs, yet pre-program the device so that the event will never occur. At that point, the main bus is effectively dead, the cpu can no longer access memory, game over. This 'exploit' took advantage of a not so well known flaw in Video Seven graphics controllers.
The hardware attached to the various busses on modern computers has the ability to halt/corrupt the bus. As long as that's the case, there's no point trying to put a kernel layer in between to 'protect' the system, unless the kernel layer has full knowledge of all aspects of the hardware in question, and will prevent such conditions from being set up. This is typically the responsibility of [drum roll] the device driver for the device [/drum roll].
If you are suffering from driver instability problems, then, you are part of the problem. You chose to buy the cheapest crap, and then sit back blaming 'somebody else' because the driver support is crap. You had the opportunity to vote with your wallet, buy stuff that's well supported, and doesn't have stability problems. If the market as a whole actually used this 'vote with the wallet' clout, the state of affairs would be different, because only vendors providing good support would survive in the marketplace. Sadly, that's not the case. The market is driven by 'the cheapest price' and you get what you pay for.
The computer I'm using to write this, doesn't have any driver stability problems. I paid a little extra to get a set of video cards (plural, I have 3 displays on this computer) that would operate cleanly, and not cause problems in a multi-display environment. I paid a little extra for a motherboard that's known to be solid and reliable. I paid a little extra for a disk that doesn't have a history of failures.
I voted with my wallet, because I understand, it's not physically possible for an operating system running on the cpu to recover from problems generated in the hadware. If a given device corrupts a data bus, or asserts reset at the wrong time, there are going to be problems. The key is, buy the devices that dont do that, and choose the ones that have a track record of good software support in the form of drivers.
I have zero sympathy for folks that complain about buggy drivers all the time. It was your choice to buy the crap hardware. You saved a few bucks, and bought a stack of aggrivation. That's your choice, but, there were other choices. You could have chosen to make informed purchases, and buy based in quality rather than price.
As long as the operating system is something that runs ON TOP OF THE HARDWARE, it's going to be subject to the problems of the hardware. The software support for the hardware is part and parcel of the package. Isolating drivers up to user space is NOT going to solve the problem, because that driver is still going to be manipulating dat
he's going back in the taxi parked on the side of the station. It's a soyuz model...
Besides, that last one to show up there wasn't a bus at all. It arrived with a load of freight, and left with a load of trash. In most writings, this is a class of vessel commonly referred to as the 'garbage scow'.
How about we exclude you from the candidate list of folks to go, and restrict it to people that _can_ deal with the claustriphobic conditions. Makes much more sense to choose crew capable of operating within the mission parameters, rather than change the mission parameters to fit a crew.
It's irrelavent. His miles are in the wrong mileage program, a combination of nasa and the russian space agency. The russian agency has no space available for cashing in miles over the next few years, all flights are booked full. Nasa has grounded it's fleet yet again.
When choosing your mileage program, it's very important to check that it's one where you can actually cash the miles in for travel, there's a bunch of them that have so many rules/restrictions that it's not worth the hassle. This fella obviously made the wrong choice for collecting miles. Then again, it's not like he had a variety of carriers to chose from when booking flights to MIR and ISS...
Every time some new worm is released onto the Internet, I ask myself what drives the sick people who create such things.
Every time a new worm like this gets a few pages of press, it reminds a LOT of folks that thier anti virus definitions subscription has expired. The cash register at anti-virus vendor websites starts to go 'cha-ching'.
If you were the ceo of a multi-million dollar public corporation, and virus definitions were your main cash cow, would you sit back and 'hope' that the virii would continue to show up? Would your shareholders allow you to take such a business risk, basing the entire business model on the generosity of virus writers?
The tin foil hat crowd gets blasted every time they suggest that the bulk of virii come from the anti-virus companies. It's not a tin foil hat thing tho, it's a sane business operations decision. If you were the ceo of [insert big anti-virus name here] it would be irresponsible of you to NOT protect your multi-million dollar revenue stream by investing a couple hundred K per annum in funding some black hat types to ensure there is a supply of virii ready to go into the wild on demand.
Atkinson cycle is in reality just the otto cycle, with a different manner of attaching the piston to the crankshaft. The efficiency in the prius installation probably gains a lot in terms of mechanical efficiency, due to modern production techniques, and some more advanced engineering over older designs. It still sends 35% of it's available energy back into the compression stroke of the cycle.
Any engine that relies on compression, will never approach the efficiency available from external combustion, its inherent in the process. Some of the input energy is used for compression, so, it's just not available as mechanical output.
Everyone I know who rides or has ridden a motorcycle is pretty sharp:
I spent 10 years flying an air ambualance. I'll stick with the original premise. Morotocycles are good for the gene pool. I've picked up many a body part over the years, fresh, ready for transplant, thanks to motorcycles. An interesting statistic, in 10 years in that line of work, I never once transported a victim after a motorycycle accident, only donor organs.
I think that pretty much sums up issues like survival rates etc.
I've heard this claim before, but can you actually provide any sort of proof to back it up?
Actually, the proof on this is pretty strait forward, and lets simplify it, use gasoline both in the vehicle, and in the power plant, ignoring the economies of using less refined fuels (coal) in the power plant.
The internal combustion engine runs on a compression/expansion cycle. A standard 4 cycle gasoline engine uses the Otto cycle (suck,squeeze,bang,blow). Energy flows in as gasoline/air mixture, which is then compressed, and ignited. The ignition triggers expansion and heat, the cylinders/pistons are arranged to extract a bunch of the energy from the explosion in the form of longitudinal motion, which is converted into torque on the crankshaft. 35% of the input energy is then used to feed the compression cycle for the next cylinder, 30% is dissipated as waste heat, and about 35% ends up on the shaft as useable torque to drive the system. Overall the cycle is about 35% efficient. The cycle is modified to a constant flow system in a turbine engine (the Brayton cycle), and modern turbines run about 40% efficient. Axial flow turbines with high bypass can approach 45% efficiency.
Contrast that to a typical large scale power plant, which uses an external combustion cycle. combustion chambers are designed so that approximately 90% of the energy in the input fuel ends up in the heated medium, usually a boiler, and about 10% actually disappears up the chimmney as waste heat. The resultant steam is then fed to a turbine that extracts about 80% of the energy into useable mechanical form, which is converted at an efficiency of approximately 98% into electricity. these numbers reflect power plants that are typical, they are 10 to 20 years old in design, modern designs do much better, but the typical result is an efficiency of about 72% in the conversion to electricity for current operating coal plants 10 to 20 years old.
As you can see, it's actually quite simple, the internal combustion engine uses a lot of it's energy to keep itself in a sustainable cycle, its used up on the compression stroke. The energy used by a large scale external combustion engine to sustain it's cycle is inconsequential (a few conveyor belts and some lights). The net result, all that energy used by compression in the car, is available for conversion to output in the power plant. Even if they were both burning gasoline, the power plant would win by a factor of 2 on efficiency. Now factor in the cheaper fuels a power plant can use, it doesn't need a highly refined fuel, works just fine on coal, or on bunker crude (unrefined oil). the external combustion system now gains both in terms of efficiency, and cost, because of the less expensive fuel. Putting in a fuel that's half the price per MJ as the gas in a car, and then converting it at twice the efficiency, you end up with energy available at the output for 1/4 the cost of that obtained on the crankshaft of an internal combustion engine. And that is exactly the reason we have an electrical grid infrastructure, and dont all run our homes on gas fired generators.
In terms of the pollution per unit energy as your were looking to compare, you must factor more than just the emissions from the internal combustion engine into the equation. On the internal combustion side, factor in the emissions from combustion, and the emissions from the refining process where the crude is refined to gasoline. On the coal side, factor in the emissions at the mine site, and at the power plant, and now, you have a valid comparison, and you'll find that they are similar in terms of emissions per unit energy burned, so, the external combustion cycle wins by a factor of 2 when it's measured in terms of emissions per unit energy produced. Ofc, all of this changes somewhat when you factor in the scrubbers in the coal plant chimney, and the internal combustion engine lack thereof, the coal plant becomes an even bigger winner, on a first rub, but, in reality, the scrubbers just remo
Motorcycles are a brilliant concept. When you have an accident in a car, there's a couple thousand pounds of metal making all sorts of creaking a grinding noises, acting as an energy absorbing wear plate, before the impact energy starts to dissipate on the occupants. This is not very efficient at all.
A motorcycle on the other hand is quite different. When you lay a motorcycle on it's side, there's a hundred pounds of human flesh and blood acting as a wear plate, before you scratch the paint on the motorcycle. The human rider is directly exposed to the energy of the impact, a very efficient transfer of energy.
As an extra side bonus, when humans act as wear plates to protect the motorcycle, they are also helping with the culling process, improving the gene pool. I always get a big grin on my face when I see a big dumb biker riding down the road, jeans and a t-shirt, no helmet. Nature will always prevail, the culling process is natural in that scenario. The only real problem these days is the sneaking up of license ages. If they keep letting it sneak up higher, pretty soon, the culling process wont be able to take effect until AFTER those folks have propogated the genes that contain utter stupidity. But I have faith in nature, it'll find another vector around this problem....
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So, with a statistical sample of 60 data points, out of potentially billions (scientific types), or at a minimum thousands (intelligent design types), you want to jump to rash conclusions? Factor in that those 60 data points are not even a representative sample, but a small cluster from the very tail end of the period, with it being quite well established that the trend has been 'up' for around 10,000 years (scientific types), or 'all thru time' for the intelligent design types, why is it even a surprise that we may get a localized high within this small sample ? The reality is, looking at the big picture, it would be news if we did NOT have a localized high, that would point to a possible change in the trend of the last 10,000 years.
There are a hell of a lot of ways that 'good science' can be done with regard to researching climate change, but this is NOT one of them. Anyone with half an understanding of statistics, and a rudimentary understanding of the concept of 'been warming up since the depth of the ice age', would understand that a localized high mean temperature is EXPECTED at the front end of the data set. When we have a large enough sample to understand the harmonic changes, and the long term trend, then we can draw conclusions based on a single in/outlier, but, with only 60 localized data points in the sample, and no basis to measure harmonic changes (there's been a few ice ages over the millenia, but our data set doesn't go back to cover the swings), we have no data on which to base conclusions other than reactionary spew designed to get press coverage.
Then again, why does it not surprise me that this kind of thing gets front page news in a population that loves to play the lottery too. The single biggest growth industry in north america seems to be casinos, kind of proves that the population certainly doesn't understand statistical relavence.
In the case you describe, somebody reporting an 'opinion' you agree with, is by definition not a journalist. There are more examples, take for example the 'embedded' folks overseas. Although they may be attempting to report facts, there is editorial content imposed (censorship). By definition, this is not journalism, it's editorials. This goes to the heart of freedom and journalism. A press that is not free to report facts, is not a free press. The laws regarding freedom of the press, and protection of journalism, apply to just that, journalism, reporting of facts. They have NOTHING to do with editorials, where opinion is overlaid (and sometimes disguised as) the facts.
There's not a lot of blogs out there that practise journalism, but, quite a significant number chock full of many opinionated editorials. By definition, they do not deserve any of the protections of 'freedom of the press', there's not a fact to be found in most of them. Hell, most of them wouldn't know a fact if it was staring them in the face.
The real issue here is, most reporters these days are actually writing editorials, not journals. The difference is, a journalist reports the facts, with no interpretation, an editorial adds interpretation of the facts.
This is the little detail that confuses the entire 'blogsphere'. They dont understand the difference between a journal, and an editorial. They believe they should gain the protections of a journalist, for writing editorials. Even in the mainstream press, all of the larger organizations fully understand the difference. If a paper publishes what they believe to be facts, after properly attempting to validate them as facts, that's journalism, and subject to the protections of a journalist attempting to dilligently report on events. On the other hand, if they publish an editorial, that's an editorial, and the paper can/will be held fully liable for it's implications.
I've never seen a blog that is a 'journal', pretty much all of them are editorials. Like it or not, editorialism is a very powerful media, but, like journalism, with the power comes responsibility. If you are going to publish an 'opinion', you should be prepared to face the consequences. There's a HUGE difference between journalism and editorialism, and the press industry has known understood this difference for a very long time. It's only the bloggers that are confused, they somehow think that editorialism is the same as journalism, and it's not, not even close.
If you think about this even semi rationally, look at the data from the Deep Impact mission. The trajectory of the rock prior to impact was quite well known, well enough, an intercept course could be plotted and executed. Does anybody think that nobody at nasa thought to measure trajectory AFTER the impact, and possibly calculate trajectory changes of the target rock? This is a mission that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and that's extremely valuable information, available for the taking after the impact. I'm quite sure that while the primary investigators on Deep Impact are all wrapped up in analyzing ejecta data, there are secondary investigators measuring and calculating trajectory changes.
The proposed ESA mission is basically Deep Impact Version 2.0, a more refined variant than version 1. Version 1 (executed by Nasa) intended to hit the target rock, and studying ejecta was labelled as the 'primary' objective. In Version 2, the objective is to hit the target rock much more precisely, relabel the 'primary data' as that of the trajectory change, and re-label the ejecta data as 'secondary'. The end result is, a mission plan that hits more political hot buttons (reference the data collection re-labelling), its easier to get grants for impactor related investigation today.
The reality is, this mission is a logical follow on which builds on the success of Deep Impact. The re-labelling of primary mission goals is just an artifact of the political process required to procure funding, the 'grants game'. The data regarding target object composition will still be collected in various forms, and it'll still get analyzed, just as trajectory data is still being collected and analyzed from the Deep Impact mission.
If the stockpiles did exist, they would have been used on the US forces to slow/stop the invasion. That is after all the reason such weapons are built, no ?
And a pre-emptive strike is defensive how???
If the shuttle was still allowed to take a load back from orbit (or it was even allowed to fly at all), it could carry 40,000 pounds back to earth. There's 14.58 troy ounces in a pound, and gold runs int he $450 an ounce range these days. 40,000 * 14.58 * 450 = ~262 million.
If gold ingots were available, 99.9 pure, in orbit, free for the taking, it would still not be anywhere near worth going up to fetch them with the shuttle. At a half billion of direct operating cost (before you factor in it needs to be replace after 50 flights), the gold returned still barely equates to half the mission cost.
Sometimes the phrase 'worth it's weight in gold' means 'just not worth it'.
You are trapped here, deal with it.
Actually, $10 per mile is quite reasonable depending on the jet. It's a little high for a low end lear or citation, a little low for a G5, and about right for something like a hawker. I've flown lots of equipment that charges out well over $10 a mile.
Then again, you could choose to live your life scared to death that 'pirates' may take over your little boat world, and go hide under uncle sam's skirt to prevent it.
This whole business of 'records' for wireless transmissions is just so silly, a game of 'mine is bigger than yours'. Until these folks are actually communicating with stuff that's farther from this planet than geostationary orbit, then, there's already plenty of folks communicating without wires, over distances far greater than 137 miles, as part of normal everyday operations, so common in fact, nobody thinks twice about it. For one off custom setups, well, there's a couple of little robots traversing around mars that do it daily. For highly specialized 'record breaking' stuff, look out to cassini and beyond.
It wont matter, cuz since you are arriving at the same place you left from, they will really fool you, and leave the luggage on the ground, just carry it from departures to arrivals while you are off on the flight.
That attitude is precisely what marks the difference between the america of the 60's, which put a man on the moon, and the america of today...
In it's current form, probably nothing wrong with that book in the usa today. But, change the title to "the terrorist guide to computer compromise", with no change of the contents, and it'll surely earn you a one way ticket to a beachfront resort in cuba...
This is all fine and dandy in theory, but, out here in the real world, device drivers still have to talk to hardware directly. When a device driver sends commands to hardware that will effectively pre-empt data bus operations at the hardware level (outside of cpu control), you have to sit back and go 'gotta trust the driver code'. Unless the kernel has full knowledge of the consequences of all hardware i/o operations, it's really pointless to run it thru a mapping layer so that the kernel actually does the io on behalf of a higher level program.
I remember once many years ago, somebody showing me a shiny new install of WindowNT, and they were telling me it was a secure, crash proof box. I chuckled, and took a look at some of the installed hardware. I then proceeded to sit down, start 'debug', write a value to one video port, and another value to another video port. Screen went blank, machine sat there for a while, then it reset. It's not hard to set a video card into a state where it's going to assert wait on the memory bus until an event occurs, yet pre-program the device so that the event will never occur. At that point, the main bus is effectively dead, the cpu can no longer access memory, game over. This 'exploit' took advantage of a not so well known flaw in Video Seven graphics controllers.
The hardware attached to the various busses on modern computers has the ability to halt/corrupt the bus. As long as that's the case, there's no point trying to put a kernel layer in between to 'protect' the system, unless the kernel layer has full knowledge of all aspects of the hardware in question, and will prevent such conditions from being set up. This is typically the responsibility of [drum roll] the device driver for the device [/drum roll].
If you are suffering from driver instability problems, then, you are part of the problem. You chose to buy the cheapest crap, and then sit back blaming 'somebody else' because the driver support is crap. You had the opportunity to vote with your wallet, buy stuff that's well supported, and doesn't have stability problems. If the market as a whole actually used this 'vote with the wallet' clout, the state of affairs would be different, because only vendors providing good support would survive in the marketplace. Sadly, that's not the case. The market is driven by 'the cheapest price' and you get what you pay for.
The computer I'm using to write this, doesn't have any driver stability problems. I paid a little extra to get a set of video cards (plural, I have 3 displays on this computer) that would operate cleanly, and not cause problems in a multi-display environment. I paid a little extra for a motherboard that's known to be solid and reliable. I paid a little extra for a disk that doesn't have a history of failures.
I voted with my wallet, because I understand, it's not physically possible for an operating system running on the cpu to recover from problems generated in the hadware. If a given device corrupts a data bus, or asserts reset at the wrong time, there are going to be problems. The key is, buy the devices that dont do that, and choose the ones that have a track record of good software support in the form of drivers.
I have zero sympathy for folks that complain about buggy drivers all the time. It was your choice to buy the crap hardware. You saved a few bucks, and bought a stack of aggrivation. That's your choice, but, there were other choices. You could have chosen to make informed purchases, and buy based in quality rather than price.
As long as the operating system is something that runs ON TOP OF THE HARDWARE, it's going to be subject to the problems of the hardware. The software support for the hardware is part and parcel of the package. Isolating drivers up to user space is NOT going to solve the problem, because that driver is still going to be manipulating dat
Besides, that last one to show up there wasn't a bus at all. It arrived with a load of freight, and left with a load of trash. In most writings, this is a class of vessel commonly referred to as the 'garbage scow'.
How about we exclude you from the candidate list of folks to go, and restrict it to people that _can_ deal with the claustriphobic conditions. Makes much more sense to choose crew capable of operating within the mission parameters, rather than change the mission parameters to fit a crew.
When choosing your mileage program, it's very important to check that it's one where you can actually cash the miles in for travel, there's a bunch of them that have so many rules/restrictions that it's not worth the hassle. This fella obviously made the wrong choice for collecting miles. Then again, it's not like he had a variety of carriers to chose from when booking flights to MIR and ISS...
Every time a new worm like this gets a few pages of press, it reminds a LOT of folks that thier anti virus definitions subscription has expired. The cash register at anti-virus vendor websites starts to go 'cha-ching'.
If you were the ceo of a multi-million dollar public corporation, and virus definitions were your main cash cow, would you sit back and 'hope' that the virii would continue to show up? Would your shareholders allow you to take such a business risk, basing the entire business model on the generosity of virus writers?
The tin foil hat crowd gets blasted every time they suggest that the bulk of virii come from the anti-virus companies. It's not a tin foil hat thing tho, it's a sane business operations decision. If you were the ceo of [insert big anti-virus name here] it would be irresponsible of you to NOT protect your multi-million dollar revenue stream by investing a couple hundred K per annum in funding some black hat types to ensure there is a supply of virii ready to go into the wild on demand.
Any engine that relies on compression, will never approach the efficiency available from external combustion, its inherent in the process. Some of the input energy is used for compression, so, it's just not available as mechanical output.
I spent 10 years flying an air ambualance. I'll stick with the original premise. Morotocycles are good for the gene pool. I've picked up many a body part over the years, fresh, ready for transplant, thanks to motorcycles. An interesting statistic, in 10 years in that line of work, I never once transported a victim after a motorycycle accident, only donor organs.
I think that pretty much sums up issues like survival rates etc.
and dancing...
Actually, the proof on this is pretty strait forward, and lets simplify it, use gasoline both in the vehicle, and in the power plant, ignoring the economies of using less refined fuels (coal) in the power plant.
The internal combustion engine runs on a compression/expansion cycle. A standard 4 cycle gasoline engine uses the Otto cycle (suck,squeeze,bang,blow). Energy flows in as gasoline/air mixture, which is then compressed, and ignited. The ignition triggers expansion and heat, the cylinders/pistons are arranged to extract a bunch of the energy from the explosion in the form of longitudinal motion, which is converted into torque on the crankshaft. 35% of the input energy is then used to feed the compression cycle for the next cylinder, 30% is dissipated as waste heat, and about 35% ends up on the shaft as useable torque to drive the system. Overall the cycle is about 35% efficient. The cycle is modified to a constant flow system in a turbine engine (the Brayton cycle), and modern turbines run about 40% efficient. Axial flow turbines with high bypass can approach 45% efficiency.
Contrast that to a typical large scale power plant, which uses an external combustion cycle. combustion chambers are designed so that approximately 90% of the energy in the input fuel ends up in the heated medium, usually a boiler, and about 10% actually disappears up the chimmney as waste heat. The resultant steam is then fed to a turbine that extracts about 80% of the energy into useable mechanical form, which is converted at an efficiency of approximately 98% into electricity. these numbers reflect power plants that are typical, they are 10 to 20 years old in design, modern designs do much better, but the typical result is an efficiency of about 72% in the conversion to electricity for current operating coal plants 10 to 20 years old.
As you can see, it's actually quite simple, the internal combustion engine uses a lot of it's energy to keep itself in a sustainable cycle, its used up on the compression stroke. The energy used by a large scale external combustion engine to sustain it's cycle is inconsequential (a few conveyor belts and some lights). The net result, all that energy used by compression in the car, is available for conversion to output in the power plant. Even if they were both burning gasoline, the power plant would win by a factor of 2 on efficiency. Now factor in the cheaper fuels a power plant can use, it doesn't need a highly refined fuel, works just fine on coal, or on bunker crude (unrefined oil). the external combustion system now gains both in terms of efficiency, and cost, because of the less expensive fuel. Putting in a fuel that's half the price per MJ as the gas in a car, and then converting it at twice the efficiency, you end up with energy available at the output for 1/4 the cost of that obtained on the crankshaft of an internal combustion engine. And that is exactly the reason we have an electrical grid infrastructure, and dont all run our homes on gas fired generators.
In terms of the pollution per unit energy as your were looking to compare, you must factor more than just the emissions from the internal combustion engine into the equation. On the internal combustion side, factor in the emissions from combustion, and the emissions from the refining process where the crude is refined to gasoline. On the coal side, factor in the emissions at the mine site, and at the power plant, and now, you have a valid comparison, and you'll find that they are similar in terms of emissions per unit energy burned, so, the external combustion cycle wins by a factor of 2 when it's measured in terms of emissions per unit energy produced. Ofc, all of this changes somewhat when you factor in the scrubbers in the coal plant chimney, and the internal combustion engine lack thereof, the coal plant becomes an even bigger winner, on a first rub, but, in reality, the scrubbers just remo
A motorcycle on the other hand is quite different. When you lay a motorcycle on it's side, there's a hundred pounds of human flesh and blood acting as a wear plate, before you scratch the paint on the motorcycle. The human rider is directly exposed to the energy of the impact, a very efficient transfer of energy.
As an extra side bonus, when humans act as wear plates to protect the motorcycle, they are also helping with the culling process, improving the gene pool. I always get a big grin on my face when I see a big dumb biker riding down the road, jeans and a t-shirt, no helmet. Nature will always prevail, the culling process is natural in that scenario. The only real problem these days is the sneaking up of license ages. If they keep letting it sneak up higher, pretty soon, the culling process wont be able to take effect until AFTER those folks have propogated the genes that contain utter stupidity. But I have faith in nature, it'll find another vector around this problem....
Oh, I can see the turf war starting. Apple motherboard, microsoft keyboard and mouse. Both OSX and Windows will be confused as hell...