One practical reason why software is not warrantied like hardware products is that no one entity is wholly responsible for the design and maintenance of the total computing system.
Every piece of software on a computing runs atop a teetering stack of hardware and software each layer of which may come from a different vendor. Not even a company like Apple has complete control of their software environment bottom to top. A bug anywhere in the stack can cause a failure. Developers spend a lot of time working around problems caused by components which their product runs atop of. Virtually every individual system in the world is a unique combination of hardware,software, peripherals and history whose interaction are impossible to predict.
The media does a poor job of reporting on any subject requiring specialist knowledge. A few years ago at the height of the Corporate governance scandals, accountants were rolling their eyes at the sheer incompetence of the coverage. I have seen dozens of stories about spikes in gas prices related to Katrina but none of them explain that gas stations set prices based on the replacement cost of gas already in their tanks.
The basic problem is that reporters are just like the rest of us in that we all have an limited area of specialization within which we are experts but outside of that area we revert to morons. Journalist differ in that they try to convinces themselves that they understand any subject well enough to explain it to anyone else.
Self-diagnosing makes people feel more in control of their health. People perceive doctors as authority figures who take control away from the patients. People do not perceive sources they find on their own as controlling (even though many of the sources do have their own agendas) so they adopt the source's explanation rather than the doctors.
The desire to feel in control is such a powerful drive that people will trade concrete benefits like money or expert advice for the mere illusion of control.
"Let me be the pessimist: it isn't just inefficiency that will stop the advent of this new technology. The oil industry is keeping a lot of powerful people rich, who could give a flip about anything new or better."
I think your right. After all look at all the historical examples. The Coal industry, a giant of its age was certainly able to prevent the rise of the upstart petroleum industry in the early 20th century. The giant railroads of the same era also managed to suppress the automobile and the airplane.
I ride to work every morning on a coal fired steam train because it is very clear that the major industries of any particular era can prevent more efficient technologies from replacing them. Hell, I'm writing this post on a dumb terminal running a process on an IBM mainframe the size of warehouse because the big computer companies successfully prevented the widespread use of personal computers.
The idea a small minority of interest dictate the choices of the majority is a strangely comforting one to many. Perhaps they would rather believe that at least somebody, somewhere nows what is going on even if they are evil and selfish. Every generation is absolutely convinced that the powerful interest of its particular era control everything but the economic history of the last 500 years in the West has been one of the Titans of one era becoming the beggars of next.
Energy production and the building of a global transportation system is simply hard. Problems and tradeoffs simple must be expected. Change takes decades. There is no reason beyond laziness to provoke political or economic conspiracies.
I can't say if this particular experiment will succeed but I am confident that it cannot be worse than using contemporary textbooks. Looking at my kid's textbooks I see:
1) They are physically huge. My daughter's high-school history text is bigger than my college organic chemistry text. Kids have a hard time just carrying all their books. One of my daughter's friend had to carry books that added up to 60% of her body weight.
2) The books are huge because they are internally laid out like web pages with large graphics and multicolor text blocks. They are visually distracting and difficult to read. The same information could be presented in a much easier to read format in a much smaller book.
3) Many teachers don't use the text anyway. About half of my kid's classes use only supplemental materials and ignore the text books. They do this because the content of the books are garbage.
Textbooks today are the bastard children of many different political groups and processes and it really shows. It may be technologically premature to switch over to laptops but there is no way kids can have a worse experience than with deadtree text.
It has been shown in psychology studies that people judge speakers who use longer sentences and who are difficult to understand as more intelligent than people who speak concisely. Especially in the case of authority figures, we tend to assume that the fault lays within our selves for not understanding their novel phrases or convoluted sentence structure. Like the parable of the "Emperor's New Clothes" people are afraid to admit they understand what the authority figure is talking about lest they be mocked by others.
This phenomenon creates an incentive to create "management speak." People will be less likely to question you if you confuse them. People won't complain about being confused because they fear being called stupid.
Given the tiny size of the "wires" their resistance must be very low if they have the efficiency implied by the article. I wonder if we could bundle them together somehow to create macro-scale superconductor cables? If not, they might provide clues on how to create such a material on the macro-scale.
"As for OS X, all I can say is that you've obviously never used it."
I use it daily and worked at Apple for 9 years where I supported OS X when it was OpenStep.
Unix style installs on OS X can be difficult but that is because they don't use the actual facilities that the OS provides. The vast majority of apps on OS X are either drag and drop installs or a one click installer. Of course, the design expectation for OS X is that the developer will expend the time and resources needed to make the install work properly so the end user won't have to. Its when that isn't done, such as when building from source, that OS X looses its advantage.
The mantra that Linux "cost absolutely nothing" is dangerous for Linux advocacy for two reasons:
(1) Institutional purchasers look at the life-cycle cost of choice. Linux has a life-cycle cost so promoting it as costless looks stupid if not dishonest.
(2) It leads to a culture of development where the time of the developer is more important than the time of the end user. Linux is behind Windows in this regard which in turn is way behind OS X. For example, there is virtually no standardization of installations on Linux. It is not unusual to use a different method of installation for each additional piece of software you add to a system. This state arose because individual developers use what ever methods is easiest for themselves. The numerous systems intended to standardize installations have in some ways made it worse.
Each of the three OSs have their own particular cost structure. OS X cost a lot up front but relatively little afterward. Windows cost moderately up front but it must be aggressively and constantly maintained. Linux cost virtually nothing up front and once configured runs with little maintenance but getting everything installed and configured can be unpredictable expensive.
Linux advocates need to think in terms of predictable life-cycle cost because the people who ultimate pay for system definitely do. Thinking of Linux as having "absolutely no cost" doesn't get us to that mindset.
"I find the same to be true with Windows and OS X."
Windows maybe but installs on OS X virtually never cause problems. Linux seems to choke on every 3rd app.
The real problem is unpredictability. The chances that you will run into an unexpected time eating problem is higher in Linux than with Windows or OS X. The cost of dealing with the problem can destroy Linux's cost advantage. If you factor in lost work the cost can go even higher.
Its seems that you can (1) Pay up front a Mac (2) Pay lifetime maintenance for Windows or (3) Pay for install and config time on with Linux. In the end, the life-cycle cost for all three could be equal so Linux isn't "free."
My major complaint against Linux is its unpredictable nature. When an install goes well it works better than Windows but one never knows when it is going to explode. It is very difficult to budget one's time for Linux, in my experience.
Windows eats one's time after the install when the blizzard of malware hits.
One of the big advantage of working with Macs is that while they are more expensive initially, the cost is predictable. Once you've paid for it you it just works.
My chief disagreement is with the idea that Linux is "free" because you don't pay a commercial fee for it. This is only true if you don't have to spend a lot of time on installation and configuration. Much of the polish that Linux lacks is precisely in those areas where it would save end user time such as documentation and error messages. Linux developers don't seem to consider conserving the end users time to be a primary design goal.
"The idea of running a system that costs absolutely nothing on the software side is a powerful one, and Windows and Mac OS X would have a difficult time competing against that."
Linux is free only if you value your time at zero. Of the three OS's I think it safe to say that most spend more time configuring Linux than the others. If you are technically proficient you may not notice this cost but if you had to pay somebody else to do it you definitely would.
The price advantage of Linux can evaporate in a hurry when you have to pay $40 dollars an hour for a tech to set the system up. Such a cost is trivial when configuring a server but for a personal machine it could easily reach the cost of a copy of OS X or Windows. Time lost to unexpected problems when installing Linux on diverse hardware or when installing new software also translates into cost for many people.
I have been very impressed by the gains made by many Linux distros in ease of installs but there is no way that in the desktop and laptop areas that Linux compares to the other two OSs when it comes to time spent configuring the systems. Basic installs work well but wander away from the pre-installed software and nightmare tangles often ensue.
I think that the Linux community to often holds the time of the end user to be a worthless. Until that attitude changes the spread of Linux to the general population will continue to be slow.
If we take the experience with the IBM PCs in the 80's as our template I think it is easy to see that cloning and piracy don't contribute to the success of individual hardware companies.
IBM owned the PC market up until the late 80s but the evolution of cloned hardware destroyed their business. It was Microsoft who made their fortune from cloned hardware not IBM. Microsoft may have benefited from software piracy but they held a unique position of being able to get reliably paid for their products by large institutions like OEMs, corporations and government entities. Pirated copies of their software didn't effect their principle revenue streams because MS didn't have a reliable mechanism for getting people who did pirate to pay in the first place.
I don't see Apple benefiting from clones (de facto or formal) or pirated software. Cloned hardware would cannibalize Apple's own sales. Clones would not functions as well as real Macs which would damage the brand. Trying to recoup by selling the OS and other software like iLife would require serialization and all the headaches that entails in addition to support issues.
Perhaps Apple could gain an edge by capturing the small but influential "hacker" market. People who enjoy futzing with Linux might be willing to suffer the headaches of running MacOS X on unsupported hardware. Beyond that, however, I don't see much advantage.
I can relate to Zawinski's frustration and many others do as well. I notice that it seems to effect those with more experience than those newer to computing.
When one first acquires a new tool, whether it is hardware, software or a woodworking plane, the very act of learning how use the tool itself works is highly engaging. Just futzing about figuring out how the new tool works is an end in itself.
However, after one has spent 20+ years learning the ends and out of each season's new tools the joy fades. One becomes progressively less interested in the tools itself and more interested in product you want to use the tool to make. The time spent futzing with the tool is not engaging but frustrating and wasteful. You want to get the primary work done not spend all your time adjusting your tools.
How many times over the years has Zawinski wrestled with a problem similar to his Linux sound issue? The thrill of solving such a problem is long gone, baby.
The Linux community is dominated by people who enjoy the process of learning and using the tool itself. They are the kind of people who take the toaster apart to see how it works. The vast majority of desktop users, however, just want to make toast.
People like Zawinski, who have taken apart their fair share of toasters, also now just want to make toast. At present, Linux doesn't let him do that.
This is one of those stories that gets reported every few years when some nuclear facility releases an audit.
The headline screams "X kilos of plutonium missing" making it sound as if plutonium went missing in one chunk but down in the story it is always revealed that the loss is not unusual and is in fact perfectly in keeping with the expected error of the accounting system. In other words, nothing newsworthy whatsoever happened at all.
The fact that these audits get reported as if they were in fact news reveals the systemic anti-nuclear bias of the media.
The last time I looked, falsifying or causing the falsification of Federal government documents, including research was Federal crime.
My grandfather worked at a USDA research station and the scientist there always had to attach some boiler plate to their research submissions saying that the research was sound to the best of their knowledge. I would image that the scientist in the survey had a similar obligation.
If these scientist have real solid evidence that science was altered then they need to provide the names of the studies and the people involved so we can through some people in jail.
"This crossing of the species barrier cannot normaly happen, and certainly has not been used by farmers "for centuries"."
This is incorrect. Genes hop across species lines all the time. Microorganisms routinely swap, inject and steal genes on an on going basis even across such divisions as eukaryotes vs prokaryotes. Viruses move genes between multicellular species routinely.
It has always amused me that people fear GM when for the last 100 years the standard breeding method for food crops has been to force mutate them with radiation and mutagenic chemicals. Such practices mutate thousands of unknown mutated genes for every beneficial gene they produce. Nobody ever checked if if 1/10 or 1 percent of the general population was allergic to a protein in a mutated food plant.
At least with GM, we know what we changed and where and when we changed it. With forced mutation and natural gene swapping we have no idea.
I'm a little dubious of this finding because even though cell phone use has increased dramatically, actual accidents and injuries have fallen over the same period.
Since drunk driving is a major driver of accidents, IIRC something like 50%, it would seem that anything that had the same effect as drunk driving would drive up accident rates significantly. Especially, since a far higher percentage of population drives and talks than ever drive drunk.
I think it this study, or at least the summary of it, exaggerates the danger.
I imagine this design is far to heavy to function as a solar sail. The entire surface must support sufficient thrust to accelerate this thing thousands (probably tens of thousands) of klicks per hour.
On a separate note, I always heard that erotic was when you used a feather and KINKY was when you used the whole chicken.
This design isn't a solar-sail. Rather it is a rocket that looks like a solar sail.
Just like any other rocket, the thrust comes from the thermal expansion of gasses pressing against the sail-shaped surface. The major difference in this design is that the energy to heat the gasses comes not from chemical, nuclear or solar power onboard the craft but from on off-board source on the ground. It is functionally identical to the Laser Launch concept.
This system would work like a cannon, accelerating the craft within the span of hour or so to the orbital velocity of its target. Then the craft would coast up to that orbit like a cork bobbing to the surface of the water. It would arrive at that orbit with zero velocity relative to its target. In order to make an orbital insertion, it would require only relatively small, onboard maneuvering thrusters.
Of course, since the energy source is back on Earth, the same system could not be used for a return flight without building a microwave generator at the target.
Long term, you could set up a type of railway system, with generators around all the planets which could cheaply shoot packages back and forth.
"How do you slow down?"
Space travel doesn't work that way.
Each orbit has a specific orbital velocity that defines it. Simplistically, speed equals location. To travel from outward from the sun you speed up, to travel towards the sun you slow down. Once your velocity matches that of an orbit you will end up in that orbit eventually with a zero velocity relative to every other object in that orbit.
So you can travel in space by raising your velocity slowly, as with an ion drive, or quickly by being shot out of cannon. It's the final velocity that matters.
I'll defer to your experience on this matter as you seemed to be far closer to the matter than I was. I was just a peon at the Austin campus at the time. It sounds as if quality control feel victim to the fiefdoms.
It is possible that the break up QC that I remember had to do with the disbanding of QC within fiefdoms. At least one group of software QC guys got scattered under Spindler(*spit*) but to be honest I don't remember exactly were they were in the org chart. I do know however, that he violently resisted all attempts to reassert quality control. I know because I know a lot of the people who were screaming at him. The products developed and shipped under his watch were horrifically bad quality wise
I think the "Great Quality Implosion" was caused by (1) fiefdoms (2) dismantling of QC and (3) a manical desire to drive prices as low as possible. Product managers were rewarded for shipping something cheap while the cost of failure was build to another fief.
You should write down your remembrances of your time at Apple especially things related to the "Great Quality Implosion". I think it is one of the more interesting corporate failures and one that is strangely little studied. Business and computer historians might find it valuable someday.
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One practical reason why software is not warrantied like hardware products is that no one entity is wholly responsible for the design and maintenance of the total computing system.
Every piece of software on a computing runs atop a teetering stack of hardware and software each layer of which may come from a different vendor. Not even a company like Apple has complete control of their software environment bottom to top. A bug anywhere in the stack can cause a failure. Developers spend a lot of time working around problems caused by components which their product runs atop of. Virtually every individual system in the world is a unique combination of hardware,software, peripherals and history whose interaction are impossible to predict.
The media does a poor job of reporting on any subject requiring specialist knowledge. A few years ago at the height of the Corporate governance scandals, accountants were rolling their eyes at the sheer incompetence of the coverage. I have seen dozens of stories about spikes in gas prices related to Katrina but none of them explain that gas stations set prices based on the replacement cost of gas already in their tanks.
The basic problem is that reporters are just like the rest of us in that we all have an limited area of specialization within which we are experts but outside of that area we revert to morons. Journalist differ in that they try to convinces themselves that they understand any subject well enough to explain it to anyone else.
Self-diagnosing makes people feel more in control of their health. People perceive doctors as authority figures who take control away from the patients. People do not perceive sources they find on their own as controlling (even though many of the sources do have their own agendas) so they adopt the source's explanation rather than the doctors.
The desire to feel in control is such a powerful drive that people will trade concrete benefits like money or expert advice for the mere illusion of control.
"Let me be the pessimist: it isn't just inefficiency that will stop the advent of this new technology. The oil industry is keeping a lot of powerful people rich, who could give a flip about anything new or better."
I think your right. After all look at all the historical examples. The Coal industry, a giant of its age was certainly able to prevent the rise of the upstart petroleum industry in the early 20th century. The giant railroads of the same era also managed to suppress the automobile and the airplane.
I ride to work every morning on a coal fired steam train because it is very clear that the major industries of any particular era can prevent more efficient technologies from replacing them. Hell, I'm writing this post on a dumb terminal running a process on an IBM mainframe the size of warehouse because the big computer companies successfully prevented the widespread use of personal computers.
The idea a small minority of interest dictate the choices of the majority is a strangely comforting one to many. Perhaps they would rather believe that at least somebody, somewhere nows what is going on even if they are evil and selfish. Every generation is absolutely convinced that the powerful interest of its particular era control everything but the economic history of the last 500 years in the West has been one of the Titans of one era becoming the beggars of next.
Energy production and the building of a global transportation system is simply hard. Problems and tradeoffs simple must be expected. Change takes decades. There is no reason beyond laziness to provoke political or economic conspiracies.
I can't say if this particular experiment will succeed but I am confident that it cannot be worse than using contemporary textbooks. Looking at my kid's textbooks I see:
1) They are physically huge. My daughter's high-school history text is bigger than my college organic chemistry text. Kids have a hard time just carrying all their books. One of my daughter's friend had to carry books that added up to 60% of her body weight.
2) The books are huge because they are internally laid out like web pages with large graphics and multicolor text blocks. They are visually distracting and difficult to read. The same information could be presented in a much easier to read format in a much smaller book.
3) Many teachers don't use the text anyway. About half of my kid's classes use only supplemental materials and ignore the text books. They do this because the content of the books are garbage.
Textbooks today are the bastard children of many different political groups and processes and it really shows. It may be technologically premature to switch over to laptops but there is no way kids can have a worse experience than with deadtree text.
It has been shown in psychology studies that people judge speakers who use longer sentences and who are difficult to understand as more intelligent than people who speak concisely. Especially in the case of authority figures, we tend to assume that the fault lays within our selves for not understanding their novel phrases or convoluted sentence structure. Like the parable of the "Emperor's New Clothes" people are afraid to admit they understand what the authority figure is talking about lest they be mocked by others.
This phenomenon creates an incentive to create "management speak." People will be less likely to question you if you confuse them. People won't complain about being confused because they fear being called stupid.
Given the tiny size of the "wires" their resistance must be very low if they have the efficiency implied by the article. I wonder if we could bundle them together somehow to create macro-scale superconductor cables? If not, they might provide clues on how to create such a material on the macro-scale.
"As for OS X, all I can say is that you've obviously never used it."
I use it daily and worked at Apple for 9 years where I supported OS X when it was OpenStep.
Unix style installs on OS X can be difficult but that is because they don't use the actual facilities that the OS provides. The vast majority of apps on OS X are either drag and drop installs or a one click installer. Of course, the design expectation for OS X is that the developer will expend the time and resources needed to make the install work properly so the end user won't have to. Its when that isn't done, such as when building from source, that OS X looses its advantage.
The mantra that Linux "cost absolutely nothing" is dangerous for Linux advocacy for two reasons:
(1) Institutional purchasers look at the life-cycle cost of choice. Linux has a life-cycle cost so promoting it as costless looks stupid if not dishonest.
(2) It leads to a culture of development where the time of the developer is more important than the time of the end user. Linux is behind Windows in this regard which in turn is way behind OS X. For example, there is virtually no standardization of installations on Linux. It is not unusual to use a different method of installation for each additional piece of software you add to a system. This state arose because individual developers use what ever methods is easiest for themselves. The numerous systems intended to standardize installations have in some ways made it worse.
Each of the three OSs have their own particular cost structure. OS X cost a lot up front but relatively little afterward. Windows cost moderately up front but it must be aggressively and constantly maintained. Linux cost virtually nothing up front and once configured runs with little maintenance but getting everything installed and configured can be unpredictable expensive.
Linux advocates need to think in terms of predictable life-cycle cost because the people who ultimate pay for system definitely do. Thinking of Linux as having "absolutely no cost" doesn't get us to that mindset.
"I find the same to be true with Windows and OS X."
Windows maybe but installs on OS X virtually never cause problems. Linux seems to choke on every 3rd app.
The real problem is unpredictability. The chances that you will run into an unexpected time eating problem is higher in Linux than with Windows or OS X. The cost of dealing with the problem can destroy Linux's cost advantage. If you factor in lost work the cost can go even higher.
Its seems that you can (1) Pay up front a Mac (2) Pay lifetime maintenance for Windows or (3) Pay for install and config time on with Linux. In the end, the life-cycle cost for all three could be equal so Linux isn't "free."
My major complaint against Linux is its unpredictable nature. When an install goes well it works better than Windows but one never knows when it is going to explode. It is very difficult to budget one's time for Linux, in my experience.
Windows eats one's time after the install when the blizzard of malware hits.
One of the big advantage of working with Macs is that while they are more expensive initially, the cost is predictable. Once you've paid for it you it just works.
My chief disagreement is with the idea that Linux is "free" because you don't pay a commercial fee for it. This is only true if you don't have to spend a lot of time on installation and configuration. Much of the polish that Linux lacks is precisely in those areas where it would save end user time such as documentation and error messages. Linux developers don't seem to consider conserving the end users time to be a primary design goal.
"The idea of running a system that costs absolutely nothing on the software side is a powerful one, and Windows and Mac OS X would have a difficult time competing against that."
Linux is free only if you value your time at zero. Of the three OS's I think it safe to say that most spend more time configuring Linux than the others. If you are technically proficient you may not notice this cost but if you had to pay somebody else to do it you definitely would.
The price advantage of Linux can evaporate in a hurry when you have to pay $40 dollars an hour for a tech to set the system up. Such a cost is trivial when configuring a server but for a personal machine it could easily reach the cost of a copy of OS X or Windows. Time lost to unexpected problems when installing Linux on diverse hardware or when installing new software also translates into cost for many people.
I have been very impressed by the gains made by many Linux distros in ease of installs but there is no way that in the desktop and laptop areas that Linux compares to the other two OSs when it comes to time spent configuring the systems. Basic installs work well but wander away from the pre-installed software and nightmare tangles often ensue.
I think that the Linux community to often holds the time of the end user to be a worthless. Until that attitude changes the spread of Linux to the general population will continue to be slow.
If we take the experience with the IBM PCs in the 80's as our template I think it is easy to see that cloning and piracy don't contribute to the success of individual hardware companies.
IBM owned the PC market up until the late 80s but the evolution of cloned hardware destroyed their business. It was Microsoft who made their fortune from cloned hardware not IBM. Microsoft may have benefited from software piracy but they held a unique position of being able to get reliably paid for their products by large institutions like OEMs, corporations and government entities. Pirated copies of their software didn't effect their principle revenue streams because MS didn't have a reliable mechanism for getting people who did pirate to pay in the first place.
I don't see Apple benefiting from clones (de facto or formal) or pirated software. Cloned hardware would cannibalize Apple's own sales. Clones would not functions as well as real Macs which would damage the brand. Trying to recoup by selling the OS and other software like iLife would require serialization and all the headaches that entails in addition to support issues.
Perhaps Apple could gain an edge by capturing the small but influential "hacker" market. People who enjoy futzing with Linux might be willing to suffer the headaches of running MacOS X on unsupported hardware. Beyond that, however, I don't see much advantage.
I can relate to Zawinski's frustration and many others do as well. I notice that it seems to effect those with more experience than those newer to computing.
When one first acquires a new tool, whether it is hardware, software or a woodworking plane, the very act of learning how use the tool itself works is highly engaging. Just futzing about figuring out how the new tool works is an end in itself.
However, after one has spent 20+ years learning the ends and out of each season's new tools the joy fades. One becomes progressively less interested in the tools itself and more interested in product you want to use the tool to make. The time spent futzing with the tool is not engaging but frustrating and wasteful. You want to get the primary work done not spend all your time adjusting your tools.
How many times over the years has Zawinski wrestled with a problem similar to his Linux sound issue? The thrill of solving such a problem is long gone, baby.
The Linux community is dominated by people who enjoy the process of learning and using the tool itself. They are the kind of people who take the toaster apart to see how it works. The vast majority of desktop users, however, just want to make toast.
People like Zawinski, who have taken apart their fair share of toasters, also now just want to make toast. At present, Linux doesn't let him do that.
This is one of those stories that gets reported every few years when some nuclear facility releases an audit.
The headline screams "X kilos of plutonium missing" making it sound as if plutonium went missing in one chunk but down in the story it is always revealed that the loss is not unusual and is in fact perfectly in keeping with the expected error of the accounting system. In other words, nothing newsworthy whatsoever happened at all.
The fact that these audits get reported as if they were in fact news reveals the systemic anti-nuclear bias of the media.
The last time I looked, falsifying or causing the falsification of Federal government documents, including research was Federal crime.
My grandfather worked at a USDA research station and the scientist there always had to attach some boiler plate to their research submissions saying that the research was sound to the best of their knowledge. I would image that the scientist in the survey had a similar obligation.
If these scientist have real solid evidence that science was altered then they need to provide the names of the studies and the people involved so we can through some people in jail.
If they can't or won't do this I call bullshit.
This is incorrect. Genes hop across species lines all the time. Microorganisms routinely swap, inject and steal genes on an on going basis even across such divisions as eukaryotes vs prokaryotes. Viruses move genes between multicellular species routinely.
It has always amused me that people fear GM when for the last 100 years the standard breeding method for food crops has been to force mutate them with radiation and mutagenic chemicals. Such practices mutate thousands of unknown mutated genes for every beneficial gene they produce. Nobody ever checked if if 1/10 or 1 percent of the general population was allergic to a protein in a mutated food plant.
At least with GM, we know what we changed and where and when we changed it. With forced mutation and natural gene swapping we have no idea.
I'm a little dubious of this finding because even though cell phone use has increased dramatically, actual accidents and injuries have fallen over the same period.
Since drunk driving is a major driver of accidents, IIRC something like 50%, it would seem that anything that had the same effect as drunk driving would drive up accident rates significantly. Especially, since a far higher percentage of population drives and talks than ever drive drunk.
I think it this study, or at least the summary of it, exaggerates the danger.
In some states.
I imagine this design is far to heavy to function as a solar sail. The entire surface must support sufficient thrust to accelerate this thing thousands (probably tens of thousands) of klicks per hour.
On a separate note, I always heard that erotic was when you used a feather and KINKY was when you used the whole chicken.
Yeah, I might missed his tone on that one but you would be surprised how many people fall for the dihydrogen monoxide gag.
Just like any other rocket, the thrust comes from the thermal expansion of gasses pressing against the sail-shaped surface. The major difference in this design is that the energy to heat the gasses comes not from chemical, nuclear or solar power onboard the craft but from on off-board source on the ground. It is functionally identical to the Laser Launch concept.
This system would work like a cannon, accelerating the craft within the span of hour or so to the orbital velocity of its target. Then the craft would coast up to that orbit like a cork bobbing to the surface of the water. It would arrive at that orbit with zero velocity relative to its target. In order to make an orbital insertion, it would require only relatively small, onboard maneuvering thrusters .
Of course, since the energy source is back on Earth, the same system could not be used for a return flight without building a microwave generator at the target.
Long term, you could set up a type of railway system, with generators around all the planets which could cheaply shoot packages back and forth.
You might want to look up dihydrogen monoxide before commenting next time
"How do you slow down?" Space travel doesn't work that way. Each orbit has a specific orbital velocity that defines it. Simplistically, speed equals location. To travel from outward from the sun you speed up, to travel towards the sun you slow down. Once your velocity matches that of an orbit you will end up in that orbit eventually with a zero velocity relative to every other object in that orbit. So you can travel in space by raising your velocity slowly, as with an ion drive, or quickly by being shot out of cannon. It's the final velocity that matters.
I'll defer to your experience on this matter as you seemed to be far closer to the matter than I was. I was just a peon at the Austin campus at the time. It sounds as if quality control feel victim to the fiefdoms.
It is possible that the break up QC that I remember had to do with the disbanding of QC within fiefdoms. At least one group of software QC guys got scattered under Spindler(*spit*) but to be honest I don't remember exactly were they were in the org chart. I do know however, that he violently resisted all attempts to reassert quality control. I know because I know a lot of the people who were screaming at him. The products developed and shipped under his watch were horrifically bad quality wise
I think the "Great Quality Implosion" was caused by (1) fiefdoms (2) dismantling of QC and (3) a manical desire to drive prices as low as possible. Product managers were rewarded for shipping something cheap while the cost of failure was build to another fief.
You should write down your remembrances of your time at Apple especially things related to the "Great Quality Implosion". I think it is one of the more interesting corporate failures and one that is strangely little studied. Business and computer historians might find it valuable someday.