I'd say it is even more recent than that at least insofar as popularity goes. I'm from Nova Scotia, and I have an uncle who's father was a fisherman. So we're probably talking early 1900's here. My uncle has always refused to eat lobster, referring to it as "bait", as when he was a child he would have to bait his dad's hooks back on land and typically what was used was lobster. Lobster was a means to catch real fish.
Anyway I don't discount your history, much of it makes sense. However in terms of volume and popularity I might attribute it to post WW2 scarcity of real fish, depletion of fish stocks using modernized large scale methods, and perhaps just simple marketing. As to hear my uncle tell it, lobster went from being something that was only used as bait or perhaps only the really destitute and poor might eat, to much sought after fine dining in the span of only 50-75 years.
For the same reason, if not complexity. I'm pretty sure if someone wanted to they could launch a supersonic airliner in no time (in fact I've heard rumors). However it isn't practical or economical, so no one will. Carries too few passengers, too expensive to run, and has problems with sonic booms over populated areas. Similarly, while the Saturn V was good at what it did, it was super expensive and complex, and once the purpose is removed, not much point to it anymore as it could be done with cheaper more reasonable methods.
It does go to show however if money is no object what can be done however... I think we'll get there again, but with something much better and we'll all be better for it.
Because it is the only place that actually has a CD player anymore. Even then, it also supports USB, Bluetooth, and has an Aux out port, so you're by no means forced to use CD's anymore either. I expect my next car/stereo probably won't even have a CD player in it...
I bought Vista for a new build back in the day, and actually ran it for some time (until my next build).
Vista has a lot of hate, but I ran it for a long time and for the most part it was a good OS.
To my mind, Vista had exactly one problem, which they fixed after a couple years. The problem was a lack of compatible drivers that were pre-loaded. I'm pretty sure even after SP1, it still was missing a ton. Don't get me wrong, the drivers existed, only you had to go manually find them and install them yourself, which was more than a bit of a pain in the ass, particularly if you had to do more than one clean install. Once you visited the various hardware websites, downloaded and installed updated Vista driver, Vista worked pretty well.
Why did it have such bad initial driver support? Well there are a number of different reasons...
#1 First of all, Vista was the first OS to follow the most popular and long lived OS of all time in Windows XP. So yeah, there were a lot of people not prepared. #2 You could argue that Microsoft didn't do enough outreach to the hardware folks for specifications and deadlines, I don't know specifics, but it could be a cause. #3 Lazy hardware folks just putting off new drivers until the last minute, missing the release date, and just posting it on their websites.
If Vista had the bulk of the drivers available on websites preloaded on the install disk, or even by SP1, I doubt people would be making such a big deal about Vista. It WAS a pain in the ass to install, but not because of the OS itself, but rather all the various drivers to be individually loaded.
Sure it had it's various things like UAC and such, and many while annoying were good ideas. Can you say the same for the tile UI of 8, or the various BS like the app store and Cortana in 10 that you and everyone else just ignores?
I see this being pronounced in "air quotes" a la doctor evil. LiDAR has been around for a very long time now, it is hardly revolutionary. In fact there was a similar story years ago, about the exact same thing, probably just a different place (or maybe the same story now in duplicate).
It is pretty cool. However at the same time my spidey sense is going off a bit on how "undiscovered" these places were. It seems much to vast and complex to have been unnoticed entirely. Locals perhaps have known about it forever but they have just not been unearthed as it isn't worth the trouble (or it is in a difficult region to get to).
I think the desire to is also dependent on the person. For myself, its pretty much a yes please. I could go for vast stretches without physical contact, in fact while I work in an office now, I'd said most of my interactions are already digital anyway. I have some overlap in what I work on with the physical people around me, but not a great deal either. Every now and again it is kind of interested to go to some large shared meeting or conference and put a face to a name. I've had working relationships with folks for like 10 years, and then meet them at some seminar which is kind of fun. So I don't think I would be really all that put out if working from home and rarely if ever met anyone. My partner however is more of a social type worker. When facing a prospect of taking a job where she would have little or no physical contact with many people she balked at it, and ultimately rejected the idea, looking elsewhere. For her she would need the constant social contact to stay interested with the job, where her job satisfaction is as much about who she works with than the actual nuts and bolts of what she is actually doing. For her that kind of isolation would be unbearable.
Can't believe no one has mentioned this one yet. It's the science fiction show I'm most looking forward to. It's probably one of the shows I'm most looking forward to period. Unfortunately they are playing a bit sketchy as to the release date in that it is listed as "2018"...
More like Populous. Language, it's subtle but important.
That is like saying that auto insurance is "popular". It has the connotation that it means "well liked". Rather than "forced to use". When simply the title should imply the simply empirical definition of most numerous...
Catapult obviously. Would probably take more care than some of the stuff I've seen.
Also more realistically the trend I've been seeing recently (particularly this Christmas) is if no one is home, you don't get your package and you need to pick it up at the depot. With so many people ordering online and delivery, thefts are way up of people just picking stuff up off people's porches. A lot of stuff unless you are there to sign for it you aren't getting it anyway.
If you are there I'm sure the little Cylon Toaster could just text you "Hey I'm outside right now, come flash your ID and I'll spit out your package!".
Pretty much what I was thinking. They took a look at the broken system, and was like "fine, I'll just make my own"...
What is an interesting thought, if you speculate and extrapolate enough... What if Amazon over a period of time is so successful with the non-profit gambit that they eventually Googleify the rest of the industry in that their market share is so large that they put the rest of the vultures out of business? You could basically get privately run universal health care (or national if sold to the US).
What's more long game is even if they decided to continue to run it as a non-profit indefinitely (and no guarantee of that after they put everyone else out of business), they could probably still monetize it enough by selling it Amazon services or in other such non-direct ways where the company itself is "non-profit" but is serviced by it's company holders for profit.
Anyway it is a huge sector, and even with the deep pockets of the companies involved, their opponents are also pretty massive as well, so this could all play out over a longer period of time before we really have an idea of how it is all going to shake out.
My mom got me to read a book on the negative impacts of sugar years ago and it was pretty eye opening. Sugar is really bad for you in a surprising number of ways so I don't doubt the claim. Unfortunately given the last 50 years of food consumerism and various sugar lobbies, it is pretty hard to avoid sugar without being pretty drastic (i.e. avoiding all and any kind of processed food). Not only that, but it is the naturally occurring sugar in "refined" products. One in particular that got my attention was the difference between white and brown rice. It isn't that white rice contains more sugar, it is because your body can break it down so quickly. So while trying to limit your sugar intake is important it is just as important (or more) to regulate how fast you break down foods into sugars. It is that which "shocks" your system and overwhelms its ability to process it properly. So the amplitude of the sugar shock and the consistency of doing so are what is going to lead to an assortment of health issues down the road.
That said, I probably don't do enough myself, but I am probably better than many.
Don't get me wrong, I actually liked Starship Troopers quite a bit.
That said it has about as much to do with Starship Troopers in that there were bugs and space.
Basically the entire script was an original work called "Bug Hunt at Outpost Nine". The bought the rights to the book "Starship Troopers" either for name recognition or more likely were afraid of the similarities that they might get sued (thanks copyright). They slightly modified their own script to align a bit more with the book and presto chango you get Starship Troopers.
So all the debate about the Book VS the Movie are a bit moot.
So my bit of conspiracy theory is this. The Boring Company is simply a way for the US government to funnel billions of dollars over a period of decades into the Elon Musk ventures, keeping him afloat, without looking like they are subsidizing them.
Though as you might recall, unlike way back when, quite a few (well relatively speaking of course) people go to the Antarctic for adventure tourism. So while I don't disagree with you at all, there may be some vacation opportunities for some ultra-rich at some point I suppose.
Even a scientific community which is heavily depended on Earth support is pretty cool however. I'd imagine due to the logistics it would be of the very small variety, that said, I could totally see the "residents" coming up with some sort of joke government just for fun. Mayor of Mars or something like that, or Supreme Planetary Leader or something....
This is just Apple recognizing that their user base is a bunch of idiots. That's how I looked at it anyhow. If you're too dumb to even know what a computer is, well you better buy an iPad!
Joking aside, I think eventually the Apple trend is going to start waning. They built their brand around "Devices that just Work". I believe this is becoming less and less true. Not sure why this is, lack of corporate focus, drive for more cutting edge features, or just greed. However in a total anecdotal way I don't use Apple products (anymore), while my girlfriend does. I seem to pretty much just coast by without any problems, while she has constant issues, and she used to work for Apple support a couple years ago. Most of the problems seem to be around poor design choices Apple has been making the last number of years. While the design choices might seem advantageous to the Apple bottom line, the resultant user experience has been diminished quite a bit. I know my girlfriend is getting pretty tired of my smugness every time she is having charging issues or whatever, and my Android just keeps ticking away without an issue (and cheaper, and more flexible, etc..).
While there are pros and cons to both sides, the one con that I think is the worst is a loss of control.
Once you're locked in there is the potential for abuse. i.e. we're going to raise rates, or it'd be a shame if something were to happen to your account etc... Additionally in the same vein, in many cases it is about the upgrade cycle. In the past, releases were more static. Now we see more software getting perpetually patched anyway, to fix issues as software becomes more complex. The downside to that of course is that there have been instances in the past where you would NOT want to upgrade, due to business processes, or compatibility issues etc... Now you are more less forced to, and if you have to adapt (and spend) then too bad.... Some build in some flexibility in this regard, but even they draw a line as to what they are prepared to support.
I wouldn't call it "stupid". It is rather easy to in hindsight look back and criticize something that now might seem stupid. Like using two digits for year data. Like 640k is big enough for anyone. You could probably list of a host of examples.
In this instance it seems to go back to 1995. However that is production release. Which means the design and decisions made for that was probably in the early 1990's. Now think back to how things were back then. The internet? Ha! Hacking? Ha! Exploits? Ha!
You could argue that things should have been re-evaluated, and updated as circumstances changed. Then again, perhaps the guy(s) who were really aware of all that stuff retired, or were laid off? Perhaps it just never occurred to anyone that it was all that exploitable. Or it could be that they did know about it, did a bit of risk assessment and figured the performance hit wasn't worth the minute risk that anyone would figure out how to exploit it in any meaningfully way (i.e. a business decision). Remember, while there have been "proofs in concept" of these exploits, to my knowledge no actual malicious hacker (i.e. not a researcher, etc...) has yet to exploit it in any meaningful way that anyone is aware of.
Anyway to call it "stupid" is a bit of hubris. If I had to guess it was done that way back in the day because it really didn't matter. Intel probably knew about it for a long time, and at certain points did business risk assessments to decide that it was better to just ignore it than do anything about it really. Now it seems they are finally paying the price... They don't call it *risk* assessment for nothing.
While I agree in principle, he isn't altogether wrong. People are lazy, and if they don't have to optimize they won't. With the additional headroom that modern computers have there are all sorts of things out there I've seen which could have been vastly more efficient, but because they don't really have to with the amount of power thrown at it, just aren't. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that overtime stuff gets a little more bloaty every year when it doesn't necessarily have to.
That said, you might also avoid things in the future where you store your year data as "79" rather than "1979" as at the time every bit counted. Perhaps our ancestors in 9999 won't be cursing our short sightedness...:)
If you want to use a car analogy you probably could have used the VW emissions scandal as an example.
They have the technology to fix the issue, however it is more expensive and less efficient. So to compete their fix was essentially smoke screen (pun intended) that made people think that their cars were passing emissions testing, which they actually weren't. The actual fix will make it harder for them to compete because it is more expensive and less efficient.
Same thing, Intel knew about the issue, lied about it to keep performance, assuming no one would ever be the wiser. Now in order to fix it, they will need to cripple their competitive advantage, but to continue with the above analogy, install a switch on the dash to turn the emissions on/off (with it default as off). That way they can continue lying about performance, while at the same time blaming the user for the emissions.
I'm no lawyer, but I am not sure that will fly in court as it seems particularly duplicitous.
Read The Left Hand of Darkness, The Disspossed, and the Earthsea series, in that order. All have places on my shelf.
She was always my example when anyone starting going on about there being no great female science fiction authors.
I also recall (but can't find) several op ed pieces she did that were just awesome. I can't remember if it was about politics, the whole Hugo mess, or about female authors (or lack thereof) within the industry (or all three). If anyone remembers, I'd gladly read them again.
Stuff like Rowling is great, but it just isn't in the same category. Just the other day there was a Final Jeopardy category about "Literary Brothers". We have a bit of a game where we try and guess the answer before they actually say what it is (actually right occasionally). I was drawing a bit of a blank so I just said Cameron and Raistlin Majere which is from Dragonlance novels back in the day by Margret Wise and Tracy Hickman. However I knew it wasn't going to be correct, as those sorts of novels would never really be considered "literary". While I enjoyed them a lot when I was younger and though they were great, they simply are not on the same level as the literary greats like Ursula...
One last thing to note. If you've ever looked at the Top X science fiction lists out there, you'll see a couple of things. Most of the authors listed might have one book of their work that makes the list. However there are a select very few that have more than one. I don't think I've seen a list that didn't have both Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossed as listed as the top science fiction novels of all time.
lol ya sort of forgot to finish my sentence/thought after the parentheses... Anyway that is what MIRV's are for.
Also seeing as it is supposed to explode underwater, I'd imagine that is why it is salted with Cobalt as otherwise you wouldn't get the normal radioactive fallout as water is one of the better insulators of radiation in the world, that way you still get the contaminated effect I suppose.
Anyway the whole idea seems a bit silly. Unless you have things things just lurking around all the time, which you probably wouldn't want to do, as someone could find one, and you wanna bet that would be a pretty good excuse for first strike, they would be much too slow. If anything ever did happen, by the time these things launch, chug across the ocean in a couple weeks, all they would be doing is blowing up a bit of toxic wasteland that had already been obliterated in the first day of ICBM strikes, bomber strikes, etc...
I think I saw that these might be "attached" to a hull of a normal nuclear sub, and launched, however I got to think that by doing so you pretty much cripple the original sub for anything as it would be easier to see, easier to hear, slower, less maneuverable, etc...
Though the first thing that came to mind was the design was adopted due to need. i.e. hey we have these mostly useless 100MT nuclear things laying around we spent a ton of money on and are too large for any conventional use, any ideas as to what to do with them other than collect dust? Well what about a torpedo? Well it is much too slow. Well we could attach it to a normal sub... Just seems like they are trying really hard to make some use of a 100MT warheads, when there are already much "better" alternatives to making them in the first place.
I had thought one of the lessons of tsar bomba was how after a certain point it isn't really all that effective to just keep increasing yield. That is what MIRV (multiple independent re-entry vehicles). Anyway the whole thing seems ludicrous, and I'd question it's validity.
Heck why not just load smaller short range missiles into the same platform to fire off the coast? I mean you are essentially building a small nuclear powered autonomous submarine you plan to blow up anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd say it is even more recent than that at least insofar as popularity goes. I'm from Nova Scotia, and I have an uncle who's father was a fisherman. So we're probably talking early 1900's here. My uncle has always refused to eat lobster, referring to it as "bait", as when he was a child he would have to bait his dad's hooks back on land and typically what was used was lobster. Lobster was a means to catch real fish.
Anyway I don't discount your history, much of it makes sense. However in terms of volume and popularity I might attribute it to post WW2 scarcity of real fish, depletion of fish stocks using modernized large scale methods, and perhaps just simple marketing. As to hear my uncle tell it, lobster went from being something that was only used as bait or perhaps only the really destitute and poor might eat, to much sought after fine dining in the span of only 50-75 years.
For the same reason, if not complexity. I'm pretty sure if someone wanted to they could launch a supersonic airliner in no time (in fact I've heard rumors). However it isn't practical or economical, so no one will. Carries too few passengers, too expensive to run, and has problems with sonic booms over populated areas. Similarly, while the Saturn V was good at what it did, it was super expensive and complex, and once the purpose is removed, not much point to it anymore as it could be done with cheaper more reasonable methods.
It does go to show however if money is no object what can be done however... I think we'll get there again, but with something much better and we'll all be better for it.
Because it is the only place that actually has a CD player anymore. Even then, it also supports USB, Bluetooth, and has an Aux out port, so you're by no means forced to use CD's anymore either. I expect my next car/stereo probably won't even have a CD player in it...
Got to love a lawyer with an appropriate level of sarcasm!
His lawyer adds that "The place was a circus and they got their scapegoat... All that was missing were clowns and balloons." #MikeDrop
I bought Vista for a new build back in the day, and actually ran it for some time (until my next build).
Vista has a lot of hate, but I ran it for a long time and for the most part it was a good OS.
To my mind, Vista had exactly one problem, which they fixed after a couple years. The problem was a lack of compatible drivers that were pre-loaded. I'm pretty sure even after SP1, it still was missing a ton. Don't get me wrong, the drivers existed, only you had to go manually find them and install them yourself, which was more than a bit of a pain in the ass, particularly if you had to do more than one clean install. Once you visited the various hardware websites, downloaded and installed updated Vista driver, Vista worked pretty well.
Why did it have such bad initial driver support? Well there are a number of different reasons...
#1 First of all, Vista was the first OS to follow the most popular and long lived OS of all time in Windows XP. So yeah, there were a lot of people not prepared.
#2 You could argue that Microsoft didn't do enough outreach to the hardware folks for specifications and deadlines, I don't know specifics, but it could be a cause.
#3 Lazy hardware folks just putting off new drivers until the last minute, missing the release date, and just posting it on their websites.
If Vista had the bulk of the drivers available on websites preloaded on the install disk, or even by SP1, I doubt people would be making such a big deal about Vista. It WAS a pain in the ass to install, but not because of the OS itself, but rather all the various drivers to be individually loaded.
Sure it had it's various things like UAC and such, and many while annoying were good ideas. Can you say the same for the tile UI of 8, or the various BS like the app store and Cortana in 10 that you and everyone else just ignores?
I see this being pronounced in "air quotes" a la doctor evil. LiDAR has been around for a very long time now, it is hardly revolutionary. In fact there was a similar story years ago, about the exact same thing, probably just a different place (or maybe the same story now in duplicate).
It is pretty cool. However at the same time my spidey sense is going off a bit on how "undiscovered" these places were. It seems much to vast and complex to have been unnoticed entirely. Locals perhaps have known about it forever but they have just not been unearthed as it isn't worth the trouble (or it is in a difficult region to get to).
I think the desire to is also dependent on the person. For myself, its pretty much a yes please. I could go for vast stretches without physical contact, in fact while I work in an office now, I'd said most of my interactions are already digital anyway. I have some overlap in what I work on with the physical people around me, but not a great deal either. Every now and again it is kind of interested to go to some large shared meeting or conference and put a face to a name. I've had working relationships with folks for like 10 years, and then meet them at some seminar which is kind of fun. So I don't think I would be really all that put out if working from home and rarely if ever met anyone. My partner however is more of a social type worker. When facing a prospect of taking a job where she would have little or no physical contact with many people she balked at it, and ultimately rejected the idea, looking elsewhere. For her she would need the constant social contact to stay interested with the job, where her job satisfaction is as much about who she works with than the actual nuts and bolts of what she is actually doing. For her that kind of isolation would be unbearable.
Can't believe no one has mentioned this one yet. It's the science fiction show I'm most looking forward to. It's probably one of the shows I'm most looking forward to period. Unfortunately they are playing a bit sketchy as to the release date in that it is listed as "2018"...
More like Populous. Language, it's subtle but important.
That is like saying that auto insurance is "popular". It has the connotation that it means "well liked". Rather than "forced to use". When simply the title should imply the simply empirical definition of most numerous...
Catapult obviously. Would probably take more care than some of the stuff I've seen.
Also more realistically the trend I've been seeing recently (particularly this Christmas) is if no one is home, you don't get your package and you need to pick it up at the depot. With so many people ordering online and delivery, thefts are way up of people just picking stuff up off people's porches. A lot of stuff unless you are there to sign for it you aren't getting it anyway.
If you are there I'm sure the little Cylon Toaster could just text you "Hey I'm outside right now, come flash your ID and I'll spit out your package!".
Pretty much what I was thinking. They took a look at the broken system, and was like "fine, I'll just make my own"...
What is an interesting thought, if you speculate and extrapolate enough... What if Amazon over a period of time is so successful with the non-profit gambit that they eventually Googleify the rest of the industry in that their market share is so large that they put the rest of the vultures out of business? You could basically get privately run universal health care (or national if sold to the US).
What's more long game is even if they decided to continue to run it as a non-profit indefinitely (and no guarantee of that after they put everyone else out of business), they could probably still monetize it enough by selling it Amazon services or in other such non-direct ways where the company itself is "non-profit" but is serviced by it's company holders for profit.
Anyway it is a huge sector, and even with the deep pockets of the companies involved, their opponents are also pretty massive as well, so this could all play out over a longer period of time before we really have an idea of how it is all going to shake out.
Must be the environment. I tried dumping bunch of humans in the middle of the ocean and they didn't last very long at all.
Clearly the conclusion if we want to extend whale lifespans is to get them out of the ocean as soon as possible.
Now I'll know to end all my death threats with a :P
My mom got me to read a book on the negative impacts of sugar years ago and it was pretty eye opening. Sugar is really bad for you in a surprising number of ways so I don't doubt the claim. Unfortunately given the last 50 years of food consumerism and various sugar lobbies, it is pretty hard to avoid sugar without being pretty drastic (i.e. avoiding all and any kind of processed food). Not only that, but it is the naturally occurring sugar in "refined" products. One in particular that got my attention was the difference between white and brown rice. It isn't that white rice contains more sugar, it is because your body can break it down so quickly. So while trying to limit your sugar intake is important it is just as important (or more) to regulate how fast you break down foods into sugars. It is that which "shocks" your system and overwhelms its ability to process it properly. So the amplitude of the sugar shock and the consistency of doing so are what is going to lead to an assortment of health issues down the road.
That said, I probably don't do enough myself, but I am probably better than many.
Verhoeven BS.
Don't get me wrong, I actually liked Starship Troopers quite a bit.
That said it has about as much to do with Starship Troopers in that there were bugs and space.
Basically the entire script was an original work called "Bug Hunt at Outpost Nine". The bought the rights to the book "Starship Troopers" either for name recognition or more likely were afraid of the similarities that they might get sued (thanks copyright). They slightly modified their own script to align a bit more with the book and presto chango you get Starship Troopers.
So all the debate about the Book VS the Movie are a bit moot.
So my bit of conspiracy theory is this. The Boring Company is simply a way for the US government to funnel billions of dollars over a period of decades into the Elon Musk ventures, keeping him afloat, without looking like they are subsidizing them.
Though as you might recall, unlike way back when, quite a few (well relatively speaking of course) people go to the Antarctic for adventure tourism. So while I don't disagree with you at all, there may be some vacation opportunities for some ultra-rich at some point I suppose.
Even a scientific community which is heavily depended on Earth support is pretty cool however. I'd imagine due to the logistics it would be of the very small variety, that said, I could totally see the "residents" coming up with some sort of joke government just for fun. Mayor of Mars or something like that, or Supreme Planetary Leader or something....
This is just Apple recognizing that their user base is a bunch of idiots. That's how I looked at it anyhow. If you're too dumb to even know what a computer is, well you better buy an iPad!
Joking aside, I think eventually the Apple trend is going to start waning. They built their brand around "Devices that just Work". I believe this is becoming less and less true. Not sure why this is, lack of corporate focus, drive for more cutting edge features, or just greed. However in a total anecdotal way I don't use Apple products (anymore), while my girlfriend does. I seem to pretty much just coast by without any problems, while she has constant issues, and she used to work for Apple support a couple years ago. Most of the problems seem to be around poor design choices Apple has been making the last number of years. While the design choices might seem advantageous to the Apple bottom line, the resultant user experience has been diminished quite a bit. I know my girlfriend is getting pretty tired of my smugness every time she is having charging issues or whatever, and my Android just keeps ticking away without an issue (and cheaper, and more flexible, etc..).
While there are pros and cons to both sides, the one con that I think is the worst is a loss of control.
Once you're locked in there is the potential for abuse. i.e. we're going to raise rates, or it'd be a shame if something were to happen to your account etc... Additionally in the same vein, in many cases it is about the upgrade cycle. In the past, releases were more static. Now we see more software getting perpetually patched anyway, to fix issues as software becomes more complex. The downside to that of course is that there have been instances in the past where you would NOT want to upgrade, due to business processes, or compatibility issues etc... Now you are more less forced to, and if you have to adapt (and spend) then too bad.... Some build in some flexibility in this regard, but even they draw a line as to what they are prepared to support.
I wouldn't call it "stupid". It is rather easy to in hindsight look back and criticize something that now might seem stupid. Like using two digits for year data. Like 640k is big enough for anyone. You could probably list of a host of examples.
In this instance it seems to go back to 1995. However that is production release. Which means the design and decisions made for that was probably in the early 1990's. Now think back to how things were back then. The internet? Ha! Hacking? Ha! Exploits? Ha!
You could argue that things should have been re-evaluated, and updated as circumstances changed. Then again, perhaps the guy(s) who were really aware of all that stuff retired, or were laid off? Perhaps it just never occurred to anyone that it was all that exploitable. Or it could be that they did know about it, did a bit of risk assessment and figured the performance hit wasn't worth the minute risk that anyone would figure out how to exploit it in any meaningfully way (i.e. a business decision). Remember, while there have been "proofs in concept" of these exploits, to my knowledge no actual malicious hacker (i.e. not a researcher, etc...) has yet to exploit it in any meaningful way that anyone is aware of.
Anyway to call it "stupid" is a bit of hubris. If I had to guess it was done that way back in the day because it really didn't matter. Intel probably knew about it for a long time, and at certain points did business risk assessments to decide that it was better to just ignore it than do anything about it really. Now it seems they are finally paying the price... They don't call it *risk* assessment for nothing.
While I agree in principle, he isn't altogether wrong. People are lazy, and if they don't have to optimize they won't. With the additional headroom that modern computers have there are all sorts of things out there I've seen which could have been vastly more efficient, but because they don't really have to with the amount of power thrown at it, just aren't. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that overtime stuff gets a little more bloaty every year when it doesn't necessarily have to.
That said, you might also avoid things in the future where you store your year data as "79" rather than "1979" as at the time every bit counted. :)
Perhaps our ancestors in 9999 won't be cursing our short sightedness...
If you want to use a car analogy you probably could have used the VW emissions scandal as an example.
They have the technology to fix the issue, however it is more expensive and less efficient. So to compete their fix was essentially smoke screen (pun intended) that made people think that their cars were passing emissions testing, which they actually weren't. The actual fix will make it harder for them to compete because it is more expensive and less efficient.
Same thing, Intel knew about the issue, lied about it to keep performance, assuming no one would ever be the wiser. Now in order to fix it, they will need to cripple their competitive advantage, but to continue with the above analogy, install a switch on the dash to turn the emissions on/off (with it default as off). That way they can continue lying about performance, while at the same time blaming the user for the emissions.
I'm no lawyer, but I am not sure that will fly in court as it seems particularly duplicitous.
Read The Left Hand of Darkness, The Disspossed, and the Earthsea series, in that order. All have places on my shelf.
She was always my example when anyone starting going on about there being no great female science fiction authors.
I also recall (but can't find) several op ed pieces she did that were just awesome. I can't remember if it was about politics, the whole Hugo mess, or about female authors (or lack thereof) within the industry (or all three). If anyone remembers, I'd gladly read them again.
Stuff like Rowling is great, but it just isn't in the same category. Just the other day there was a Final Jeopardy category about "Literary Brothers". We have a bit of a game where we try and guess the answer before they actually say what it is (actually right occasionally). I was drawing a bit of a blank so I just said Cameron and Raistlin Majere which is from Dragonlance novels back in the day by Margret Wise and Tracy Hickman. However I knew it wasn't going to be correct, as those sorts of novels would never really be considered "literary". While I enjoyed them a lot when I was younger and though they were great, they simply are not on the same level as the literary greats like Ursula...
One last thing to note. If you've ever looked at the Top X science fiction lists out there, you'll see a couple of things. Most of the authors listed might have one book of their work that makes the list. However there are a select very few that have more than one. I don't think I've seen a list that didn't have both Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossed as listed as the top science fiction novels of all time.
lol ya sort of forgot to finish my sentence/thought after the parentheses... Anyway that is what MIRV's are for.
Also seeing as it is supposed to explode underwater, I'd imagine that is why it is salted with Cobalt as otherwise you wouldn't get the normal radioactive fallout as water is one of the better insulators of radiation in the world, that way you still get the contaminated effect I suppose.
Anyway the whole idea seems a bit silly. Unless you have things things just lurking around all the time, which you probably wouldn't want to do, as someone could find one, and you wanna bet that would be a pretty good excuse for first strike, they would be much too slow. If anything ever did happen, by the time these things launch, chug across the ocean in a couple weeks, all they would be doing is blowing up a bit of toxic wasteland that had already been obliterated in the first day of ICBM strikes, bomber strikes, etc...
I think I saw that these might be "attached" to a hull of a normal nuclear sub, and launched, however I got to think that by doing so you pretty much cripple the original sub for anything as it would be easier to see, easier to hear, slower, less maneuverable, etc...
Though the first thing that came to mind was the design was adopted due to need. i.e. hey we have these mostly useless 100MT nuclear things laying around we spent a ton of money on and are too large for any conventional use, any ideas as to what to do with them other than collect dust? Well what about a torpedo? Well it is much too slow. Well we could attach it to a normal sub... Just seems like they are trying really hard to make some use of a 100MT warheads, when there are already much "better" alternatives to making them in the first place.
I had thought one of the lessons of tsar bomba was how after a certain point it isn't really all that effective to just keep increasing yield. That is what MIRV (multiple independent re-entry vehicles). Anyway the whole thing seems ludicrous, and I'd question it's validity.
Heck why not just load smaller short range missiles into the same platform to fire off the coast? I mean you are essentially building a small nuclear powered autonomous submarine you plan to blow up anyway.