I love how government gets the blame here. Government doesn't actually develop anything in house anymore. When everything you do is done through consultants and firms trying their very best to bleed and suckle the taxpayer teat dry it is hard to do anything right. Private sector to the rescue.
That isn't to say that government hasn't had their hand in mismanagement, they probably do, stuff like political interference do come into play. Not to mention that any very large project of that scale is difficult to do for anyone, including the private sector.
In Canada everything has be caps for like a decade. The "unlimited" data model died a long time ago... The trend is slowly improving... It used to be that caps were generally too small. With network enhancements, caps have gotten bigger to the point that they are reasonable, though some you pay though the teeth for. Most recently I have seen a combination of Cap/Unlimited which I think is a better balance... You get "unlimited" cap, but at a certain cap, your speed is degraded, which to me is pretty good. You pay for the 1GB or 2GB or 5GB cap at full speed, but after that you have unlimited, it is just a bit slower. Typically any user stays within a cap more or less, its just that every now and again you blow it, and the result is either you have no more data, or that you pay some exorbitant amount per GB. At least this way, you watch you cap and you get good service, but if you do happen to blow it, you still have service if a bit slower.
1) Trains have a higher risk of having a spill 2) A modern pipeline can be monitored and remotely shut off. 3) Pipelines run though the middle of nowhere, while trains travel through every population center. Even more risk and impact.
Not to mention pipelines generally speaking run though the middle of nowhere, so if there is a spill there is less human impact. Trains on the other hand run through every little town, increasing the risk of spills around people.
Pretty much this. I wouldn't call this a "win" other than in optics. This is more like a step backwards. It isn't going to stop the oil, it will just travel by train. Transportation by train is higher risk. So more spills, more loss of life. Congratulations on your ideological empty win environmentalists.
I'm not a huge fan of pipelines, but it was better than the alternative, and at least it would have had some jobs attached to it.
One of the guys I played hockey with was a bouncer at a bar, during an altercation he got stabbed in the face with a screwdriver (right through cheek). Bouncers definitely don't get paid enough for that sort of garbage. Anyway a screwdriver is way more dangerous than a box cutter in my view.
The thing that pisses me off the most is bring booze on the plane. That used to be easy and not a big deal. Anyway that has tried to check booze, and had it break can attest to the pain of your bleeding suitcase when you go to pick it up. Sure there is duty free, if you enjoy drinking garbage, or not buying anything local. Some airlines, and some countries, and some airports, allow you to bring your own and use special bags, etc... but it is horribly inconsistent, and arduous.
Though one funny kind of spin off of that, are if you are snowbirds or the like for any length of time, it is easier to just leave all your booze behind, which means: 1) Some serious parties and drinking likely occur just before the rental month people have to leave just to get rid of their booze, and 2) There is a thing where you leave all your booze for the next guy, or friends that haven't left yet, and the booze pile just kind of gets bigger and bigger.
I used to carry a Swiss army knife on my belt all the time, including every flight (of which I would take several per year) between 1995 and 2001. Not once did anyone ever bat an eye. After 9/11 when I went to get on a plane, it was noticed, and they asked me if the flight attendant could hold onto it for the duration of the flight. The following year (I forgot I even had it on me) I was told they it would need to be put into an special envelope and flight staff would secure it for the flight and that I really shouldn't be carrying it at all. I stopped doing it for 2003, as at that point I think it was just not allowed at all anymore.
As to why carry it at all, well you can probably blame a childhood full of MacGyver TV. Airways full of terrorists? Even better reason to carry a Swiss army knife if you're MacGyver, perhaps you'll need it to escape or save the day somehow using a screw driver and small tweezers...
I agree with pretty much everything you've said. I could probably mention a ton of things, but I'll only add two:
1) One of the big differences between Private and Government contracts, is the Government contact will have a lot of requirements that are mandatory, that no private one has to adhere to, all of which drive up costs. Things like FOI requests, and protection of personal information, all much stronger, in addition the procurement processes are usually supposed to be transparent and fair and because of tax dollars, elaborate and long. The procurement process can probably take longer than a lot of actual projects themselves!
2) Self righteous republicans, conservatives, private companies abound... Had an election not so long ago, where the conservative candidate is making himself sound like a master of industry, preaching all the usual garbage about smaller government, less tax, etc... that companies like he build with his sweat and blood are what generate wealth and prosperity etc... Which if you look into his background, made all his money in a software firm, who sells software and contracting services almost entirely to government, which got bought out by another company, which also sells software and contracting services almost entirely to government, who basically rip off suckle at the government teat (taxpayer money)... Unbelievable.
1) I'm excited to see Star Trek on "TV" again. 2) I'm disappointed that it is being released on a subscription service. 3) I think it is a bit of an oxymoron when CBS calls their subscription service "All Access", perhaps it should be called "No Access".
I've been an AMD user for some time, and I can only describe their drivers as bloated and clunky. So it is good that it is getting replaced. That said, it sounds like they are replacing it with something even more bloated. Hopefully it works better. What they really need to work on is getting it to actually run video well, and handle basic features like multi-monitor setup well. Some improvements might include an install process and upgrade process that doesn't require some sort of voodoo dance, reading the necronomicon backwards. while praying to the elder gods that it doesn't totally screw your system. Like codecs, I've found once you get it working, don't effing touch it ever again if you can help it. Still better than nVIDIA, but they have some of the same issues.
Was the same even in the 2000's. Probably because more people using linux were using old systems from the 1990's though I suppose.
I remember someone asking why I tried so many distros of linux and how could I enjoy that. My answer was more less, I had to try that many until I could fine one that worked. I recall trying to find something to work with my old Dell Dimension 4200 (a P3 800), and had to basically play matchmaker with my hardware, bios version, and linux distro until I could get one that worked. I recall fondly Xandros and Mepis. Ubuntu and Knoppix would work if the versions and lunar cycles aligned. Others would range from simply not supported (aka no boot) to partially supported in some hardware either was flaky, or a pita to use, like not detecting HD to mount etc... or all the features you wanted weren't supported in stable, but all in unstable, which would eventually break your system, prompting the whole process over again. Though as frustrating as it could be, at least you could learn something in trying to fix things. That said, the last time I used linux, was a modern (well it was probably a number of years ago now) version of Knoppix on a LiveCD (on that some old Dell), and it worked like a champ no problem...
You can't have mismanagement without "management".
Anyway there are plenty of reasons, much of them boring like budgets and staff resources.
One however that isn't talked about much, is the ability to say "No" when talking about requirements analysis. Usually this is where nobody wants to say no to a manager who has seen things like the internets and iphones.
Typically an application is created to solve a business problem. There is a tendency to want to throw everything and the kitchen sink into the project, more less because you can. I think if a lot of projects concentrated on producing a simple product that solves the core business problem in a very stable way without a lot of bells and whistles increasing the complexity of the project they would be a lot more successful. Nothing wrong with collecting the bells and whistles as requirements, that might be added at a later date, once the core business requirements have been met, deployed, and proven. If more time was dedicated to core than on fluff towards something that is functional, I think it would pretty much eliminate project failure, at least in that there would be some usable results, and not just a huge pile of code and documentation that is non-functional. Big healthcare systems come to mind.
"The emotional distance of the world is shrinking, thanks to the communications we enjoy today"
OK, that made me puke in my mouth just a bit. What a complete pile of marketing drek.
Anyway of more interest when I heard of the project a few days ago, was how are these things powered? I assume they are solar... However I always figured the power necessary to transmit with enough power to be useful for anything would be well beyond what would be available through simple solar cells.
I really have little idea how LTE type signal is generated or broadcast, but I guess I have to assume that they still achieve great range with little power??? Anyone know how this works or what the values we are talking about?
As probably a good chunk of Slashdot is already aware, this problem is not new, has been around for a long time, and will continue to be around for a very long time. About the only difference in terms of NASA is the scale of the issue, and perhaps some enhanced interdependence.
If you work in IT and government, two of the biggest problems you will face are:
1) Generally speaking you get a yearly budget. That is all you get to spend. You need to spend all of it. You can't save it. You can't plan ahead. You will probably get a similar budget next year, but maybe not. In many cases you get large projects. Projects large enough that completing it in a year just isn't feasible. You typically break the project into phases, chunks of work that can be completed within a year, within budget. You have to "risk manage" pretty much everything. Get your budget cut, then you have to make adjustments, sometimes meaning that a project falls off the truck. If that happens, projects can get delayed, staff move on, perhaps eventual failure. I've seen enough money dumped into a project over multiple years to think there is no way this will not move forward, only to have some manager create some grand new strategy to which the project no longer fits, and it is abandoned in place for something else, then management moves on etc... Much of this can happen in the private sector as well, but I would say it is worse in government.
2) On top of yearly budgets, and fickle management, you get political change in government. Which can mean several things, many of which are not good to any project partially completed. First, just like in the first point, budgets can be massively adjusted. Change from year to year usually isn't drastic, but a new government with different priorities may just not fund you, in which cases projects just die for lack of resources. Speaking of priorities, it could be that whatever project you are working on, isn't something the new political masters agree with ideologically, in which case it is probably immediately dead no matter what. On top of that, political parties generally speaking don't want others to have success, so worst case they will torpedo projects that might make the previous party look good, best case they simply re-brand it, call it something else, and claim it as their own... Which can have some hilarious results, particularly in code and architecture when everything was called something else, then suddenly now it is change to something new, and not everything (that people can see) is changed, so you see tons of old documentation and references that don't make any sense anymore. Here is where that whole argument about having IT gray beards around and not just a bunch of kid code monkeys and no one will have the history anymore of why the application is so weirdly designed etc...
Anyway when dealing with 10's of millions it can be tough. I would imagine when dealing with amounts several magnitudes greater, developing things that need to be completed in an iterative order for success, can have some pretty dicey "risk management" going on... When you get to the end and figure out that the propulsion management system was never developed due to cuts 3 years ago, and you are months away from a launch window that won't be around again for another 20 years... Well I can see how that might be frustrating enough to say that they are "Dooooomed" if the politicos don't get their act together.
Considering that the Liberal party won the election, and one of the platform promises was to cancel the F35 order immediately and go with something less expansive and more reasonable, I think the answer to that question is going to be zero...
Sounds like some really really lazying coding. Considering that the primary audience for this drek are consoles, and it was most certainly designed primarily with that in mind, it is really absurd to think that to "avoid paging" it will require 12GB of RAM which is way more than any console would ever have. Sounds to me that it was designed perhaps narrowly in mind for a console architecture, however when you "turn up the volume" so to speak for an enhanced PC version (i.e. resolutions over 1080p, with fancy graphic bits turned on) it doesn't scale very well, or the method that they use is so brute force and lacking in subtlety that it has the same effect. They are also pretty much saying, "we don't give a damn about the PC market, if you don't like it you have the option of buying more RAM".
That said, any modern PC that is built for gaming is going to be using an SSD anyway, which means even if their is some paging going on, it likely isn't going to be the bottleneck that it used to be.
Also in some instances, why bother. I've been in the industry for only 15 years, but even I've seen entire technologies go from buzzworthy to obsolete in a few years.
Also it is likely that the "old guys" are kept busy trying to maintain existing systems, and CIO's don't want to invent money or resources necessary to keep training up on emerging technology, and would rather just get new hires as they are already trained... Yet they don't know how to maintain those old systems... Oh noes! the quandary!
To me the solution seems pretty evident and not really all that complicated. The hint is it really has nothing to do with the physical age of your workforce.
How done one "grab" a tether where the free end is 10,000 ft in the air? An interesting problem.
That is up at the upper range to which a helicopter can actually hover... Even if it could, the rotors would be in the way, and you would have to somehow grab it horizontally. A plane of course can't stop, and would need some sort of grappling device, if one exists... On top of that, I don't know what "Vectran" is, but presumably it is an ultra strong 6700ft cable, which is likely as much to slice through a plane and whatever is trying to grab it than not...
60,000,000,000 could buy you a LOT of drones. So what if they aren't all that stealthy or fast or whatever. Send 10,000 of them.
Rather than have one bomber carrying lots of bombs, that might get taken down by AA measures, have MANY bombers, with a few bombs, overwhelming defenses. Make 'em cheap. Lose a bunch, who cares, no pilots to die. Also makes the enemy use up their ariel weaponry for the next wave etc...
That said, my Mom has always been a bit of a heath nut. There isn't a Christmas that goes by that I don't get some book or recipe book on some sort of healthy eating, most of which I ignore and don't use. However there was one I did read cover to cover, though its name alludes me now... Anyway it wasn't so much a recipe book as it was a book on food health, and once you got reading, it was fairly obvious that the main point that they were trying to make with the overall theme was: Sugar is very bad for you. Much of which has to do with how fast you can metabolize it. How fast you metabolize it depends on how refined it is. So things like white cane sugar or HFCS being very refined, get metabolized very fast, which is sort of a shock and awe to your system, overloading it, and causing it to try and take other measures to keep up with processing it. The book was quick to point out things like white rice, white bread, etc... are all very refined, which means that the sugar within gets converted at an alarming rate. However the alternatives, like brown rice, or whole wheat, health benefits like slightly better fiber aside, means that it is less refined, which means it does take your body longer to break it down into sugar, which means it can more easily handle the processing of that sugar as it arrives at deliberate rate rather than in a tidal wave of sugar production.
So yeah, I've tried to actively cut out sugar where possible. It is difficult as anything processed will probably be full of it, and sometimes alternatives are not readily available... Also sometimes you just want the real thing... If I am going to have pizza, I am not going to ruin it by making it whole wheat for example. I do what I can however, and the only place I ever actually add sugar is in my morning coffee, and there I try to be reasonable.
Oh on another point similar to yours, things thought of as "healthy" that are simply filthy with sugar are fruit juices. From a sugar shock perspective they are terrible for you. However at the same time, if you actually eat a piece of fruit it takes the body a bit longer to break it down in many cases.
Protecting the right of the son or grand-son to sell it to some corporation to pay for their coke habit, who in turn owns the works forever, never dies, and actively lobbies for copyright extension using profits until the eventual heat death of the universe.
Meh. There are plenty of BS "remedies" for all sorts of aliments. All citing "clinical studies" usually of some unknown origin or bought and paid for by themselves. I think ColdFX is one of those. It is far from alone. There is a reason that "Snake Oil Salesman" has its origins in the medical industry's past. One that has never completely gone away. You can walk into any pharmacy anywhere, and probably point to literally hundreds of things that dubiously do anything, don't have any research pointing to that they do, or are marketed in such a way as to not require it.
I don't think any government agency FDA included really does enough about consumer protection in this regard. It is like homeopathy, a government agency will go so far as to say that it is "safe" (of course it is, it is basically nothing), but that is as far as they go, providing no consumer protection against marketing and ripping off consumers thinking they are buying a useful product.
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I love how government gets the blame here. Government doesn't actually develop anything in house anymore. When everything you do is done through consultants and firms trying their very best to bleed and suckle the taxpayer teat dry it is hard to do anything right. Private sector to the rescue.
That isn't to say that government hasn't had their hand in mismanagement, they probably do, stuff like political interference do come into play. Not to mention that any very large project of that scale is difficult to do for anyone, including the private sector.
In Canada everything has be caps for like a decade. The "unlimited" data model died a long time ago... The trend is slowly improving... It used to be that caps were generally too small. With network enhancements, caps have gotten bigger to the point that they are reasonable, though some you pay though the teeth for. Most recently I have seen a combination of Cap/Unlimited which I think is a better balance... You get "unlimited" cap, but at a certain cap, your speed is degraded, which to me is pretty good. You pay for the 1GB or 2GB or 5GB cap at full speed, but after that you have unlimited, it is just a bit slower. Typically any user stays within a cap more or less, its just that every now and again you blow it, and the result is either you have no more data, or that you pay some exorbitant amount per GB. At least this way, you watch you cap and you get good service, but if you do happen to blow it, you still have service if a bit slower.
"branding the car less as transportation than a tool for the connected class"
Is it only me, but did the marketing boffins make a bad choice of words for an electric car whose main concerns seem to be around the range...
So by "Connected Class" do they mean the people that have to have their car constantly plugged in? LOL! :p
Or is it that you have to be part of the mafia or something?
1) Trains have a higher risk of having a spill
2) A modern pipeline can be monitored and remotely shut off.
3) Pipelines run though the middle of nowhere, while trains travel through every population center. Even more risk and impact.
Not to mention pipelines generally speaking run though the middle of nowhere, so if there is a spill there is less human impact. Trains on the other hand run through every little town, increasing the risk of spills around people.
Pretty much this. I wouldn't call this a "win" other than in optics. This is more like a step backwards. It isn't going to stop the oil, it will just travel by train. Transportation by train is higher risk. So more spills, more loss of life. Congratulations on your ideological empty win environmentalists.
I'm not a huge fan of pipelines, but it was better than the alternative, and at least it would have had some jobs attached to it.
Aww thought of changing the subject title to "Decanting weapons is NOT..." after I already post :(
One of the guys I played hockey with was a bouncer at a bar, during an altercation he got stabbed in the face with a screwdriver (right through cheek). Bouncers definitely don't get paid enough for that sort of garbage. Anyway a screwdriver is way more dangerous than a box cutter in my view.
The thing that pisses me off the most is bring booze on the plane. That used to be easy and not a big deal. Anyway that has tried to check booze, and had it break can attest to the pain of your bleeding suitcase when you go to pick it up. Sure there is duty free, if you enjoy drinking garbage, or not buying anything local. Some airlines, and some countries, and some airports, allow you to bring your own and use special bags, etc... but it is horribly inconsistent, and arduous.
Though one funny kind of spin off of that, are if you are snowbirds or the like for any length of time, it is easier to just leave all your booze behind, which means:
1) Some serious parties and drinking likely occur just before the rental month people have to leave just to get rid of their booze, and
2) There is a thing where you leave all your booze for the next guy, or friends that haven't left yet, and the booze pile just kind of gets bigger and bigger.
I used to carry a Swiss army knife on my belt all the time, including every flight (of which I would take several per year) between 1995 and 2001. Not once did anyone ever bat an eye. After 9/11 when I went to get on a plane, it was noticed, and they asked me if the flight attendant could hold onto it for the duration of the flight. The following year (I forgot I even had it on me) I was told they it would need to be put into an special envelope and flight staff would secure it for the flight and that I really shouldn't be carrying it at all. I stopped doing it for 2003, as at that point I think it was just not allowed at all anymore.
As to why carry it at all, well you can probably blame a childhood full of MacGyver TV. Airways full of terrorists? Even better reason to carry a Swiss army knife if you're MacGyver, perhaps you'll need it to escape or save the day somehow using a screw driver and small tweezers...
What is to stop the rich people from simply moving all their money overseas? Wouldn't that get around that tax?
So rather than inherit 20 million, you now own several companies that exist outside the US?
I agree with pretty much everything you've said. I could probably mention a ton of things, but I'll only add two:
1) One of the big differences between Private and Government contracts, is the Government contact will have a lot of requirements that are mandatory, that no private one has to adhere to, all of which drive up costs. Things like FOI requests, and protection of personal information, all much stronger, in addition the procurement processes are usually supposed to be transparent and fair and because of tax dollars, elaborate and long. The procurement process can probably take longer than a lot of actual projects themselves!
2) Self righteous republicans, conservatives, private companies abound... Had an election not so long ago, where the conservative candidate is making himself sound like a master of industry, preaching all the usual garbage about smaller government, less tax, etc... that companies like he build with his sweat and blood are what generate wealth and prosperity etc... Which if you look into his background, made all his money in a software firm, who sells software and contracting services almost entirely to government, which got bought out by another company, which also sells software and contracting services almost entirely to government, who basically rip off suckle at the government teat (taxpayer money)... Unbelievable.
1) I'm excited to see Star Trek on "TV" again.
2) I'm disappointed that it is being released on a subscription service.
3) I think it is a bit of an oxymoron when CBS calls their subscription service "All Access", perhaps it should be called "No Access".
I've been an AMD user for some time, and I can only describe their drivers as bloated and clunky. So it is good that it is getting replaced. That said, it sounds like they are replacing it with something even more bloated. Hopefully it works better. What they really need to work on is getting it to actually run video well, and handle basic features like multi-monitor setup well. Some improvements might include an install process and upgrade process that doesn't require some sort of voodoo dance, reading the necronomicon backwards. while praying to the elder gods that it doesn't totally screw your system. Like codecs, I've found once you get it working, don't effing touch it ever again if you can help it. Still better than nVIDIA, but they have some of the same issues.
Was the same even in the 2000's. Probably because more people using linux were using old systems from the 1990's though I suppose.
I remember someone asking why I tried so many distros of linux and how could I enjoy that. My answer was more less, I had to try that many until I could fine one that worked. I recall trying to find something to work with my old Dell Dimension 4200 (a P3 800), and had to basically play matchmaker with my hardware, bios version, and linux distro until I could get one that worked. I recall fondly Xandros and Mepis. Ubuntu and Knoppix would work if the versions and lunar cycles aligned. Others would range from simply not supported (aka no boot) to partially supported in some hardware either was flaky, or a pita to use, like not detecting HD to mount etc... or all the features you wanted weren't supported in stable, but all in unstable, which would eventually break your system, prompting the whole process over again. Though as frustrating as it could be, at least you could learn something in trying to fix things. That said, the last time I used linux, was a modern (well it was probably a number of years ago now) version of Knoppix on a LiveCD (on that some old Dell), and it worked like a champ no problem...
You can't have mismanagement without "management".
Anyway there are plenty of reasons, much of them boring like budgets and staff resources.
One however that isn't talked about much, is the ability to say "No" when talking about requirements analysis. Usually this is where nobody wants to say no to a manager who has seen things like the internets and iphones.
Typically an application is created to solve a business problem. There is a tendency to want to throw everything and the kitchen sink into the project, more less because you can. I think if a lot of projects concentrated on producing a simple product that solves the core business problem in a very stable way without a lot of bells and whistles increasing the complexity of the project they would be a lot more successful. Nothing wrong with collecting the bells and whistles as requirements, that might be added at a later date, once the core business requirements have been met, deployed, and proven. If more time was dedicated to core than on fluff towards something that is functional, I think it would pretty much eliminate project failure, at least in that there would be some usable results, and not just a huge pile of code and documentation that is non-functional. Big healthcare systems come to mind.
"The emotional distance of the world is shrinking, thanks to the communications we enjoy today"
OK, that made me puke in my mouth just a bit. What a complete pile of marketing drek.
Anyway of more interest when I heard of the project a few days ago, was how are these things powered? I assume they are solar... However I always figured the power necessary to transmit with enough power to be useful for anything would be well beyond what would be available through simple solar cells.
I really have little idea how LTE type signal is generated or broadcast, but I guess I have to assume that they still achieve great range with little power??? Anyone know how this works or what the values we are talking about?
As probably a good chunk of Slashdot is already aware, this problem is not new, has been around for a long time, and will continue to be around for a very long time. About the only difference in terms of NASA is the scale of the issue, and perhaps some enhanced interdependence.
If you work in IT and government, two of the biggest problems you will face are:
1) Generally speaking you get a yearly budget. That is all you get to spend. You need to spend all of it. You can't save it. You can't plan ahead. You will probably get a similar budget next year, but maybe not. In many cases you get large projects. Projects large enough that completing it in a year just isn't feasible. You typically break the project into phases, chunks of work that can be completed within a year, within budget. You have to "risk manage" pretty much everything. Get your budget cut, then you have to make adjustments, sometimes meaning that a project falls off the truck. If that happens, projects can get delayed, staff move on, perhaps eventual failure. I've seen enough money dumped into a project over multiple years to think there is no way this will not move forward, only to have some manager create some grand new strategy to which the project no longer fits, and it is abandoned in place for something else, then management moves on etc... Much of this can happen in the private sector as well, but I would say it is worse in government.
2) On top of yearly budgets, and fickle management, you get political change in government. Which can mean several things, many of which are not good to any project partially completed. First, just like in the first point, budgets can be massively adjusted. Change from year to year usually isn't drastic, but a new government with different priorities may just not fund you, in which cases projects just die for lack of resources. Speaking of priorities, it could be that whatever project you are working on, isn't something the new political masters agree with ideologically, in which case it is probably immediately dead no matter what. On top of that, political parties generally speaking don't want others to have success, so worst case they will torpedo projects that might make the previous party look good, best case they simply re-brand it, call it something else, and claim it as their own... Which can have some hilarious results, particularly in code and architecture when everything was called something else, then suddenly now it is change to something new, and not everything (that people can see) is changed, so you see tons of old documentation and references that don't make any sense anymore. Here is where that whole argument about having IT gray beards around and not just a bunch of kid code monkeys and no one will have the history anymore of why the application is so weirdly designed etc...
Anyway when dealing with 10's of millions it can be tough. I would imagine when dealing with amounts several magnitudes greater, developing things that need to be completed in an iterative order for success, can have some pretty dicey "risk management" going on... When you get to the end and figure out that the propulsion management system was never developed due to cuts 3 years ago, and you are months away from a launch window that won't be around again for another 20 years... Well I can see how that might be frustrating enough to say that they are "Dooooomed" if the politicos don't get their act together.
Considering that the Liberal party won the election, and one of the platform promises was to cancel the F35 order immediately and go with something less expansive and more reasonable, I think the answer to that question is going to be zero...
One word: Bloat.
Sounds like some really really lazying coding. Considering that the primary audience for this drek are consoles, and it was most certainly designed primarily with that in mind, it is really absurd to think that to "avoid paging" it will require 12GB of RAM which is way more than any console would ever have. Sounds to me that it was designed perhaps narrowly in mind for a console architecture, however when you "turn up the volume" so to speak for an enhanced PC version (i.e. resolutions over 1080p, with fancy graphic bits turned on) it doesn't scale very well, or the method that they use is so brute force and lacking in subtlety that it has the same effect. They are also pretty much saying, "we don't give a damn about the PC market, if you don't like it you have the option of buying more RAM".
That said, any modern PC that is built for gaming is going to be using an SSD anyway, which means even if their is some paging going on, it likely isn't going to be the bottleneck that it used to be.
Also in some instances, why bother. I've been in the industry for only 15 years, but even I've seen entire technologies go from buzzworthy to obsolete in a few years.
Also it is likely that the "old guys" are kept busy trying to maintain existing systems, and CIO's don't want to invent money or resources necessary to keep training up on emerging technology, and would rather just get new hires as they are already trained... Yet they don't know how to maintain those old systems... Oh noes! the quandary!
To me the solution seems pretty evident and not really all that complicated. The hint is it really has nothing to do with the physical age of your workforce.
I think I see the problem here.
How done one "grab" a tether where the free end is 10,000 ft in the air? An interesting problem.
That is up at the upper range to which a helicopter can actually hover... Even if it could, the rotors would be in the way, and you would have to somehow grab it horizontally. A plane of course can't stop, and would need some sort of grappling device, if one exists... On top of that, I don't know what "Vectran" is, but presumably it is an ultra strong 6700ft cable, which is likely as much to slice through a plane and whatever is trying to grab it than not...
60,000,000,000 could buy you a LOT of drones. So what if they aren't all that stealthy or fast or whatever. Send 10,000 of them.
Rather than have one bomber carrying lots of bombs, that might get taken down by AA measures, have MANY bombers, with a few bombs, overwhelming defenses. Make 'em cheap. Lose a bunch, who cares, no pilots to die. Also makes the enemy use up their ariel weaponry for the next wave etc...
No shit. Things everyone knows.
That said, my Mom has always been a bit of a heath nut. There isn't a Christmas that goes by that I don't get some book or recipe book on some sort of healthy eating, most of which I ignore and don't use. However there was one I did read cover to cover, though its name alludes me now... Anyway it wasn't so much a recipe book as it was a book on food health, and once you got reading, it was fairly obvious that the main point that they were trying to make with the overall theme was: Sugar is very bad for you. Much of which has to do with how fast you can metabolize it. How fast you metabolize it depends on how refined it is. So things like white cane sugar or HFCS being very refined, get metabolized very fast, which is sort of a shock and awe to your system, overloading it, and causing it to try and take other measures to keep up with processing it. The book was quick to point out things like white rice, white bread, etc... are all very refined, which means that the sugar within gets converted at an alarming rate. However the alternatives, like brown rice, or whole wheat, health benefits like slightly better fiber aside, means that it is less refined, which means it does take your body longer to break it down into sugar, which means it can more easily handle the processing of that sugar as it arrives at deliberate rate rather than in a tidal wave of sugar production.
So yeah, I've tried to actively cut out sugar where possible. It is difficult as anything processed will probably be full of it, and sometimes alternatives are not readily available... Also sometimes you just want the real thing... If I am going to have pizza, I am not going to ruin it by making it whole wheat for example. I do what I can however, and the only place I ever actually add sugar is in my morning coffee, and there I try to be reasonable.
Oh on another point similar to yours, things thought of as "healthy" that are simply filthy with sugar are fruit juices. From a sugar shock perspective they are terrible for you. However at the same time, if you actually eat a piece of fruit it takes the body a bit longer to break it down in many cases.
Protecting the right of the son or grand-son to sell it to some corporation to pay for their coke habit, who in turn owns the works forever, never dies, and actively lobbies for copyright extension using profits until the eventual heat death of the universe.
Meh. There are plenty of BS "remedies" for all sorts of aliments. All citing "clinical studies" usually of some unknown origin or bought and paid for by themselves. I think ColdFX is one of those. It is far from alone. There is a reason that "Snake Oil Salesman" has its origins in the medical industry's past. One that has never completely gone away. You can walk into any pharmacy anywhere, and probably point to literally hundreds of things that dubiously do anything, don't have any research pointing to that they do, or are marketed in such a way as to not require it.
I don't think any government agency FDA included really does enough about consumer protection in this regard. It is like homeopathy, a government agency will go so far as to say that it is "safe" (of course it is, it is basically nothing), but that is as far as they go, providing no consumer protection against marketing and ripping off consumers thinking they are buying a useful product.