The problem is that science seems to be on the side of the doom predictors. I really really hope and try to convince myself that global warming isn't as bad as predicted, but it's not getting any easier.
Linus worked on a PC and DOS was the only viable OS.
Minix was viable. Linus used it but found it too poor, which is one of the reasons he made Linux.
except you like writing machine code.
Heh, you're talking about the guy who can tell from hex dumps which instructions caused problems.
Also, I seriosly doubt that the compiler and text editor used by him were legally purchased.
Linus used gcc, of course. And Microemacs, I believe, but I'm less sure of that.
We figure that, if a church organist can play scales with her feet, we could speed up our typing significantly by never having to use two finger simultaneously by way of our feet doing that part of the job.
When the organist plays, it does not make too much difference whether she hits the foot pedal a microsecond after she hits a note on the keyboard, rather than a microsecond before. The timing has to be approximately right, but the order doesn't matter. Typing has the opposite properties, and I think most people would have trouble getting the order right.
To which I'll respond, "as top secret as a test that produces a humongous mushroom cloud and detonation in plain sight of ground level viewers can be."
OTOH, am I fundamentally misunderstanding the properties of quantum transmission?
Yes. With a quantum repeater, you can forward or transform a quantum state without actually measuring it. If you try to put in a doctored version, you need to actually measure the state and pass on a newly created one. That will cause instant communication breakdown.
A sgnificant portion of people out there, myself included, cant stand touchpads.
A significant portion of people out there, myself included, can't stand clit mice. I find it impossible to do precision work with those things. With a touchpad I can even play FPS's. Mice are still more precise, but with a mouse I have to move my hand off of the keyboard all the time.
If your RDBMS is doing a full table scan just to do a count(*), then it (or your code) is badly broken.
Postgres knows how many rows are in the table, but it does not know how many of those you can see. Some of them may be inserted speculatively by another transaction. Postgres needs to go through each row to determine whether or not that row is actually visible to you. It is possible to turn this into an O(1) operation if you're willing to do sufficient work on inserts and deletes. Whether this is a good tradeoff depends on how often you do count(*) compared to how often you do inserts and deletes.
Why would a space elevator need to be positioned at the equator? I'm not being facetious, I'm truly curious.
Do the experiment. Take a ball, attach a string with a weight at the end. Now try spinning the ball. You will notice that if you put the attachment on the equator of the ball, you will be able to reach further with the same length of string.
Extraordinary claims that require extraordinary proof indeed. However, if I got US 1.5 Billion and would be thinking about exploring space I would not mind spending a few million to go about proving/disproving them...
I would mind. I have read the talk page related to his article. While Burkhard Heim may not have been a complete crank, his supporters are certainly not sufficiently versed in physics.
Are they using static arp entries? Otherwise, they'll be seriously vulnerable to arp hijacking, DoS, etc.
First of all, arp is only used on LANs. I seriously doubt that the router will be 802.11b-compatible. Point-to-point protocols have no need for arp. Second, let us for a moment assume that the router does use 802.11b or something similar. Then static arp entries protect against all the people who know how to send fake arp packets, but who don't know how to change their MAC address. I think you're just about the only person in that group.
The ping time would probably be pretty good, considering I can ping servers all over the planet with good response and that almost invariably takes the data through at least one satellite somewhere...
Unless you're sitting at a very out-of-the-way spot, your traffic to servers over most of the planet does not go through a satellite. Satellites are pretty much out of the the internet business. The latency is simply too long for geostationary satellites, and LEO satellites either need fancy rotating antennas on the ground stations or provide lousy bandwidth. Iridium gives you 2400bps. Yay.
You can easily check for yourself with traceroute. If a hop costs you more than 240ms, it's probably a satellite. I tried testing the link to Greenland, but Tele Greenland seems to block traceroute (both icmp and udp).
I have no idea what you're calculating. Let's do the unit analysis (it's easy): 2.5*10^5W / (3.5*10^7m)^2 = 2.0*10^-9W/m2 (not W, as you proposed).
Assuming that a laser beam is sufficiently well focused to cover no more than the area of the satellite, and that the atmosphere makes no difference, the full 250kW will be delivered to the satellite. Both assumptions are questionable of course.
Telnet has always been safer as an exposed service, if for no other reason than its simplicity.
You should read the RFC. Telnet is a very bloated protocol. And yes, there has been at least one remote root vulnerability in telnetd -- the exploit happens before telnetd gets as far as displaying the prompt.
Telnet obviously could have been a very simple protocol just setting up a virtual terminal as you say. That is however not what it is in practice.
If you want to get the best possible service life out of your hard drives, never let them spin down.
Some (desktop) drives actually depend on being shutdown once in a while. The explanation I recall is that they only add lubricant when being powered up (or waking up from powersave).
(being used in a design that has shown it can safely withstand catostrophic failure)
I'm unaware of any previous catastrophic failures happening at the speed with which Cassini passed the Earth when slingshotting. Perhaps you can enlighten me.
The real problem with Cassini wasn't just the fact that it had an RTG. Lots of RTG's have been sent up, we basically know how to handle them. The problem was that Cassini used the Earth for gravity assist (slingshot) after going to Venus (IIRC). This means that Cassini came back to Earth at a velocity far higher than anything we could achieve with rockets. If it had hit the Earth, the containment would be unlikely to do much good, the energies involved would just be too high.
Admittedly there has been no case of spacecraft trying to slingshot but hitting the planet instead. Therefore the risk seems reasonably low. I still think the proper cautious approach is to use other planets for the slingshots until we know that RTG containment actually works at those speeds.
Slashdot Mirror
www.generals.dk gets about 7% of its hits from Firefox. 86% is from Internet Explorer.
Of course you have an ethical obligation to help someone who is in mortal danger. In some jurisdictions you have a legal obligation as well.
Is IS broken slashcode. Try validating Slashdot sometime. Of course Slashdot blocks web validators, but with a little work it can be done.
The problem is that science seems to be on the side of the doom predictors. I really really hope and try to convince myself that global warming isn't as bad as predicted, but it's not getting any easier.
Minix was viable. Linus used it but found it too poor, which is one of the reasons he made Linux. except you like writing machine code.
Heh, you're talking about the guy who can tell from hex dumps which instructions caused problems. Also, I seriosly doubt that the compiler and text editor used by him were legally purchased.
Linus used gcc, of course. And Microemacs, I believe, but I'm less sure of that.
When the organist plays, it does not make too much difference whether she hits the foot pedal a microsecond after she hits a note on the keyboard, rather than a microsecond before. The timing has to be approximately right, but the order doesn't matter. Typing has the opposite properties, and I think most people would have trouble getting the order right.
Link please.
Which public tests, exactly?
IBM (or whatever they're called now) makes some very nice laptops which unfortunately only have clit mice.
Yes. With a quantum repeater, you can forward or transform a quantum state without actually measuring it. If you try to put in a doctored version, you need to actually measure the state and pass on a newly created one. That will cause instant communication breakdown.
With a touchpad you can just define two-finger-clicks to be right clicks, and three-finger-clicks to be middle clicks. No such luck with a clit mouse.
A significant portion of people out there, myself included, can't stand clit mice. I find it impossible to do precision work with those things. With a touchpad I can even play FPS's. Mice are still more precise, but with a mouse I have to move my hand off of the keyboard all the time.
Only iTunes can send audio to the airport express, right? That makes it rather useless for a HTPC.
I complain. /usr is an old bad hack. /usr/local just makes it worse.
Postgres knows how many rows are in the table, but it does not know how many of those you can see. Some of them may be inserted speculatively by another transaction. Postgres needs to go through each row to determine whether or not that row is actually visible to you. It is possible to turn this into an O(1) operation if you're willing to do sufficient work on inserts and deletes. Whether this is a good tradeoff depends on how often you do count(*) compared to how often you do inserts and deletes.
Do the experiment. Take a ball, attach a string with a weight at the end. Now try spinning the ball. You will notice that if you put the attachment on the equator of the ball, you will be able to reach further with the same length of string.
I would mind. I have read the talk page related to his article. While Burkhard Heim may not have been a complete crank, his supporters are certainly not sufficiently versed in physics.
First of all, arp is only used on LANs. I seriously doubt that the router will be 802.11b-compatible. Point-to-point protocols have no need for arp. Second, let us for a moment assume that the router does use 802.11b or something similar. Then static arp entries protect against all the people who know how to send fake arp packets, but who don't know how to change their MAC address. I think you're just about the only person in that group.
Unless you're sitting at a very out-of-the-way spot, your traffic to servers over most of the planet does not go through a satellite. Satellites are pretty much out of the the internet business. The latency is simply too long for geostationary satellites, and LEO satellites either need fancy rotating antennas on the ground stations or provide lousy bandwidth. Iridium gives you 2400bps. Yay.
You can easily check for yourself with traceroute. If a hop costs you more than 240ms, it's probably a satellite. I tried testing the link to Greenland, but Tele Greenland seems to block traceroute (both icmp and udp).
Assuming that a laser beam is sufficiently well focused to cover no more than the area of the satellite, and that the atmosphere makes no difference, the full 250kW will be delivered to the satellite. Both assumptions are questionable of course.
You should read the RFC. Telnet is a very bloated protocol. And yes, there has been at least one remote root vulnerability in telnetd -- the exploit happens before telnetd gets as far as displaying the prompt.
Telnet obviously could have been a very simple protocol just setting up a virtual terminal as you say. That is however not what it is in practice.
Some (desktop) drives actually depend on being shutdown once in a while. The explanation I recall is that they only add lubricant when being powered up (or waking up from powersave).
Doesn't AIDS fit the bill? It's certainly altering the landscape of much of a continent, and it doesn't seem to slow down.
I'm unaware of any previous catastrophic failures happening at the speed with which Cassini passed the Earth when slingshotting. Perhaps you can enlighten me.
Admittedly there has been no case of spacecraft trying to slingshot but hitting the planet instead. Therefore the risk seems reasonably low. I still think the proper cautious approach is to use other planets for the slingshots until we know that RTG containment actually works at those speeds.