There are plenty of objects in Earth orbit that are able to damage a satellite. The cause doesn't have to be sabotage or human error. Shit Sometimes Happens...
Yeah, because some idiot like you could "just infiltrate someone into the programming team" for a secret military satellite project.
Moles have existed in the highest levels of government. What makes you think that something like that is (in theory) impossible. I'm not saying *I* would, BTW - I'm saying that it would be the easiest way for a terrorist organization to sabotage a satellite.
Yes, because terrorists who make explosives and strap them to themselves have billion-dollar weaponry to shoot satellites out of orbit. Sheesh. Get a clue.
Nah, I'd just infiltrate someone into the programming team and make sure that the satellite's antennas stay turned away from the Earth and the solar panels' angle isn't optimal. There are many ways to sabotage such a complex system...
Something as small as having a touch screen to dial your phone, and display everything, means that you're either going to have to carry around a stylus (which you will probably lose) which will scratch your screen, or your screen will have fingerprints; either way it means images/videos/text will be hard to read.
Apple is going for the stylus-free touch screen approach. The other problem with this is that unless touch screen tech has changed drastically in the last 6 mo., this will be unusable while wearing gloves, whereas a properly shaped (i.e. not flat) keypad - even a small one - is very usable with a thin pair of leather gloves.
I hope you mean while "riding." You surfing the 'net while *driving* is a bit scary for other road users:D
Why would I want to spend huge amount of internet time with Cingular when I can walk 5 minutes at the most in any direction and find a Wireless Cafe to get email or tap in to my companies network, or my home network when I am at home.
Ore even tap into a network that people deliberately leave open so others can use (or just don't know any better). Plenty of those around in NYC, and pretty secure if you're doing it via VPN.
The cellco give you, the consumer, a price subsidy if you sign that nice 2 year (or more I've seen) contract.
I got a Nokia 3120 phone for "free" with a 1-yr basic contract from Cingular in 2005. It was light, tiny (3.5" x 1.5" x 0.75") and it worked fine for more than a year. It did exactly what I wanted it to do, which was making phone calls and occasional text messaging. I don't really need anything more capable.
$500-$600 is for a locked phone with a 2yr contract. Even after a few months, unlocked ones on eBay will be over $1000.
I suspect that used unlocked phones will be down to around $500 within a year. Which is about the time when Apple will have finally released a debugged version of the OS.
This format could expand to include a hard drive and become a real portable hand-held, the new Newton.
Why a HDD? HDDs are heavy, prone to mechanical failure, and suck power. For a handheld device, I don't think that you really need more than 10GB for data anyway - that much storage can be provided by flash. Even 5GB stores a lot of music, and movies/music could (will) be swapped as needed from a desktop PC. What may be nice is a powered mini-USB port so you can plug in an external HDD in a 2.5" shell. This should also allow the connection of a real keyboard for those that don't want to pay extra for Bluetooth devices.
For $500-600, it better not be locked to Cingular. That would suck if you wanted to travel abroad and use a non-Cingular SIM rather than paying Cingular's extortionate international roaming rates. I'd rather wait a few months for the unlocked or grey-market models to show up on EBay. If I have to pay $150 more for one, that's fine too. But, honestly, even $500 is too much for me to pay for a phone. If Cingular were smart, they'd offer it for $250 and add $15/mo for "Apple phone service" to the regular voice/data plan. Basically a stealth payment plan over two years.
. Once broadband becomes more commonplace (and I mean available most places including the rural areas) we're going to see the true promise of software as a service come true. When everything lives on the Internet, how you access it becomes unimportant.
That won't fly in the corporate marketplace. Companies want their data "on-site". "On-site" == control and privacy, unlike uploading it to some server who-knows-where. Sometimes laws even mandate on-site data retention. I think that we'll see *some* software-as-a-service, but no one wants a return to the bad old days of all software running on a mainframe connected to lots of dumb terminals (only this time around, the mainframes will be even more centralized).
Can it back up the data on the USB drive automatically? Can it share other devices like scanners? What would be a cool application of this is if it could read music off of the USB drive directly and only need a computer (or a wireless remote) for control. Combine AirTunes and a USB drive. Sort of like a Sonos box with the advantage of built-in storage.
Why does something that's essentially a glorified NAS box need 512MB RAM?! This seems a bit bloated for what it does. If you want a good home/small-office server solution, why not go with something like SME Server 7? It's free, runs fast, takes about 10 min. to install and can be setup not *just* to be a NAS box - you can install whatever you want since it's a LAMP box.
Nevermind that the Uranium could be used to make a super-simple gun-type nuclear bomb that could be constructed without massive computational resources, dozens of nuclear scientists, and actual test sites that would show up on a seismograph. No, it's much better to worry about Plutonium.
To be pedantic:
Actually, plutonium can be used for a gun-type bomb, too, provided that it's free of almost all of the Pu-240 impurities. The problem is that this usually isn't the case in real life, and the mass difference between Pu-239 and Pu-240 is so small as to make seperation very difficult. In theory, though, even the impure plutonium available can be used in a gun-type bomb. The velocity of assembly just has to be extremely high. This would require a long gun (40 ft is the estimate I've heard with firing charges on *both* ends) evacuated to a vacuum. But it is supposedly possible. Just impractical from a delivery standpoint, though I suppose such a device could be clandestinely built into a ship.
The only remaining question is will Windows' successor be Mac OS X or Linux
I vote for "none of the above - it hasn't been developed yet." All three popular systems are based on underlying structures that are getting to be very long in the tooth.
There is currently no official access to university email without Windows
What are you running?! Even Exchange can do SIMAP/SPOP. Not to mention that there are native Exchange clients (Entourage) for OS X - not sure about other Unices. Groupwise is the same way.
Now you are talking about locking in your HARDWARE, which costs more than your software...
Then again, the combination of tightly-controlled hardware with a stable OS (X) is much more reliable than Windows combined with hundreds of different hardware types. There'll be a significant administration cost saving there. You can also do what some universities do and run the back-end and technical department systems on a Unix.
i thought the reason we couldn't reprocess the spent fuel was because of a treaty we have that restricts us from operating a certain type of reactor that is required in order to process the waste into new fuel because that type of reactor can also be used to make nuclear weapons.
Nope, we're already a nuclear weapons state, so non-proliferation agreements don't apply. We can't ship weapons-grade plutonium to other countries by that treaty, but anything we do domestically is ok. There *is* a Federal law that prohibits commercial reprocessing, but chances are that Congress will see reason eventually and repeal it.
I appreciate the 'choice' argument, but really - how is 'locking in' a program that exposes students to the software they will use in the real world an issue?
I doubt that Windows will be as popular in 10 years as it is now. That's just the way of things - new technologies come around and old empires decline. Windows is an overcomplicated, bloated, resource-hogging OS any way you look at it. Also, Windows isn't the best OS to teach programming on because of its complexity.
I've spoken to people from the UK, and it seems that their universities are actually much more Windows-centric than US schools. Could this be because they networked later - the US has a strong Unix base dating from the days of ARPANet when Unix was the only game in town and Windows hadn't been invented yet? (And networking the first versions of Windows was a screaming bitch.)
1) If this stuff is still hot, doesn't it mean there's still energy there we could use?
Yes, but the absolutely daft US regulations forbid extracting plutonium from spent fuel. After all, it might make it easier for terrists to get holda some and make a nukular bomb.
If the glass matrix with plutonium and other alpha-emitters degrades, put a layer of "clean" glass around the matrix as a final protection. The alphas won't be able to penetrate into that, and since it isn't producing them...
Here in the US we don't reprocess our spent fuel, because it costs more to reprocess that to just make new.
Only because the government is subsidizing the eventual building of a storage facility. Also, have we considered the risks of the current state of things - which is that the highly-radioactive spent fuel elements are lying around (under guard, but still...) in dry casks or reactor water pools.
Besides, environmental costs also have to be considered. It's not just the storage of a large mass of fuel. The environmental toll also includes damage due to uranium mining and extraction, enrichment of the uranium - both of which involve some pretty evil chemicals (UF6, yummmmmmm).
Slashdot Mirror
-b.
Moles have existed in the highest levels of government. What makes you think that something like that is (in theory) impossible. I'm not saying *I* would, BTW - I'm saying that it would be the easiest way for a terrorist organization to sabotage a satellite.
-b.
Nah, I'd just infiltrate someone into the programming team and make sure that the satellite's antennas stay turned away from the Earth and the solar panels' angle isn't optimal. There are many ways to sabotage such a complex system...
-b.
Not too bad if you run Windows backup software on one of the clients and back up a shared area periodically.
-b.
Especially if you have more than one battery and want to swap batteries "on the go."
-b.
Apple is going for the stylus-free touch screen approach. The other problem with this is that unless touch screen tech has changed drastically in the last 6 mo., this will be unusable while wearing gloves, whereas a properly shaped (i.e. not flat) keypad - even a small one - is very usable with a thin pair of leather gloves.
-b.
I hope you mean while "riding." You surfing the 'net while *driving* is a bit scary for other road users :D
Why would I want to spend huge amount of internet time with Cingular when I can walk 5 minutes at the most in any direction and find a Wireless Cafe to get email or tap in to my companies network, or my home network when I am at home.
Ore even tap into a network that people deliberately leave open so others can use (or just don't know any better). Plenty of those around in NYC, and pretty secure if you're doing it via VPN.
-b.
I got a Nokia 3120 phone for "free" with a 1-yr basic contract from Cingular in 2005. It was light, tiny (3.5" x 1.5" x 0.75") and it worked fine for more than a year. It did exactly what I wanted it to do, which was making phone calls and occasional text messaging. I don't really need anything more capable.
-b.
I suspect that used unlocked phones will be down to around $500 within a year. Which is about the time when Apple will have finally released a debugged version of the OS.
-b.
Why a HDD? HDDs are heavy, prone to mechanical failure, and suck power. For a handheld device, I don't think that you really need more than 10GB for data anyway - that much storage can be provided by flash. Even 5GB stores a lot of music, and movies/music could (will) be swapped as needed from a desktop PC. What may be nice is a powered mini-USB port so you can plug in an external HDD in a 2.5" shell. This should also allow the connection of a real keyboard for those that don't want to pay extra for Bluetooth devices.
-b.
-b.
No 3G. It has WiFi, and open WiFi networks are ubiquitous in most major (and less major) cities. For other places, it still has EDGE/GPRS.
-b.
That won't fly in the corporate marketplace. Companies want their data "on-site". "On-site" == control and privacy, unlike uploading it to some server who-knows-where. Sometimes laws even mandate on-site data retention. I think that we'll see *some* software-as-a-service, but no one wants a return to the bad old days of all software running on a mainframe connected to lots of dumb terminals (only this time around, the mainframes will be even more centralized).
-b.
Can it back up the data on the USB drive automatically? Can it share other devices like scanners? What would be a cool application of this is if it could read music off of the USB drive directly and only need a computer (or a wireless remote) for control. Combine AirTunes and a USB drive. Sort of like a Sonos box with the advantage of built-in storage.
-b.
-b.
To be pedantic:
Actually, plutonium can be used for a gun-type bomb, too, provided that it's free of almost all of the Pu-240 impurities. The problem is that this usually isn't the case in real life, and the mass difference between Pu-239 and Pu-240 is so small as to make seperation very difficult. In theory, though, even the impure plutonium available can be used in a gun-type bomb. The velocity of assembly just has to be extremely high. This would require a long gun (40 ft is the estimate I've heard with firing charges on *both* ends) evacuated to a vacuum. But it is supposedly possible. Just impractical from a delivery standpoint, though I suppose such a device could be clandestinely built into a ship.
-b.
I vote for "none of the above - it hasn't been developed yet." All three popular systems are based on underlying structures that are getting to be very long in the tooth.
-b.
What are you running?! Even Exchange can do SIMAP/SPOP. Not to mention that there are native Exchange clients (Entourage) for OS X - not sure about other Unices. Groupwise is the same way.
-b.
Then again, the combination of tightly-controlled hardware with a stable OS (X) is much more reliable than Windows combined with hundreds of different hardware types. There'll be a significant administration cost saving there. You can also do what some universities do and run the back-end and technical department systems on a Unix.
-b.
Nope, we're already a nuclear weapons state, so non-proliferation agreements don't apply. We can't ship weapons-grade plutonium to other countries by that treaty, but anything we do domestically is ok. There *is* a Federal law that prohibits commercial reprocessing, but chances are that Congress will see reason eventually and repeal it.
-b.
I doubt that Windows will be as popular in 10 years as it is now. That's just the way of things - new technologies come around and old empires decline. Windows is an overcomplicated, bloated, resource-hogging OS any way you look at it. Also, Windows isn't the best OS to teach programming on because of its complexity.
-b.
-b.
Yes, but the absolutely daft US regulations forbid extracting plutonium from spent fuel. After all, it might make it easier for terrists to get holda some and make a nukular bomb.
-b.
-b.
Only because the government is subsidizing the eventual building of a storage facility. Also, have we considered the risks of the current state of things - which is that the highly-radioactive spent fuel elements are lying around (under guard, but still...) in dry casks or reactor water pools.
Besides, environmental costs also have to be considered. It's not just the storage of a large mass of fuel. The environmental toll also includes damage due to uranium mining and extraction, enrichment of the uranium - both of which involve some pretty evil chemicals (UF6, yummmmmmm).
-b.