There's Computer Science and Computer Engineering - they are different. Computer Science teaches you how to program computers, while Computer Engineering teaches you how to program computers properly. Writing code for a typical desktop application probably doesn't matter, but knowing the Engineering approach is important if you are programming a fly by wire avionics system or the controller for a nuclear power plant.
Computer science as such is actually neither math nor science. It is an engineering endeavor. Because it is concerned not so much with discovery of either laws of nature or the conclusions from assumptions as it is with construction of complex stable structures from already discovered facts.
True, but I would argue that you cannot call it engineering unless you study it within an engineering framework. This gives you not only the knowledge of how to do it, but the discipline and structured approach to do it properly, and the ethics of whether you should be doing it at all. Only then would you call it computer engineering.
It was actually a custom made 15 bit computer with 4k ram. I doubt today software programmers with their Windows only backgrounds would even know how to turn it on, let alone write an entire guidance system that would fit in those memory constraints.
In the real world, a lot of engineering gets done in standard, particularly in the US. The reason? If I walk to the hardware store, they are gonna sell me a 2"x4" piece of wood, not 40mm X 90mm. The same is true for metal, screws, bolts, even the specifications for things like motors and sensors.
Well I'm an engineer in the real would and pretty much everything is done in metric. Look at your car sometime. It doesn't matter if it is an American car or not, every bolt in there is a metric bolt. Cylinder heads are measured in mm. Volume in cc's. The only time I have to use imperial is when dealing with a small machine shop that hasn't updated their equipment yet. In construction even a 2x4 isn't 2" x 4". It's a historical naming convention.
Could it be that the hardware improvements made over the last 12 years may have made library-level emulation unnecessary? Device-level (eg, vmware) and architecture-level (eg, virtual pc) are both simpler and more robust.
Of course Wine is obsolete. It was designed over 10 years ago and obviously technology has improved since then. Who cares that they've made incremental improvements.
Oh wait. That's the argument for getting rid of Hubble. Never mind.
Read more carefully. While the U.S. had announced their return to the ITER program in 2003, funding was not approved until the new energy bill was signed in August 2005. So no, they have not been participating for several years as some have suggested.
And you can't really call the U.S. a true team member either. Funding was only approved for U.S. scientists doing research on U.S. soil. Any hardware purchased must also stay in the U.S. Hard to be a contributing team member with restrictions like that as the facility is being built in France.
I agree. I've had software updates to my SUV three times in the last four years.
Which is why I firmly believe that software that directly impacts a persons safety should be written only by Engineers that have been trained to develop software for mission critical applications (and whose conduct is bound by a code of ethics and a regulatory body).
All I want is to turn on my TV and watch a movie. I really don't care what format the movie is in. The easiest way to do this is to plug something directly into my TV, or something attached to my TV. I don't was the hassle of booting up my PC, waiting 8 hours to download it, then connecting that PC to something that has a big enough display to watch (I don't know about you but my PC display is not 60" wide).
And for those of you that think the PC and TV will merge someday: the first day I have to reboot my TV is the last day I watch it.
True, except the race to the moon was started by Kennedy, which was before significant action in Vietnam. He was a popular president and to kill his dream to put a main on the moon after he was assassinated would have been political suicide.
At the height of the Vietnam war, military spending hit $80 Billion. The most expensive budget for all of NASA in the 60's was $5 Billion. Currently the US is spending close to $500 Billion on its military, with homeland security a extra $30 Billion. NASA's current budget is $15 Billion, steady at that value since the early 90's (which is actually decreasing if you take inflation into account).
By why not nuclear FUSION? I've seen or heard little progress in its research. Sure, we've read about some technologies that can aid in the process but I have yet to read about them being applied right now. Why is it we don't have "Manhattan project" on a global scale using the worlds best scientists and engineers available to boot-strap with yet?
There is a world scale project to develop fusion and every developed country in the world is currently participating (except the U.S.)
Fusion has been researched for decades and most of the really hard stuff has been solved. First was JET in the U.K. that proved a controllable reaction could be maintained. The problem with JET was that it was too small and required more energy than it produced - but it worked.
So next on the drawing board is ITER, the first fusion reactor large enough to generate more power than it consumes. Demonstration portions of if have been built, and they're finally got enough commitment from would leaders to go ahead with the construction.
The big benefits of fusion are that its waste is reactive for a much shorter time than fission waste, you can actually use the current stored radioactive waste from fission reactors as fuel, and due to the properties of fusion it is impossible to get an uncontrollable runaway reaction. Turn off the input power and the reaction dies out.
Except that Hubble's optics were never designed to focus on an object as close or as bright as the Earth.
However Lockheed also made a bunch of modified Hubbles that are pointed towards Earth called KH-11s and KH-12s. So don't worry - someone is looking at you.
It is not out of date, there currently is no telescope that can match the quality of Hubble images, and the cheapest and easiest repair is to do it robotically as in the original plan before Griffin took over.
The biggest problem with the U.S. education system is that the teachers are paid crap. Why would anyone with an engineering or similar degree become a teacher at about 1/3 the salary they could get if they worked in their discipline.
So rarely does a teacher also have an advanced degree. A lot of kids ask 'why do we need to know this?' They just don't see the point. And a teacher that has never had a practical use for say Calculus probably couldn't explain it.
offer better salaries, smarter people will become teachers who will hopefully be able to explain the practicality of what they are learning better.
Why would a bunch of religious fundamentalist nutbars care about space and science when there are godless non-Christians to kill? And dammit, they got our oil!
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There's Computer Science and Computer Engineering - they are different. Computer Science teaches you how to program computers, while Computer Engineering teaches you how to program computers properly. Writing code for a typical desktop application probably doesn't matter, but knowing the Engineering approach is important if you are programming a fly by wire avionics system or the controller for a nuclear power plant.
Math is the language of science and English is one of the languages of literature, but no-one would say that English IS literature.
It was actually a custom made 15 bit computer with 4k ram. I doubt today software programmers with their Windows only backgrounds would even know how to turn it on, let alone write an entire guidance system that would fit in those memory constraints.
Pot. Kettle. Look it up.
Read more carefully. While the U.S. had announced their return to the ITER program in 2003, funding was not approved until the new energy bill was signed in August 2005. So no, they have not been participating for several years as some have suggested.
And you can't really call the U.S. a true team member either. Funding was only approved for U.S. scientists doing research on U.S. soil. Any hardware purchased must also stay in the U.S. Hard to be a contributing team member with restrictions like that as the facility is being built in France.
From the ITER site:
"In 1998, the Congress directed the DOE to conduct an orderly closeout of its ITER activities, which was done during FY1999."
I agree. I've had software updates to my SUV three times in the last four years.
Which is why I firmly believe that software that directly impacts a persons safety should be written only by Engineers that have been trained to develop software for mission critical applications (and whose conduct is bound by a code of ethics and a regulatory body).
All I want is to turn on my TV and watch a movie. I really don't care what format the movie is in. The easiest way to do this is to plug something directly into my TV, or something attached to my TV. I don't was the hassle of booting up my PC, waiting 8 hours to download it, then connecting that PC to something that has a big enough display to watch (I don't know about you but my PC display is not 60" wide).
And for those of you that think the PC and TV will merge someday: the first day I have to reboot my TV is the last day I watch it.
True, except the race to the moon was started by Kennedy, which was before significant action in Vietnam. He was a popular president and to kill his dream to put a main on the moon after he was assassinated would have been political suicide.
At the height of the Vietnam war, military spending hit $80 Billion. The most expensive budget for all of NASA in the 60's was $5 Billion. Currently the US is spending close to $500 Billion on its military, with homeland security a extra $30 Billion. NASA's current budget is $15 Billion, steady at that value since the early 90's (which is actually decreasing if you take inflation into account).
There is a world scale project to develop fusion and every developed country in the world is currently participating (except the U.S.)
Fusion has been researched for decades and most of the really hard stuff has been solved. First was JET in the U.K. that proved a controllable reaction could be maintained. The problem with JET was that it was too small and required more energy than it produced - but it worked.
So next on the drawing board is ITER, the first fusion reactor large enough to generate more power than it consumes. Demonstration portions of if have been built, and they're finally got enough commitment from would leaders to go ahead with the construction.
The big benefits of fusion are that its waste is reactive for a much shorter time than fission waste, you can actually use the current stored radioactive waste from fission reactors as fuel, and due to the properties of fusion it is impossible to get an uncontrollable runaway reaction. Turn off the input power and the reaction dies out.
Except that Hubble's optics were never designed to focus on an object as close or as bright as the Earth.
However Lockheed also made a bunch of modified Hubbles that are pointed towards Earth called KH-11s and KH-12s. So don't worry - someone is looking at you.
It's hard to fund a space program to the moon when your country spends hundreds of billions of dollars blowing the crap out of other countries.
It is not out of date, there currently is no telescope that can match the quality of Hubble images, and the cheapest and easiest repair is to do it robotically as in the original plan before Griffin took over.
The biggest problem with the U.S. education system is that the teachers are paid crap. Why would anyone with an engineering or similar degree become a teacher at about 1/3 the salary they could get if they worked in their discipline.
So rarely does a teacher also have an advanced degree. A lot of kids ask 'why do we need to know this?' They just don't see the point. And a teacher that has never had a practical use for say Calculus probably couldn't explain it.
offer better salaries, smarter people will become teachers who will hopefully be able to explain the practicality of what they are learning better.
That has to be the stupidest explanation I've ever heard in my life.
'disguarded'? Do you mean 'discarded'?
Obviously it didn't help your braincells any.
Sorry I can't bring myself to vote redneck. I wouldn't be able to live with myself in the morning.
And all airline fatalaties occur not in the air but on the ground.
It really is a silly distinction. Its not a meaningful statistic to say that noone has died in space.
Didn't they already do this to Cuba? Great way to suspend human rights by placing your prisons in other countries.
And when a totally useless moon-base turns into another multi-billion dollar boondoggle,what would you have them crash THAT into?
Why would a bunch of religious fundamentalist nutbars care about space and science when there are godless non-Christians to kill? And dammit, they got our oil!