Does it weaken Goetz's argument that his description of the software lifecycle harks back to the waterfall days and bears little resemblance to current development practice in open source and/or Internet contexts?
In a word, no. It doesn't matter how or in what context you come up with something, it's whether it's sufficiently unique or not. And in any case, I am not sure why you refer to "current development practice" since that varies wildly from application to application, and the "waterfall" process is certainly still in full force for many serious programming applications.
Hey, that's an excellent point - an article that concludes teh new hotness from Apple is inferior to a 10-year old product you can't buy is an oustanding and ingenious viral ad campaign. Color me impressed!
This is a surprise to someone? Who ever though this *could* work? Certainly not anyone with any knowledge of thermodynamics. The only compressed -gas systems that even have a chance of working are those that store the working fluid as a liquid, meaning it has to be able to be liquified at room temperature at a reasonable pressure (few hundred PSI at most). Otherwise the tanks are huge and heavy (meaning it will barely move under power) or they are small and heavy (meaning it has no range). Two excellent working fluid for this purpose are - wait for it - CO2 and Freon! Oops.
Throwing out data in the original might be a good thing.
Certainly, that's one reason tube amps tend to sound better on poor source material - they have severe rolloff at high frequencies. And one of the big tricks to modifying tube amps is to *further* filter the input to prevent the amp from trying to play anything below about 50 hz or above 10khz, so it never gets overloaded trying to play signals it can't.
Oh, absolutely. There is no doubt that the biggest problem, by far, is the upfront engineering, not the file format. I have plenty of DDD CDs and other items where the digitization of the data involves essentially no loss - but are still terrible recordings that are painful to listen to. Only when everything else it darn near ideal does the compression method/bit rate even become detectable. And the vast, vast majority of cases, and as far as I know never for any portable device, are the conditions ideal. A crappy 128K MP3 of a good performance with good engineering can be a joy.
The results are not at all surprising to me. And of course the "audiophile" community is "stuck on stupid" in some cases. ANYONE who thinks information recorded in tiny wiggles in groves and played through a bunch of springs (stylus, cartridge coils, tonearm, not to mention the non-trivial compliance of the record itself) and then amplified by two-three orders of magnitude is a more accurate representation than a full digital string (almost independent of bit rate) is deluding themselves.
The F4F was about the only plane that even came close to even with the Zero. The Buffalos, the Spitfires, were all toast. For the Buffalo, the kill ratio was something like 8:1 in favor of the Zero.
Like the other poster, I think you meant the F6F Hellcat. The F4F was slower than a Zero and couldn't come close to out-performing it. It had the advantage in the dives, and it was much tougher, which kept the carnage down to some extent, but performance-wise, no way.
You are right that the Zero greatly out-performed the Brewster Buffalo, but even at the start of the war a Spitfire would have been a very good match to the Zero head-to-head, and the later Marks of the Spitfire ran rings around the Zero. The only advantage the Zero had over the Spitfire was range, but that (as noted) was due to lack of armor, self-sealing tanks, etc. Not that they ever met much, head to head, but you certainly would prefer a Spitfire.
The Zero was pretty good in 1939 but not any better than other contemporary land-based fighters like the BF-109 or the Spitfire. It was better than almost all the carrier-based planes at the time, but not a lot in terms of kill ratio. The Wildcats held their own respectably well and the P-40 had a pretty good record, and they are both pretty doggy airplanes by later war standards. And the Zero never really got a lot better. By even 1941 was out-classed by most of the newer Allied airplanes and it's own stablemates. The Zero had a terrible record when it came up against the P-38 or later the F6F, Mustang, or Corsair. Although they didn't really meet, any model of the Zero would have been dead meat in 1943 against any front-line US, British, or Luftwaffe fighter.
"Why can't it just work?", and the fact that it doesn't is put on my shoulders as the "tech" generation.
But, from an objective view, it kind of is the fault of the "tech generation". This stuff should "just work" and the fact that for the most part, it doesn't, and that this is an accepted view of the world, is something no one should have to accept. The fact that a lot of the experts are suggesting reformat/reinstall on a regular basis as if that's the only answer should bother everyone here.
And the Obama "stimulus package" (i.e. payoffs to political cronies) was ~900 billion, or about 33 cents. At least the part of it that is publicly admitted to.
Several hours? Really? Google "linux change resolution". First hit has a line ready to copy and run (xrandr -s 1024x768).
Well, there you go, every child of 3 knows that. Who needs a dialog box that fits the screen resolution with straightforward "just works" workarounds like that?
It's also very difficult for a MacBook to be pirated and made available for download on bittorrent. If they didn't make money on the hardware, they wouldn't make money.
Upgrading from one OS to another, regardless of the platform can always lead to problems down the road. This includes Windows, OS X, and Linux. It is impossible to test every possible upgrade scenario to find all the bugs. SImply put, an upgrade install is there for the less informed and/or lazy. It isn't the best way to get a new OS, and the fact that neither OS X or Windows support upgrading from versions more than the immediate previous one (Leopard and XP respectively) just goes to prove that it's not worth their time supporting such an upgrade path.
Oh, bullshit. I have NEVER ONCE done a format/install on a Mac OS that hadn't experienced a hardware issue requiring an HD replacement. And I have NEVER ONCE had a problem doing it. That goes back to Mac System 6->7, up to and including OS 10.5.8. I have found bugs in the new system, but NEVER ONCE an issue with the upgrade itself. Format/install is probably the only way I would do Windows "upgrades" but it's simply a non-issue with Macs going back ~20 years.
They will probably do all that, but the big thing in this flight was to characterize the structural dynamics -frequencies and amount of the flexing of the structure. They did that by doing programmed attitude changes that put forces on the structure, and then use accelerometers and gyros to see how much flex there was, at what frequencies it happens, and how quickly it damped out. Those things are all critical for both stress analysis, and control system design.
Your only option is to yell at those idiots. Yell and yell and yell and yell. Make them feel like the shit that they are. They still won't understand why they shouldn't do the things you tell them not to do. They just won't do it to avoid your angry reaction.
That will be a great story to tell all those people you meet at the unemployment office, there, tough guy.
Hey, ISP is in seconds, it's an industry standard. The SI version isn't any better - kgf-sec/kg. It makes more sense when you realize it's proportional to the exhaust velocity, which is in, say, feet/second.
To clarify - this sort of "orbital" motion (not really "orbital" since it actively powered) is hardly a new idea. What is relatively new is the fact that you have engines that permit you do do it without prohibitive fuel consumption. It's different from a hovering rocket-propelled lander (like the DC-X) only in scale. The key feature, not clear in the article, is that you are intentionally thrusting along the local vertical, in the direction of gravity, to modify its effects. That was possible and everybody knew about it since, well, Newton figured out gravity. What we haven't been able to do is to maintain it for more than the briefest periods due to excess fuel consumption.
The new part here is the Hall Current thruster, which is ~factor of 10 more efficient than traditional engines. The specific impulse of these is around 1800 seconds (lb-sec of impulse per lbm of fuel- hey I didn't invent the units, I just use them...) compared to maybe 180 for a hydrazine monopropellant thruster. These are not exactly "new" either, the Russkies have been using them for decades. Only recently has the western world begun to develop them, so it's new only in that sense. So the solution they are looking at is now looking reasonably practical, although no doubt still significantly limited by the fuel consumption.
That's pretty significant incentive for the average user to not make use of it. The procedure is not turn on and forget, but buy an expensive external hard drive, plug that in, then turn it on and forget. Most people don't want to shell out all the extra money.
Uh, why do you have to buy a Time Capsule? I run Time Machine using a $75 external HD, works fine. Set and forget.
Hey, "clueless user"? And you wonder why people get irritated with Linux or free software zealots and no one wants to use your apps?
I am a "user". Given my experience building things you wouldn't understand, I would argue the point of "cluelessness". I don't give a crap one way or the other what your ideals are, or how fervently you "believe" in open source. I just want to sit down and write a report. If it works easily and reliably, it's a good product, and if it doesn't, it's not.
BTW, I spent the last few days writing an engineering report using OO.o. Does my "cluelessness" make my comment on the good and bad things about it invalid?
I'm lucky enough to have a policy at work that allows me to both bring my iPod in to work with me, as well as listen to it while working so long as I keep it reasonably quiet./
I was told that I could listen to the radio at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven, I told Bill that if Sandra is going to listen to her headphones while she's filing then I should be able to listen to the radio while I'm collating so I don't see why I should have to turn down the radio because I enjoy listening at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven.
Uh, twit, this is what I do for a living. The statement, as made and stand-alone, was true of this scheme [i]and every other scheme[/i] possible for trajectory change.
Slashdot Mirror
In a word, no. It doesn't matter how or in what context you come up with something, it's whether it's sufficiently unique or not. And in any case, I am not sure why you refer to "current development practice" since that varies wildly from application to application, and the "waterfall" process is certainly still in full force for many serious programming applications.
Brett
Uh, try doing this project *without* a money guy, and see how far you get. Then you will know what he is bringing to the party.
I'm an engineer, too, but you have to recognize that to do something like this requires a lot more than engineering.
Brett
Hey, that's an excellent point - an article that concludes teh new hotness from Apple is inferior to a 10-year old product you can't buy is an oustanding and ingenious viral ad campaign. Color me impressed!
This is a surprise to someone? Who ever though this *could* work? Certainly not anyone with any knowledge of thermodynamics. The only compressed -gas systems that even have a chance of working are those that store the working fluid as a liquid, meaning it has to be able to be liquified at room temperature at a reasonable pressure (few hundred PSI at most). Otherwise the tanks are huge and heavy (meaning it will barely move under power) or they are small and heavy (meaning it has no range). Two excellent working fluid for this purpose are - wait for it - CO2 and Freon! Oops.
Brett
Certainly, that's one reason tube amps tend to sound better on poor source material - they have severe rolloff at high frequencies. And one of the big tricks to modifying tube amps is to *further* filter the input to prevent the amp from trying to play anything below about 50 hz or above 10khz, so it never gets overloaded trying to play signals it can't.
brett
All cyro'ed of course.
Oh, absolutely. There is no doubt that the biggest problem, by far, is the upfront engineering, not the file format. I have plenty of DDD CDs and other items where the digitization of the data involves essentially no loss - but are still terrible recordings that are painful to listen to. Only when everything else it darn near ideal does the compression method/bit rate even become detectable. And the vast, vast majority of cases, and as far as I know never for any portable device, are the conditions ideal. A crappy 128K MP3 of a good performance with good engineering can be a joy.
The results are not at all surprising to me. And of course the "audiophile" community is "stuck on stupid" in some cases. ANYONE who thinks information recorded in tiny wiggles in groves and played through a bunch of springs (stylus, cartridge coils, tonearm, not to mention the non-trivial compliance of the record itself) and then amplified by two-three orders of magnitude is a more accurate representation than a full digital string (almost independent of bit rate) is deluding themselves.
Brett
Like the other poster, I think you meant the F6F Hellcat. The F4F was slower than a Zero and couldn't come close to out-performing it. It had the advantage in the dives, and it was much tougher, which kept the carnage down to some extent, but performance-wise, no way.
You are right that the Zero greatly out-performed the Brewster Buffalo, but even at the start of the war a Spitfire would have been a very good match to the Zero head-to-head, and the later Marks of the Spitfire ran rings around the Zero. The only advantage the Zero had over the Spitfire was range, but that (as noted) was due to lack of armor, self-sealing tanks, etc. Not that they ever met much, head to head, but you certainly would prefer a Spitfire.
The Zero was pretty good in 1939 but not any better than other contemporary land-based fighters like the BF-109 or the Spitfire. It was better than almost all the carrier-based planes at the time, but not a lot in terms of kill ratio. The Wildcats held their own respectably well and the P-40 had a pretty good record, and they are both pretty doggy airplanes by later war standards. And the Zero never really got a lot better. By even 1941 was out-classed by most of the newer Allied airplanes and it's own stablemates. The Zero had a terrible record when it came up against the P-38 or later the F6F, Mustang, or Corsair. Although they didn't really meet, any model of the Zero would have been dead meat in 1943 against any front-line US, British, or Luftwaffe fighter.
Brett
But, from an objective view, it kind of is the fault of the "tech generation". This stuff should "just work" and the fact that for the most part, it doesn't, and that this is an accepted view of the world, is something no one should have to accept. The fact that a lot of the experts are suggesting reformat/reinstall on a regular basis as if that's the only answer should bother everyone here.
Brett
And the Obama "stimulus package" (i.e. payoffs to political cronies) was ~900 billion, or about 33 cents. At least the part of it that is publicly admitted to.
Well, there you go, every child of 3 knows that. Who needs a dialog box that fits the screen resolution with straightforward "just works" workarounds like that?
Brett
It's also very difficult for a MacBook to be pirated and made available for download on bittorrent. If they didn't make money on the hardware, they wouldn't make money.
Brett
Oh, bullshit. I have NEVER ONCE done a format/install on a Mac OS that hadn't experienced a hardware issue requiring an HD replacement. And I have NEVER ONCE had a problem doing it. That goes back to Mac System 6->7, up to and including OS 10.5.8. I have found bugs in the new system, but NEVER ONCE an issue with the upgrade itself. Format/install is probably the only way I would do Windows "upgrades" but it's simply a non-issue with Macs going back ~20 years.
Brett
They will probably do all that, but the big thing in this flight was to characterize the structural dynamics -frequencies and amount of the flexing of the structure. They did that by doing programmed attitude changes that put forces on the structure, and then use accelerometers and gyros to see how much flex there was, at what frequencies it happens, and how quickly it damped out. Those things are all critical for both stress analysis, and control system design.
Brett
I have used Philips and GE - both have an average lifetime of around 9 months in my applications.
Brett
That will be a great story to tell all those people you meet at the unemployment office, there, tough guy.
Brett
Hey, ISP is in seconds, it's an industry standard. The SI version isn't any better - kgf-sec/kg. It makes more sense when you realize it's proportional to the exhaust velocity, which is in, say, feet/second.
Brett
To clarify - this sort of "orbital" motion (not really "orbital" since it actively powered) is hardly a new idea. What is relatively new is the fact that you have engines that permit you do do it without prohibitive fuel consumption. It's different from a hovering rocket-propelled lander (like the DC-X) only in scale. The key feature, not clear in the article, is that you are intentionally thrusting along the local vertical, in the direction of gravity, to modify its effects. That was possible and everybody knew about it since, well, Newton figured out gravity. What we haven't been able to do is to maintain it for more than the briefest periods due to excess fuel consumption.
The new part here is the Hall Current thruster, which is ~factor of 10 more efficient than traditional engines. The specific impulse of these is around 1800 seconds (lb-sec of impulse per lbm of fuel- hey I didn't invent the units, I just use them...) compared to maybe 180 for a hydrazine monopropellant thruster. These are not exactly "new" either, the Russkies have been using them for decades. Only recently has the western world begun to develop them, so it's new only in that sense. So the solution they are looking at is now looking reasonably practical, although no doubt still significantly limited by the fuel consumption.
Brett
Uh, why do you have to buy a Time Capsule? I run Time Machine using a $75 external HD, works fine. Set and forget.
Brett
Someone links to a nearly 1 gig image file on the front page of Slashdot, and you can't believe it's slashdotted?? Really?
Hey, "clueless user"? And you wonder why people get irritated with Linux or free software zealots and no one wants to use your apps?
I am a "user". Given my experience building things you wouldn't understand, I would argue the point of "cluelessness". I don't give a crap one way or the other what your ideals are, or how fervently you "believe" in open source. I just want to sit down and write a report. If it works easily and reliably, it's a good product, and if it doesn't, it's not.
BTW, I spent the last few days writing an engineering report using OO.o. Does my "cluelessness" make my comment on the good and bad things about it invalid?
Brett
People are so unfair!
Money wasted on only one step of the "bailout" - $787 billion.
Brett
Uh, twit, this is what I do for a living. The statement, as made and stand-alone, was true of this scheme [i]and every other scheme[/i] possible for trajectory change.
Brett