>But, the way I understand it, a store has the >right to toss you out for any reason they see >fit (presumably barring race or gender.)
As long as it is a private enterprise, I think they can throw anyone out for ANY reason including race and/or gender. Of course that would be very bad for business, what with the protesters and all.
Its CHICKEN FEED for this type of mission. You can't even buy a launch for $30 million, never mind develop and manufacture a lander. It'll be the most expensive $30 million you ever got.
Usually, calling something a "disaster" implies that someone or something was negatively effected. The Three Mile Island "disaster" resulted in no impact to anyone or anything aside from causing electricity bills to rise.
Uh, all of them? I have dozens to hundreds from that era and there hasn't been any problem with any of them, aside from the occasional scratch (that can be polished out). None, repeat, none, are unplayable.
Bear in mind I am talking about commercially-produced audio CDs. "Do-it-yourself" CD-Rs are constructed differently.
Brett
Re:Someone update the Wiki pls?
on
SCO Loses
·
· Score: 1
The same problem appears to have afflicted the original authors. The article is poorly written, even by Wiki standards.
Well, obviously, it was a very serious problem in Florida in 2000. Ultimately it was proven, even by partisan hacks, that Bush would have won, but it would have taken 6 months. So paper vote counting certainly is a "problem".
That doesn't mean that electronic voting is the solution, of course.
Sadly, it's far from a joke! I recently saw a new ground control system intended to be used for satellite control, and it was EXACTLY that sort of problem. The workload of dealing with the various windows and dialog boxes completely overwhelmed the analysts, who were instead supposed to be watching telemetry. It's been a steady decline over at least the last 25 years.
I guarantee that we will wind up with all sorts of "autonomous labor-saving features" that will cost fantastic amount of time and money to reproduce the actions of a toggle switch.
>The huge increases in computation power >are extremely useful in running >simulations, in engineering, fluid >dynamics, etc, which may help us >advance the propulsion technology. >Moreover, landing men on Mars won't be >as easy as the Moon, as the landing is >considerably trickier (thanks to >gravity and atmosphere), for which >things like flight computers would >certainly be useful.
I am fully aware of that, I do it for a living. However, the simulation capability was sufficiently good at the time of Apollo. Better is only vaguely better and doesn't greatly increase the probability of success and doesn't decrease the cost at all. In fact, developing the simulations is a continual problem and over-reliance on simulation (vs. test and flight experience) tends to increase the risk. The cost tends to be higher (to monumentally higher) and the schedule is almost always limited by slow software development. I run simulations every day of the same level of complexity, or higher, that ran perfectly well on computers extant in 1970. In fact a lot of the code was written in the late 60's and is still in use. "Improved" versions in "modern" languages require 8-processor DEC Alphas TO DO EXACTLY THE SAME CALCULATIONs, but with persistent and apparently unresolvable bugs. It doesn't *have* to be that way, of course, but the fact is that in practice that has happened time and again.
>Are you are aware of the quality the Space Shuttle Onboard Systems team produces?
Yes, because the process discipline used is not in line with "modern" standards, thankfully. If they had to redevelop it today, in 2007 (not 1980) there is no reason to believe that it could be done in any reasonable amount of time or with any reasonable chance of success. And once again, increased software sophistication IS NOT REQUIRED. A few minor operational irritations could be avoided but the Apollo system was quite obviously sufficient, and "improving" it would almost certainly entail all sorts of unnecessary bloat like autonomous failure detection, etc, that was handled with a guy flipping a toggle switch back in 1969.
>The whole Apollo program was made in >about 10 years, and in the 38 years >since we landed on the moon all things >electronic have improved with such >incredible speed, going to Mars soon >should be a piece of cake right? No. Is >it because the GHz processors we have >are too weak? No
A billion times more processor power has no effect because the PROCESSOR POWER IN 1969 was PLENTY ENOUGH. The hard job of landing men on the moon had nearly nothing to do with computers and faster computers don't solve any relevant problems. The hard problems to solve were structural design and propulsion, not algorithms. Propulsion technology- at least propulsion technology useful for manned lunar missions - hasn't advanced one iota since the mid-60's.
To the contrary, all that essentially infinite computer power has brought is C++ or other, more inappropriate languages and associated junk programming - THAT MAKE IT HARDER. In fact, I predict that the biggest issue on return to the moon and even return to capsule Earth-orbital missions will be the flight software - too much to test correctly and innumerable bugs caused by modern "computer science" approaches. Having 6k of RAM and implementing the firmware *on a loom* was sufficiently limiting to prevent the worst of the current bloatware approach to programming. Virtually every current space project of which I am aware has had massive problems with the flight software and database, and it's coincident with trying to use inappropriate programming techniques made possible by faster computers.
>Hi-def audio failed not because of format wars, but because >no human can hear a difference between 24 bit 192 khz sampled >hi-def audio and 16 bit 44.1 khz sampled audio. Double blind >testing shows that listeners just can't hear any difference. >A well-dithered modern CD playing 16-bit 44.khz sampled audio >sounds as good as it gets. Bats may be able to hear a difference >between that 20 khz rolloff and the 80 khz rolloff of hi-def audio, > but humans can't.
Actually SACD was/is technically inferior to regular CD-Audio. The idea was that with the higher sampling frequency you would have an easier time creating a filter to roll off the out-of-band sampling noise. But it was also single-bit streaming which introduces all sorts of noise all by itself. The parts were *cheaper* for SACD as well.
HDCD, which is a 20-bit PCM format, solves the only recognized issue with regular CD - quantization effects at low amplitude. It's effectively dead, too, but it was actually superior, and backwards compatible with CD.
Note that the quoted part of the article says "time variation in magnetic fields". If there is a varying magnetic field, no laws of physics need to be violated to get energy out of it. It's not perpetual motion - it's extracting energy from whatever it causing the field to vary.
This story is complete horseshit. The target was known weeks in advance. I was actually in the printer room of the ops complex shortly before the test and the guys who ran the spacecraft were certainly well aware of the situation and had all gathered around to watch.
Moreover, the spacecraft was barely functional enough to maintain despin and a telemetry downlink (which was iffy at best because antenna had degenerated years before). No one was getting much useful data due to multiple failures in the payloads and the tape recorder. It was certainly no accident and there was no comsat that was ever intended or claimed to be the target. In fact, special spacecraft were constructed to act as targets but were never used after the program was ended - due to orbital debris concerns by the USAF. All the debris wa/is cataloged and tracked like all the rest.
What idiot modded this "Funny"? Some African economists have been begging for the West to stop funneling money into Africa for years. And the result is more "aid concerts". When you send a billion to Africa, you are sending a billion to the same corrupt governments that caused the appalling current conditions. Cut off the money and you cut off arms sales, payoffs, etc.
This is no joke - literally billions of people are endangered by well-meaning but ultimately foolish decisions like this.
More money is not the solution to any of the world's current problems. US public education is actually an incontrovertible proof of this - a prototypical example.
The computers in question are definitely NOT analog, and analog computers are definitely NOT particularly prone to the kinds of problems they are currently experiencing.
The current issue may or may not be related to the new solar array, although it was an interesting coincidence if it wasn't. The computers involved are apparently known to be prone to problems with EMI and that seems to be a leading candidate right now.
Analog computers (depending on definition) are present in essentially all spacecraft, but they are not at all prone to the sort of issues that they are currently experience. And, they Russians certainly didn't either pioneer them nor do they use them a whole lot more than anyone else. In high-bandwidth control situations they are *the* standard. They don't necessarily do all that well in super-low-bandwidth situations like ISS thruster control because they analog components are prone to "drift" in their characteristics with thermal variation, etc.
You do realize, do you not, that his is not some PC, but a dedicated processor, conformally-coated, probably in a hermtically-sealed enclosure with inert gasses, right? It's not like swapping out parts on your Dell.
>Apparently, by "acoustic coupler" they mean "telephone". >Goes to show that bamboozling unsuspecting consumers with >high-tech talk has been around as long as the technologies >themselves!
Snot-nosed punk.
The acoustic coupler was the cradle into which you inserted the telephone handset so the modem could use the speaker and microphone to acoustically transmit the data. We still have some around my place of business and they still work and are in occasional use. See how your high-falutin' iPhone works 40 years from now.
One thing you also might not be aware of is that at the time, you couldn't OWN a telephone - they all belonged to ATT/Ma Bell. In fact that was more-or-less true into the late 70's/early 80s. And they were all identical designs (actually there were two different designs but completely standardized) so your coupler would work with any of them.
Slashdot Mirror
>But, the way I understand it, a store has the
>right to toss you out for any reason they see
>fit (presumably barring race or gender.)
As long as it is a private enterprise, I think they can throw anyone out for ANY reason including race and/or gender. Of course that would be very bad for business, what with the protesters and all.
Brett
Look at the list of shows available, and I think you will quickly see that you are getting what you paid for...
Brett
You're going to have a really tough time landing a hundred pound or so lander with a .05 lb-thrust Ion thruster.
Brett
Its CHICKEN FEED for this type of mission. You can't even buy a launch for $30 million, never mind develop and manufacture a lander. It'll be the most expensive $30 million you ever got.
Brett
Right, but that's a self-created disaster/criminal stupidity that had virtually nothing to do with the reality of the original incident.
Brett
Usually, calling something a "disaster" implies that someone or something was negatively effected. The Three Mile Island "disaster" resulted in no impact to anyone or anything aside from causing electricity bills to rise.
Brett
Agreed! Naturally, everything that liberals don't like is the "slippery slope" to facism.
Brett
Uh, all of them? I have dozens to hundreds from that era and there hasn't been any problem with any of them, aside from the occasional scratch (that can be polished out). None, repeat, none, are unplayable.
Bear in mind I am talking about commercially-produced audio CDs. "Do-it-yourself" CD-Rs are constructed differently.
Brett
The same problem appears to have afflicted the original authors. The article is poorly written, even by Wiki standards.
Brett
Oh, of course, tracking down people who commit felonies is hardly the job of the FBI...
Brett
Well, obviously, it was a very serious problem in Florida in 2000. Ultimately it was proven, even by partisan hacks, that Bush would have won, but it would have taken 6 months. So paper vote counting certainly is a "problem".
That doesn't mean that electronic voting is the solution, of course.
Brett
Except that more mutations should lead to *more biodiversity*, not less. More extinctions but more new species, too.
Brett
Geez, I guess I better learn how to use smilies...
They can have my PS3 when they pry it from my cold, dead, hands!
Sadly, it's far from a joke! I recently saw a new ground control system intended to be used for satellite control, and it was EXACTLY that sort of problem. The workload of dealing with the various windows and dialog boxes completely overwhelmed the analysts, who were instead supposed to be watching telemetry. It's been a steady decline over at least the last 25 years.
I guarantee that we will wind up with all sorts of "autonomous labor-saving features" that will cost fantastic amount of time and money to reproduce the actions of a toggle switch.
Brett
>The huge increases in computation power
>are extremely useful in running
>simulations, in engineering, fluid
>dynamics, etc, which may help us
>advance the propulsion technology.
>Moreover, landing men on Mars won't be
>as easy as the Moon, as the landing is
>considerably trickier (thanks to
>gravity and atmosphere), for which
>things like flight computers would
>certainly be useful.
I am fully aware of that, I do it for a living. However, the simulation capability was sufficiently good at the time of Apollo. Better is only vaguely better and doesn't greatly increase the probability of success and doesn't decrease the cost at all. In fact, developing the simulations is a continual problem and over-reliance on simulation (vs. test and flight experience) tends to increase the risk. The cost tends to be higher (to monumentally higher) and the schedule is almost always limited by slow software development. I run simulations every day of the same level of complexity, or higher, that ran perfectly well on computers extant in 1970. In fact a lot of the code was written in the late 60's and is still in use. "Improved" versions in "modern" languages require 8-processor DEC Alphas TO DO EXACTLY THE SAME CALCULATIONs, but with persistent and apparently unresolvable bugs. It doesn't *have* to be that way, of course, but the fact is that in practice that has happened time and again.
>Are you are aware of the quality the Space Shuttle Onboard Systems team produces?
Yes, because the process discipline used is not in line with "modern" standards, thankfully. If they had to redevelop it today, in 2007 (not 1980) there is no reason to believe that it could be done in any reasonable amount of time or with any reasonable chance of success. And once again, increased software sophistication IS NOT REQUIRED. A few minor operational irritations could be avoided but the Apollo system was quite obviously sufficient, and "improving" it would almost certainly entail all sorts of unnecessary bloat like autonomous failure detection, etc, that was handled with a guy flipping a toggle switch back in 1969.
Brett
>The whole Apollo program was made in
>about 10 years, and in the 38 years
>since we landed on the moon all things
>electronic have improved with such
>incredible speed, going to Mars soon
>should be a piece of cake right? No. Is
>it because the GHz processors we have
>are too weak? No
A billion times more processor power has no effect because the PROCESSOR POWER IN 1969 was PLENTY ENOUGH. The hard job of landing men on the moon had nearly nothing to do with computers and faster computers don't solve any relevant problems. The hard problems to solve were structural design and propulsion, not algorithms. Propulsion technology- at least propulsion technology useful for manned lunar missions - hasn't advanced one iota since the mid-60's.
To the contrary, all that essentially infinite computer power has brought is C++ or other, more inappropriate languages and associated junk programming - THAT MAKE IT HARDER. In fact, I predict that the biggest issue on return to the moon and even return to capsule Earth-orbital missions will be the flight software - too much to test correctly and innumerable bugs caused by modern "computer science" approaches. Having 6k of RAM and implementing the firmware *on a loom* was sufficiently limiting to prevent the worst of the current bloatware approach to programming. Virtually every current space project of which I am aware has had massive problems with the flight software and database, and it's coincident with trying to use inappropriate programming techniques made possible by faster computers.
Brett
>Hi-def audio failed not because of format wars, but because
>no human can hear a difference between 24 bit 192 khz sampled
>hi-def audio and 16 bit 44.1 khz sampled audio. Double blind
>testing shows that listeners just can't hear any difference.
>A well-dithered modern CD playing 16-bit 44.khz sampled audio
>sounds as good as it gets. Bats may be able to hear a difference
>between that 20 khz rolloff and the 80 khz rolloff of hi-def audio,
> but humans can't.
Actually SACD was/is technically inferior to regular CD-Audio. The idea was that with the higher sampling frequency you would have an easier time creating a filter to roll off the out-of-band sampling noise. But it was also single-bit streaming which introduces all sorts of noise all by itself. The parts were *cheaper* for SACD as well.
HDCD, which is a 20-bit PCM format, solves the only recognized issue with regular CD - quantization effects at low amplitude. It's effectively dead, too, but it was actually superior, and backwards compatible with CD.
Brett
Note that the quoted part of the article says "time variation in magnetic fields". If there is a varying magnetic field, no laws of physics need to be violated to get energy out of it. It's not perpetual motion - it's extracting energy from whatever it causing the field to vary.
Brett
This story is complete horseshit. The target was known weeks in advance. I was actually in the printer room of the ops complex shortly before the test and the guys who ran the spacecraft were certainly well aware of the situation and had all gathered around to watch.
t ml for a correct, non-hysterical/paranoid story the way it really happened.
Moreover, the spacecraft was barely functional enough to maintain despin and a telemetry downlink (which was iffy at best because antenna had degenerated years before). No one was getting much useful data due to multiple failures in the payloads and the tape recorder. It was certainly no accident and there was no comsat that was ever intended or claimed to be the target. In fact, special spacecraft were constructed to act as targets but were never used after the program was ended - due to orbital debris concerns by the USAF. All the debris wa/is cataloged and tracked like all the rest.
please see: http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/histind/ASAT/F15ASAT.h
Brett
What idiot modded this "Funny"? Some African economists have been begging for the West to stop funneling money into Africa for years. And the result is more "aid concerts". When you send a billion to Africa, you are sending a billion to the same corrupt governments that caused the appalling current conditions. Cut off the money and you cut off arms sales, payoffs, etc.
This is no joke - literally billions of people are endangered by well-meaning but ultimately foolish decisions like this.
More money is not the solution to any of the world's current problems. US public education is actually an incontrovertible proof of this - a prototypical example.
Brett
With video, preferably?
The computers in question are definitely NOT analog, and analog computers are definitely NOT particularly prone to the kinds of problems they are currently experiencing.
The current issue may or may not be related to the new solar array, although it was an interesting coincidence if it wasn't. The computers involved are apparently known to be prone to problems with EMI and that seems to be a leading candidate right now.
Analog computers (depending on definition) are present in essentially all spacecraft, but they are not at all prone to the sort of issues that they are currently experience. And, they Russians certainly didn't either pioneer them nor do they use them a whole lot more than anyone else. In high-bandwidth control situations they are *the* standard. They don't necessarily do all that well in super-low-bandwidth situations like ISS thruster control because they analog components are prone to "drift" in their characteristics with thermal variation, etc.
Brett
You do realize, do you not, that his is not some PC, but a dedicated processor, conformally-coated, probably in a hermtically-sealed enclosure with inert gasses, right? It's not like swapping out parts on your Dell.
Brett
>Apparently, by "acoustic coupler" they mean "telephone".
>Goes to show that bamboozling unsuspecting consumers with
>high-tech talk has been around as long as the technologies
>themselves!
Snot-nosed punk.
The acoustic coupler was the cradle into which you inserted the telephone handset so the modem could use the speaker and microphone to acoustically transmit the data. We still have some around my place of business and they still work and are in occasional use. See how your high-falutin' iPhone works 40 years from now.
One thing you also might not be aware of is that at the time, you couldn't OWN a telephone - they all belonged to ATT/Ma Bell. In fact that was more-or-less true into the late 70's/early 80s. And they were all identical designs (actually there were two different designs but completely standardized) so your coupler would work with any of them.
Brett