Not so. Anything you send to Mars from a space platform has first to be lifted from earth's surface to that platform - there is no real saving, and you add the complexity of on-orbit assembly and the engineering headaches of extra time in vacuum while you stop at the station.
So source the raw materials from a moon based mining operation - it'd be a lot cheaper to get that into earth orbit - of course, then you have the cost of setting up a moon based mining operation but that would probably be a good end in itself..
However, if you want to launch lots of things into earth orbit then it's 6 times cheaper to do it from the moon than it is to do it from earth.
To my mind anything which could persuade industry to go to the moon and setup shop is a good thing because once there are mining facilities etc there then we can launch loads of those wonderful solar power satellites [or even just launch containers of helium 3 into earths gravity well to be picked up by some kind of high altitude plane] a damned site cheaper than doing it all from earth..
Oops, should've checked my typing before posting! I did mean, of course, respire. Basically plants only do the CO2 to O2+H2O thing during photosynthesis and then use up oxygen normally at other times.
I don't know about day lengths but I know a lot of plants won't undergo photosynthesis with non natural light so it's possible that mars being furthur out may not get enough power from natural sunlight to properly sustain plants.
Aren't scientists already working on biological computers? That to me is much more ground breaking and radical than conventional computers based on biological designs.
They have been doing so for ages, as well as DNA computers and other such things. The main problem witha biological computer is that there is simply so much we don;t understand about the biological computer found inside everybodies head to even began to understand how to construct one from scratch.
Also there could be a danger in modelling existing computer technology on biological systems to the point where the tech reaches biological complexity. It sounds likea far out science fiction concept but as a biological system we humans are more than the sum of our parts, we show an emergent property known as conciousness/soul/whatever - what if a technological system given the same level of complexity could demonstrate similar properties ?
I used to work for an organisation that had a support divison of 100 people in total to support 15,000 staff across the UK. that number included all management, Pc/Server support, network support, thirdline/projects people, mainframes, security and helpdesk as well as voice stuff. Basically everybody was overworked, underpaid and under huge amounts of stress.
I now work for a bunch with a similar amount of staff to suppport but who are setting up a support organisation of 450 people [including all the same areas as above] and this works out as a far more reasonable number with the staff not being totally snowed under.
I believe the likes of Gartner Group publish recommendations but these numbers are always totally unlike anything you'll find in the real world, mainly because unless it's an IT company you work for IT is always viewed as a non-essential function [even though the company invariably depends on it] and something that doesn't need too much resource. such is life.
For too long we have ignored our celestial partner and space research in general has been on a severe downer since the heyday of the Apollo program.
If governments won't go into space then the only other entities that can do it are the commercial interests. Mapping the moon with modern technology is an admirable step forward from the data collected on the Apollo missions. And who knows, if one or two of these unmanned missions go successfully then man may once again set foot on the moon.
And maybe, just maybe, their craft will get a photo of tranquility base and prove that that damned landing was a hoax!
The high value of the british currency is already creating a lot of problems for england.
shouldn't that be Britain ? Besides, sterling is not currently overvalued, check it;s value against the dollar or the yen and it's fine - it's only overvalued against the euro because the euro is going down faster than an intern on bill clinton. That said it seems to have caught itself now so maybe it'll go up again.
rover crisis would not be as dangerous as it is
Personally I don't see the loss of a car manufacturer that has demonstrated over the years a stunning ability to make cars that people don't want and another ability to not make any profit whatsoever as a particularly bad thing.
True, the ecu is underrated at the moment
Underrated ? it's simply a weak currency cause they let any old dodgy economy join and then don't have control over tax rates and cash relief over those economies. Until they reorganise the EU along lines of a single monetary source and single controlling authority it'll never work - and that'll be a long time in coming because of the nationalistic aspects to iron out.
Actually, if you knew anything about the hardware he is referring to, you would know that it is controlled by firmware (software stored in a PROM), which is usually upgraded regularly as bugs are discovered.
However, since devices such as switches [as was the piece of hardware originally mentioned] and routers are normally based on highly custom architechtures then of course you'd require a custom compiler for each piece of hardware to take whatever source language you use and turn it into the appropriate binary language for the device.
The compiler to do this could well be the same piece of software being used on said companies newer products so they could well be unwilling to release it meaning the first task of anyone playing with the hardware would probably be to produce the compiler and given the pace of development in the network kit world by the time that has happened the kit would probably be totally obsolete.
But it's much harder than you apparently think to pull off an exact cover.
ven if you had Dre's exact studio setup, the same loop sources, the sheet music, and the lyric sheet, it would still be difficult to duplicate one of his songs. And of course you still have to be able to sound just like him when you rap.
Unintentionally perhaps but by suggesting this and with your responses this makes a brilliant point against the copying and distrbution of a musicians work. They have the talent to produce the work, and the sound that makes it all come together. Why, then, should everybody else automatically have rights to do whatever they like with it ?
Music, ideas and stories have not been a commodity for thousands of years, they have been freely available, and shared.
Codswallop!
Before the advent of the ability to record and distribute personal copies of a musical work the only way you would hear a musician perform their work was to *PAY* them to play it for you or a group of people. Minstrels would survive by wondering the country and entertaining a crowd in a pub for a meal and a room over their head. Either way the artist was paid for their work. Of course, if you had enough talent you could listen to the composition and recreate it yourself whenever you wanted to listen to it - something you're still free to do, get some instruments, record the song yourself and keep it in your personal collection and voila - a legal copy [although publishing it may incur a small license fee].
With the advent of personal recording systems it became blatantly obvious that this model would no longer work since the artist would only ever get to do the performance once, everybody would record it, pass copies around and byebye goes any hope the artist had of furthur income unless they were to come up with a brand new song every single day. This is what copyright protects with music. Very, very few bands are big enough to actually make cash out of touring, putting on a big tour can incur a whole truckload of expenses and the proift margins can be small [since the promoter takes a whole wedge for fronting up the cash in the first place thereby leaving a not very big cut for the artists.]
So, if an artist can't make a living from their music what incentive is there for them to even bother creating it in the first place.
No, you're not being clear, you're deliberately confusing the issue by comparing unlike items. Comparing the MP3 file format to a floppy disk or an audio cassette is far more accurate. Napster is far more like a gathering where people swap the mediums they have [say for example a group of people meeting in a hall to swap computer games]. If the owner of the hall is aware of the activity taking place then they become an accessory to the crime, so Napster - by being fully aware of all the illegal trading that goes on - becomes an accessory. I would imagine that people would go after the users as well if they could identify the users.
The whole concept of "intellectual property" wasn't designed to prevent people from having their creations taken away from them.
I disagree. What part of a musical composition is not a creation ? The original purpose of IP was to protect the rights of someone to control property that has no physical component. Music is an obvious example in that the artist has, usually, put a lot of effort into developing the sequence of notes, chords, sounds and lyrics that come together in a pleasing fashion. I would say that if someone has put that effort into it then they have a right to sell it to people just as if they had built a house. They don't, however, have a right to force someone to buy it just as that person doesn;t have a right to simply take it away from them.
If someone managed to duplicate the exact same arangement of notes, chords etc without any reference to the original work then they should also have a right to it but I fail to see why anyone should have a right to it simpl because it is easily copyable and has no physical component - thats like saying that everyone has the talent to generate every piece of music ever created..
Anyway, I'm beginning to ramble - I forget if I had a point
It's worse than that under uk libel law. Truth is not a garaunteed defence against libel if significant damage has been done by the statement. see the granada TV vs Marks & Spencer case.
2) The new tax laws which came into effect this month (IR35), which basically mean that self-employed programmers pay more tax than any other industry (~ 50% of their _company's income).
This is a gross misinterpretation of the laws typically made by someone hit by it. The fact of the matter is that IR35 simply means that a self employed programmer who is under contract to a single employer pays the same tax as a regular employee rather than utilising any number of tax loopholes.
The Gartner tends to be very conservative in it's opinions as I'm sure we're all aware. Several of the financial institutions I've worked for swear by them and the finance sector tends to be one of the most conservative industries going [excluding the fly by night cowboys in the stock market at brokerage companies of course:)]
That the GG is now writing about things like OSS in this light is evidence in itself that it's becoming so mainstream that they can't just ignore it anymore and hope it'll go away and as such they need to start writing about it instead because it's what people want to hear. [The gartner group excel in telling companies what they want to hear:)]
Notice it wasn't all roses tho. They still talk about things like TCO and how it's not as cheap as people might think. Just for once I'd like to see a group like this do a proper comparison and prove that the TCO of installing linux or *bsd is probably no different to that of deploying NT or Netware. The first time at least. Of course when the new version of software comes out you have to pay all those training courses and deployment costs all over again, whereas the OSS system gradually evolves so the administrators stay for more familiary with it and don't need to be completely retrained on a new version since they've grown along with the OS they're adminning.
I'd say anyone who runs a linux box as a fileserver for windows boxes would appreciate the virus scanning.
I used to run a similar product on a nightly basis on a number of novell servers, Netware doesn't have viruses but the clients that connect to it and store their files on it most certainly do.
Another use would be to scan the mailstore for all those pop3 users to make sure none of those word attachments have annoying macro viruses in them.
This kind of product is very useful to anyone using linux boxes as a server in a mixed platform environment.
Not just that, Communicatton is vital for society. The development of global, realtime communications medium such as television and latterly the internet piggybacked on the already developing communications mediums such as radio and the printed word [newspapers et al] has shaped the last 100 years like nothing else.
Whilst before it would take several days for information to cross a continent, or weeks even for it cross an ocean, the information was passed instantaeneously around the globe.
People talk about knowing exactly where they were when they heard kennedy had been shot, or whilst they watched Armstrong place the first human foot on another planetry body. For me it was watching Challenger explode or seeing the masses tear the berlin wall to pieces. Television made this kind of experience possible and also made it far more emotive than reading about it a few days later in a newspaper, or even hearing someones description of radio [although lets not forget the profound impact simple radio had on society with the broadcast of War of the Worlds]. It is this that has led to the development of society. We as a society are far more informed on what is going on in the world and far more aware of the issues than we ever were before these developments.
Latterly the rise of the internet has developed that even furthur. Now a scientist or an engineer or a musician or an artist can post their work for almost instant comments by their peers, but not just people local to them, people from all over the world. Lawsuits over regulation aside, this ability to freely share information around the world in a matter of minutes and seconds has forever changed the face of society. The beauty of this over the previous mediums like TV is not so much its interactiveness but the fact that you can get the raw information, the raw news and form your own opinion without having to pull the facts out of a piece of media news that has ineveitably gained a chunk of the authors bias.
Communications technology looks set to develop even futhur in future years but I would question if it will benefit us as much as it has done in these last 100-150 years. We have been communicating in some form since the human race began but the ways in which we communicate have never taken such leaps and bounds as they did over the last 100 years. When it's finally over some people have suggested that the 20th century be known as the century of war, I say it should be known as the century of communication.
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So source the raw materials from a moon based mining operation - it'd be a lot cheaper to get that into earth orbit - of course, then you have the cost of setting up a moon based mining operation but that would probably be a good end in itself ..
J
To my mind anything which could persuade industry to go to the moon and setup shop is a good thing because once there are mining facilities etc there then we can launch loads of those wonderful solar power satellites [or even just launch containers of helium 3 into earths gravity well to be picked up by some kind of high altitude plane] a damned site cheaper than doing it all from earth ..
J
SinnFein is the political wing of the IRA, basically the public mouthpiece/spokespeople.
I don't know about day lengths but I know a lot of plants won't undergo photosynthesis with non natural light so it's possible that mars being furthur out may not get enough power from natural sunlight to properly sustain plants.
J
J
They have been doing so for ages, as well as DNA computers and other such things. The main problem witha biological computer is that there is simply so much we don;t understand about the biological computer found inside everybodies head to even began to understand how to construct one from scratch.
Also there could be a danger in modelling existing computer technology on biological systems to the point where the tech reaches biological complexity. It sounds likea far out science fiction concept but as a biological system we humans are more than the sum of our parts, we show an emergent property known as conciousness/soul/whatever - what if a technological system given the same level of complexity could demonstrate similar properties ?
bing well
J
I now work for a bunch with a similar amount of staff to suppport but who are setting up a support organisation of 450 people [including all the same areas as above] and this works out as a far more reasonable number with the staff not being totally snowed under.
I believe the likes of Gartner Group publish recommendations but these numbers are always totally unlike anything you'll find in the real world, mainly because unless it's an IT company you work for IT is always viewed as a non-essential function [even though the company invariably depends on it] and something that doesn't need too much resource. such is life.
J
If governments won't go into space then the only other entities that can do it are the commercial interests. Mapping the moon with modern technology is an admirable step forward from the data collected on the Apollo missions. And who knows, if one or two of these unmanned missions go successfully then man may once again set foot on the moon.
And maybe, just maybe, their craft will get a photo of tranquility base and prove that that damned landing was a hoax!
J
shouldn't that be Britain ? Besides, sterling is not currently overvalued, check it;s value against the dollar or the yen and it's fine - it's only overvalued against the euro because the euro is going down faster than an intern on bill clinton. That said it seems to have caught itself now so maybe it'll go up again.
rover crisis would not be as dangerous as it is
Personally I don't see the loss of a car manufacturer that has demonstrated over the years a stunning ability to make cars that people don't want and another ability to not make any profit whatsoever as a particularly bad thing.
True, the ecu is underrated at the moment
Underrated ? it's simply a weak currency cause they let any old dodgy economy join and then don't have control over tax rates and cash relief over those economies. Until they reorganise the EU along lines of a single monetary source and single controlling authority it'll never work - and that'll be a long time in coming because of the nationalistic aspects to iron out.
J
However, since devices such as switches [as was the piece of hardware originally mentioned] and routers are normally based on highly custom architechtures then of course you'd require a custom compiler for each piece of hardware to take whatever source language you use and turn it into the appropriate binary language for the device.
The compiler to do this could well be the same piece of software being used on said companies newer products so they could well be unwilling to release it meaning the first task of anyone playing with the hardware would probably be to produce the compiler and given the pace of development in the network kit world by the time that has happened the kit would probably be totally obsolete.
J
ven if you had Dre's exact studio setup, the same loop sources, the sheet music, and the lyric sheet, it would still be difficult to duplicate one of his songs. And of course you still have to be able to sound just like him when you rap.
Unintentionally perhaps but by suggesting this and with your responses this makes a brilliant point against the copying and distrbution of a musicians work. They have the talent to produce the work, and the sound that makes it all come together. Why, then, should everybody else automatically have rights to do whatever they like with it ?
J
Codswallop!
Before the advent of the ability to record and distribute personal copies of a musical work the only way you would hear a musician perform their work was to *PAY* them to play it for you or a group of people. Minstrels would survive by wondering the country and entertaining a crowd in a pub for a meal and a room over their head. Either way the artist was paid for their work. Of course, if you had enough talent you could listen to the composition and recreate it yourself whenever you wanted to listen to it - something you're still free to do, get some instruments, record the song yourself and keep it in your personal collection and voila - a legal copy [although publishing it may incur a small license fee].
With the advent of personal recording systems it became blatantly obvious that this model would no longer work since the artist would only ever get to do the performance once, everybody would record it, pass copies around and byebye goes any hope the artist had of furthur income unless they were to come up with a brand new song every single day. This is what copyright protects with music. Very, very few bands are big enough to actually make cash out of touring, putting on a big tour can incur a whole truckload of expenses and the proift margins can be small [since the promoter takes a whole wedge for fronting up the cash in the first place thereby leaving a not very big cut for the artists.]
So, if an artist can't make a living from their music what incentive is there for them to even bother creating it in the first place.
J
J
I disagree. What part of a musical composition is not a creation ? The original purpose of IP was to protect the rights of someone to control property that has no physical component. Music is an obvious example in that the artist has, usually, put a lot of effort into developing the sequence of notes, chords, sounds and lyrics that come together in a pleasing fashion. I would say that if someone has put that effort into it then they have a right to sell it to people just as if they had built a house. They don't, however, have a right to force someone to buy it just as that person doesn;t have a right to simply take it away from them.
If someone managed to duplicate the exact same arangement of notes, chords etc without any reference to the original work then they should also have a right to it but I fail to see why anyone should have a right to it simpl because it is easily copyable and has no physical component - thats like saying that everyone has the talent to generate every piece of music ever created ..
Anyway, I'm beginning to ramble - I forget if I had a point
J
J
This is a gross misinterpretation of the laws typically made by someone hit by it. The fact of the matter is that IR35 simply means that a self employed programmer who is under contract to a single employer pays the same tax as a regular employee rather than utilising any number of tax loopholes.
Actually under UK law truth is not an absolute defence against libel, strange as it may seem.
J
The Gartner tends to be very conservative in it's opinions as I'm sure we're all aware. Several of the financial institutions I've worked for swear by them and the finance sector tends to be one of the most conservative industries going [excluding the fly by night cowboys in the stock market at brokerage companies of course :)]
:)]
That the GG is now writing about things like OSS in this light is evidence in itself that it's becoming so mainstream that they can't just ignore it anymore and hope it'll go away and as such they need to start writing about it instead because it's what people want to hear. [The gartner group excel in telling companies what they want to hear
Notice it wasn't all roses tho. They still talk about things like TCO and how it's not as cheap as people might think. Just for once I'd like to see a group like this do a proper comparison and prove that the TCO of installing linux or *bsd is probably no different to that of deploying NT or Netware. The first time at least. Of course when the new version of software comes out you have to pay all those training courses and deployment costs all over again, whereas the OSS system gradually evolves so the administrators stay for more familiary with it and don't need to be completely retrained on a new version since they've grown along with the OS they're adminning.
--
I'd say anyone who runs a linux box as a fileserver for windows boxes would appreciate the virus scanning.
I used to run a similar product on a nightly basis on a number of novell servers, Netware doesn't have viruses but the clients that connect to it and store their files on it most certainly do.
Another use would be to scan the mailstore for all those pop3 users to make sure none of those word attachments have annoying macro viruses in them.
This kind of product is very useful to anyone using linux boxes as a server in a mixed platform environment.
--
Not just that, Communicatton is vital for society. The development of global, realtime communications medium such as television and latterly the internet piggybacked on the already developing communications mediums such as radio and the printed word [newspapers et al] has shaped the last 100 years like nothing else.
Whilst before it would take several days for information to cross a continent, or weeks even for it cross an ocean, the information was passed instantaeneously around the globe.
People talk about knowing exactly where they were when they heard kennedy had been shot, or whilst they watched Armstrong place the first human foot on another planetry body. For me it was watching Challenger explode or seeing the masses tear the berlin wall to pieces. Television made this kind of experience possible and also made it far more emotive than reading about it a few days later in a newspaper, or even hearing someones description of radio [although lets not forget the profound impact simple radio had on society with the broadcast of War of the Worlds]. It is this that has led to the development of society. We as a society are far more informed on what is going on in the world and far more aware of the issues than we ever were before these developments.
Latterly the rise of the internet has developed that even furthur. Now a scientist or an engineer or a musician or an artist can post their work for almost instant comments by their peers, but not just people local to them, people from all over the world. Lawsuits over regulation aside, this ability to freely share information around the world in a matter of minutes and seconds has forever changed the face of society. The beauty of this over the previous mediums like TV is not so much its interactiveness but the fact that you can get the raw information, the raw news and form your own opinion without having to pull the facts out of a piece of media news that has ineveitably gained a chunk of the authors bias.
Communications technology looks set to develop even futhur in future years but I would question if it will benefit us as much as it has done in these last 100-150 years. We have been communicating in some form since the human race began but the ways in which we communicate have never taken such leaps and bounds as they did over the last 100 years. When it's finally over some people have suggested that the 20th century be known as the century of war, I say it should be known as the century of communication.
--