And just to clarify, this bug was only discovered (at least by someone willing to disclose it) in January 2010. At least Microsoft didn't brush it under the rug for 17 years, I hope...
Remember that over 2/3 of the defense budget is operational costs (paying our soldiers, conducting operations).
One thing I have to point out, though, is how much we spend on defense compared to the rest of the world. When doing international budget comparisons, the only real comparisons is by percentage of GDP. Want to guess where the US places in the rankings? 1st? 3rd?
The reason why it's "scientifically interesting" is:
Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD) is extremely unusual as it is only one of three recorded cancers that can spread like a contagious disease. The cancer is passed from devil to devil through biting. The live tumour cells aren't rejected by the animal's immune system because of a lack of genetic diversity among Tasmanian devils.
From what I remember, the Sea Shadow was actually mostly a failure, in terms of radar signature. Sure, it was damn stealthy. In fact, too stealthy. Water naturally reflects radar, so when they took Sea Shadow out, all they had to do was look for the hole where they weren't getting any reflection.:-/
In other ways it was a success. It did have a very low noise signature. The hull design did help it greatly reduce the ships wake, keeping it from turning up too much water.
No, not really windows, but more of a hardware issue. The SATA spec doesn't require manufatures support hot-swap, so, some don't fully support it. nVidia's SATAs always have had hot-swap, so thats why you would see the main hard drive in the "safely remove" list. But, for example, my Marvel and Intel controllers don't support hot-swap. My Marvel controller handles the eSATA ports, and I've tried adding a drive while it was powered up. Windows detected it and everything work, but there is no safe method to disconnect the drive (the write-cache buffers need to be cleared out before you can yank it off safely). The best solution I could come up was force the computer into S3 standby, and then pull the drive. That seems to work good enough.
How about this: hibernate the process. Take everything in memory, keep track of its open files, and write it out to disk. When the user logs in, load it back up and continue on. A notification to the user that this has occurred would be useful.
Of course, the question you're probably trying to raise is why save at all? Why do modern systems still rely on a paradigm that's over a 100 years old? Maybe someday we'll come up with something that's more efficient and better organized, but right now I don't have that answer.
I can't defend everything, so I'll just post some info.
Full-scale OS updates aren't intended for its intended audience. I've had bad upgrades, but only when playing with the development branch (joyride). Activities can be updated easily with a new Sugar build.
Sugar was just updated very recently. I would post a link, but the wiki is down at the moment. It has some changes, modified layout, better power management, and a control panel with a software updater.
Wifi with security is a LOT better than it was. Mine syncs right up with WPA for me without any trouble.
There are localized Wiki activities now available. And, these do often come specialized for the country they are being delivered to, including electronic books that they use. These are often special builds not available to the public, so you wouldn't see much of them.
One of the big concerns is the inability to provide large-scale support (hardware warranty, returns, software mishaps). The average-Joe would expect this, as a lot of them did even with the G1G1 program. Support for new schools usually came from people who were trained by the OLPC staff, and who continued support after the staff had left. It would be a logistical nightmare to try to provide support to thousands of people all over the country, something this non-profit didn't want to get involved with.
I have three motherboards sitting in the corner right now, all the caps on them are bulging or leaking. I had to replace two motherboards on my friend's systems because of failing caps. Hell, I've even seen a video card with a failing capacitor.
Speaking of Apple, they had a leaking capacitor problem on their Airport Extreme.
The problem exists. Because you haven't seen it in your "~20 years" of experience doesn't mean the rest of us are suffering.
UAVs are inevitable. We have the technology to begin removing people from some dangerous positions, so we are. UAVs kind of remind me of early airplanes. They were used for quite awhile as just simple reconnaissance, then someone had the neat idea of strapping a gun to one.
Of course, unmanned does not mean autonomous. There's still someone in a pilot seat pushing the buttons.
But when it comes to primes in the 10 million digit range (I couldn't even guess how many bits you would require for a number that large), it becomes impractically large for cryptography.
From the GIMPS website:
Finding new Mersenne primes is not likely to be of any immediate practical value. This search is primarily a recreational pursuit. However, the search for Mersenne primes has proved useful in development of new algorithms, testing computer hardware, and interesting young students in math.
For example, flip-chip technology uses a solder BGA to connect the silicon ship to a substrate. That substrate is then also usually connected to a motherboard through a solder BGA.
Although RoHS probably contributed to the RRoD, mostly it was an improper thermal solution. There was an article awhile back where it was discovered that Microsoft engineers decided to cut costs by designing the heatsink system themselves. Insufficient cooling and an improper mounting system allowed the board to warp more than the RoHS solder could handle. Newer 360's have lots of extra epoxy around the package to keep it from pulling too far away from the motherboard.
Chrome might help with lasers, but it'll decrease other factors such as stealth, both visual and radar. Older fighters (think P-51 Mustang or B-29 Superfortress) often went out with polished aluminum skins. Later generations opted to increase the weight by adding paint, so that they could get additional visual camouflage both when on the ground and in the sky (depending on where they were being deployed they would go with different color schemes, though lately the services prefer the general-all-around-good patchy-gray).
I'm no specialist, but I also imagine a chrome/polished surface isn't the best radar absorbent material available.
You do realize they have automated tools to take Verilog source (or whatever they use) and throw it on to silicon. Sure, it probably won't run at the clock frequency that you would get with hand-tuned circuits, but it'll work.
I had to take a second look for that. A little reading does the trick:
Present for the reunion was office manager Miriam Lubow (center of new picture), who missed the original sitting due to a snowstorm. (When Lubow, now retired, first met Gates, she couldn't believe that disheveled kid was the president.) Absent for the reshoot was Bob Wallace (top center), who died in 2002; after leaving Microsoft in 1983, he pioneered the idea of shareware.
The article is very light on actual details, but you could already do this to some degree.
Resistance of metals can increase with the temperature of the metal (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistivity). With that, you could try this at home.
Take a length of wire, and thermally insulate it. Put a lot of current through it to heat it up. Wait. Read the resistance of the wire later on. The resistance of the wire now is slightly higher than it was (resistivity is rather small, and you would probably only see a tenth of an ohm difference). A higher resistance means a "one" was previously written to it. A lower, "normal", resistance means it was a zero. So, to write a one, dump lots of current into it. To write a zero, let it cool down.
Of course, this is neither fast or power efficient, but it works to some degree (pun!).
I know of this kind of stuff first hand. I worked at a local hardware store several summers ago. It was a chain store that through its contract bought most of its supplies through the chain. The chain also had an online website selling most, but certainly not all, of the things we carried.
What we often found out was the website was COMPETING with US, the people running the stores. Sometimes the prices on the website were cheaper then what the we could of bought them from the distributor, let alone have any sort of markup to gain profit.
But, we were usually good with the website. Sometimes customers would point out the difference and all we did was shrug our shoulders.
Slashdot Mirror
And just to clarify, this bug was only discovered (at least by someone willing to disclose it) in January 2010. At least Microsoft didn't brush it under the rug for 17 years, I hope...
I had to look up CGA (no, not Color Graphics Adapter). He means Column Grid Array. Essentially they turn the solder balls into solder cylinders.
Wow, very very slick.. I wish I had mod points to mod you up.
One thing I have to point out, though, is how much we spend on defense compared to the rest of the world. When doing international budget comparisons, the only real comparisons is by percentage of GDP.
Want to guess where the US places in the rankings? 1st? 3rd?
How about 27th
Considering defense is one of the explicitly layed-out directives of the Constitution, I think we're going about it rather logically.
Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD) is extremely unusual as it is only one of three recorded cancers that can spread like a contagious disease. The cancer is passed from devil to devil through biting. The live tumour cells aren't rejected by the animal's immune system because of a lack of genetic diversity among Tasmanian devils.
See: http://tassiedevil.com.au/disease.html
In other ways it was a success. It did have a very low noise signature. The hull design did help it greatly reduce the ships wake, keeping it from turning up too much water.
No, not really windows, but more of a hardware issue. The SATA spec doesn't require manufatures support hot-swap, so, some don't fully support it. nVidia's SATAs always have had hot-swap, so thats why you would see the main hard drive in the "safely remove" list. But, for example, my Marvel and Intel controllers don't support hot-swap. My Marvel controller handles the eSATA ports, and I've tried adding a drive while it was powered up. Windows detected it and everything work, but there is no safe method to disconnect the drive (the write-cache buffers need to be cleared out before you can yank it off safely). The best solution I could come up was force the computer into S3 standby, and then pull the drive. That seems to work good enough.
Of course, the question you're probably trying to raise is why save at all? Why do modern systems still rely on a paradigm that's over a 100 years old? Maybe someday we'll come up with something that's more efficient and better organized, but right now I don't have that answer.
I can't defend everything, so I'll just post some info. Full-scale OS updates aren't intended for its intended audience. I've had bad upgrades, but only when playing with the development branch (joyride). Activities can be updated easily with a new Sugar build. Sugar was just updated very recently. I would post a link, but the wiki is down at the moment. It has some changes, modified layout, better power management, and a control panel with a software updater. Wifi with security is a LOT better than it was. Mine syncs right up with WPA for me without any trouble. There are localized Wiki activities now available. And, these do often come specialized for the country they are being delivered to, including electronic books that they use. These are often special builds not available to the public, so you wouldn't see much of them.
One of the big concerns is the inability to provide large-scale support (hardware warranty, returns, software mishaps). The average-Joe would expect this, as a lot of them did even with the G1G1 program. Support for new schools usually came from people who were trained by the OLPC staff, and who continued support after the staff had left. It would be a logistical nightmare to try to provide support to thousands of people all over the country, something this non-profit didn't want to get involved with.
Does it come with its own fire extinguisher?
Speaking of Apple, they had a leaking capacitor problem on their Airport Extreme.
The problem exists. Because you haven't seen it in your "~20 years" of experience doesn't mean the rest of us are suffering.
Damn! Even my sneakernet isn't safe anymore!
UAVs are inevitable. We have the technology to begin removing people from some dangerous positions, so we are. UAVs kind of remind me of early airplanes. They were used for quite awhile as just simple reconnaissance, then someone had the neat idea of strapping a gun to one.
Of course, unmanned does not mean autonomous. There's still someone in a pilot seat pushing the buttons.
From the GIMPS website:
Finding new Mersenne primes is not likely to be of any immediate practical value. This search is primarily a recreational pursuit. However, the search for Mersenne primes has proved useful in development of new algorithms, testing computer hardware, and interesting young students in math.
This is something to download, store away, and reminisce some 30 years later.
For example, flip-chip technology uses a solder BGA to connect the silicon ship to a substrate. That substrate is then also usually connected to a motherboard through a solder BGA.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_chip
And: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_grid_array
Although RoHS probably contributed to the RRoD, mostly it was an improper thermal solution. There was an article awhile back where it was discovered that Microsoft engineers decided to cut costs by designing the heatsink system themselves. Insufficient cooling and an improper mounting system allowed the board to warp more than the RoHS solder could handle. Newer 360's have lots of extra epoxy around the package to keep it from pulling too far away from the motherboard.
Today's laser systems all use radar to detect and track targets, so perhaps the best defense against lasers is the best defense against radars.
Chrome might help with lasers, but it'll decrease other factors such as stealth, both visual and radar. Older fighters (think P-51 Mustang or B-29 Superfortress) often went out with polished aluminum skins. Later generations opted to increase the weight by adding paint, so that they could get additional visual camouflage both when on the ground and in the sky (depending on where they were being deployed they would go with different color schemes, though lately the services prefer the general-all-around-good patchy-gray). I'm no specialist, but I also imagine a chrome/polished surface isn't the best radar absorbent material available.
You do realize they have automated tools to take Verilog source (or whatever they use) and throw it on to silicon. Sure, it probably won't run at the clock frequency that you would get with hand-tuned circuits, but it'll work.
Resistance of metals can increase with the temperature of the metal (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistivity). With that, you could try this at home. Take a length of wire, and thermally insulate it. Put a lot of current through it to heat it up. Wait. Read the resistance of the wire later on. The resistance of the wire now is slightly higher than it was (resistivity is rather small, and you would probably only see a tenth of an ohm difference). A higher resistance means a "one" was previously written to it. A lower, "normal", resistance means it was a zero. So, to write a one, dump lots of current into it. To write a zero, let it cool down.
Of course, this is neither fast or power efficient, but it works to some degree (pun!).
You can also say or type in the zip code if you know it. This is usually faster and dead accurate.
I know of this kind of stuff first hand. I worked at a local hardware store several summers ago. It was a chain store that through its contract bought most of its supplies through the chain. The chain also had an online website selling most, but certainly not all, of the things we carried.
What we often found out was the website was COMPETING with US, the people running the stores. Sometimes the prices on the website were cheaper then what the we could of bought them from the distributor, let alone have any sort of markup to gain profit.
But, we were usually good with the website. Sometimes customers would point out the difference and all we did was shrug our shoulders.