"what good are these hi-tech weapons against enemies without ICBMs or even jet fighters?"
Forget the wars we fight these days, let's asume we're at total war against a nation such as you describe. Assume they have overwhealming manpower, hand weaponry, tanks guns etc. If it was Army vs Army, then in those cases you'd be right and they'd probably win
But instead we get a single Trident sub and tell it to obliterate that country. about 40 minutes later that country would glow in the dark; end of that threat. Even without that, see any recentmilitary campain, where one air force gains air supremacy, and then the ground troops are in a whole lot of trouble! Just remember the damage an airstrike can do against infantry. A country without ICBMs and Jets is powerless by itself if we choose to invade it.
So I'm really not sure what your point is. This weapon isn't about this War on freedom (one mans terrorist is another man's freedom fighter). It's about another tool in the arsenal to protect our troops in whatever they're doing. It reduces the effectiveness of a single threat, that is all. In time I'm sure they'll develop it both ways to be more effective against larger weapons (ICBMs) and smaller weapons (RPGs for example) but for the moment it reduces the threat of a single weapon and serves as a building block for future defesive technologies.
So how come it doesn't destroy the mirrors that are part of the adaptive optics?
Are there multiple smaller beams co-inciding on a single spot on the target? Or is it more subtle that the mirrors in the airplane can be higher quality and kept cleaner than ones strapped to the side of a missle?
"Boycotting Microsoft makes about as much sense as... I can't think of a witty comparison."
I agree the users can't boycott Microsoft, but I think the point that Engineers would start to leave is valid. The people I know who work for MS don't believe it is an evil company, a company with problems yes, but all large companies have that. If they did believe it had gone too far I don't believe they would stop any longer than the time it took to find a new job.
Off topic I know, but were they good blokes because they were fighting the system (the english) whereas those in power now are playing the role of the imperialist Engish?
Indeed, that's why I said "If they gave it away for free";-)
I don't think that's quite their value proposition, their's seems to be that if you sell windows, you're more likely to sell software such as office, or photoshop; whereas if you don't sell windows and bundle Linux or have a blank system, then you've lost out on sales.
This is dubious logic at best! If you fail to make $X, that doesn't mean that $X was ever there to be made. (as an easy example, if you look at the ammount of reading I do in a day online, if I had to get that through buying newspapers, that doesn't mean I would buy the number of newspapers required to do that ammount of reading)
"they don't want to make sure all their hardware is compliant, that would entail pressuring vendors to supply documentation or linux drivers"
I can see why Dell would worry about it, but is driver compatability really that much of an issue for Dell? From the limited time I worked for even such a small manufacturer as Granville Technologies (the group behind Time, Simply and Tiny), the fact that we bought several thousand systems per day was enough to get some very friendly support people when you were evaluating new hardware.
i.e. if they say "in 6 months time all our suppliers must supply a working Linux driver" you can bet every supplier will go out of their way to prove how much better they are than the other suppliers. Much like people bow down before wallmart
If they force you to buy it, then yes it certainly is.
*i.e. if (like AOL used to with their product) ensure a CD with a legal copy of windows was included with every computer then I'd be very happy. Some would argue this would still be an abuse of monopoly though because it would be even less of an alternative to swap to alternate OS platforms and MS would still have lock in via their API
What 60s tech is going into the CEV program? As far as I can see, it's either re-using shuttle tech, or it's new tech (the methane rockets) Or do you mean it looks similar to the 60s stuff?
By that logic, the Atlas, Delta and let's face it, everything but the shuttle is 60s tech. Or have I misunderstood your assertion here?
Will we hear this argument again if/when a space elevator is built? What about sentient AI? Or a flying car? Or asteroid mining?
SciFi is where the human imagination can run free and what defines good sci-fi to me is that you can extrapolate it from current technology and can imagine what is proposed. This is all well and good, but I think you lend too much credit to people's flights of fancy - to take your example how many of Star Trek's aesthetic features have actually made it into modern society? Not that I wouldn't welcome all those women in miniskirts at my office, but then I'd have to wear that jumpsuit and I'd have all those knobs to play with rather than this keyboard & mouse... So yes, sci fi does have lots of ideas, probably all the ideas huamns can imagine, but remember those ideas that didn't work and were far wrong as well as the one that came true.
Remember a horoscope is not a good guide to the future...
There's a difference between altitude and orbit. In the extereme case, if I got a 330km ladder and climbed up it then I would not be in orbit - If I jumped off the ladder I'd still fall to earth under gravity's influence. I'd have to achieve approx mach25 on top of the height to go into orbit. IIRC most of the shuttle's (or any orbital vehicle's) energy goes into primaraly achieving speed not height (of course height helps reduce air resistance).
So it could well be accurate that the rocket they go up on requires significantly less than orbital energy to run this test.
I could be talking out of my behind however, so feel free to ignore me...
You probably mean Pounds Stirling (I'f you're referring to the monetary unit)
British Pounds could just as well mean the unit of weight that I think you're trying to discriminate it from (since the normal term for those units are imperial - I think Pounds are origonallly an english measure - hence the phrase Imperial or Metric to denote what units you prefer to work in). I think American pounds came later and are the same weight, even if the definition of things like gallons differ.
Ok, so they're rich, so? Why not be richer if it does no harm? Only a fool throws money away he doesn't have to.
I'm willing to bet they have a standard fully compliant template they can use when a browser is encountered they can't produce code for. For the moment it is good engineering sense to optimise the design as much as possible.
Following the rules just because they are the rules only leads to incompetence, jobs-worth-ness and general fuckwittery. As soon as this causes someone an actual problem and not just pedentry, then I'm right with you, until then saving bandwidth is always worth it.
True, but in England a football is round, therefore in English the ball is round. If America wants to fork the language, then I'm sure that's fine, but recall that American is a fork. Besides for the rest of the world, (i.e. 5-6 Billion or so) a football is a round ball.
I suppose that depends on who you invite to your "world series" though?
BTW it might be worth remembering that the internet is not confined to America, so speaking of "this country" needs to be done with care. The world is becomming more international - America would do well to remember that ignoring the way the rest of the world does things may not always be the best policy - sometimes it is better to fit in with the crowd...
Or were you going for funny and I was being obtuse?
"how do you keep the robotis from taking over and/or indiscriminately killing mere humans"
Why bother? Here's on thought experiment:
So far humanity has procreated by passing on genes. But civilisation and culture is about an idea. If I adopt a child he is no more my genetic offspring than a robot - from the prospective of my genes, I'm as good to build a robot to be a son as I am to adopt. But to this adopted child/robot (assuming a sufficiently advanced robot) I can pass on my beliefs and ideals and "self" just as well as i could to my own son.
And if the robot is brighter, stronger and better than a wetware human, then why not let them take over - if we want to pass the light of civilisation on, should it not be to those best equiped to deal with it?
Not sure how PCs are designed, but I've done both electronic and mechanical design for embedded telco equipment, and the only tool that we used that only ran on windows was Outlook.
all the electronic design was Cadence's toolchain, Flowtherm for the thermal modling, I forget what the mechanical package was called, but I had a sun on my desk to run it on...
and if you can't eat you won't do that job. If no-one can eat from what it pays, no-one will do the job. If no-one is willing to do the job, but the profit is there, then the wage of the job will increase until it's either not profitable, or someone is willing to do it.
This will start off as a small sector and grow.
An equilibrium will be found.
If you don't believe this will work, look at the countries that have a large percentage of the population starving, and those that have a high standard of living - correlate this to their adherence to a free market economy. Not a 100% match I'll grant you, but getting there...
Slashdot Mirror
"what good are these hi-tech weapons against enemies without ICBMs or even jet fighters?"
Forget the wars we fight these days, let's asume we're at total war against a nation such as you describe. Assume they have overwhealming manpower, hand weaponry, tanks guns etc. If it was Army vs Army, then in those cases you'd be right and they'd probably win
But instead we get a single Trident sub and tell it to obliterate that country. about 40 minutes later that country would glow in the dark; end of that threat. Even without that, see any recentmilitary campain, where one air force gains air supremacy, and then the ground troops are in a whole lot of trouble! Just remember the damage an airstrike can do against infantry.
A country without ICBMs and Jets is powerless by itself if we choose to invade it.
So I'm really not sure what your point is. This weapon isn't about this War on freedom (one mans terrorist is another man's freedom fighter). It's about another tool in the arsenal to protect our troops in whatever they're doing. It reduces the effectiveness of a single threat, that is all. In time I'm sure they'll develop it both ways to be more effective against larger weapons (ICBMs) and smaller weapons (RPGs for example) but for the moment it reduces the threat of a single weapon and serves as a building block for future defesive technologies.
So how come it doesn't destroy the mirrors that are part of the adaptive optics?
Are there multiple smaller beams co-inciding on a single spot on the target?
Or is it more subtle that the mirrors in the airplane can be higher quality and kept cleaner than ones strapped to the side of a missle?
It's Slashdot joke - Dr Brown (in Back to the future) actually says 1.21 Jigawatts!!!!
Hence the joke now about time travel, 88 miles an hour and Jigawatts.
Yes we know it is none-sense - that's why we find it funny.
"Boycotting Microsoft makes about as much sense as... I can't think of a witty comparison."
I agree the users can't boycott Microsoft, but I think the point that Engineers would start to leave is valid. The people I know who work for MS don't believe it is an evil company, a company with problems yes, but all large companies have that. If they did believe it had gone too far I don't believe they would stop any longer than the time it took to find a new job.
Off topic I know, but were they good blokes because they were fighting the system (the english) whereas those in power now are playing the role of the imperialist Engish?
Burn Karma! Burn!
Indeed, that's why I said "If they gave it away for free" ;-)
I don't think that's quite their value proposition, their's seems to be that if you sell windows, you're more likely to sell software such as office, or photoshop; whereas if you don't sell windows and bundle Linux or have a blank system, then you've lost out on sales.
This is dubious logic at best! If you fail to make $X, that doesn't mean that $X was ever there to be made. (as an easy example, if you look at the ammount of reading I do in a day online, if I had to get that through buying newspapers, that doesn't mean I would buy the number of newspapers required to do that ammount of reading)
Agreed, and I wasn't picturing a situation where they would do that _directly_.
:-)
;-)
What I was picturing was them giving away windows to anyone who'd take it just to remove another reason to use Linux.
i.e. if they were giving it away there'd be no reason to force anyone to supply it
Do you think we could try and persuade Microsoft to give it away in an effort to combat piracy?
Just watch in tomorrow's news there'll be an article about microsoft releasing a crippled version of Vista to do just that
"they don't want to make sure all their hardware is compliant, that would entail pressuring vendors to supply documentation or linux drivers"
I can see why Dell would worry about it, but is driver compatability really that much of an issue for Dell? From the limited time I worked for even such a small manufacturer as Granville Technologies (the group behind Time, Simply and Tiny), the fact that we bought several thousand systems per day was enough to get some very friendly support people when you were evaluating new hardware.
i.e. if they say "in 6 months time all our suppliers must supply a working Linux driver" you can bet every supplier will go out of their way to prove how much better they are than the other suppliers. Much like people bow down before wallmart
If they gave it away for free probably not*
If they force you to buy it, then yes it certainly is.
*i.e. if (like AOL used to with their product) ensure a CD with a legal copy of windows was included with every computer then I'd be very happy. Some would argue this would still be an abuse of monopoly though because it would be even less of an alternative to swap to alternate OS platforms and MS would still have lock in via their API
What 60s tech is going into the CEV program? As far as I can see, it's either re-using shuttle tech, or it's new tech (the methane rockets)
Or do you mean it looks similar to the 60s stuff?
By that logic, the Atlas, Delta and let's face it, everything but the shuttle is 60s tech.
Or have I misunderstood your assertion here?
I can't believe no-one has posted this link:
http://www.omwh.com/
Once More with hobbits!
(probably only for the buffy fans...
They won't be able to leap as far with it turned on though...
Will we hear this argument again if/when a space elevator is built?
What about sentient AI? Or a flying car? Or asteroid mining?
SciFi is where the human imagination can run free and what defines good sci-fi to me is that you can extrapolate it from current technology and can imagine what is proposed. This is all well and good, but I think you lend too much credit to people's flights of fancy - to take your example how many of Star Trek's aesthetic features have actually made it into modern society? Not that I wouldn't welcome all those women in miniskirts at my office, but then I'd have to wear that jumpsuit and I'd have all those knobs to play with rather than this keyboard & mouse...
So yes, sci fi does have lots of ideas, probably all the ideas huamns can imagine, but remember those ideas that didn't work and were far wrong as well as the one that came true.
Remember a horoscope is not a good guide to the future...
There's a difference between altitude and orbit.
In the extereme case, if I got a 330km ladder and climbed up it then I would not be in orbit - If I jumped off the ladder I'd still fall to earth under gravity's influence. I'd have to achieve approx mach25 on top of the height to go into orbit.
IIRC most of the shuttle's (or any orbital vehicle's) energy goes into primaraly achieving speed not height (of course height helps reduce air resistance).
So it could well be accurate that the rocket they go up on requires significantly less than orbital energy to run this test.
I could be talking out of my behind however, so feel free to ignore me...
You probably mean Pounds Stirling (I'f you're referring to the monetary unit)
British Pounds could just as well mean the unit of weight that I think you're trying to discriminate it from (since the normal term for those units are imperial - I think Pounds are origonallly an english measure - hence the phrase Imperial or Metric to denote what units you prefer to work in). I think American pounds came later and are the same weight, even if the definition of things like gallons differ.
Please correct me if I'm wrong
Ok, so they're rich, so? Why not be richer if it does no harm? Only a fool throws money away he doesn't have to.
I'm willing to bet they have a standard fully compliant template they can use when a browser is encountered they can't produce code for. For the moment it is good engineering sense to optimise the design as much as possible.
Following the rules just because they are the rules only leads to incompetence, jobs-worth-ness and general fuckwittery.
As soon as this causes someone an actual problem and not just pedentry, then I'm right with you, until then saving bandwidth is always worth it.
The reason it's not valid is so that it is smaller loads faster. Thus saving a fortune in bandwidth.
As long as it works on all browsers, why does it matter?
True, but in England a football is round, therefore in English the ball is round.
If America wants to fork the language, then I'm sure that's fine, but recall that American is a fork. Besides for the rest of the world, (i.e. 5-6 Billion or so) a football is a round ball.
I suppose that depends on who you invite to your "world series" though?
BTW it might be worth remembering that the internet is not confined to America, so speaking of "this country" needs to be done with care. The world is becomming more international - America would do well to remember that ignoring the way the rest of the world does things may not always be the best policy - sometimes it is better to fit in with the crowd...
Or were you going for funny and I was being obtuse?
Passwords are security by obscurity, and they work!
:-)
Sorry, I couldn't resist
"how do you keep the robotis from taking over and/or indiscriminately killing mere humans"
Why bother? Here's on thought experiment:
So far humanity has procreated by passing on genes. But civilisation and culture is about an idea. If I adopt a child he is no more my genetic offspring than a robot - from the prospective of my genes, I'm as good to build a robot to be a son as I am to adopt. But to this adopted child/robot (assuming a sufficiently advanced robot) I can pass on my beliefs and ideals and "self" just as well as i could to my own son.
And if the robot is brighter, stronger and better than a wetware human, then why not let them take over - if we want to pass the light of civilisation on, should it not be to those best equiped to deal with it?
WTF?
Not sure how PCs are designed, but I've done both electronic and mechanical design for embedded telco equipment, and the only tool that we used that only ran on windows was Outlook.
all the electronic design was Cadence's toolchain, Flowtherm for the thermal modling, I forget what the mechanical package was called, but I had a sun on my desk to run it on...
Yeah! windows sucks! Microsoft sucks!
Go for the xbox instead...
How can you not count it?
Or what if you hit your grandchildren (or someone else's) in an accident?
Nit pick - it's the biggest single chamber engine - the RD170 (a multichamber design) is the most powerful...
and if you can't eat you won't do that job. If no-one can eat from what it pays, no-one will do the job. If no-one is willing to do the job, but the profit is there, then the wage of the job will increase until it's either not profitable, or someone is willing to do it.
This will start off as a small sector and grow.
An equilibrium will be found.
If you don't believe this will work, look at the countries that have a large percentage of the population starving, and those that have a high standard of living - correlate this to their adherence to a free market economy. Not a 100% match I'll grant you, but getting there...