That the same guy would re-use his own words just goes to show you how useless most web article are. A witter is paid by the piece and will just bang out gibberish as long a he gets paid. I doubt these writers even have a real opinion. They are like lawers, they will argue either side. It's just a job.
In real life which is best depends on your goal. Do you want your code to be tied to Windows or do you want it to be portable to other platforms?
Have you not read about the TSP/LP connection done using carrier pigeons? This has been used for Comp Sci teachers for years as an example of how network "layers" work such that TCP is over Ip is over the physical link and how you can swap out layers without effecting the other layers. It was purly just a teaching point, until a few years ago...
Then it was done for real, using live birds to carry the data. I think they tried a Ping and maybe a telnet session. There is a real RFC written up on this. Note that the "time of flight" delays are on the same order for the pigeons as for the speed of light delays to mars. SO, this problem has been solved once.
Actually, I think it's only TCP that needs to have a window adjusted due to the delay. The IP packets don't care how long it takes but the TCP layer will start doing re-transmits if acks don't come back within a window.
"rfc 1149 was written. This rfc specifies a protocol for IP over avian carriers, CPIP (carrier pigeon internet protocol)." Read more at www.blug.linux.no/rfc1149/
Sextant? For the same reason I would want to take one with me on a sailing trip to Hawaii. Yes I have a GPS and a backup GPS on my boat. I also know some one who had two GPS units fail while en route across the Pacific. Had to fall back on dead reconing (using the knot log, clock and compass)
If the on-board computer smokes you would need the sextent to measure your orientation.
Neither Aperture or Lightroom are competitors to Photoshop. Both Aperture and Lightroom are a new, different type of program. After you buy your pick of Aperture or Lightroom you would still want Photoshop.
What these two programs to for you is streamline the handling of hundreds of digital images. They can do work in batch mode and have features for catalogging ork. Photoshop on the other hand is intended to making extensive edits to ne image.
SpaceShipOne was just a low cost copy of what the US Air Force did in the 1950's. It only technically went into "space". It was just a ballistic trajectory, like if you shot a rifle into the sky. That is far from getting into orbit.
As for using private industry to get into space, what do you think they do now? Who builds and launches all those rockets? It's all contracted.
The answer is "wind" this has been known at least a century, no need to put it in the article. Now you ask what makes wind. This to has been known for a long time, the basic answer at the bottom of all of this is uneven heating of the atmosphere by solar radiation. Why "uneven"? The Earth is not uniform all over it's surface? Why is that? Something about plate tectonics? Why is that? The core is liquid and the "lighter" crust floats on the liquid while the liquid circulates. You can go on forever.....
But seriously, wind blowing over water causes ripples, the hight and period of the riples depends on the speed of the wind and the "fetch". Fetch being the distance the wind has to act on the water.
Gosh, what a dumb idea. Assume this works perfectly and the technology was free. You still would not want this in a space suit. Moving inside a space suit is hard work, the suit is pressurized and resists motion. Also every motion you make requires that you breath just a little more oxygen. Basically this idea is taking weight out of the battery and placing it in the oxygen tank. There is no free energy.
I notice this effect when scuba diving. If I can relax and slow my motions the air consumption rate is reduced but the slightest work load and up it goes.
This thing might work well if you wanted to generate electric power from ocean waves or other random natural movement.
Column oriented means it can read data in from one column from the disk without pulling in all the other bytes in the row. Possibly much less reduced I/O bandwidth usage depending on the query. (kind of like if you turned the normal file structure side ways.)
Grid enabled - This means the DBMS can make use of a large distributed group of computers and potentially have access to a huge amount of computing power. The typical DBMS runs on at beat a multi-processor server. Thi sis kind of like a DBMS server running a a "seti at home" type network.
Going solely by the developer's reputation, this could be a big deal. He is not some random hacker. He is a well known university professor who has several times in the past lead projects that have been revolutionary and turned the field around. His ideas are widely used Still "100X faster" is a big claim. Lots of smart people have been working on DMBSes for many years, a two order of magnitude improvement is a "I will have to see it to believe it" type claim
I'm using PostgreSQL to handle some telemetry data right now. If my 45 minute run times can be reduced to seconds, I'll be happy.
I've been running for president under the "common sense" party for years. I can solve ALL problems with simple common sense. For example crime: As you say, it is better to PREVENT the crime. So simple common sense says to put people in jail BEFORE they commit the crime. Gosh how easy was that! I'm for the death penalty too. We should execute people before they can murder someone. Prevention, that's the way to go.
I have other common sense solutions to all the other problems too.
People are joking about "do I have to upload the file back to the server". I'd say "Yes" in some cases.
Why would you return a non-DRM'd MP3 file. You can't just say "I don't like the song" likely to only reson you could return it is because it is corrupted or has some technical error. So you send it back a "proof" and they then sed yu the same track but non-defective. just like with an opened CD all they will do is give you the same CD title in exchange.
Doesn't NASA already do this? I think the only launch vehicle they own are the shuttles and they are only used infrequently for manned missions. The US Air Force launches more payloads than NASA and all their stuff is contracted. NASA does a few science missions a year this way too.
I have had a chance to talk with some policemen about car theft and how they catch the people stealing cars. The basic answer was that most people who steal cars are stupid and make stupid mistakes that allow them to get caught. I have some examples but they all boild down to the theft not thinking.
the linked article says about the same for cryptography. Basically the bad guys don't understand the technology well enough or they are not careful enough. Vista's bitlocker does not help the person who is knowable and careful because he is already using unbreakable cryptography.
Many of those 100,000+ projects were never ment to be "big" for example I have one project there. It is a Linux kernel drivel and some user land stuff that goes with it. The driver controls an astronomical camera of which less than one dozen wer made. Onless you run a TASS Mk III camera you don't need this.
Much of this stuff is intended for a very small user group, so if only 50 people use it, it is not a failure. One example is software to help with EME radio (EME is "Earth, Moon, Earth" where you bounce radio signals off the moon.) this is very popular but only within a small community. Actually MOST software is like this. Here at work I'm working on software to process telemetry data from space lift boosters. Not many people need this. I'd guess n the closed source worlld 99% of everything is written for just a few users and therefor never published.
Don't count quality or usefullness by the number o users
An army in those days was unlike an army today. They were not commanded from the government in Rome. Nor were they supplied and fed by Rome. They were send out to some far off place where communications and supply were imposable. Commanders were given great power, even to make treaties that were binding on Rome. Even a "centurian", a man who commands only 100 men could speak for the government of Rome. While the officers were trusted, had great power and were educated the man were likely illiterate and certainly could not find their way home from 500 miles away.
Why support the Playstation? Because it's cool to be able to run linux on the Sony Playstation. Game consoles make great computers because typically the makers sell these things at a loss hoping to make money on the games. So you can get a computer at a lower price then you otherwise could. These new generation consoles are actually very powerfull computers and Linux lets you use them for non-gamming.like say a robot controller
Several bad things that could have happened
on
Jim Gray Is Missing
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· Score: 2, Insightful
As a sailor, I can think of several bad things that could have happened
1) He fell overboard. With or without a PDF (life jacket) he'd be dead. Th water is cold up there, low 50's I think so hypothermia will get him even if he does not drown.
2) A common danger is the boom. If the boat does an unplanned jibe and the sailor forgets to duck he can get hit hard on the head with a fairly massive chunk of aluminum boom. This could knock him out, kill him outright (not likely) or (more likely) knock him overboard. (see #1 above)
3) His boat could have hit something and sunk. Then we are back to #1 above. If he was very lcky he could have goten a life raft out. But them most rafts are equipted with a GPS and a radio.
4) some kind of a medical problem. Then it's not really a boating accident but just not a good place to have such a problem
It's hard to understand how any of this could happen. An experienced sailor would have himself tethered to the boat at all times with a tether short enough that he could not fall into the water. He would know not to let a boom hit him and would maintain a watch for ship traffic.
Ebay is funded by sellers, so you know who they need to keep happy. If buyers paid it would be a much better place to buy. But because sellers are the ones who pay it is a better place to sell.
Every company has to do the same thing: Keep their paying customers happy and returning.
maybe consumers should start lobbying or just stop buying.
That's like telling a drug addict not to buy drugs. Consumers can't stop buying movies. Even if they say "I could if I wanted to." they are wrong. Electronic entertainment is as addictive as crack cocaine.
My favorite story about oak was that the Chinese space program used it was a heat shield for small a recoverable spacecraft. It chars and bit of it burn away but it only has to work once.
Call me old-fashioned, but before a gov't starts acting on all of their world-stage aspirations, shouldn't they feed their citizens?
The problem with this argument is in India that experiment only cost maybe 30 cents per person. Even if the total cost was $500M there are so many people that when you spread the cost out it becomes affordable. Conversely if you took the money and used it to buy food it would work out to less than US$1 per poor person.
Giving money or food away does not address the root cause of poverty
The other thing is that the Indian government did not simply burn up the money. The spent it all. If a space experiment costs $500M then all of that $500 went to some scientific institution, university or the like. Al places that they need to support. Money spent on space is not spent in space it is spent on the ground and goes back into the economy
Which leads to a better question than Fermi's paradox: If they're out there, why haven't they tried to make contact with us yet?
Lot's of reasons not to contact us but I think they might all be equivalent to "Because they have nothing to gain by contacting us."
They might have ethical rules that say we have to find them first or scientific protocol that does not allow the observer to mess with what he is observing. We would be a rare find and they'd hate to miss the chance to watch us. Either way you have to wonder if they have anything to gain by contacting us, I'd think not.
Still, Fermi's obsevation that they are NOT here and detectable tell you a lot. So far the simple fact that they are not here is the only firm observation we have. and this one observation puts some contraints on any theory
The main disc of the galaxy is about 100,000 light years across. Assume 10% light speed for probe travel time, light speed for information return and 50 years for each new colony to build infrastructure to a point where they can launch probes. You'd have 90% of the galaxy explored in three or four million years -- almost 4 orders of magnitude less than this fellow's estimate.
This is EXACTLY Fermi's Paradox. He said if there was even one advanced civilization, they would have done exactly the above and they would be here. But they are not here. So we must assume we are the first.
it could be the case that civilazations are so un-common that only one or two exist in a billion years span. We have no way to know.
I agree with the author. The reason we have not found another civilization is that we have not looked long enough and they have not looked long enough. The real problem is that us humans have not been here for very long. We just learned to build cities 5,000 years ago and learned that the Sun is a star a couple hundred years ago. We are to new and young to have been found yet.
But I disagree with his numbers. Searching all of the galaxy would be MUCH quicker. His assumption of sending out a fixed number of probes is wrong. In fact his assumed plan is so bad no one would ever do it that way. The way to do it, in fact the only way that could ever work is to build a probe that can build probes. You build 100 of these and each of these builds 100 and after 10 generations you have a galaxy filled up with probes. If there is anything to be found you WILL find it that way. So, I'd not be surprised at all to find four probes in our Solar system noe as we speak, all of which have found us and all having sent a message back to their builders. The message will take thousands of years to get there and maybe the builders are long dead or lost interest in listening or forgot how to listen or forgotten that these probes were ever sent.
The best plan would NOT be to even bother to send a message back home. The probes would be one-way comunication. The probes would simply say "Someone built by great, great, grandparent and they used to live over there. Would you guys please send a message back? I can't yell that loud."
Sending out eight probes with eight sub-probes each is a stupid plan. It would take "forever" for only 64 probes to search the galaxy and worse then that, each probe would have to continue to function for an unreasonable length of time. I doubt humans will ever know how to build a machine that can last a billion years but if they build a machine that can build a machine they will not have to.
Compressed natural gas is a common fuel used to power stoves on sailboats and fleet vehicles. You can buy it at the fuel docks at many marinas. Typically you exchange a tank, empty tank for full tank and pay about $20. The tanks look like steel SCUBA tanks and are filled to between 2400 to 3000 PSI. (about 200 BAR if you like metric) It really does need to be compress to 200 Bar or so to make it a usful otherwise the tanks are huge compared to the energy they contain. At 1 bar a small car might use 1 cubic foot per mile
The same fuel at about the same pressure is used to power cars trucks and busses in some fleets but is not common at all for privatly owned vehicles.
The problem of course is that it takes long time and a very expensive pump to compress the gas to 3000 PSI. Even if the fill station maintains a large staogage tank at 3000 PSI small SCUBA sized takes still take a while to fill because if you add the ga to fast it heats up and then cools to a lower presure. So you need to take at least about 5 minutes to fill a small tank.
OK why the long story... just to show the fuel is not exotic. It's common with a large existing infrastructure.
Hence the tank exchange method
I suspect the rocket uses liquid methane at cryogenic tempertures.
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That the same guy would re-use his own words just goes to show you how useless most web article are. A witter is paid by the piece and will just bang out gibberish as long a he gets paid. I doubt these writers even have a real opinion. They are like lawers, they will argue either side. It's just a job.
In real life which is best depends on your goal. Do you want your code to be tied to Windows or do you want it to be portable to other platforms?
Have you not read about the TSP/LP connection done using carrier pigeons? This has been used for Comp Sci teachers for years as an example of how network "layers" work such that TCP is over Ip is over the physical link and how you can swap out layers without effecting the other layers. It was purly just a teaching point, until a few years ago...
Then it was done for real, using live birds to carry the data. I think they tried a Ping and maybe a telnet session. There is a real RFC written up on this. Note that the "time of flight" delays are on the same order for the pigeons as for the speed of light delays to mars. SO, this problem has been solved once.
Actually, I think it's only TCP that needs to have a window adjusted due to the delay. The IP packets don't care how long it takes but the TCP layer will start doing re-transmits if acks don't come back within a window.
"rfc 1149 was written. This rfc specifies a protocol for IP over avian carriers, CPIP (carrier pigeon internet protocol)." Read more at www.blug.linux.no/rfc1149/
Sextant? For the same reason I would want to take one with me on a sailing trip to Hawaii. Yes I have a GPS and a backup GPS on my boat. I also know some one who had two GPS units fail while en route across the Pacific. Had to fall back on dead reconing (using the knot log, clock and compass)
If the on-board computer smokes you would need the sextent to measure your orientation.
Neither Aperture or Lightroom are competitors to Photoshop. Both Aperture and Lightroom are a new, different type of program. After you buy your pick of Aperture or Lightroom you would still want Photoshop.
What these two programs to for you is streamline the handling of hundreds of digital images. They can do work in batch mode and have features for catalogging ork. Photoshop on the other hand is intended to making extensive edits to ne image.
SpaceShipOne was just a low cost copy of what the US Air Force did in the 1950's. It only technically went into "space". It was just a ballistic trajectory, like if you shot a rifle into the sky. That is far from getting into orbit.
As for using private industry to get into space, what do you think they do now? Who builds and launches all those rockets? It's all contracted.
"Now tell us what causes the waves."
The answer is "wind" this has been known at least a century, no need to put it in the article. Now you ask what makes wind. This to has been known for a long time, the basic answer at the bottom of all of this is uneven heating of the atmosphere by solar radiation. Why "uneven"? The Earth is not uniform all over it's surface? Why is that? Something about plate tectonics? Why is that? The core is liquid and the "lighter" crust floats on the liquid while the liquid circulates. You can go on forever.....
But seriously, wind blowing over water causes ripples, the hight and period of the riples depends on the speed of the wind and the "fetch". Fetch being the distance the wind has to act on the water.
Gosh, what a dumb idea. Assume this works perfectly and the technology was free. You still would not want this in a space suit. Moving inside a space suit is hard work, the suit is pressurized and resists motion. Also every motion you make requires that you breath just a little more oxygen. Basically this idea is taking weight out of the battery and placing it in the oxygen tank. There is no free energy.
I notice this effect when scuba diving. If I can relax and slow my motions the air consumption rate is reduced but the slightest work load and up it goes.
This thing might work well if you wanted to generate electric power from ocean waves or other random natural movement.
Grid enabled - This means the DBMS can make use of a large distributed group of computers and potentially have access to a huge amount of computing power. The typical DBMS runs on at beat a multi-processor server. Thi sis kind of like a DBMS server running a a "seti at home" type network.
Going solely by the developer's reputation, this could be a big deal. He is not some random hacker. He is a well known university professor who has several times in the past lead projects that have been revolutionary and turned the field around. His ideas are widely used Still "100X faster" is a big claim. Lots of smart people have been working on DMBSes for many years, a two order of magnitude improvement is a "I will have to see it to believe it" type claim
I'm using PostgreSQL to handle some telemetry data right now. If my 45 minute run times can be reduced to seconds, I'll be happy.
I have other common sense solutions to all the other problems too.
Why would you return a non-DRM'd MP3 file. You can't just say "I don't like the song" likely to only reson you could return it is because it is corrupted or has some technical error. So you send it back a "proof" and they then sed yu the same track but non-defective. just like with an opened CD all they will do is give you the same CD title in exchange.
Doesn't NASA already do this? I think the only launch vehicle they own are the shuttles and they are only used infrequently for manned missions. The US Air Force launches more payloads than NASA and all their stuff is contracted. NASA does a few science missions a year this way too.
the linked article says about the same for cryptography. Basically the bad guys don't understand the technology well enough or they are not careful enough. Vista's bitlocker does not help the person who is knowable and careful because he is already using unbreakable cryptography.
Much of this stuff is intended for a very small user group, so if only 50 people use it, it is not a failure. One example is software to help with EME radio (EME is "Earth, Moon, Earth" where you bounce radio signals off the moon.) this is very popular but only within a small community. Actually MOST software is like this. Here at work I'm working on software to process telemetry data from space lift boosters. Not many people need this. I'd guess n the closed source worlld 99% of everything is written for just a few users and therefor never published.
Don't count quality or usefullness by the number o users
An army in those days was unlike an army today. They were not commanded from the government in Rome. Nor were they supplied and fed by Rome. They were send out to some far off place where communications and supply were imposable. Commanders were given great power, even to make treaties that were binding on Rome. Even a "centurian", a man who commands only 100 men could speak for the government of Rome. While the officers were trusted, had great power and were educated the man were likely illiterate and certainly could not find their way home from 500 miles away.
Want to re-program your iPod? It can be done. http://www.macworld.com/2005/05/secrets/julygeekfa ctor/index.php
Why support the Playstation? Because it's cool to be able to run linux on the Sony Playstation. Game consoles make great computers because typically the makers sell these things at a loss hoping to make money on the games. So you can get a computer at a lower price then you otherwise could. These new generation consoles are actually very powerfull computers and Linux lets you use them for non-gamming.like say a robot controller
1) He fell overboard. With or without a PDF (life jacket) he'd be dead. Th water is cold up there, low 50's I think so hypothermia will get him even if he does not drown.
2) A common danger is the boom. If the boat does an unplanned jibe and the sailor forgets to duck he can get hit hard on the head with a fairly massive chunk of aluminum boom. This could knock him out, kill him outright (not likely) or (more likely) knock him overboard. (see #1 above)
3) His boat could have hit something and sunk. Then we are back to #1 above. If he was very lcky he could have goten a life raft out. But them most rafts are equipted with a GPS and a radio.
4) some kind of a medical problem. Then it's not really a boating accident but just not a good place to have such a problem
It's hard to understand how any of this could happen. An experienced sailor would have himself tethered to the boat at all times with a tether short enough that he could not fall into the water. He would know not to let a boom hit him and would maintain a watch for ship traffic.
Every company has to do the same thing: Keep their paying customers happy and returning.
That's like telling a drug addict not to buy drugs. Consumers can't stop buying movies. Even if they say "I could if I wanted to." they are wrong. Electronic entertainment is as addictive as crack cocaine.
My favorite story about oak was that the Chinese space program used it was a heat shield for small a recoverable spacecraft. It chars and bit of it burn away but it only has to work once.
The problem with this argument is in India that experiment only cost maybe 30 cents per person. Even if the total cost was $500M there are so many people that when you spread the cost out it becomes affordable. Conversely if you took the money and used it to buy food it would work out to less than US$1 per poor person.
Giving money or food away does not address the root cause of poverty
The other thing is that the Indian government did not simply burn up the money. The spent it all. If a space experiment costs $500M then all of that $500 went to some scientific institution, university or the like. Al places that they need to support. Money spent on space is not spent in space it is spent on the ground and goes back into the economy
Lot's of reasons not to contact us but I think they might all be equivalent to "Because they have nothing to gain by contacting us."
They might have ethical rules that say we have to find them first or scientific protocol that does not allow the observer to mess with what he is observing. We would be a rare find and they'd hate to miss the chance to watch us. Either way you have to wonder if they have anything to gain by contacting us, I'd think not.
Still, Fermi's obsevation that they are NOT here and detectable tell you a lot. So far the simple fact that they are not here is the only firm observation we have. and this one observation puts some contraints on any theory
This is EXACTLY Fermi's Paradox. He said if there was even one advanced civilization, they would have done exactly the above and they would be here. But they are not here. So we must assume we are the first.
it could be the case that civilazations are so un-common that only one or two exist in a billion years span. We have no way to know.
But I disagree with his numbers. Searching all of the galaxy would be MUCH quicker. His assumption of sending out a fixed number of probes is wrong. In fact his assumed plan is so bad no one would ever do it that way. The way to do it, in fact the only way that could ever work is to build a probe that can build probes. You build 100 of these and each of these builds 100 and after 10 generations you have a galaxy filled up with probes. If there is anything to be found you WILL find it that way. So, I'd not be surprised at all to find four probes in our Solar system noe as we speak, all of which have found us and all having sent a message back to their builders. The message will take thousands of years to get there and maybe the builders are long dead or lost interest in listening or forgot how to listen or forgotten that these probes were ever sent.
The best plan would NOT be to even bother to send a message back home. The probes would be one-way comunication. The probes would simply say "Someone built by great, great, grandparent and they used to live over there. Would you guys please send a message back? I can't yell that loud."
Sending out eight probes with eight sub-probes each is a stupid plan. It would take "forever" for only 64 probes to search the galaxy and worse then that, each probe would have to continue to function for an unreasonable length of time. I doubt humans will ever know how to build a machine that can last a billion years but if they build a machine that can build a machine they will not have to.
Compressed natural gas is a common fuel used to power stoves on sailboats and fleet vehicles. You can buy it at the fuel docks at many marinas. Typically you exchange a tank, empty tank for full tank and pay about $20. The tanks look like steel SCUBA tanks and are filled to between 2400 to 3000 PSI. (about 200 BAR if you like metric) It really does need to be compress to 200 Bar or so to make it a usful otherwise the tanks are huge compared to the energy they contain. At 1 bar a small car might use 1 cubic foot per mile
... just to show the fuel is not exotic. It's common with a large existing infrastructure.
The same fuel at about the same pressure is used to power cars trucks and busses in some fleets but is not common at all for privatly owned vehicles.
The problem of course is that it takes long time and a very expensive pump to compress the gas to 3000 PSI. Even if the fill station maintains a large staogage tank at 3000 PSI small SCUBA sized takes still take a while to fill because if you add the ga to fast it heats up and then cools to a lower presure. So you need to take at least about 5 minutes to fill a small tank.
OK why the long story
Hence the tank exchange method
I suspect the rocket uses liquid methane at cryogenic tempertures.