Well, the former at least, there are some models for how oil could be produced from purely geological rather then biological processes, so there very well may be oil on mars.... but it would still be economically useless to try to bring it back to earth.
Now, as a one (long) time fuel source for a potential colony....
Embedded systems tend to run much close to capacity then general purpose computers. Your desktop, laptop, or even modern cell phone run ok because they are overbuilt. There were all sorts of way we could have solved the problem by throwing more hardware at it, but every time we did that the asks for capabilities just went up instead
Custom firmware that set very specific buffer and sleep behaviors. If you used an off the shelf drive the system would stutter randomly. We had also configured the drives to be more resilient to the power being cut because our customers tended to do things like hit the breakers, thus 3rd party hard drives had a higher chance of data loss.
To a degree, I can not blame them. Years ago I worked for a company that produced an embedded device. One of the largest categories of customer service calls came from people swapping out components with stuff they could by 'cheaper' at their local computer store, and it was OUR fault that it started behaving oddly. Then they would go on forums to complain about crappy our product was, leaving out that they were using some 3rd party cheapie instead of the hardware that we spent hundreds of man hours validating in various combinations.
It was extremely frustrating to deal with, but when we tried to lock down some of the more critical (and high call volume) pieces like hard drives they would then run to forums to complain about our money grab by locking out cheap replacement drives and charging high prices for replacement ones.. even though that high price came from (a) manufacturer custom settings/firmware and (b) a supply guarantee from the manufacturer that we would continue to receive the exact validated model well past it's consumer equivalent would be end of lifed.
So while as a consumer I agree it is annoying, as someone who has been on the other side I can sympathize with wanting to stop people from buying cheap unvalidated 3rd party crap.
Not really. When projects are already dominated by a particular language, esp projects that can have decades or more of legacy design to them, programmers who want to come in and rewrite perfectly good subsystems in their preferred language are not all that well looked upon.
Many technological decisions are based off how easy it is to find programmers to fill roles, which means if you want to be able to easily hire people onto a project you have to bend to what is generally popular. I worked on several projects that ended up switching languages or even OSes because what we were using made finding candidates more difficult.
While there are some add on libraries that can do 'ok', Fortran is generally much better then C or C++ at handling numbers. In applications I have worked on that used both languages, generally you only let the C++ code handle the data when it didn't have to be all that accurate, such as sending it to the UI. But for calculations you would keep it in Fortran.
Esp given how easy it is to link Fortran to C, C++, and ObjC. Granted it has been years since I worked with the stuff, but the last project I was on we jumped between Fortran, C and C++ depending on which had better stuff for any particular part of the program, and GCC compiled them all down into a single binary.
Well, that depends on just how good the fabricators get. Right now any shop with the right tools could duplicate a car piece by piece, but such a setup is both expensive and requires specialized training.. not to mention the process of mixing and matching requires extensive domain knowledge. The assumption people are generally making is that someday 3d printers will bring the cost and skill level down to the point any neighborhood shop can do it, but this is not a very safe assumption.
Time for the car analogy, about cars! Or more specifically, bicycles. Bicycles are slower then cars. They are cheaper to produce and are much more within the range of what a hobbyist or corner machine shop can throw together, but historically they have never been as fast or usable as cars. There have been significant improvements in bicycles over the years, including a few significant leaps, but it is unlikely that anyone will ever produce a bicycle design that can both be manufactured by an amateur with low cost materials/equipment AND be the equivalent of a car.
It is quite possible that these automatic general purpose additive devices will never overtake traditional manufacturing either.
Though back on the original example, right now there are shops that do that kind of work, build custom cars which may include design features of existing brands, but they are generally pretty rare and outside the reach of all but fairly dedicated enthusiasts. I've seen such shops produce some amazing rigs, but give them a large scale fabricator and I imagine it would only marginally cut down their expenses and skills required.
Could you imagine the outrage if that went wrong? "Well, we have all these trained pilots and equipement, but these locals said they could do it better so we just took their word for it and used their maps, created on their schedule and whim'.
Add to that how much 'free' help can cost, it really is not as much help as the company makes it out to be. Even if those drones do a lovely job of avoiding other aircraft and taking pictures, that information still needs to be tied into their C&C, which means they have to dedicate people to coordinating with the private entity and merging the two data sets. Combine that with being unable to actually direct or coordinate with the private individuals and those good samaritans can really get in the way.
If they really want to help, I am sure there are relief efforts all over the region that could use some extra manpower.
That is generally what I suspect. They have exclusive priority access to the airspace right now and do not want to deal with private aircraft which are not coordinated with them and do not have the time to tie their communication together.
Success is not very news worthy. FEMA does pretty well on any number of smaller disasters, but more things go wrong in big disasters and just like the CDC, FEMA has become associated with 'bad things' and thus people tend to focus on the negative.
Given how little of the espionage actually benefits the average american, and how much of it might hurt the average american, I am not so sure we should 'want' them doing it.
Historically such things have benefited a fairly small number of people, usually a few well connected corporations and political parties. On the other hand it tends to increase ill will between countries and that usually gets taken out on travelers and small business interactions.
And there is the utility of 'rockstar programmers', not their ability to code, but the group's ability to trot them out to other departments, investors, clients, etc. They are showy, they are high profile, and they make great front-people.... but generally keep them away from the real work. Just like bands.
The piece was not asking what the actual text says, but was arguing the justifications for why the 5th amendment was written to protect the accused but not 3rd parties. Simply leaving it 'because it says so' is not very interesting.
And that is the critical piece that people need to remember. While prosecutors did not like what he was teaching, there was nothing illegal about it.
Generally instructing people to do something illegal (not just how, but to do) is a crime unto itself.
That being said, given that the people within law enforcement that taught officers how to do illegal things are not in jail, it is still pretty hypocritical.
I would be curious to see more experiments like that actually done. There is actually something to the 'golden ears', a small percentage of the population really does have much finer grained hearing then most people. Unfortunately for every person who actually does have this unusual trait, there (like wine drinkers) probably a thousand people who do not but blindly follow their lead, and probably another thousand who since they can not tell the difference they conclude that there is none.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe Gotham is in a very low ceiling bubble with the sky projected on it?
Well, the former at least, there are some models for how oil could be produced from purely geological rather then biological processes, so there very well may be oil on mars.... but it would still be economically useless to try to bring it back to earth.
Now, as a one (long) time fuel source for a potential colony....
Embedded systems tend to run much close to capacity then general purpose computers. Your desktop, laptop, or even modern cell phone run ok because they are overbuilt. There were all sorts of way we could have solved the problem by throwing more hardware at it, but every time we did that the asks for capabilities just went up instead
Mission critical enterprise system? Average consumers are MUCH more reactive to minor inconveniences then people running mission critical systems.
Custom firmware that set very specific buffer and sleep behaviors. If you used an off the shelf drive the system would stutter randomly. We had also configured the drives to be more resilient to the power being cut because our customers tended to do things like hit the breakers, thus 3rd party hard drives had a higher chance of data loss.
It was never about warranty, it was about customers having problems and giving us bad press for their modifications.
To a degree, I can not blame them. Years ago I worked for a company that produced an embedded device. One of the largest categories of customer service calls came from people swapping out components with stuff they could by 'cheaper' at their local computer store, and it was OUR fault that it started behaving oddly. Then they would go on forums to complain about crappy our product was, leaving out that they were using some 3rd party cheapie instead of the hardware that we spent hundreds of man hours validating in various combinations.
It was extremely frustrating to deal with, but when we tried to lock down some of the more critical (and high call volume) pieces like hard drives they would then run to forums to complain about our money grab by locking out cheap replacement drives and charging high prices for replacement ones.. even though that high price came from (a) manufacturer custom settings/firmware and (b) a supply guarantee from the manufacturer that we would continue to receive the exact validated model well past it's consumer equivalent would be end of lifed.
So while as a consumer I agree it is annoying, as someone who has been on the other side I can sympathize with wanting to stop people from buying cheap unvalidated 3rd party crap.
Not really. When projects are already dominated by a particular language, esp projects that can have decades or more of legacy design to them, programmers who want to come in and rewrite perfectly good subsystems in their preferred language are not all that well looked upon.
Many technological decisions are based off how easy it is to find programmers to fill roles, which means if you want to be able to easily hire people onto a project you have to bend to what is generally popular. I worked on several projects that ended up switching languages or even OSes because what we were using made finding candidates more difficult.
Well, you can always decompile the Fortran into Java.....
While there are some add on libraries that can do 'ok', Fortran is generally much better then C or C++ at handling numbers. In applications I have worked on that used both languages, generally you only let the C++ code handle the data when it didn't have to be all that accurate, such as sending it to the UI. But for calculations you would keep it in Fortran.
Esp given how easy it is to link Fortran to C, C++, and ObjC. Granted it has been years since I worked with the stuff, but the last project I was on we jumped between Fortran, C and C++ depending on which had better stuff for any particular part of the program, and GCC compiled them all down into a single binary.
That is one of the things that happens when multiple disciplines overlap, sometimes their jargon does not always match up.
Well, that depends on just how good the fabricators get. Right now any shop with the right tools could duplicate a car piece by piece, but such a setup is both expensive and requires specialized training.. not to mention the process of mixing and matching requires extensive domain knowledge. The assumption people are generally making is that someday 3d printers will bring the cost and skill level down to the point any neighborhood shop can do it, but this is not a very safe assumption.
Time for the car analogy, about cars! Or more specifically, bicycles. Bicycles are slower then cars. They are cheaper to produce and are much more within the range of what a hobbyist or corner machine shop can throw together, but historically they have never been as fast or usable as cars. There have been significant improvements in bicycles over the years, including a few significant leaps, but it is unlikely that anyone will ever produce a bicycle design that can both be manufactured by an amateur with low cost materials/equipment AND be the equivalent of a car.
It is quite possible that these automatic general purpose additive devices will never overtake traditional manufacturing either.
Though back on the original example, right now there are shops that do that kind of work, build custom cars which may include design features of existing brands, but they are generally pretty rare and outside the reach of all but fairly dedicated enthusiasts. I've seen such shops produce some amazing rigs, but give them a large scale fabricator and I imagine it would only marginally cut down their expenses and skills required.
Could you imagine the outrage if that went wrong? "Well, we have all these trained pilots and equipement, but these locals said they could do it better so we just took their word for it and used their maps, created on their schedule and whim'.
Add to that how much 'free' help can cost, it really is not as much help as the company makes it out to be. Even if those drones do a lovely job of avoiding other aircraft and taking pictures, that information still needs to be tied into their C&C, which means they have to dedicate people to coordinating with the private entity and merging the two data sets. Combine that with being unable to actually direct or coordinate with the private individuals and those good samaritans can really get in the way.
If they really want to help, I am sure there are relief efforts all over the region that could use some extra manpower.
That is generally what I suspect. They have exclusive priority access to the airspace right now and do not want to deal with private aircraft which are not coordinated with them and do not have the time to tie their communication together.
Success is not very news worthy. FEMA does pretty well on any number of smaller disasters, but more things go wrong in big disasters and just like the CDC, FEMA has become associated with 'bad things' and thus people tend to focus on the negative.
Given how little of the espionage actually benefits the average american, and how much of it might hurt the average american, I am not so sure we should 'want' them doing it.
Historically such things have benefited a fairly small number of people, usually a few well connected corporations and political parties. On the other hand it tends to increase ill will between countries and that usually gets taken out on travelers and small business interactions.
All of those things are very profitable therefor they are admired.
Nah, profits define morality, so by the NSA's standards they are doing nothing wrong. Now if they were polluting for free they might get in trouble.
And there is the utility of 'rockstar programmers', not their ability to code, but the group's ability to trot them out to other departments, investors, clients, etc. They are showy, they are high profile, and they make great front-people.... but generally keep them away from the real work. Just like bands.
The piece was not asking what the actual text says, but was arguing the justifications for why the 5th amendment was written to protect the accused but not 3rd parties. Simply leaving it 'because it says so' is not very interesting.
And that is the critical piece that people need to remember. While prosecutors did not like what he was teaching, there was nothing illegal about it.
Generally instructing people to do something illegal (not just how, but to do) is a crime unto itself.
That being said, given that the people within law enforcement that taught officers how to do illegal things are not in jail, it is still pretty hypocritical.
I would be curious to see more experiments like that actually done. There is actually something to the 'golden ears', a small percentage of the population really does have much finer grained hearing then most people. Unfortunately for every person who actually does have this unusual trait, there (like wine drinkers) probably a thousand people who do not but blindly follow their lead, and probably another thousand who since they can not tell the difference they conclude that there is none.