Homeopathic medicine doesn't generally tell you have an infection that you don't really have in order to get people to buy it, and it doesn't generally change it's name every week so you can research it's effectiveness. Many homeopathic remedies work, and the plants from which they're extracted are the original source of many of the pharmaceutical medicines we have today (after creating a version that can be patented, since no really big money in selling plant extracts that aren't patentable).
There are a number of factors that bloat and/or doom these projects:
No one person or group of people actually know all the specifications.
Tracking time for vacations, PTO, sick time, personal time, leave of absence, overtime, etc. varies by jurisdiction, and changes over time.
Other specifications may change during development due to legal or corporate policy changes. IRS rulings, FAS rulings, state and federal legislative changes, etc. can all effect the project.
Contracts (especially gov't) aren't usually written to allow for significant changes or variation. Changes require a change request, a change cost estimate, and a change order. Work on the change can't begin until all of that is complete, meanwhile the project either continues without the change, or goes on hold.
They don't hire a really good software architect to design a flexible system, they just design it to the incomplete (and often inaccurate) specs in the RFP/Contract.
The amount of auditing, reporting, and security controls are almost always underestimated.
So, it's far more complex that it first appears.
Having said that, $600M is an insane amount. And the 2GB footprint another poster cited is also absurd. A good software architect could have prevented or minimized both of those.
The metric system is originally based upon an earth derived measurement called the meter. 1m ~ 1/10,000 the distance from the equator to the poles, 1g = the weight of 1cc of pure water at STP, etc. That all the measurements are base 10 is not what makes it "metric", it's that they're derived from the (originally) earth centric meter. Our time system is also derived from earth centric measurements, called day and year.
Base 10 time would be a huge adjustment for society. While using a 100,000 "MetSec" day and a 100 "MetSec" "MetMin" would produce units fairly close to the existing second and minute measurements, a "MetHour" would be much longer or much shorter than an hour, either 14.4 minutes (100 MetHours/day), or 2.4 hours (10 MetHours/day). And that doesn't do anything to address the leap second issue, nor does it alter the ~ 365.25 MSD year.
The bottom line is that as long as we maintain the concept of a day and year and all the associated stuff (seasons, equinoxes, solstices, etc.), all of which are critical to agriculture and survival, there has been no system of time keeping proposed that is significantly better than what we have. The universe is not going to arbitrarily adapt it's cycles to make it easy for our minds and computers to keep track of time.
And that's without considering relativistic time dilation. While most people never have to worry about time dilation effects, the atomic clocks that create UT1 and GPS satellites have to compensate for relativistic differences caused by differences in local gravity and speed, both of which are affected by altitude.
Perhaps Douglas Adams said it best, "Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so."
I agree. Mozilla is wrong on this. They're trying to play the numbers game as Chrome is at "version" 12, Opera is at 11, and IE is at 9, so it "looks like" FF is behind. That's stupid. Just jump the version to 10 to address any public perception issue and release a new version every year or two with security updates as needed (every 1-3 months).
Migraines are not the same thing as cluster headaches. Migraines are caused by vasodilation, and vasoconstriction is the only effective treatment. If phrenilin/fioricet relieves a "migraine", then it's not really a migraine.
I've had a few migraines in my life, but I've had far more cluster headaches. My last two episodes lasted 16/17 days, would have been debilitating without an effective treatment. Phrenilin has been extremely effective in treating my cluster headaches, and it doesn't prevent me from being coherent and continuing to work/play/etc.
Thanks for the correction on the conversion factor, don't know where I got my conversion factor (I can't find it now).
MW/s is an unusual unit, but given the rapid and approximately logarithmic decrease in decay heat production in the first hour, using a larger time window would be bizarre and produce questionable results. It's also what the original poster used, so for consistency and clarity, I used it too (just with an incorrect conversion factor).
Reactor 1 is 1360MWt. Approximate decay heat at shutdown is ~6.6% ~ 90MW. After 10 mins, it's ~2.2% = ~ 30MW, after 1hr, it's ~1.5% = ~ 20MW.
The original poster failed to convert MW to kJ. 1MW/s = 2000 kJ/s, failed to adjust for the water temperature/pressure (heat of vaporization is lower at high temp&pressure), and failed to adjust for the rapid decrease in decay heat during the first hour.
I've been running Flash free for several months, except for Flash built in to Chrome. I don't use Chrome as my primary browser, so sites see me as someone without Flash. When I need to access something that requires Flash, I open it in Chrome. If it requires Flash and it won't work in Chrome, I won't use the site.
Interesting side note, most sites that require Flash give me an incorrect message saying:
"WE'RE SORRY"
You need to update your Flash Player.
I don't need to update anything, I don't have Flash installed, and I want it that way. Very few give me a message saying I need to install Flash Player for the site to function (correctly). Note to site developers, STOP designing sites that require Flash to work.
The title of the other submission "Submission: Atomic Clock-on-a-Chip Obsoletes GPS" is inaccurate. This does not obsolete GPS at all. It makes GPS unnecessary as a precision time source in some applications, but GPS = Global Positioning System, and this doesn't provide any positioning information, it's just highly accurate and stable time source. GPS also provides that, but it provides that from multiple satellites with well defined locations. Using the time differences from 3 or more GPS satellites, you can calculate a position on the earth. So, this is an alternative to GPS for systems that only need a highly accurate and stable time source, but not for those that need the positioning information you can get from GPS.
That it's small, non-radioactive, relatively inexpensive (for an atomic clock), and relatively low power offers many new possible uses. However, it's still far more expensive than a GPS receiver, so it won't replace GPS (or WWV/WWVB) as a time source for mainstream purposes until the cost comes down by at least a factor of 100, more likely it'll have to come down by a factor of 500 ($3) before it sees any mass adoption.
Slashdot Mirror
From TFA: "original patent claimed by IPventure was filed on June 22, 2007"
The Apple MacBook introduced in May 2006 did this. I'm sure there were many others before, that's just one clear example.
Homeopathic medicine doesn't generally tell you have an infection that you don't really have in order to get people to buy it, and it doesn't generally change it's name every week so you can research it's effectiveness. Many homeopathic remedies work, and the plants from which they're extracted are the original source of many of the pharmaceutical medicines we have today (after creating a version that can be patented, since no really big money in selling plant extracts that aren't patentable).
Given Sony's other actions, I would expect them to put an end to such "foolishness" from Ericsson soon.
Until then, keep up the good work Ericsson.
The open letter gave them many clues, for free. Based upon RIM's reply, they would recognize a clue if you shoved it down their throats.
Due to union contracts and city regulations, they had to account for leap seconds for anyone who worked overnight. Future of UTC and the Leap Second
There are a number of factors that bloat and/or doom these projects:
So, it's far more complex that it first appears.
Having said that, $600M is an insane amount. And the 2GB footprint another poster cited is also absurd. A good software architect could have prevented or minimized both of those.
The metric system is originally based upon an earth derived measurement called the meter. 1m ~ 1/10,000 the distance from the equator to the poles, 1g = the weight of 1cc of pure water at STP, etc. That all the measurements are base 10 is not what makes it "metric", it's that they're derived from the (originally) earth centric meter. Our time system is also derived from earth centric measurements, called day and year.
Base 10 time would be a huge adjustment for society. While using a 100,000 "MetSec" day and a 100 "MetSec" "MetMin" would produce units fairly close to the existing second and minute measurements, a "MetHour" would be much longer or much shorter than an hour, either 14.4 minutes (100 MetHours/day), or 2.4 hours (10 MetHours/day). And that doesn't do anything to address the leap second issue, nor does it alter the ~ 365.25 MSD year.
The bottom line is that as long as we maintain the concept of a day and year and all the associated stuff (seasons, equinoxes, solstices, etc.), all of which are critical to agriculture and survival, there has been no system of time keeping proposed that is significantly better than what we have. The universe is not going to arbitrarily adapt it's cycles to make it easy for our minds and computers to keep track of time.
And that's without considering relativistic time dilation. While most people never have to worry about time dilation effects, the atomic clocks that create UT1 and GPS satellites have to compensate for relativistic differences caused by differences in local gravity and speed, both of which are affected by altitude.
Perhaps Douglas Adams said it best, "Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so."
I agree. Mozilla is wrong on this. They're trying to play the numbers game as Chrome is at "version" 12, Opera is at 11, and IE is at 9, so it "looks like" FF is behind. That's stupid. Just jump the version to 10 to address any public perception issue and release a new version every year or two with security updates as needed (every 1-3 months).
One correction, Fioricet may relieve milder migraines because caffeine is a mild vasoconstrictor.
Sounds like you have migraines, not cluster headaches. Imitrex is a vasoconstrictor, if it works, it was a migraine, not a cluster headache.
Migraines are not the same thing as cluster headaches. Migraines are caused by vasodilation, and vasoconstriction is the only effective treatment. If phrenilin/fioricet relieves a "migraine", then it's not really a migraine.
I've had a few migraines in my life, but I've had far more cluster headaches. My last two episodes lasted 16/17 days, would have been debilitating without an effective treatment. Phrenilin has been extremely effective in treating my cluster headaches, and it doesn't prevent me from being coherent and continuing to work/play/etc.
Dr prescribed phrenilin (butalbital + acetaminophen) for mine.
Right advice, wrong OS.
In training mode, the game controls your hands, which operate the controller.
..for all of this intense activity. It needs more time to rest between cycles these days.
Here's what you're missing. NTLM encodes passwords in 7 character units. An 8-14 character PW is at most 2x as difficult to crack as a 7 character PW.
Don't use NTLM password hashes (you can disable them on newer versions of Windows Server).
And maybe one day, idiots will bother to read and/or research an item on /. before posting a response that clearly indicates they didn't do either.
Thanks for the correction on the conversion factor, don't know where I got my conversion factor (I can't find it now).
MW/s is an unusual unit, but given the rapid and approximately logarithmic decrease in decay heat production in the first hour, using a larger time window would be bizarre and produce questionable results. It's also what the original poster used, so for consistency and clarity, I used it too (just with an incorrect conversion factor).
Reactor 1 is 1360MWt. Approximate decay heat at shutdown is ~6.6% ~ 90MW. After 10 mins, it's ~2.2% = ~ 30MW, after 1hr, it's ~1.5% = ~ 20MW.
The original poster failed to convert MW to kJ. 1MW/s = 2000 kJ/s, failed to adjust for the water temperature/pressure (heat of vaporization is lower at high temp&pressure), and failed to adjust for the rapid decrease in decay heat during the first hour.
I've been running Flash free for several months, except for Flash built in to Chrome. I don't use Chrome as my primary browser, so sites see me as someone without Flash. When I need to access something that requires Flash, I open it in Chrome. If it requires Flash and it won't work in Chrome, I won't use the site.
Interesting side note, most sites that require Flash give me an incorrect message saying:
I don't need to update anything, I don't have Flash installed, and I want it that way. Very few give me a message saying I need to install Flash Player for the site to function (correctly). Note to site developers, STOP designing sites that require Flash to work.
5ft is correct. The report from TEPCO is 1.7m ~ 5ft. 5m is incorrect, and it fact is greater than the length of the fuel rods.
NHK article.
Because they don't have fingers and opposable thumbs.
This may be the beginning of the Star Trek universal translator. But, only if it actually works.
The title of the other submission "Submission: Atomic Clock-on-a-Chip Obsoletes GPS" is inaccurate. This does not obsolete GPS at all. It makes GPS unnecessary as a precision time source in some applications, but GPS = Global Positioning System, and this doesn't provide any positioning information, it's just highly accurate and stable time source. GPS also provides that, but it provides that from multiple satellites with well defined locations. Using the time differences from 3 or more GPS satellites, you can calculate a position on the earth. So, this is an alternative to GPS for systems that only need a highly accurate and stable time source, but not for those that need the positioning information you can get from GPS.
That it's small, non-radioactive, relatively inexpensive (for an atomic clock), and relatively low power offers many new possible uses. However, it's still far more expensive than a GPS receiver, so it won't replace GPS (or WWV/WWVB) as a time source for mainstream purposes until the cost comes down by at least a factor of 100, more likely it'll have to come down by a factor of 500 ($3) before it sees any mass adoption.