Cupertino residents should keep their mouths shut...
...if they know what's good for them. After all, I'm sure they don't want a "low-income housing" project to go on the space instead, like happened up in Marin...
Posts by Mike Powers
193 posts • joined Wednesday 19th April 2006 12:22 GMT
This was probably the cheaper option
Knowing how the government does things, it probably cost *less* to do it this way.
If you tried to buy smaller, cheaper equipment that was sized for the intended user, there probably wouldn't be anything on the Approved Equipment List. Which means you need to go through the process to get the item you want added to the list so you're allowed to buy one. Hopefully there's someone on the Approved Vendor List that sells one, otherwise you need to find a company that does sell it and get *them* added to the list. If you're very lucky there are at least three companies that sell the item you want, allowing you to prepare a competitive bid package, but probably there isn't so you need another special justification to sole-source the procurement.
So now you've had three separate review-and-approval processes, and you're ready to buy the product you want. But, since your supplier is now, they haven't gone through the supplier qualification process that's required of anyone who wants to sell--HEY YOU, WAKE UP BACK THERE! NO SLEEPING!--anyway, if you want to sell things to the government there is a specific procedure you have to be certified as able to follow, even if you've been selling things for thirty years.
And all of these steps are important and necessary to make sure that we aren't spending Taxpayer Dollars on junk. When you say "I don't want the government to waste my money!" you need to be aware that "we will therefore spend a great deal of money conducting extensive review and oversight to ensure that money spent on hardware is not being wasted" is a valid response.
Exactly
Technology is always "just about to hit the upper limit of capability". The world responds by inventing a new technology.
I saw a sign down in Monterey:
WARNING
SEA LIONS ARE WILD ANIMALS
AND CAN MOVE VERY FAST WHEN STARTLED
MUCH FASTER THAN SMALL CHILDREN
Posted in CERN boffins to lift LHC beam power
"running the LHC at 4 TeV per beam will help it meet a data target of 15 inverse femtobarns for the ATLAS and CMS experiments, with LHC bunch spacing to remain at 50 nanoseconds."
But what about the plasma phase inducers? Or the inertial damping field? Or the dilithium polarity reversers?
Did you make a cake, or did you make the SAME cake?
There's a difference between making a cake, and making an exact copy of the cake you saw; and between making a cake for yourself and making cakes for anyone who wants them.
"Lost sales are a fallacy"
You're right, but not in the way you intend. Pointing to "lost sales" is a fallacious argument BECAUSE YOU STILL GOT THE THING. In a legal transaction you would have compensated the owner in some way to obtain the product. You did not compensate the owner, and yet you got the product anyway. "Oh but I wouldn't even have got it if I had to pay!" Well, A: see previous, and B: you're saying you got the full-ride version of Photoshop just to faff around with it?
He isn't talking about software piracy
If you read the speech, he barely mentions software. It's all about the merch. What he calls "piracy that helps us" is people making Angry Birds T-shirts and hats and plush toys, turning themselves into walking Angry Birds billboards. And these are things where there's a genuine difference--in quality, in durability--between an Official Licensed Product and a cheap knockoff; meaning there's some reason to pay premium prices for Official etc.
Scorched Earth
And even earlier games (VGABomb)
Sounds like a Tom Swift title
"Tom Swift and his Atomic X-Ray Laser"
It's the term 'atomic' that does it, really; rather than the newfangled 'nuclear'. But then, 'nuclear' is so often linked to 'bomb' or 'disaster' so I can see how they'd want to avoid it.
Stuxnet strikes again!
No doubt it was those dastardly Israelis.
Gundam's AMBAC?
Using robot limbs to adjust attitude in a free-fall environment? I'm surprised this research isn't being done by Bandai...
So how was it advertised?
If the eBay listing said "old violin, had it for a long time, probably made in the 1930s but I can't verify that, Stradivarius sticker on the side of dubious authenticity", that's one thing. If the eBay listing was "GENUINE ANTIQUE STRAD VIOLIN NR L@@K!!!!", well, that's another thing.
If the listing genuinely does not support a counterfeit claim then I'd say it's lawsuit time.
Orbital flexibility
The flexibility that this provides for the final orbit will be important.
A typical launch site doesn't launch rockets over populated areas, due to the risk of showering the populace with exploding carcinogenic acid (aka 'rocket fuel'). This limits the inclination of the orbit--the angle of the orbit plane relative to the equator--because rockets generally get launched in the direction of the orbit inclination. (The rocket or the satellite can change direction afterwards, but this takes a LOT of fuel.)
Why is this relevant? Because an airplane can go out over the ocean and fly in any direction it wants, and therefore launch a payload into whatever inclination the customer needs. Previously this was done by Orbital Science Corporation's "Pegasus", but that was a pretty small rocket. This is going to be a big boy.
The SR-71 doesn't fly
and hasn't flown for the past thirty years. (The USAF never quite got over the fact that the CIA got a Mach 3 airplane before they did, and that the only Mach 3 airplane the USAF flew was a mod of the one the CIA had.)
Fighting to solve the problems created by the solutions we fought for
"They should be campaigning to resolve this problem"...really? The problem that THEY created?
Although that's a pretty good gig. Fight strongly for a policy that will cause increased suffering and misery. Then fight strongly for policies to alleviate that suffering and misery. Play your cards right and you'll be able to fight strongly forever. In other words, WAR IS PEACE.
Airframes are generally pretty low margin
Composites do indeed fail catastrophically when they go, but that's not to suggest that they can't be designed with sufficient margin. While there are some intricacies to composite design, the basic concepts of stress-versus-load still apply.
While you're correct that metal has more capability for plastic (yielding) deformation before failure, it's also the case that aircraft are manufactured right down to the razor's edge of margin. Every extra pound means you have to burn that much more fuel on every trip. I think that the 747's cross-section area between the frames is only something like twelve square inches. So while the metal could conceivably have some strength left after yielding, it probably wouldn't have all that much; and aluminum doesn't yield all that much before failure anyway (only a factor of 1.12 between yield stress and failure stress, versus about 1.67 for cold-drawn stainless steel.)
If you're worried about composites being used as major structures, that ship has sailed (er, that plane has flown?) Airbus has been making composite tails for years--in fact, in November 2001 there was an airliner crash in New York where the tail snapped off due to overstressing (pilots had been improperly trained to seesaw the rudder violently to handle turbulence.)
Ultimately, it seems like it's as you describe--the benefit of composites (or weldments) is that you can reduce the amount of joinery you need, saving that part of the weight. You also get a small benefit from reducing the work at your primary assembly facility (bigger subsections = less time bolting them together) although you're really just spreading the labor out to the subsection manufacturers.
Note that they're still using fasteners to assemble the 787 (in fact there was a big problem with their fastener supply chain--they just assumed that there would always be plenty of aircraft-grade bolts available. Unfortunately, when all the defense-industry work went away, the fastener suppliers went out of business!) They just have to be more careful about it. i.e. instead of just punching a hole with a simple die punch, they have to drill and ream and clean. Instead of just slapping on a rivet and letting everything mush itself into place by yielding, they have to use a special-made washer with a curved face to avoid gouging the composite surface (or spend time countersinking every place there's going to be a fastener.) People have tried to make bonded joints for composite structures and nobody's ever found a way to do it that's as good as a bolted joint without being just as much work. (you have to design specifically to make the bonded joint work--any peel stress will kill it dead, just like ripping a piece of Velcro open versus trying to slide it off.)
NASA Langley's drop-test facility has been crashing carbon-fiber aircraft for a while now. They pretty much act just like aluminum ones.
Of course it wasn't China
Just like it wasn't China that was shooting lasers up the mirrors of spy satellites.
Because if China were to intentionally interfere with the operation of another nation's satellites, it would be an act of war. We'd have to go to war with China over that, or else come up with a really good explanation why we didn't.
So it can't possibly be true that China was interfering with the operation of satellites. Whatever it takes, whatever we have to believe, whatever obvious realities we have to ignore, whatever doublethink we must employ, it CANNOT BE TRUE that China interfered with our satellites. Because if it were true, it would be bad.
Reusable rockets are like reusable beer cans
And no, I don't mean "recycling", I mean "wash out the can and fill it back up with beer and crimp on a new top".
Good point
Nuke simulations need RAM; I can't see how caching to a hundred-Petabyte disk is going to be do-able with any kind of responsiveness.
Why we can't make a Kindle in America
...because we don't like the idea of dumping waste solvent in the ditch behind the factory, flushing our etching tanks directly into the river, and exhausting fume hoods out the roof without filters or treatment.
Medtronic or Minimed?
The pump in question was manufactured by an entirely different company (Minimed) that was bought out by Medtronic. Calling Minnesota gets you nothing but the head offices and the accounting department of the manufacturer's parent company. Minimed itself is in Northridge CA. If Radcliffe were indeed calling Medtronic then it's understandable why the people he was talking to would have no clue.
Christ, talk about "correlation/causation" fallacy
You could also interpret this as "nerds are more likely to care about what browser they use, most others just use what came in the box".
Posted in Head fed cyberspook resigns abruptly
Misread the title
...as "HAND fed cyberspook". I'm all "wow, they really go all-out in their indoctrination these days..."
Twitter instead of Powerpoint?
So let me get this straight. You think that putting things onto slides is too limiting so you're going to use Twitter? You think that Powerpoint encourages "factoid assimilation" over understanding, so you're going to boil everything down to 140-character talking points?
"A decently designed tool subtly or overtly guides use in such a way that the results are usually good, and you have to work hard to get really bad results."
Spoken like a person who's never used a hammer to drive a nail.
Why aren't you using email?
"I'm an individual, a parent, a spouse, a boss, a client, a friend..."
So, what, you can't email any of these people? You've already *got* a narrowcasting channelized targeted communications application. It's what you get when you double-click that little envelope icon.
I don't eat soup with a fork, so why would I use Social Media to handle business communications?
Dogma 2011
Anyone remember the old "Dogma 95" film movement? There must just be something about Europeans and technology that doesn't mix.
*sigh*
DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER
THIS POST DOES NOT IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM EXPRESSLY IMPLIED OR OTHERWISE IN ANY SORT OF FASHION WHATSOEVER THAT MAY OR MAY NOT BE CURRENTLY INTERPRETED BY THE READER OR READERS AGREE SUPPORT DEFEND OR OTHERWISE APPROVE OF THE ACTIONS ACTIVITIES STATEMENTS POSITIONS OR LEGAL ACTIONS OF APPLE COMPUTER INC OR ITS SUBSIDIARIES OR DESIGNATED AGENTS
I'm not saying I agree with the reasoning. I'm explaining it. Get the picture?
DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER
THIS POST DOES NOT IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM EXPRESSLY IMPLIED OR OTHERWISE IN ANY SORT OF FASHION WHATSOEVER THAT MAY OR MAY NOT BE CURRENTLY INTERPRETED BY THE READER OR READERS AGREE SUPPORT DEFEND OR OTHERWISE APPROVE OF THE ACTIONS ACTIVITIES STATEMENTS POSITIONS OR LEGAL ACTIONS OF APPLE COMPUTER INC OR ITS SUBSIDIARIES OR DESIGNATED AGENTS
Easy answer
It's a store where apps are sold, and "App Store" is a unique name that could just as well have been "Program Shop" or "Software Seller" or "Petunia" or "Honeycomb" or "Bloward's".
It's just like "Kleenex" and "Velcro". Those are not generic terms; they refer to specific trademarked brand names.
It wasn't necessarily a failure
Do we have confirmation that it was a failure? It's possible that they didn't so much "crash" as "intentionally land so hard that it broke the chopper, just to get on the ground that much more quickly".
Sort of like a Space Marine Drop Pod.
Oh jeez
"Each night she wipes every one of her web accounts and deletes every email in her inbox," Forbes reports. "She has no physical hard drive and boots her computer from a microSD card," it adds."
Seriously? This sounds like the breathless "CYBER-HACKING" stories that we heard back in the early Nineties, when people thought that sending someone an email could make your computer explode, when people thought that European teenagers buzzed on sugar water and were stealing people's bank accounts and taking control of nuclear-missile silos.
She "wipes her web accounts"? What does that even *mean*?
Heck, if they didn't like it they'd just ban it
It's not like Apple has shown any compunctions about banning apps it doesn't like.
Microsoft lawsuit?
So Microsoft got their butts sued over providing Internet Explorer bundled with Windows, which was apparently "anticompetitive".
Now here's Apple OVERTLY DECLARING that they won't let you bring in programs that "duplicate" Apple functionality and allow users to make purchases via channels that aren't controlled by Apple.
It would be pretty ironic if Apple got sued over this and the plaintiffs cited the Microsoft lawsuit as precedent!
Wait 'til SpaceX sees their first CDR
They will immediately understand why everything you do for the government costs three times as much and takes five times as long as it ought to do.
Global Warming?
You sound like someone spouting links to "scientific proof" that AGW is real, and accusing "deniers" of being plants or shills.
Posted in How not to do Project Management
Icebergs
I kind of like that analogy--"a ship's captain constantly on the bridge on the lookout for icebergs and floating containers". The PM is one of those people in the position where a properly-done job is unnoticed; after all, nobody bothered to count how many icebergs the Titanic *didn't* hit.
Then why all the "FOX NOOZ HURF DURF"
"It's just an accounting of what happened, no more and no less."
Really? Then why all the angry gibbering about how anyone with a gripe about the census was a fat-cat Glenn Beck addict? (And how homeless and jobless people were invariably pleasant and understanding and had totally legitimate excuses for everything.)
XH-59? No
The XH-59 was Sikorsky's effort at the 19602-1970s gunship program. The winner was Lockheed's XH-56 Cheyenne, which had only one engine and not four. The Cheyenne did have a vibration problem, which was fixed (albeit after one helicopter disintegrated in midair and killed a test pilot.)
The problem with the Cheyenne was that the Army changed its mind. They originally wanted a high-speed escort for troop carriers; they decided that the carriers shouldn't be going to hot LZs, and that what was really needed was a low-speed high-maneuverability tank-killer. That's how we got the AH-64 Apache.
Of course, now we're in a situation where what we need is a high-speed escort for troop carriers...
Seems like a valid concern
Seeing as how there were (and are) many court cases regarding First Sale Doctrine--and even that doctrine mostly exists because of nonenforceability--I'd say that "read it then lend it to a friend" is going to prove to be more of a *custom* than a *right*.
Feel and smell
I always see people going on about how they love the "feel and smell" of a book.
This sounds like someone in the early 20th century saying that those silly car things will never catch on because they can't reproduce the feel and smell of a horse.
Indeed, cars are an instructive example. At first they were clunky, cranky, expensive things that needed specialist training and knowledge. And in about twenty years they became so common that the only people who rode horses for personal transport were either tremendously rich or shockingly poor; and twenty years after *that* even poor people had cars.
@Matt Stephens: " I find it quite difficult to shell out that amount of money for something I don't really "own". "
Well, you don't "really own" a print book, either. And if you're worried about losing the file, well, I've got all my Kindle "books" saved in at least two different places. And if my Kindle breaks, then (when I get a replacement) I can have my entire library back in about five minutes. Try *that* next time you drop your copy of Beauty's Punishment in the loo.
Posted in Moms stand firm against antenna madness
Ooh, good idea!
That's a wonderful grinchy idea, right there--secretly bankroll the "anti-tower" wackos, and then once they manage to make cell phones illegal you blitz the area with picocell marketing...
Or at least run the company properly
Even if you say flat-out "we're only going to earn enough to cover operating costs", you still have a duty to your employees to not do crazy things. This isn't a WoW guild, you can't just ragequit because you disagree with someone.
PS in California, anticompete clauses are illegal right from the get-go. Craigslist people could sell everything to ebay and immediately turn around and start Pornlist or whatever.
Green behavior is mostly about feeling good
Studies have shown that people who think they're acting virtuously are more likely to "trade"--that is, they act worse then they normally would because they think that their virtuous behavior makes up for it.
So when someone flicks off the light, they're more likely to go out and be a colossal jerk on the roadway; because, after all, they figure that they *deserve* to drive fast and tailgate and yammer on the phone, they're *eco-friendly* after all.
Posted in Apple fans drool over Liquidmetal widget
It reproduces frequencies only dogs can hear.
It's made of Damask steel, the same kind used in swords.
It's a *tube* amp. Do you know how rare those are?
Paid talent
Most of the geniunely-attractive female cosplayers at conventions are paid attendees; they're the contemporary equivalent of E3's booth babes.
Posted in Steve Jobs morphs into Darth Vader
Time for LawsuitArts to step in
Remember that LucasArts sued the US Air Force for putting an X-Wing fighter on a unit patch; what are the chances they'll let something like this stand?
I'm sure he's crying himself to sleep over this
of course, the pillowcase stuffed full of money will do an excellent job absorbing the tears.
The problem with this whole discussion is that everyone's acting like Apple is Sony, selling their hardware at a loss and making the money back on licensing. That's exactly the opposite. Apple is one of the few media-hardware manufacturers that still makes money off the hardware, and people need to keep that in mind when dealing with them. So your app got rejected? So what? The i-products were never about apps in the first place.
Of COURSE it was "HACKERS"
I mean, there's no WAY that anyone who works at Foxconn would screw with the site like this as a form of protest. No, it was those dastardly HACKERS. Those HACKERS! You know they can HACK just about anything. All those antigovernment messages must have been HACKERS. All those trojans in Google were done by HACKERS. All those attempts to spy on the Dalai Lama's email were just HACKERS...
Posted in Music biz pot calls Apple black
"All" is "enough"
Actually, that's not quite true. Most places consider "all" to be "enough", even if that "all" is in fact less than "part" would be. The kind of arrogant hypercompetitive jerks who rise to the top of the busines world would rather have all of a small pizza than share slices of a huge one. The only real emotion these people feel is "WANT! WANT! MINE! MINE! WAAAANT! MIIIIINE!"
Juniper was going to build our space-satellite routers
Too bad that didn't work out, I was looking forward to the program (not to mention that I'd have had a job until 2023!)
Opinion
David McLeman
My 25 years of comical IT buzzwords
Tim Worstall
Time to take a sniff at the coffee, perhaps
Chris Mellor
Will they have to drag him back like last time?
Popular Stories
Features
Playing the SLA long game
More than just middlemen...
Applications must work for the cloud to float
How a Unix killer crawled from the dot-com bust