Posts by John Smith 19 16330 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
reassuringly expensive.
Seriously, unlike a lot of other DoD payloads GPS sats are not a $Bn 1 off that absolutely, positively, cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die have to work packages. the incremental cost of building another one if there's a launch failure is not that high.
Of course if SX manages to launch all the GPS satellites without failure people might begin to ask what exactly requires so much money to get the level of reliability that ULA have delivered.
So it's only a lucky guess that the original design produced any thrust at all in a measurable direction?
This is pretty exciting news as a viable explanation is the first step to moving beyond cut-and-try designs.
However with something this big we need to be very cautious as extraordinary (and they are) claims need extraordinary evidence.
The payoff for a system that turns electricity directly into thrust with no mass loss for everything in LEO and beyond is of course huge.
"Those 'advocates' are not concerned for one very simple reason,they have been brainwashed by NEW LABOUR into believing that whatever a 'Labour' government says,must be true."
Wow, you really believe any Government minister has the brains to do this?
Blair liked the idea but this was cooked up by a cabal of senior intelligence civil servants centered around the Home Office and GCHQ.
The loose wording of the 1984 Telecomms bill suggest they may have been at it during the Miners Strike under Thatcher.
Data fetishism is a disease, not a political viewpoint.
And boy, were we right.
And note, these are the trivial examples of misuse.
Others include
Making sure spouses are out of the country to ensure risk free adultery.
Tracking someone's movements to ensure they have no alibi if you're planning to commit a crime your going to frame them for.
So 6 benefits x Millions of people x Decades of benefit history x number of files to implement each benefits data model x No of hardware platforms --> "f**k me sideways" volume of data.
GB of data? Definitely. TB? Quite possible.
Clearly you'll need seasoned, hard core systems architects and experienced ETL types to have any serious chance of getting it done in an orderly fashion, probably with mainframe (possibly ICL/Fujitsu OS & DB) skills at some point. So no point in me applying. :-( .
One suggestion. Do the data cleaning before you upload to the new system. You will have fewer claimants on the system to start with but their details will be reliable details, and that give the claimants confidence it's going to work.
That's a senior civil servants version of "work to rule."
Usually driven by
a)It threatens us in some way
b)We don't think it's a good idea.
it should have been obvious from the onset this was a huge project both in terms of data volume and complexity. Phased (and fairly slow) roll out was the only way it was ever going to deliver the full benefits.
But that would not fit a certain Ministers agenda.
That would be here
Key feature is gates that use zero energy to compute.
Which might be quite handy given how power requirements of new processors have risen and zero design to use asynchronous design.
Is it a quantum computer?
The fact it uses quantum data carriers suggests it might be.
TBH I think quantum systems are looking better at massive parallel correlation and search problems, rather like optical systems were touted at as being good for.
The real quantum computer that takes in a "normal" (but very large) computing problem, then solves
it using quantum electronics (whatever that is) seems as far away as ever.
Translation.
"It will stop the FCC setting WTF we want conditions on whoever we choose whenever we choose to do so."
Just a reminder.
The default personality type of all corporate cultures is "sociopath."
Sociopaths hate all restrictions on their behavior.
"Reduce the price and demand will, for want of a better word, skyrocket."
It is hoped demand will skyrocket.
In reality there is very limited evidence for price elasticity in the launch services market. Hint. You can't buy a rocket, you buy basically a ticket on a rocket for ride at some (usually years) time in the future.
They will still be discarding the 2nd stage and that costs in the tens of millions and it's never not going to cost tens of millions
Will people be queuing up for launches at $40m in a way they are not at $60m?
My instinct says no. I don't think raising the money for a launch at $40m is that much easier for a project than it is at $60m.
But we'll find out.
"It can increase the number of launches possible in a set period as well?"
That's only useful if there are customers who want that capacity.
That only happens if a 30% price cut is big enough to offset the drop in SX revenues.
Some think it will be.
But that still means you throw away the 2nd stage which is around $15-20m.
While that continues a flight will still cost tens of $m.
Trouble is the current designs don't do it right.
That's why there is so much waste (and this is not waste, it's weapons grade fuel) to bury.
Note 2 things.
PWR's can be fueled with transuranic elements and Pu to burn them up.
No one wants to do so and the US is even more difficult about reprocessing than the UK.
" (1) What's the point? There's a search function anyway. (2) There's only a couple of hundred names and the webpages paginate in a rather clever way that utilises the height of the browser window to minimise scrolling and the calculations behind that, if the pages are to display where they break rather than just show a number, would have to calculate everything for every page and iterate the arrays four times over needlessly. So if it happens to break between James and Jones do you want A-Ja Jo-Z or A-J K-Z? In which case it shows the first n letters of the surname until there's a difference (and let's hope it doesn't break between A Smith and B Smith)."
Or just do a sorted query on the driver database and use that to drive the website so the data's sorted already?
There's the problem the PHB thinks is the problem, and then there's the real problem.
Are you running the system for you staff, or to email outsiders? Relevant if you're LM or Boeing or BP. Small companies on one site, not so much.
Do you management think keeping all email (not just their personal ones) private is important?
Will management invest if they find the current system can't do the job?
Are there products and services you can trust to do the job (and afford) that you can buy if the current system can't cut it?
One of those "Oh a couple of minutes between devices, what's the harm?" points.
I thought it was quite easy to set up a time server so all devices sync their clocks to it.
Apparently not.
His last point (lessons learned) is often ignored but it's the way you avoid doing this all over again in x weeks/months//years time.
""I had a guaranteed military sale with ED 209, erm the F35, - renovation program, spare parts for twenty-five, erm forty years... Who cares if it works or not?"
Indeed you can't read about this sort of clusterf**k development and not hear the words of everyone's favorite Bad VP,
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