Posts by Joe Cooper 421 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Apr 2007
@Lewis Page
Ironically, assuming that the next war will be just like Iraq or Afghanistan is just as misguided. These wars are winding down, and it's unlikely the government is going to convince anyone to do any "regime change" again for a good long time.
Meanwhile, Russia is becomming much more agitated, getting back on the ball and is now in control of a lot of oil. They're flying their bombers around Alaska again, taunting their neighbors, suggesting they'll put those tanks and jets BACK ON THE BORDERS if Poland brings in those SAM sites.
Russia does make it's neighbors quite nervous. Neighbors like Poland who are in NATO.
Add to that, if anything this Raptor and EF situation has shown that modern fighter jets are so complicated that you can't just drop them and whip one out in two years if we suddenly need them.
Sound planning for a better tomorrow.
@Bounty:
Pilots can make intelligent decisions on-site. Remote control would come with a satellite delay, and computers are... Astoundingly stupid, even if they can perform all the basic maneuvers now.
The current UAVs don't actually have to make any tactical decisions.
This is very typical and perfectly normal.
Firstoff, very old CPUs like the 486 or Pentium are more than capable of doing everything a B-2 needs. These are, seriously, really powerful processors that can do a lot of useful stuff. It's incredibly amateur to judge a system by asking if it can run Vista.
What matters to a CPU in military and space is hardening. The manufacturing. It has to be able to handle extreme environments. Look up the RAD750.
As for C:
There are a thousand ways to hang yourself with C... If you're an idiot. They don't put monkeys with keyboards in charge of programming the B-2. If you can't handle doing C safely, than you don't have a chance of programming the B-2's systems in any other language.
Now, some have suggested automatic garbage collection. The problem is that this is a real time system that absolutely must perform in a ~predictable~ manner.
Automatic garbage collection introduces an unpredictable aspect into the system.
REAL programmers don't like surprises.
And you know who else won't like surprises? Two crewman over the middle of the Atlantic.
"Never let the the truth get in the way of a good story! US media likes to be prosecutor, trial and jury. TTF they're not (yet) executioner. Oh, forgot. They almost are."
Uhhh, I don't think this has really made it to the media beyond sites like this. Probably none of the prosecution or people involved even think of him as famous. We're probably among the 500 people on Earth who know who he is without him knowing us back.
This isn't actually that unusualy. Similarly, the WWF (world wrestling federation) yielded to the WWF (world wildlife foundation) and changed their name to WWE.
Also, Apple seems to wind up these situations plenty, including copying their logo and making a product called the iPhone when there was already an iPhone.
I'm not sure how they keep getting away with it.
I had a similar problem once. Some users were reporting that buttons were missing when the software was fullscreen. I spent ages chasing down Java painting glitches trying to figure out why they weren't showing. But while it always worked on my system, some customers still had problems.
Eventually it hit me that my code assumed a 4:3 screen, and there are a lot of screens on the market nowadays with a different ratio. Duh!
My boss has a story similar to the one told. A very angry customer could not get the program to work. No amount of consultation over the phone could find the problem. Eventually he drove out there - six hours - to see what was going on.
The laserdisc was upside down.
GEO is the most ridiculous thing ever. It takes tremendous fuel to deorbit, as mentioned.
But saying that it's less detectable than ICBMs is the most ridiculous thing ever.
Your launcher is in a ~high orbit~. Screw agents, ~everyone~ can see it. All you need a good IR telescope to spot engine firings. And guess what? Being in GEO means you NEVER HAVE TO ADJUST YOUR TELESCOPE. It's always in the same place in the sky.
And then what? You have a LOT more time before the hammer drops. Coming down from GEO can take many, many hours, maybe a day I can't remember. ICBMs are there in a flash, comparatively.
Ditto for GPS sats which orbit at a good altitude and everyone has a very clear idea of how big they're supposed to be. When you start launching 200 ton GPS satellites, EVERYONE is going to notice and you'll have the KGB sending agents to figure out what you're doing. And yes, still high enough that you have to put up a lot of fuel for deorbiting.
There's simply no hiding what you're doing, and it's simply not faster than ICBMs which, MAD aside, can carry any warhead they put on.
Either way, a closer parallel to the goal of orbit bombing as described would be short range cruise missiles launched by the navy. The navy can use nuclear carriers with electric propulsion (which is irrelevant to orbital bombing) and can hit targets anywhere, very very fast, with satellite assistance for photos and GPS to target and guide the missiles.
A tomahawk only costs around a million dollars, beating ICBMs by a mile and orbital bombing by a lightyear.
There's also aircraft can put bombs down anywhere they want, moving targets or not. Take the F-15E for example. It features an IR telescope and laser so that they can track and direct bombs at moving targets or targets that have relocated.
Lastly, I'd like to remind everyone that the US has ant-sat weapons ready to go, China has done it before and while I haven't checked I have to assume that Russia has it ready to go too since, like the US, they've done it ~multiple times~.
In summary, the good systems use satellites extensively to make air, sea and ground based weapons far superior AND more economical AND faster than orbital bombing.
Remy Redert, you're oversimplifying them unrealistically. I don't even know where to begin.
So I'll start with the fact that a couple of kilograms of iron alloy ejected from a space launcher will make a small glassed crater about a hundred miles away from the target - if you're good.
Even from 5 miles high you can't drop a dumb bomb perfectly accurately, and I'm talking about ones that make a big kaboom (to lower the margin of error) and have fins and aerodynamic shape. The atmosphere is a major wildcard.
Even bombs dropped from an airplane are NOT that simple - and yes, they come down with PLENTY of speed, enough to penetrate DEEP into concrete before blowing up, so you can really rip up a runway if you need to.
Now, let's say that we DO have a bomb with whatever it needs. You still need an orbital maneuvering system either on the bomb or on a launcher that contains the bombs.
The ~big~ reason is that you need to actually be able to change your orbital inclination so that you ~actually go over~ your target. This is a VERY fuel expensive operation, especially if you're dragging 5000 tons of bombs. This launcher will need to be huuuuuuge. You're only going to be able to afford a few inclination changes even if you made the thing an epic god of satellites. This thing will need to be far, far bigger than the space station to be useful.
And guess what? It'll take so LONG to maneuver it that it won't actually be any faster.
So maybe you could put the manuevering system on the bombs.
But then, why even do that? Why not just keep the bombs on the ground, and launch them into space with a ton of speed so that they accurately fall on their target thanks to the magic of math and some kind of attitude control in the warhead?
That'd be a great idea!
So great, in fact, that everyone already has this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICBM
You might be thinking, "But then you have to launch a rocket to space every time you want to drop a bomb!" Guess what. You STILL need to launch every ounce of this system on a rocket.
Much, much BIGGER, more expensive rockets using a lot more fuel because putting something into ORBIT is a lot more expensive than a suborbital ICBM trajectory.
So, is orbital bombing too complex? No, but it's bloody stupid.
Actually, you're talking out of your ass.
The actual binary contains code for multiple architectures. It's called a fat binary.
I don't mean the .app bundle. I mean the actual UNIX executable file inside the bundle. You can have gcc produce a multi-architecture binary, and you can also use a command line tool to combine multiple binaries into a single fat binary.
That's how the universal bundles work. There's a single executable so that the operating system can pull the appropriate code on the fly, seamlessly.
This applies to dynamic libraries too.
There IS no "universal installer"; most OS X programs don't even have an installer at all. Makes me wonder if you've even touched a Mac..? The ones that do are architecture ignorant and rely on the actual binaries to feature multiple architecture code.
The idea here is to do it all seamlessly.
If you actually even have a Mac, toss together a little C program and compile it with the options "-arch i386 -arch ppc" and watch what pops out.
Europe can do the "same job" faster for the simple reason that it isn't the same job.
The ESA proposal is for a "simple" ferry to get from the ground to LEO and back, based on a spacecraft ~already developed~ with future manned operations in mind.
NASA's moved way past Gemini and right now they're replacing their seven-crew, space-station-building shuttle with something that lets them send a size seven crew to the Moon, Mars or a near Earth asteroid.
Overkill for crew swapping, which is why they want someone else to provide this capacity. NASA isn't in the business of reinventing Gemini so we can brag we don't have to buy cheap flights off Russia. They might as well start building their own C-130s.
But they don't build their own C-130s, and they don't waste their time making another Gemini or Apollo when the Soyuz is on the market, the Dragon is coming soon and the ESA can potentially do it for a tiny fraction of the cost of what we're trying to do.
Chip companies ARE manufacturing companies, he got it half right. But the R&D is how they improve their manufacturing processes. That's what the bulk of their R&D is.
Moore's law doesn't allude to some magical quality of chips that makes them double in complexity every so often. That happens because companies spend big R&D bucks making it happen.
Even aside from the obvious one-upping of the competitor, they need to research and develop their manufacturing capabilities to improve yields of chips they're already making. Remember the news when Cell procs were being pumped out with a yield of about 15%? But the yields improve. Why? Because they research and develop this shit.
Anyway, I hope to God everyone here remembers that as soon as Intel slaggered off a bit a few years back, with the Pentium IV and the Itanic delays against AMD's 64-bit monsterchips, that AMD came out of nowhere and grabbed about 20 to 25 % of the x86 marketshare. Intel's revenue was dropping by hundreds of millions.
And the only thing that stopped it was - get ready for this - a faster fucking chip from Intel. And boy did it stop it. Core2 boned AMD overnight.
For Intel to slack off their R&D for the sake of looking "mature" to this wanker would be monumentally stupid, and kinda vain too.
Actually Microsoft has always just copied what everyone else is doing, sometimes 5 or even 10 years late. Or 20. They're the Soviets of the software industry, which is ironic considering all the "Linux is communism" rants.
It has worked out moderately well, too. Let Apple and Sun or whoever experiment and "design", then do what they did with the benefit of hindsight.
Java + Hindsight = C#
Boring thud? Very.
But absolutely nothing new and I wonder if maybe Google doesn't know what's coming. Microsoft has a history of taking industry leaders and fucking them to pieces.
"you people clearly lack the intelligence, ability and inclination to ever consider `evidence` for yourselves in a rational way"
I have and it seems that most of the "evidence" is just "ignorance" with spooky background music.
It's like people who say the moon landings were fake because there aren't any stars in the background; it's only suspicious if you don't know how a camera works.
Appeals to ignorance are not evidence.
This actually helps boys too. Here in the US (31 on that index) the vast, vast majority of students with diagnosed "learning disorders" are male, the majority of high school drop outs are male and the majority of college students are female.
These problems magically go away in schools with segregated classes, even if they're still mixed at break time.
There's a lot of "damage has been done" type comments but this actually just attracted a whole bunch of extra attention to the situation ~and~ nothing bad happened to the kid after all ~and~ the media is reminding everyone that the British government does in fact classify Scientology as a cult.
They're used to all kinds of shit like that, and they signed on to do space research anyway. That's what people are doing in space is researching things.
Remember that these guys will get into a rocket with a non-zero chance of blowing up to go into sickening zero-G for months while their bones deteoritate so they can do science.
An hour in a centrifuge for the sake of understanding space sickness is nothing.
An FYI for everyone.
Most helicopters, probably including this one, DO use jet engines. Go look up "turboshaft". It's a kind of jet engine optimized for producing shaft power rather than jet thrust, common on helicopters and even the M-1 tank.
Using jet engines to drive bigger fans actually works out rather well for efficiency and power. See: turbofan
This is better than using the turbojets for raw thrust, and is why a helicopter with relatively puny jet engines can lift itself off the ground while the Harrier and F-35 need monster engines.
If you'd rather have a cool looking vehicle than a working one, by all means use bog standard turbojets.
"So what would the MoD bashing Reg. like to happen?? A purely UK built supercarrier for half the price? Its not going to happen. If the our kit was 100% British then the price would soar for decades, until we can wrangle the price down because the expertise is easier to get hold of in this country."
Well his point is that the whole buying british thing is a facade and doesn't actually work out that way. The typhoon and other "british" hardware actually consist of a lot of foreign equipment.
He's not suggesting that they go 100% british; he's suggesting that they cut the middleman and go foreign without BAE's british facade.
I really, really hate these stories. I don't ever wanna see this on the Register again.
The way he says it he sounds like he really believes it's so revolutionary, but it's the same old crap we've been hearing our whole lives.
You know where I've heard it? Sun. I remember when Java was new and people were gonna be able to put together custom applications just dropping in java beans or whatever buzzword they had.
If you dig around, there's tons of tools that allow laymen to do some pretty neat things. And there have been for a long time. Has anyone here ever used HyperStudio?
What about Flash? Or Macromedia's older tools like Shockwave and Action? I remember playing with Action 2.5 on my family's first home PC back in '93. And hearing about Java.
Even coming from the site with all those Paris Hilton stories and ROTM gags this is pretty fucking lame.
The real fad is someone who thinks you can build a system with top notch graphics as it's main selling point that people will still give a rat's ass about at the end of a five year generation.
Does nobody remember the N64 getting it's ass beat by the PSX? The PS2 0wning everyone despite not having basic things like antialiasing? Even the N64 from five years before it had anti-aliasing.
Every time there's a new generation all the nerds argue about the system's specs like they think it matters. Then reality comes along and the one with the lowest specs beats the shit-skittles out of EVERYONE.
Again and again.
Comparing portables (PSP) to home consoles isn't really fair. Portables always outsell home consoles. Did you know that Nintendo has a portable?
Yup, it's called the DS. It has a novel input system too. It has weaker graphics than it's competitor. The PSP has tons of 3rd party software.
And guess what, after all these years it's still outsold the PSP by a wiiiiiide margin.
"Nah, if you want a real comparison of the gen 4 planes then go to the "Ace Combat 6 - Fires Of Liberation" forums (*it's a video game). Now there's some real flamings! Seriously (not!) though - give me a Typhoon with the long-range missiles and F22's are dead meat - the Tiffie's just so agile."
Well according to Aerofighters Assault, the A-10 can outturn the F-22, F-14, Rafale AND Eurofighter. It can also fly at 1400 knots and has infinite missiles.
Chips are mass manufactured widgets. They're like screws. You don't need the most advanced screw. That's not where the value lies in a jet. You do NEED screws, but the screw technology we had in the 60s still does exactly what it needs to do. Just because the Eurofighter features the same old boring screw technology doesn't mean it's not advanced.
You wouldn't get the impression running Vista on it, but a Motorola 68k is a tremendously powerful device. Computers all the back to the 70s could handle all kinds of aerodynamics work, hence the fully automated Space Shuttle landing and the F-16's computer assisted flight model.
People's impression of what computers are capable of has been warped a lot by the PC market, where every increase in power is immediately spent on more abstraction so software isn't so expensive and difficult to make. This cycle never, ever ceases so after only a few decades, the powerful computer that keeps the B-2 in the air can't run consumer-grade desktop software.
Bizarre, huh?
In case you're interested these chips, they ARE special in manufacturing. They need to survive extreme environments. Have a look at the RAD750. It won't run half as well as the IBM 750 in a Gamecube. But it'll handle the extreme conditions of a space launch, an interplanetary journey and Martian orbit.
I've got Vista here finally, and it's got it's bugs, including this mouse problem which effects my PS2 mouse.
But seriously, does NOBODY remember the whole XP thing? I can't believe nobody remembers the whole "OMG XP STANDS FOR XTRA PROBLEMS" bit, and everyone talking about how this was Linux's chance to get into the mainstream because people would be so fed up with XP, and how people were sticking with 98SE cause it was Microsoft's most stable operating system.
Going a little further back, you got the same thing with the Windows 9x series.
I'm not saying Vista doesn't have issues, I'm just saying it's rather ignorant to suggest that this is indicative of any new trend or shift in the industry. The reality is this is a very old situation that happens every time Microsoft releases a new system.
At worst, it will be another Windows ME, and we'll get Windows 7 shortly here and everyone will be happen.
I would like to point out to anyone raving about how wonderful XP is that it has seven years worth of real world usage and bugfixes applied to it.
Furthermore, anyone here should know that XP didn't get good until SP2.
Shame on all of you.
Lemme remind you that Bush did not drop The Bomb, and, in fact, was not president at the time.
And while Bush likes to throw around bullshit World War II analogies alot, that doesn't mean that his crusades have anything to do with or are anything like what happened in World War II.
That you even make the connection makes me think you listen to him a little too much ;)
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