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Kent Sharkey wrote: If we wait long enough, they might start begging Do you thinks we can get paid if we wait long enough ?
Patrice
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Albert Einstein
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Russian high-tech billionaire Yuri Milner teamed up with the world’s most famous scientist, British physicist Stephen Hawking, to announce a new $100 million effort to detect signals from alien civilizations. "If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans"
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I wouldn't go so far and say money spent this way is entirely wasted, but yes, it is indeed. I mean, what would we gain from detecting a signal from another civilization? Proof that we aren't the only ones in the universe? Now what if the source is thousands of lightyears away... it's impossible to establish any kind of communication over such long distances. And what if the alien civilization already became extinct in the meantime because they didn't found a solution to their energy problem and overpopulation...?
But most important: Detecting is one thing. But to detect something, someone has to actually send something. Question is: Are we sending anything? Or are we just looking to detect something? Well, if everybody only listens but no one speaks... you get the idea.
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The only reason for looking for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence is that no-one has found any Intelligence down here (excepting dolphins). Who would describe as 'intelligent' any species that despoils its planet, kills its own kind, spends more money on slimming aids than in providing food for its starving people?
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Meh! A change in government would be nice.
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It’s a question that CEOs and managers around the world are asking: "How can I keep my employees loyal?". "Making it work takes a little time"
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Trust + Autonomy + Purpose + Mastery*
Trust: No timesheet / time management / clock-in type software
Autonomy: The ability to choose the design and execution of the system
Purpose: What is the reason for this work in a bigger context.
Mastery: How do I build my expertise in this.
*This is applicable to engineers - managers have already sold out their souls anyway, so the only thing you can bribe them with is more money
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Needs more acronymosity. How about STAMP ("Some" or "Salary") for the first letter?
TTFN - Kent
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Purpose + Autonomy + kNowledge + Trust + Skill
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Obligatory Dilbert
http://dilbert.com/strip/2012-08-20[^]
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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While Microsoft is putting the final polish on Windows 10 ahead of its release next week, it's time to start looking at what's next for the OS. Yeah, that was my reaction too ("What's 'Threshold'?")
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Microsoft has announced the release to manufacturing of the latest version of its flagship IDE, along with the release of .NET 4.6. Joining Microsoft’s family of Visual Studio products including Visual Studio Community, Visual Studio Enterprise, Visual Studio Online and Visual Studio Code, VS 2015 is geared toward more robust agile development and DevOps capabilities. The release includes a new set of DevOps services featuring a cross-platform build service, an automated unit testing tool, and a Dev/Test service delivered both via the cloud in Visual Studio Online and on-premises through Team Foundation Server.
What did you do last night Microsoft? Same thing we do every night, try to take over the world!
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Leslie already told us 8.5 hours ago...
Decrease the belief in God, and you increase the numbers of those who wish to play at being God by being “society’s supervisors,” who deny the existence of divine standards, but are very serious about imposing their own standards on society.-Neal A. Maxwell
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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That was only the release event schedule...
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that's embarassing...
Decrease the belief in God, and you increase the numbers of those who wish to play at being God by being “society’s supervisors,” who deny the existence of divine standards, but are very serious about imposing their own standards on society.-Neal A. Maxwell
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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Release event[^] agenda:-
8:30 – 10:15
Keynote: Visual Studio 2015 – Any app, Any developer
10:15 - 10:35
In the Code – App Overview and planning
10:35 - 10:55
Live Q&A (Agile Planning and DevOps)
10:55 - 11:10
In the Code – Building the web site in the cloud
11:10 – 11:30
Live Q&A (ASP.NET and Azure Development)
11:30 – 11:45
In the Code – Building the cross-platform mobile app
11:45 – 12:05
Live Q&A (Cross-Platform Mobile Development)
12:05 – 12:20
In the Code – Getting it to the finish line
12:20 – 12:40
Live Q&A (Testing, User Experience, and Accessibility)
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Channel 9[^]
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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Do you think career happiness is all about the money? Columnist Rob Enderle doesn’t. He says focus on happiness as your main goal and let cash play a supporting role. Says the guy who probably caught it
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What makes a good developer? That’s a question that could define your career. "Be not afraid of greatness: some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them."
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Some idiot wrote: What makes a good developer?
Strict adherance to perceived norms and lack of imagination.
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Having the following words in your moniker: Great, Powerful.
Decrease the belief in God, and you increase the numbers of those who wish to play at being God by being “society’s supervisors,” who deny the existence of divine standards, but are very serious about imposing their own standards on society.-Neal A. Maxwell
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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Colorado space startup Escape Dynamics announced today that they’ve successfully tested a prototype of their spaceship engine and are ready to move on to their next phase in development. Their engine fired using power beamed at it from a microwave antenna across the room. Bonus: you can reheat leftovers while getting into space!
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The real bonus is that you leave your engine at home, where it may be reused for other launches.
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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Hope nothing goes wrong, lest it makes directed energy take-downs of missiles look like a sparkler compared to a fireworks display.
I'm sceptical about the ability to beam sufficient power from a 1km² antenna to the heat exchanger on a rocket moving as fast as it will be. I'm also more than a little dubious about the author's understanding of the reasons that we have multiple-stage rockets in the first place - they're far more efficient than single-stage ones, for two reasons. Only one of which applies to liquid fuelled rockets.
Firstly, if you split the fuel into two tank/motor assemblies you can get rid of 1/2 of the total fuel tank weight after you jettison the first stage, you also lose some of the length, which improves the rocket's Cd. Admittedly, you need to carry several engine modules for a liquid fueled motor and the associated stage couplings, or an extra nozzle for solid fuelled ones, but the penalty of either of these is outweighed by the reduction in weight of everything that was dumped after stage-burnout.
Secondly, and not important here - if you multi-stage solid-fuel rockets, the fuel in your second stage will produce more peak thrust and specific impulse than it would if it were in a larger single stage. Why? Simple, the solid fuel is housed within the reaction chamber. As the fuel burns, the volume inside the chamber increases which leads to lower pressures, which then leads to slower burn-rate, that further decreases the pressure in what is a vicious cycle.
This can be seen in any number of commercial multi-stage rockets of the 'small' variety. The infamous BUK is multi-stage, yet it has an operational ceiling of just 22,000 meters. To send it as high with a single stage would cost and weigh more. It would also be detrimental to the missile's maximum velocity.
This is such simple and basic stuff. I'm rather bemused by the fact that my standard retort in such a situation is entirely invalid, since this actually is rocket science.
"When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down 'happy'. They told me I didn't understand the assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life." - John Lennon
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All of that's true (although the bit about the changing volume of a solid fuel rocket's combustion chamber's irrelevant to this design); but that bit that you're missing is that staging adds a huge amount of complexity to designs and is something that we only do because the low specific impulses of current rocket fuels mean we have no choice.
Specific impulse is a term that goes in the exponent if you're calculating the mass fraction of a rocket that needs to be made of fuel to reach it's destination; which means that even fairly modest increases to it will result in large shifts in the mass fraction.
Pulling the equations out of wikipedia[^] gives the mass fraction as: 1-e^(-delta_v/v_effective) , and v_effective = g * i_sp For a low earth orbit you need a delta v of 7000 m/s; plugging the numbers into google gives a theoretical mass fraction of 0.91[^] for fuel with a specific impulse of 300 seconds (typical for a hydrocarbon fueled rocket), 0.81[^] for a Isp of 425 (hydrogen fueled rocket), an Isp 600 would improve the ration to 0.69[^].
With conventional liquid fueled rockets, that's roughly the same as the ratio between the first stage of the rocket and everything else; which is why the performance numbers they're expecting actually do make an SSTO a viable design.
Keeping the beam from the radar array tight enough to avoid wasting most of the power is potentially a major challenge; however beyond the general rule that a larger phased array makes a tighter beam possible I don't know enough about their design to make an estimates of how feasible this would be.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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