Faulty hardware found on shuttle

On or about Wed, 31 Mar 2004 02:00:45 GMT, Richard Lamb
made the sensational claim that:
LooseChanj wrote:
On or about Mon, 29 Mar 2004 22:08:37 -0500, Peter Stickney
made the sensational claim that:
And MS_Word 2204 will require a semitrailer full of terabyte
SVHDDVDs. run like a Sloth on your MeraHertz Anthill processor, and
provide no more useful functionality than Word 6.

But by then that semitrailer of storage will be smaller than a shoebox.

It already is...

Smaller than a semitrailer full of whatever sort of "DVD"s Mr. Stickney was
predicting? Assuming he meant a disk roughly the size of a CD or DVD holding
a terabyte's worth of data, I don't think so. I'm not even sure exabytes would
cover that much data. Or even whatever's the next step, petabytes? For that
much friggin' data it better come with a holographic guy to do your work for
you, and a holographic supermodel to spend your time on the beach with.

SuperVeryHighDensityDVD?
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Derek Lyons wrote:

Early inertial systems weren't considered particularly stable. It was
not uncommon to have *both* systems installed. Civilian navigators
were also helped out the door by the increasing availability and
reliability of LORAN/DECCA/OMEGA etc...

In the case of Hound Dog, the missile originally had purely inertial
guidance; but later a star tracker was located on each of the B-52's
twin launch pylons that would update the missile's INS right up to the
moment of launch- since twin sensors were used, I imagine that not only
did you have system redundancy, but could split the difference in what
both the star trackers were giving as bearing and location, and give the
missiles a very accurate set of data; I suspect the bomber's nav system
used them also, particularly in areas where a radar check of the ground
would be an invitation to a SAM arriving pronto.
Our star sensors were far more compact than the first generation Soviet
equivalents; the transparent housing for the star sensor on the Buran
missile was the size of a fighter plane's canopy!
Here's a shot of the Hound Dog's star tracker under test- I assume that
the top assembly is the star tracker and the pylon-mounted electronics
system; and the large pod it's sitting on top of, the missile's INS
gear: http://www.ammsalumni.com/PlatforAst...r2_340x240.jpg
They seem to be testing it in a room with no ceiling, so that the star
tracker can see the sky.

Pat

In article ,
LooseChanj wrote:
...Anyone who
thinks unix should be held up as a shining example of operating systems should
be forced (preferably at gunpoint) to read the Unix Hater's Handbook.

That's about the only way that most of the UHH is readable...
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"LooseChanj" wrote in message
om...
and a holographic supermodel to spend your time on the beach with.

Does the name Six of One ring any bells?

"Paul Blay" wrote in message
...

... for sufficiently large values of 'shoe'.

Yeah, probably Ian Thorpe's

"Derek Lyons" wrote in message
...
Kevin Willoughby wrote:

On the other hand, if you have a bit of margin in cpu-speed, real-time
requirements, and memory, it is valid engineering to consider not
forcing the programmers to be careful with memory allocations. Let the
machine keep track of memory usage (keyword: "garbage collection").

Of course to use that margin, you have to ensure not only that the
garbage collector is called, but that it actually functions as
intended and is itself bug free.

Of course, you also need to trust your compiler's deallocation routine. I
remember that at one time Turbo Pascal essentially ignored deallocation.

Course, you could then explicitly manage all your allocations in your own
code. (Which is much more efficient for things like OS code.)

Herb Schaltegger wrote:
In article ,
(Derek Lyons) wrote:

Hmm... My Windows box hasn't crashed outright in over a week, hasn't
had a program freeze in two or three days, and only needs rebooting
when one particular memory picky game is run.[1] The only people to
whom that is not acceptable are those with a pathological hatred of
Redmond, or an unrealistic standard of performance.

Come on, Derek, you're setting your standards too low. My OS X laptop
hasn't crashed outright three times in 14 months, hasn't had a program
freeze in several weeks and only needs rebooting when I update system
software.

So what? I mean what does that level of reliability really gain you
for home or office usage?

D.
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Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

Dave Michelson wrote:

Derek Lyons wrote:
Dave Michelson wrote:

Perhaps you should preface your remark, "In my uninformed opinion, people
hold it to an unrealistic standard...."

If my opinion was uninformed, you'd have a point. But I'll give you a
free clue: "uninformed" != "disagrees with yours".

If the standard is "unrealistic", it couldn't be met by people developing
other desktop operating systems (Linux, Solaris, BSD, etc.) under similar
constraints.

I never said it was an unrealistic standard to design to. I *said* it
was an unrealistic standard to hold Windows to. There is a
difference.

Since they do so handily, one can only conclude that the standard *is*
realistic. QED.

(To myself: Hmmm. I wonder how Derek is going to twist this one around!)

Haven't twisted anything yet. It's twits like yourself who are doing
the twisting to avoid actually adressing the issue.

D.
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Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

(Peter Stickney) wrote:

Well, to me, serious is a data acquisition system (distributed among
several host systems, capable of running more than 5,000 test
stations, each one taking 4 types of measurement at sub-millisencond
intervals, while controlling dynamic electrical loads (Constant
Resistance, Constant Current, or Constant Power, or a mix of all 3) at
microsecond intervals, With better than 2 mV and 1 Ma accuracy. With
the minumum risk of losing data to any cause, for test durations
ranging from 1 second to over 6 months. Oh, yeah - the Test
Stations may be in environments ranging from Ambient to -40C to 50C,
and the test subjects may be in the act of exploding at the time.
You can't do that with Windows.

Ah. So since my mini-van won't perform as well as bus or semi, I
should complain? (Which means ignoring the fact that my mini-van
wasn't designed or intended for such usage.)

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

Pat Flannery wrote:

Here's a shot of the Hound Dog's star tracker under test- I assume that
the top assembly is the star tracker and the pylon-mounted electronics
system; and the large pod it's sitting on top of, the missile's INS
gear: http://www.ammsalumni.com/PlatforAst...r2_340x240.jpg

Your assumption would be correct based on the systems I've
seen/studied/worked with. For obvious reasons you want your star
tracker rigidly (and if possible physically) aligned with your
intertial platform.

D.
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Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.