Posts by John Smith 19

@Chris Malme

"Now if it was 500K per per patient affected, then that might be something."

Now that's more like it.

Re: Remember the DC-X?

"But under the skin, they are always a fuel tank + engine + a few other bits and pieces. Not much 'new' technology there, just funding, better CAD/CFD, and better materials."

In the same way that a Leaf is like a Massarti.

DC-X goal was to demonstrate fast turnaround of LO2/LH2 engines. It succeeded.

It's top speed was Mach 3. It's shape was partly because the full size one was going to enter "sharp end first" and because keeping a long thin structure stable (even a bottom heavy one like a rocket stage) was considered very tough.

Which it is.

In that sense making the F9 1st stage reusable is much more ambitious, as it's likely to have to decellerate from about M13, with the minimal amount of fuel and TPS needed to ensure its survival and safe landing.

The truth neither you nor I know exactly what's under the skin because that's what Spacex has spent the time to find out.

Re: Whatever happened to...

"the Space Elevator idea?"

Still awaiting roughly a 6x improvement in strength to weight of the best available materials.

Re: Best of luck...

"Drop it gently and precisely into the sea to prove you can, then move to a land site, which can amount to little more than a sodding great concrete pan in the middle of the desert with a road to truck it out - a hell of a lot cheaper to build than a sea platform and much less expensive to rebuild if you break it (how?), with nothing of value in the surrounding area if it all gets noisy!"

Correct.

Which is what Spacex have had built for them at Space Port America in New Mexico, although that's more a flight test pad as they are planning to bring the stage(s) down to near the (but not at) the launch site, either Canaveral or Vandenberg.

@HollyHopDrive

"They have two options -

a) fight like dogs to keep their monopoly (a battle they will eventually loose even if this approach keeps them going for another 20 years)

b) Embrace the opportunity to compete fairly on merit and actually implement the Open standard."

History demonstrates that MS invariably goes with a), and if it fails gets their PR in to airbrush it out of history to maintain their "undefeated" mystique.

Recall "MSN" ?

Microsoft has "pals"? Nope - only paid shills,

That's not fair. It also has:-

Hardware companies that rely on the next generation of Windows to bloat up even more, so people need to refresh their hardware.

VARS, who make a living fixing the problems their software and file formats cause.

Training companies, who train users how to use the work arounds the VARS have developed.

Competitors, who it has not managed to destroy yet.

Re: @Peter Gathercote @John Smith

"But at the time I was being told that RPG was a high level language superior to PL/1 or C, and that is why I made the comparison with such scorn."

That really was a LOL moment.

TBH with time I have come to realize there is a simple truth.

If your support tools are flexible enough any language can be a viable development environment.

The trouble is that there seem to be very few tools that a)Language neutral enough and b)powerful enough to be applied to any language.

@Bakana

"where they got taught that the only thing that mattered is Next Quarter and that Long Term (Ie, 10 Years) planning was unnecessary because lots of great "Quarterly Success" would somehow Magically guarantee Long Term success."

One of the base rules of "Operations Research" was that optimized sub systems do not naturally lead to a system that is optimized overall.

I guess they don't teach much OR on MBA's.

@Philip Lewis

I remember seeing one of the "Shaums Outline Series" on "IBM Assembler Language Programming".

Presumed it meant IBM PC programming.

Actually was 360/370 BAL.

I suspect it's a topic with few 3rd party textbooks.

Re: It's all risk based

"Once the risk of the current system failing catastrophic exceeds the risk of catastrophically breaking things by migrating it, then and only then will they do anything about it."

Sadly that works for me.

Thumbs up for deep management insight.

@Peter Gathercote

" I likened RPG to a rather restricted assembler language. And in hindsight, I think that I was being generous!"

Historically RPG was a language for programmers whose only previous experience was assembler language.

Fixed format upper case 5 character "opcodes" is exactly how a lot of assemblers have been laid out.

BTW 3 address instructions with conditional execution flags --> ARM Assembler.

RPG IV is meant to be much nicer, free format, lower case allowed, external subroutines etc.

PPirate Dave

"Hey, at least it's not Object.RPG with OpenGL extensions..."

You do realize there are probably 4 people who read this that know what you're talking about?

Re: Building from the ground up

"Many of these systems are more patched than Frankenstein. Over the years (most likely decades) functionality has been added to the basic systems, often programmed in different languages by people who left long ago."

Correct.

Here's the thing.

CTO "I want to scrap all our old CICS/COBOL that's been written over the last 40 years and rewrite it in C++/Java/ML/LISP/WTF is the language De Jour"

Board "Why"

CTO It'll be easier to maintain (and it'll look great on my CV. And if I can make the systems administration work as well I'll be a God)

Board "So what are the risks?"

CTO "It'll take years, (look at Nationwide migration to SAP), cost 100s of $/£/Em and cause massive disruption.

Board "And give us what we already have?

CTO "Yes."

Board "And is it likely your successor would want do the same, but with a different language?"

CTO "Yes. (To the man who only knows VB everything is a button)."

Board "I think we can can unanimously say that you can f**k right off with that plan."

They might not care what they use for their gambling qualitative trading systems but when it comes to tracking what their customers owe them on a large scale banks are very conservative

Re: terrible

"Seems OK with me. I read it all the way to the end. Reput. Rhymes with Kaput."

Nice.

Re: Price

"I guess they won't bin them.

They have two different markets, and would be stupid to just offer one product"

Really.

Perhaps you should look up the history of the 2 ERP systems that became Microsoft "Dynamics."