Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

Re: "These are the subsidies Intel and others have been clamoring for"

So increase prices for all your domestic users making their businesses less profitable while increasing prices and causing inflation ?

That sounds like the sort of tarrif policy that would 'trump' all the others

Re: Congress's Main Task is Thinking Up Cutesy Acronyms

That's why the originally titled "Cause long queues at airports to take my shoes off and then get my balls felt Act" was renamed the PATRIOT Act

Re: "These are the subsidies Intel and others have been clamoring for"

Then the government can say that it will only buy made in america chips for certain applications.

Then it's upto individual companies to decide if they want to service this market and what capital to put to work

In fact you could organise the whole economy around this idea of customer demand and market supply and capital allocation

We could call it "Demand And Supply Capitalism". Or in the fashion of the modern web, with acronyms and odd dramatic misspelled words we could call it DAS Kapital

Re: And the answer to the question is

>But JWST took advantage of the changes in access to space, hence why it was origami folded to fit a specific sized payload container.

That's one way to phrase it. The 1995 design was a 6m monolithic mirror to be launched on an Ariane 5 with an enlarged shroud (the turbo bump).

Then in 2001 the French declined an invitation to a party in Iraq and so it had to launch on a Delta 4 'Freedom rocket'. This involved a lot of back to the drawing board to fit a 6m mirror in a 3+m rocket.

This cost so much that they needed international partners, who contributed a free launch on an ..... Ariane 5

But good for us, our mirrors were going to be bumped for the more profitable NASA contract

In theory even better if the same technology allowed a future folding 20m space telescope - but there is never any long term planning to keep the knowledge around

Re: And the answer to the question is

>Unbelievably, they still operate under cost plus.

Because the suppliers are used to a world where they bid to build 1000 low cost housing units n Chicago

Then the next administration now wants them all to have 18 bedrooms and a pool, and they need to be built in Hawaii but 50% of the jobs have to be in Alaska

Re: JWST has cost 10 billion

If the same accounting applies as in Hubble, a big chunk of that $10bn is going to paying for 1000s of students and postdocs to look at the data for the next decade.

Of course a lot of university administration and overhead also got billed to it as well -big budgets tend to attract accounting depts

Re: The US has spent more than 5x that amount

The irony is that the money is spent in the same place. You either pay $1bn to XYZ aerospace ( a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin) for the Telescope, or you pay $1bn for Javelins from ZYX aerospace (a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin)

Re: A qualified success?

Yes and no.

In the Mid-IR 5-30um it's very difficult to do anything from the ground. But the bigger mirror, fancy optics, highly accurate pointing etc is for the 2um near-IR uses. You can do a lot of the mid-IR program with a much simpler spacecraft, although the location is nice.

Modern 10+M class telescopes on the ground with adaptive optics/interferometry are pretty good at near-IR

Re: And the answer to the question is

>Unexpected problems and thus delays are to be expected with this sort of project.

It's far worse than that:

The project is to build a cutting-edge almost impossible technology.

But there is only confirmed funding for 3years, so anything you might need you better buy now.

Sorry it didn't get renewed for the next budget, so fire everybody working on it and scrap all the jigs/tools

Good news, it's back in the new budget next year, so dig out all those old designs and try and hire some new experts to continue working on them.

Bad news, the budget had been halved so you need to redesign and cut how much you spend this year.

Good news, we have new international partners, which mean you are now using their instruments/software/electronics and their launch vehicle so just redesign to incorporate that

And all this is being done by defence contractors used to pricing each stage of the contract because they expected all this.

Re: And the answer to the question is

>So even if you can get a future launcher which is better / similar for 1 million dollars, it will still cost about 10 billion for the whole telescope.

Not necessarily. (Speaking from Hubble era experience)

If a Shuttle launch is $1bn, and only one slot is available in 5-10years time then you need to be really sure the payload is going to work, so you test the living-Belgium out of it, for years and years. This costs a fortune and means you are limited to now obsolete but proven space-qualified technology.

If it is going on a manned mission - then all this 10x

If a launch is a $1M and is available every day, then you just use cheap off-the-shelf technology and figure you would rather have 50*$10M craft + $50M launch costs - than a single $500M payload

Re: Meanwhile

Wasn't some American buying $M of Copper cents from the US mint - because the copper is worth more than the face value ?

Then they introduced a law making it illegal to "deface" ie melt down, currency

Re: I'm surprised

The World Electronics Forum ?

I think they are a coffee-drinking cabal of BNC-cable traffickers

Re: Three Impossible Goals In Search Of An Attractive Political Posture!!

Remember it's an AI judging this = ONLY amanfromMars1's stuff will be approved

Re: I'm surprised

>Badenough is pro-Brexit, Anti-ECHR and Anti Green.

>This means she is only interested in short term gain at the expense of everyone else.

It means she knows what she has to say to get 20 Tory MPs to publicly support her

I suspect she personally believes nothing other than she is the chosen one

Re: Freedom to be be butt hurt.

>In the UK, "Hate speech" is a criminal offence for example.

But the bar is relatively high and usually sensible.

The courts take a rather different view of shouting "Boris is a lady-part" outside the pub, compared to a national figure going on TV and saying "I call on my followers. Rise up. We start the extermination of the methodists at dawn tomorrow"

Even online I think the courts accept a difference between fruity comments on el'reg and people sending 1000s of messages/emails/Facebook posts to a teenage girl telling her to kill herself.

Re: Authoritarianism

The British public might not believe in G*d but they do believe in the church of England (*) and wouldn't want to offend it - I think the right honourable member has forgotten this.

* which ironically doesn't believe in G*d

** not spelling out G*d just in case the Jews are right. He does have form for having a very thin skin and a tendancy to over-react

Re: Authoritarianism

>So we're blaming this on Corbyn as well then? Those perfidious reds, always causing mischief!

Has anyone seen Corbyn and "Boris" in the same room recently?

I mean the rubber face, floppy blonde wig and fat suit are obviously all a costume.

I was still hoping that he would rip it off when he resigned and it would be Sacha Baron Cohen all along

Re: This isn't it, but something seems to be needed

>Surely as privately owned companies they have very right - or even obligation - to establish policies and remove those who don't respect them.

But what if Facebook decides not to run any ads for your party in the midterms - cos it hopes to get a better tax deal from the other lot?

Or Google no longer returns any results for your party's candidate

Or the monopoly credit card companies both decide that the democrat candidate is obviously a Maoist who is going to destroy capitalism and so won't process donations.

All within their rights - right ?

Re: Lets hope it

> I only remember that youtube has videos when I use a different browser...

So you just read Youtube for the comments ?

Re: The Un-Dead

>once you knew how it was pretty simple to resurrect someone.

A drop of blood in the dust in the coffin?

Or the traditional tomb+rock+3day delivery option ?

Re: Proving that you are not a bigamist

> 'living in sin' is just fine thank you!

In Germany you probably need an official government permit which specifies exactly what kind of sin and what days and times you are permitted to do it - definitely not Sunday mornings in the rural areas.

Re: The title is optional

>if I ever do need to take out a loan, I'll probably be told : "Sorry, Mr. Gray, but our records indicate that you're dead."

You don't think being dead would stop the bank trying to sell you a loan?

Ah Mr Gray, since you are already dead we assume the term of this loan will 'eternity' with a typical APR of ....

Re: "We never make mistakes"

Used to be a thing in the middle ages (and probably in France today) if you had the sacrament of "last rights" and then recovered you were considered "sort of dead" by the church and had to fast and be in mourning for yourself for the rest of your life

Re: Proving you've never been married

That doesn't prove you were unmarried, it's just you saying that!

If I went 'round sayin' I was Emperor, just because some moistened bint lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away.

Found out when when I owned a company. We are married with no kids but partner is a few days younger.

If we were both in a car crash we assumed it all got split but everything would have gone to her elderly mother who would have become boss of a software company

In the UK if you both die within some period of time, the older one is declared to have died first.

This turned out quite useful in WWII, when some Lord and his son were killed in the blitz by the same bomb. The government claimed death duties on the father's estate then the same again on the son's.

Re: Wait till the press tour is over.

Pluto is in just about it's closest - but it's very small so might not be that interesting

Saturn is currently closer than than Jupiter - but it's directly away from Earth so not ideal for the telescope's current set of targets.

Not sure what its maximum pointing angle is compared to the Sun-Earth shield ?

Re: "even if one of the parties has no operations in the EU"

If the buyer was European and was buying foreign firms in order to become a monopoly or prevent other competitors entering the market that would be a reasonable concern.

Obviously if the buyer is totally foreign but buying a European operation this is investigated, otherwise a buyer just needs to form a front company outside the Eu, claim that this entity is doing the deal and has no presence in the Eu and so is free to do anything

Re: This is just one of the many reasons why European data is not safe in the US

>In Europe privacy is a fundamental right that is enshrined in most constitutions.

And yet it's Europe where every city center has more CCTV cameras watching you than a reality TV show and where ANPR tracks every car on every major road.

Here in the offshore colonies, speed cameras are banned as an unconstitutional invasion of privacy

Re: Pictograms ...

>are so limiting

That's why China had poetry for 1000s of years before we had 'Erik's axe' scratched in runes

Re: So, wait, what? Why again?

Because it's there !

It might find a use in kiosks ? Or reducing parental support calls. But chromebooks are so cheap you might as well buy one new

Personally I buy old cheap chromebooks put Linux+xfce on and use them as nice laptops fro browsing

Re: You put your left foot in ...

>Yes if it good enough to return to the rive as fresh water it should be good enough for intel to use again.

Not if your process needs <ppb of some contaminant. We are happy to drink water with 'minerals' but the machines aren't.

Having said that it's normally a problem of solvents, its hard to remove tiny amounts of a waste solvent, compared to removing heavy metals, but you can dilute it down to a safe level on the waste stream

Re: Good for Intel

Unless they are doing is an accounting trick. Extract X gallons from municipal water, add in Y gallons from a river or well and deliver x+y gallons of contaminated eater to municipal sewer system

Re: Bosch is set to invest €3 billion

That's because the Eu and Germany are Communist.

Here we are promising to "invest" $50bn but because we are capitalists we won't actually ever deliver

Re: Meanwhile. Back in the UK...

With our new British "fraction of an inch" fab technology