Slashdot Mirror

I'm surprised no one seems to have mentioned this, but we ran a very safe (for the time) molten-salt reactor, AKA the LFTR (liquid fluoride thorium reactor). Later, total decommisioning was found to be an issue, but we've done what scientists and engineers do: find solutions. From Wiki: "Much of the high cost was caused by the unpleasant surprise of fluorine and uranium hexafluoride evolution from cold fuel salt in storage that ORNL did not defuel and store correctly, but this has now been taken into consideration in MSR design.[22]"

Nuclear is here to stay, in one form or another, unless humans cease to exist. Note that I didn't say "cease to exist tomorrow or next week." Try to think long-term. If you still can't wrap your head around the idea that nothing in the universe comes for free, and that we are stuck on a very small rock, your Buxton Index might not be the same as mine.

>

To my mind, provided that the algorithm doing the conversion is appropriately protected, pseudonymisation may be one good method of reducing the risk associated with the processing of personal data, protecting it in the event for a data breach, and thus be a form of security measure, but is unlikely to stop the data from being capable of identifying the individual, in the hands of the party carrying out the pseudonymisation.

With all respect, your mind and common sense are superseded by better minds:

Robust De-anonymization of Large Sparse Datasets

Our techniques are robust to perturbation in the data and tolerate some mistakes in the adversary’s background knowledge.
We apply our de-anonymization methodology to the Netflix Prize dataset, which contains anonymous movie ratings of 500,000 subscribers of Netflix, the world’s largest online movie rental service. We demonstrate that an adversary who knows only a little bit about an individual subscriber can easily identify this subscriber’s record in the dataset. Using the Internet Movie Database as the source of background knowledge, we successfully identified the Netflix records of known users, uncovering their apparent political preferences and other potentially sensitive information

Deanonymizing Mobility Traces: Using Social Networks as a Side-Channel

Location-based services, which employ data from smartphones, vehicles, etc., are growing in popularity. To reduce the threat that shared location data poses to a user’s privacy, some services anonymize or obfuscate this data. In this paper, we show these methods can be effectively defeated: a set of location traces can be deanonymized given an easily obtained social network graph.

I know... series (scroll to the bottom of the page)

A LOT About Your Web Browser and Computer
The Country, Town, and City You Are Connecting From (IP Geolocation)
What Websites You Are Logged-In To (Login-Detection via CSRF)
I Know Your Name, and Probably a Whole Lot More (Deanonymization via Likejacking, Followjacking, etc.)
Who You Work For
Your [Corporate] Email Address, and more

De-anonymizing social networks

Network de-anonymization task is of multifold significance, with user profile enrichment as one of its most promising applications. After the deanonymization and alignment, we can aggregate and enrich user profile information from different online networking services and make the bundled profiles available for end-users as well as third-party applications.

Actually you know what? lmgtfy

In the physical world, there is NO SUCH THING as perfect security. You can't design a setup that someone else cannot overcome We all accept this as part of every day life. However then when it comes to the virtual world, to computers, geeks seem to think things should be perfect.

The difference is that, in the physical world, we start with materials that we do not fully understand. I don’t mean that it’s too complicated, but that the rules have not even been discovered. For a well-known example, Quantum Mechanics still hasn’t been reconciled with General Relativity.

In contrast, software is built from pure logic. As Edsger Dijkstra put it, The automatic computer is our first large-scale digital device The animistic metaphor of the bug that maliciously sneaked in while the programmer was not looking is intellectually dishonest as it disguises that the error is the programmer’s own creation. He says a lot of more interesting things in that lecture. In principle, everything that a program does can be derived from a careful reading of the text, because all the rules are well-defined.

Not to mention, in the physical world you can afford to cut corners because, realistically, who is going to check the security of the 4th stud next to your bedroom, but in software, everything will eventually come under attack.

skip all dat and plum run it dru de Jive filter. Ah be baaad... whut it is. Right On!

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/jbc/home/chef.html

Giving a plant the genetic equivalent of a vasectomy

Oh, no... they certainly didn't! The terminator fuckup is in the pollen, so the plant actually ejaculates and will contaminate neighboring crops - terminating them and introducing a patented technology for which Monsanto can sue. Actually they also sue for segregation of seeds, so it's Catch-22, where Monsanto always wins and controls food production. That's exactly why it was done first.

With Weak Stability Boundary theory trajectories you can basically get from a lunar transfer orbit (or either ES or EM L1/2) to anywhere else around without spending any fuel, if you are willing to wait long enough. This pdf presentation should give you the idea.

Now, in practice you can't do it with no fuel, but if you are willing to be patient, you can do amazing things with a piddling expenditure of delta-V.

To give this more background, the conflict of interest investigation panel's report is here:
http://www.utexas.edu/news/PDF/Review-of-report.pdf
My quick summary is that the white papers produced by the study were not criticized, but mostly said "this hasn't been well studied, and we can't draw conclusions", but the summary presentation by Groat, who did not actually participate in the study, modified this to "there's no evidence of a link between health effects and fracking"

The (almost content free) press release from UT is here: http://www.utexas.edu/news/2012/12/06/university-accepts-shale-gas-development-report/
It's discussed on the NYTimes blog here:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/damning-review-of-gas-study-prompts-a-shakeup-at-the-university-of-texas/

To give this more background, the conflict of interest investigation panel's report is here:
http://www.utexas.edu/news/PDF/Review-of-report.pdf
My quick summary is that the white papers produced by the study were not criticized, but mostly said "this hasn't been well studied, and we can't draw conclusions", but the summary presentation by Groat, who did not actually participate in the study, modified this to "there's no evidence of a link between health effects and fracking"

The (almost content free) press release from UT is here: http://www.utexas.edu/news/2012/12/06/university-accepts-shale-gas-development-report/
It's discussed on the NYTimes blog here:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/damning-review-of-gas-study-prompts-a-shakeup-at-the-university-of-texas/

Here's another example:
http://web.utk.edu/~bursar/Fall2012FeesUG.pdf

So for that school, in-state is $9100 a year, while out-of-state is $27600. That's in-line with the grandparent poster's estimates.

Here's another example:
http://www.utexas.edu/tuition/costs.html

So for that school, in-state is about $9800 a year, while out-of-state is about $32000.

Both of these ignore the possibility of a community college for the first two years of school, which can save a lot of money for someone working his or her own way through college.

It's actually much simpler to refute than that.

Latour states:

"However, the absorption rate of real bodies depends on whether the absorber T (radiating or not), is less than the intercepted radiation T, or not. If the receiver T > intercepted T, no absorption occurs"

This is an absolute falsehood. There is no law of physics that states this. In fact, it is a physical impossibility, which is obvious if you look at it at the atomic level. Suppose a lower temperature body emits a photon toward a higher temperature body. The probability that photon is absorbed by an atom manifestly does not depend on the temperature of the emitting body, or on any other property of the photon source. (The quantum amplitude for this process is the vertex Feynman diagram in QED, Eq. 8 here.) There isn't any footnote in the equation that adds "... unless the photon came from a cold body, then the amplitude is zero". The atom has to absorb photons, independent of where they came from.

I haven't the patience to work through Latour's tedious algebra to find the error, but that seems to be the only "proof" Jane Q. will accept, no matter how many other ways there are to disprove Latour.

The latter. The best way to rob a bank is to own one

Dr. Davis's honors calculus class at the University of Texas trains your unconscious brain to perform calculus. http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/davis/davis_site/Kathy_Davis_Homepage.html When I took this class years ago, there was a very difficult take-home test every week, handed out on Monday and collected eight days later on Tuesday. She instructed us to review the test before going to sleep on the first day and on the first morning work on the solution for just a few minutes. Every day we were told to work on it a little more before bed and just after waking. She would drop hints during the lecture, and laugh. If I remember correctly, some of the homework problems were originally solved over decades by famous mathematicians -- real mind f'ers. After two semesters of this, solving calculus proofs in this way became almost second nature. Dr. Davis is one of those instructors that repeatedly wins "best professor" awards. (She was actually a he when I took the class, but that’s a whole other story).

The difference in delta-V to L1 and L2 is (for the Moon) pretty small. In fact, if you are willing to take your time, you can get to either with basically no fuel beyond a geostationary transfer orbit injection, using WSB trajectories. (This will take months, so it is not so good for manned voyages, but would save a lot on supply logistics costs, up to doubling the payload delivered per launch.)

By the way, getting a space station from L1 to L2 (or back) is also not energetically hard. The NASA plans on this envision putting a habitat at EML1 and then later move it to EML2, and maybe back after a period. (The station would not be AT EML2, but in a Lissajous orbit about it big enough so that it was always in view of Earth.)

Lots of people have been working in this field. The most impressive results are achieved by the astronomy community. link It is possible to produce a home made spectrometer that gets useful results. Some of these are capable of resolution sufficient to identify chemicals. These are sophisticated and often use a peltier cell to cool the CCD in order to reduce noise. link

I did a project whose aim was to produce a cheap spectrometer to match paint colors. link The problems I found were:

1. Cheap webcams are quite noisy
2. Cheap webcams are not at all linear
3. For dark colors, sensitivity is a big problem
4. The spectrum of the light source varies depending on which angle you view it from.
5. Organizing the data is perhaps the biggest problem of all

My own engineering trade-off was sensitivity vs. resolution. To get spectra for dark colored paints, I widened the slit which reduced resolution. That, as far as I could tell, was reasonable because I wasn't trying to identify chemicals and the spectra from paints weren't particularly sharp.

The folks in TFA have a site where people can upload spectra. That's fine but a huge database of spectra is not too useful. The spectra have to be organized somehow. Here's an example. In fact the problem can be quite daunting

Johnson supported Apollo and the Great Society. I ran across this quote about the Great Society:

We are going to assemble the best thought and broadest knowledge from all over the world to find these answers. I intend to establish working groups to prepare a series of conferences and meetings—on the cities, on natural beauty, on the quality of education, and on other emerging challenges. From these studies, we will begin to set our course toward the Great Society.

Imagine if we did the same today, to solve our problems. Then readjusted them once we found out what worked and what didn't. Read the whole speech, we don't have any politicians today who are anywhere near as eloquent. We are the generation of incompetent politicians.

He was eloquent, ok...

We are going to assemble the best thought and broadest knowledge from all over the world to find these answers. I intend to establish working groups to prepare a series of conferences and meetings—on the cities, on natural beauty, on the quality of education, and on other emerging challenges. From these studies, we will begin to set our course toward the Great Society.

Imagine if we did the same today, to solve our problems. Then readjusted them once we found out what worked and what didn't. Read the whole speech, we don't have any politicians today who are anywhere near as eloquent. We are the generation of incompetent politicians.

There was the TAU 1000 AU probe, which was to be sold on parallax measurements (i.e., astronomy). I didn't regard that as compelling.

More interesting are the suggestions of a probe to the solar gravitational lens focus, at 688.81 AU (or greater) (for light - it is less than that for gravitational waves or neutrinos, as they pass through the Sun, while light has to go around the Sun).

At that distance or greater, you could use the Sun as a telescope and greatly magnify any remote object at any frequency (and also for gravitational waves and neutrino's). Trouble is, it would be hard to point it at more than one or two targets (as you would have to move the spacecraft 11 AU / deg to do so). You could (I am sure) arrange a trajectory to get 2 or 3 or maybe even 4 objects over time, but that's not many objects for a multi-decade mission.

500 Trillion Watts is old news. A petawatt laser has existed for years, now. The record set by NIF is energy per pulse. The petawatt laser has only 190J per pulse, whereas the NIF has ~100000 times more energy per pulse.

citation 1
citation 2
citation 3
citation 4
citation 5
citation 6
citation 7
citation 8
citation 9
citation 10
Okay, there's 10 citations for you. Begin your spin, denouncements, deflections, justifications, and outright lies.....

Tetris itself is not new. It's based on a very old Russian toy/puzzle.

Source, please.

http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/smmg/archive/1997/radin.html
It may not be Russian, but polyomino tiling puzzles are at least 100 years old.

Six years ago, from a professor at my alma mater: http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/329/lectures/node45.html This being slashdot, I didn't RTFA but the author seems to come to the same conclusion that Fitzpatrick did. Incidentally, if you ever need to know something about physics, chances are this fellow has excellent lecture notes posted on his website covering the topic (in hyperlinked html, pdf, and even a git repository for the latex code!).

You didn't read further where I said nobody does it because of cost.

It's not because of cost, it's because it doesn't work. The CO2 comes back out again and you have no control over where that happens. If it comes out where people live, you will likely kill them.

What Can We Learn From
the CO2-EOR Record?

(1) The operational risks of capturing, compressing,
transporting and injecting CO2

(2) The risk of blowouts or very rapid CO2 release from
wells

(3) The risk that CO2 will leak into shallow aquifers
and contaminate potable water

(4) That sequestered CO2 (and possibly associated
methane gas) will leak into the atmosphere

Yep, and here's something even funnier (this time on purpose): http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD04xx/EWD475.html

I mean I'm not saying people always make good decisions.

Some examples from my intellectual neck of the woods-- the comments sections were particularly interesting during the whole OPERA snafu, though with Lubos' blog in particular you have to deal with some pretty half-baked political ideologies.

http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/~distler/blog/
http://motls.blogspot.com/

The patriot missile had a beginner level programmer's bug in it which caused it to miss every scud:

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~downing/papers/PatriotB1992.pdf

Yeah, it's not like variations of the flu have killed more people than all of our wars combined. It's not like we have a lack of organizations that believe in terror or widespread murders. Heck, we don't even have any environmental radicals that just might look at a world wide population reduction as the best possible thing that could happen to the environment. Nope, no reason at all to be concerned about this....

The seminal paper proposing the use of switched/routed interconnection networks on-chip (NoCs) was published by Dally and Towels 11 years ago in DAC'01: Route packets, not wires: On-chip interconnection networks. The idea of associating a router to each core and replicating it in "tiles" is not new either; Tilera was (IIRC) the first company to sell processors based on a tiled design, which was an evolution of the RAW research project. A related research project, the TRIPs, replicated functional units on each tile, rather than full cores. Intel has used a tiled design in the Polaris, SSC and MIC (which includes the forthcoming Knights Corner).

So no, the idea of using routed interconnects is not new at all. In fact, after reading the linked article, turns out that 2/3ths of the text are introducing the idea, and the last section details the contributions: Two ideas developed by the group of Li-Shiuan Peh seeking to improve performance (by using virtual bypassing, a form of routing precomputation) and reducing power consumption (using low-swing signaling).

True, but prior to the development of modern medicine average lifespan was a heck of a lot shorter.

In Rome life expectancy at birth was about 25.

http://www.utexas.edu/depts/classics/documents/Life.html

Maintaining population was a big deal. Women were married as soon as they hit puberty and were expected to be pregnant except when nursing. Few women made it to old age.

So yes humans can survive without modern medicine. But it isn't as nice.

"I remember how, with the advent of terminals, interactive debugging was supposed to solve all our programming problems, and how, with the advent of colour screens, "algorithm animation" was supposed to do the same. And what did we get? Commercial software with a disclaimer that explicitly states that you are a fool if you rely on what you just bought."

From http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~vl/notes/dijkstra.html.

Hey, workers need a place to live, right?

I'm no expert in this, since as an engineering graduate all that stuff seems like "liberal arts" to me, but I just did a quick Google search and the University of Texas' Liberal Arts college has departments for both Anthropology and Sociology:
http://www.utexas.edu/cola/resources/offices/

If you're interested in modeling this phenomenon you can do so using the Laplace-Young equation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young%E2%80%93Laplace_equation

I did part of my Master's thesis using it... for some examples see here: http://www.cfdlab.ae.utexas.edu/labstaff/carey/GFC_Papers/Carey216.pdf

It is a question of graph theory (it is a branch of computer science), and I am sure it can be solved with some efficiency because it seems like a typical one. If you want anything more specific, then how about reading the white paper? The theory including average and worst case scenarios is all there.
Do not forget that the effects of this are cumulative. When one car frees the road quicker, then other cars can move quicker as well. The human factor seems to be a very important bottleneck in the traffic load management. If this would be in conjunction with the automatic driving system, there wouldn't be 0.2-0.4 second reaction times, uneven brakings, and keeping a safe distance from the car driving ahead would cost less time (and nerves). So my point is that when we would take the same amount of cars with (effective) AI-s and the same roads as of today, the peak hours wouldn't be the peak hours as we know them.
The paper seems to be free to download, I wonder why the Slashdot news narration doesn't include a reference to it :
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~pstone/Papers/bib2html-links/AAMAS04.pdf

Well that's just it isn't it? By 2016 the US will definitely have a new government, and they may cancel whatever plan are in place, even if they're behind.

This is why the most valuable thing which can be done at this point is what Obama is trying to do. Skip the grand plans (SLS and MPCV were pork forced on him by Congress, not his plan) and focus on changing the fundamental dynamics of the situation which have contributed to the gridlock we've been in for the last 30 years. His plan is to facilitate the maturation of commercial operators so that private industry can bring the cost of access to space down. Another year or so of effort will see that far enough along that canceling Commercial Crew won't stop it. The companies will have their capabilities mature enough that they can finish them on their own. ISS servicing is really only the initial market to prime the pump, the real future for them is non-NASA clients. It was too expensive for this to start completely on its own, but with a few years of NASA kickstarting it, we are now on the brink of getting there. Once those capabilities exist, it matters less and less what Congress and NASA do because that is not where the important things will be happening.

SpaceX and Lockheed etc. are all trying to fill requirements set out by NASA.

Yes, because it is an easy early market, but it isn't the only market or even the biggest, just a starting point. If that NASA project goes away but gets their vehicles far enough along to fly, then it isn't a catastrophe, they will simply continue with their plans to serve additional markets with those vehicles. I realize you will probably ignore this just as you ignored the presentation I linked above outlining why super heavy lift is not necessary, but on the off chance you are willing to be educated, read this:

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/543572main_Section%20403(b)%20Commercial%20Market%20Assessment%20Report%20Final.pdf

If you want to send something of a reasonable size even back to the moon you need something bigger than the size of a falcon heavy.

As I've already pointed out, and provided a link to a detailed report on, this assertion is patently false. Go listen to the presentation and review the slides:
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Akin_12-14-11/

You should also review some of the presentations linked below. All of these offer different options for getting things beyond low earth orbit which do not require heavy lift or massive government spending. Pretending that exploration depends solely on what a single rocket can throw beyond LEO on a single launch wont make reality go away no matter how many times you repeat it.

Propellent Depots
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Adamo_10-13-10
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Kutter_11-10-10
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/McLean_3-2-11/

Electrodynamic Tethers
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Pearson_8-31-11/

New developments in orbital dynamics (which offer lower propellant trajectories to the moon)
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Belbruno_1-4-12/

Electric Propulsion
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Casaregola_5-04-11/
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso

Well that's just it isn't it? By 2016 the US will definitely have a new government, and they may cancel whatever plan are in place, even if they're behind.

This is why the most valuable thing which can be done at this point is what Obama is trying to do. Skip the grand plans (SLS and MPCV were pork forced on him by Congress, not his plan) and focus on changing the fundamental dynamics of the situation which have contributed to the gridlock we've been in for the last 30 years. His plan is to facilitate the maturation of commercial operators so that private industry can bring the cost of access to space down. Another year or so of effort will see that far enough along that canceling Commercial Crew won't stop it. The companies will have their capabilities mature enough that they can finish them on their own. ISS servicing is really only the initial market to prime the pump, the real future for them is non-NASA clients. It was too expensive for this to start completely on its own, but with a few years of NASA kickstarting it, we are now on the brink of getting there. Once those capabilities exist, it matters less and less what Congress and NASA do because that is not where the important things will be happening.

SpaceX and Lockheed etc. are all trying to fill requirements set out by NASA.

Yes, because it is an easy early market, but it isn't the only market or even the biggest, just a starting point. If that NASA project goes away but gets their vehicles far enough along to fly, then it isn't a catastrophe, they will simply continue with their plans to serve additional markets with those vehicles. I realize you will probably ignore this just as you ignored the presentation I linked above outlining why super heavy lift is not necessary, but on the off chance you are willing to be educated, read this:

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/543572main_Section%20403(b)%20Commercial%20Market%20Assessment%20Report%20Final.pdf

If you want to send something of a reasonable size even back to the moon you need something bigger than the size of a falcon heavy.

As I've already pointed out, and provided a link to a detailed report on, this assertion is patently false. Go listen to the presentation and review the slides:
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Akin_12-14-11/

You should also review some of the presentations linked below. All of these offer different options for getting things beyond low earth orbit which do not require heavy lift or massive government spending. Pretending that exploration depends solely on what a single rocket can throw beyond LEO on a single launch wont make reality go away no matter how many times you repeat it.

Propellent Depots
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Adamo_10-13-10
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Kutter_11-10-10
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/McLean_3-2-11/

Electrodynamic Tethers
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Pearson_8-31-11/

New developments in orbital dynamics (which offer lower propellant trajectories to the moon)
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Belbruno_1-4-12/

Electric Propulsion
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Casaregola_5-04-11/
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso

Well that's just it isn't it? By 2016 the US will definitely have a new government, and they may cancel whatever plan are in place, even if they're behind.

This is why the most valuable thing which can be done at this point is what Obama is trying to do. Skip the grand plans (SLS and MPCV were pork forced on him by Congress, not his plan) and focus on changing the fundamental dynamics of the situation which have contributed to the gridlock we've been in for the last 30 years. His plan is to facilitate the maturation of commercial operators so that private industry can bring the cost of access to space down. Another year or so of effort will see that far enough along that canceling Commercial Crew won't stop it. The companies will have their capabilities mature enough that they can finish them on their own. ISS servicing is really only the initial market to prime the pump, the real future for them is non-NASA clients. It was too expensive for this to start completely on its own, but with a few years of NASA kickstarting it, we are now on the brink of getting there. Once those capabilities exist, it matters less and less what Congress and NASA do because that is not where the important things will be happening.

SpaceX and Lockheed etc. are all trying to fill requirements set out by NASA.

Yes, because it is an easy early market, but it isn't the only market or even the biggest, just a starting point. If that NASA project goes away but gets their vehicles far enough along to fly, then it isn't a catastrophe, they will simply continue with their plans to serve additional markets with those vehicles. I realize you will probably ignore this just as you ignored the presentation I linked above outlining why super heavy lift is not necessary, but on the off chance you are willing to be educated, read this:

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/543572main_Section%20403(b)%20Commercial%20Market%20Assessment%20Report%20Final.pdf

If you want to send something of a reasonable size even back to the moon you need something bigger than the size of a falcon heavy.

As I've already pointed out, and provided a link to a detailed report on, this assertion is patently false. Go listen to the presentation and review the slides:
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Akin_12-14-11/

You should also review some of the presentations linked below. All of these offer different options for getting things beyond low earth orbit which do not require heavy lift or massive government spending. Pretending that exploration depends solely on what a single rocket can throw beyond LEO on a single launch wont make reality go away no matter how many times you repeat it.

Propellent Depots
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Adamo_10-13-10
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Kutter_11-10-10
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/McLean_3-2-11/

Electrodynamic Tethers
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Pearson_8-31-11/

New developments in orbital dynamics (which offer lower propellant trajectories to the moon)
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Belbruno_1-4-12/

Electric Propulsion
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Casaregola_5-04-11/
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso

Well that's just it isn't it? By 2016 the US will definitely have a new government, and they may cancel whatever plan are in place, even if they're behind.

This is why the most valuable thing which can be done at this point is what Obama is trying to do. Skip the grand plans (SLS and MPCV were pork forced on him by Congress, not his plan) and focus on changing the fundamental dynamics of the situation which have contributed to the gridlock we've been in for the last 30 years. His plan is to facilitate the maturation of commercial operators so that private industry can bring the cost of access to space down. Another year or so of effort will see that far enough along that canceling Commercial Crew won't stop it. The companies will have their capabilities mature enough that they can finish them on their own. ISS servicing is really only the initial market to prime the pump, the real future for them is non-NASA clients. It was too expensive for this to start completely on its own, but with a few years of NASA kickstarting it, we are now on the brink of getting there. Once those capabilities exist, it matters less and less what Congress and NASA do because that is not where the important things will be happening.

SpaceX and Lockheed etc. are all trying to fill requirements set out by NASA.

Yes, because it is an easy early market, but it isn't the only market or even the biggest, just a starting point. If that NASA project goes away but gets their vehicles far enough along to fly, then it isn't a catastrophe, they will simply continue with their plans to serve additional markets with those vehicles. I realize you will probably ignore this just as you ignored the presentation I linked above outlining why super heavy lift is not necessary, but on the off chance you are willing to be educated, read this:

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/543572main_Section%20403(b)%20Commercial%20Market%20Assessment%20Report%20Final.pdf

If you want to send something of a reasonable size even back to the moon you need something bigger than the size of a falcon heavy.

As I've already pointed out, and provided a link to a detailed report on, this assertion is patently false. Go listen to the presentation and review the slides:
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Akin_12-14-11/

You should also review some of the presentations linked below. All of these offer different options for getting things beyond low earth orbit which do not require heavy lift or massive government spending. Pretending that exploration depends solely on what a single rocket can throw beyond LEO on a single launch wont make reality go away no matter how many times you repeat it.

Propellent Depots
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Adamo_10-13-10
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Kutter_11-10-10
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/McLean_3-2-11/

Electrodynamic Tethers
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Pearson_8-31-11/

New developments in orbital dynamics (which offer lower propellant trajectories to the moon)
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Belbruno_1-4-12/

Electric Propulsion
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Casaregola_5-04-11/
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso

Well that's just it isn't it? By 2016 the US will definitely have a new government, and they may cancel whatever plan are in place, even if they're behind.

This is why the most valuable thing which can be done at this point is what Obama is trying to do. Skip the grand plans (SLS and MPCV were pork forced on him by Congress, not his plan) and focus on changing the fundamental dynamics of the situation which have contributed to the gridlock we've been in for the last 30 years. His plan is to facilitate the maturation of commercial operators so that private industry can bring the cost of access to space down. Another year or so of effort will see that far enough along that canceling Commercial Crew won't stop it. The companies will have their capabilities mature enough that they can finish them on their own. ISS servicing is really only the initial market to prime the pump, the real future for them is non-NASA clients. It was too expensive for this to start completely on its own, but with a few years of NASA kickstarting it, we are now on the brink of getting there. Once those capabilities exist, it matters less and less what Congress and NASA do because that is not where the important things will be happening.

SpaceX and Lockheed etc. are all trying to fill requirements set out by NASA.

Yes, because it is an easy early market, but it isn't the only market or even the biggest, just a starting point. If that NASA project goes away but gets their vehicles far enough along to fly, then it isn't a catastrophe, they will simply continue with their plans to serve additional markets with those vehicles. I realize you will probably ignore this just as you ignored the presentation I linked above outlining why super heavy lift is not necessary, but on the off chance you are willing to be educated, read this:

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/543572main_Section%20403(b)%20Commercial%20Market%20Assessment%20Report%20Final.pdf

If you want to send something of a reasonable size even back to the moon you need something bigger than the size of a falcon heavy.

As I've already pointed out, and provided a link to a detailed report on, this assertion is patently false. Go listen to the presentation and review the slides:
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Akin_12-14-11/

You should also review some of the presentations linked below. All of these offer different options for getting things beyond low earth orbit which do not require heavy lift or massive government spending. Pretending that exploration depends solely on what a single rocket can throw beyond LEO on a single launch wont make reality go away no matter how many times you repeat it.

Propellent Depots
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Adamo_10-13-10
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Kutter_11-10-10
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/McLean_3-2-11/

Electrodynamic Tethers
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Pearson_8-31-11/

New developments in orbital dynamics (which offer lower propellant trajectories to the moon)
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Belbruno_1-4-12/

Electric Propulsion
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Casaregola_5-04-11/
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso

Well that's just it isn't it? By 2016 the US will definitely have a new government, and they may cancel whatever plan are in place, even if they're behind.

This is why the most valuable thing which can be done at this point is what Obama is trying to do. Skip the grand plans (SLS and MPCV were pork forced on him by Congress, not his plan) and focus on changing the fundamental dynamics of the situation which have contributed to the gridlock we've been in for the last 30 years. His plan is to facilitate the maturation of commercial operators so that private industry can bring the cost of access to space down. Another year or so of effort will see that far enough along that canceling Commercial Crew won't stop it. The companies will have their capabilities mature enough that they can finish them on their own. ISS servicing is really only the initial market to prime the pump, the real future for them is non-NASA clients. It was too expensive for this to start completely on its own, but with a few years of NASA kickstarting it, we are now on the brink of getting there. Once those capabilities exist, it matters less and less what Congress and NASA do because that is not where the important things will be happening.

SpaceX and Lockheed etc. are all trying to fill requirements set out by NASA.

Yes, because it is an easy early market, but it isn't the only market or even the biggest, just a starting point. If that NASA project goes away but gets their vehicles far enough along to fly, then it isn't a catastrophe, they will simply continue with their plans to serve additional markets with those vehicles. I realize you will probably ignore this just as you ignored the presentation I linked above outlining why super heavy lift is not necessary, but on the off chance you are willing to be educated, read this:

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/543572main_Section%20403(b)%20Commercial%20Market%20Assessment%20Report%20Final.pdf

If you want to send something of a reasonable size even back to the moon you need something bigger than the size of a falcon heavy.

As I've already pointed out, and provided a link to a detailed report on, this assertion is patently false. Go listen to the presentation and review the slides:
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Akin_12-14-11/

You should also review some of the presentations linked below. All of these offer different options for getting things beyond low earth orbit which do not require heavy lift or massive government spending. Pretending that exploration depends solely on what a single rocket can throw beyond LEO on a single launch wont make reality go away no matter how many times you repeat it.

Propellent Depots
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Adamo_10-13-10
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Kutter_11-10-10
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/McLean_3-2-11/

Electrodynamic Tethers
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Pearson_8-31-11/

New developments in orbital dynamics (which offer lower propellant trajectories to the moon)
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Belbruno_1-4-12/

Electric Propulsion
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Casaregola_5-04-11/
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso

Well that's just it isn't it? By 2016 the US will definitely have a new government, and they may cancel whatever plan are in place, even if they're behind.

This is why the most valuable thing which can be done at this point is what Obama is trying to do. Skip the grand plans (SLS and MPCV were pork forced on him by Congress, not his plan) and focus on changing the fundamental dynamics of the situation which have contributed to the gridlock we've been in for the last 30 years. His plan is to facilitate the maturation of commercial operators so that private industry can bring the cost of access to space down. Another year or so of effort will see that far enough along that canceling Commercial Crew won't stop it. The companies will have their capabilities mature enough that they can finish them on their own. ISS servicing is really only the initial market to prime the pump, the real future for them is non-NASA clients. It was too expensive for this to start completely on its own, but with a few years of NASA kickstarting it, we are now on the brink of getting there. Once those capabilities exist, it matters less and less what Congress and NASA do because that is not where the important things will be happening.

SpaceX and Lockheed etc. are all trying to fill requirements set out by NASA.

Yes, because it is an easy early market, but it isn't the only market or even the biggest, just a starting point. If that NASA project goes away but gets their vehicles far enough along to fly, then it isn't a catastrophe, they will simply continue with their plans to serve additional markets with those vehicles. I realize you will probably ignore this just as you ignored the presentation I linked above outlining why super heavy lift is not necessary, but on the off chance you are willing to be educated, read this:

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/543572main_Section%20403(b)%20Commercial%20Market%20Assessment%20Report%20Final.pdf

If you want to send something of a reasonable size even back to the moon you need something bigger than the size of a falcon heavy.

As I've already pointed out, and provided a link to a detailed report on, this assertion is patently false. Go listen to the presentation and review the slides:
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Akin_12-14-11/

You should also review some of the presentations linked below. All of these offer different options for getting things beyond low earth orbit which do not require heavy lift or massive government spending. Pretending that exploration depends solely on what a single rocket can throw beyond LEO on a single launch wont make reality go away no matter how many times you repeat it.

Propellent Depots
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Adamo_10-13-10
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Kutter_11-10-10
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/McLean_3-2-11/

Electrodynamic Tethers
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Pearson_8-31-11/

New developments in orbital dynamics (which offer lower propellant trajectories to the moon)
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Belbruno_1-4-12/

Electric Propulsion
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Casaregola_5-04-11/
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso

Well that's just it isn't it? By 2016 the US will definitely have a new government, and they may cancel whatever plan are in place, even if they're behind.

This is why the most valuable thing which can be done at this point is what Obama is trying to do. Skip the grand plans (SLS and MPCV were pork forced on him by Congress, not his plan) and focus on changing the fundamental dynamics of the situation which have contributed to the gridlock we've been in for the last 30 years. His plan is to facilitate the maturation of commercial operators so that private industry can bring the cost of access to space down. Another year or so of effort will see that far enough along that canceling Commercial Crew won't stop it. The companies will have their capabilities mature enough that they can finish them on their own. ISS servicing is really only the initial market to prime the pump, the real future for them is non-NASA clients. It was too expensive for this to start completely on its own, but with a few years of NASA kickstarting it, we are now on the brink of getting there. Once those capabilities exist, it matters less and less what Congress and NASA do because that is not where the important things will be happening.

SpaceX and Lockheed etc. are all trying to fill requirements set out by NASA.

Yes, because it is an easy early market, but it isn't the only market or even the biggest, just a starting point. If that NASA project goes away but gets their vehicles far enough along to fly, then it isn't a catastrophe, they will simply continue with their plans to serve additional markets with those vehicles. I realize you will probably ignore this just as you ignored the presentation I linked above outlining why super heavy lift is not necessary, but on the off chance you are willing to be educated, read this:

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/543572main_Section%20403(b)%20Commercial%20Market%20Assessment%20Report%20Final.pdf

If you want to send something of a reasonable size even back to the moon you need something bigger than the size of a falcon heavy.

As I've already pointed out, and provided a link to a detailed report on, this assertion is patently false. Go listen to the presentation and review the slides:
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Akin_12-14-11/

You should also review some of the presentations linked below. All of these offer different options for getting things beyond low earth orbit which do not require heavy lift or massive government spending. Pretending that exploration depends solely on what a single rocket can throw beyond LEO on a single launch wont make reality go away no matter how many times you repeat it.

Propellent Depots
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Adamo_10-13-10
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Kutter_11-10-10
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/McLean_3-2-11/

Electrodynamic Tethers
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Pearson_8-31-11/

New developments in orbital dynamics (which offer lower propellant trajectories to the moon)
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Belbruno_1-4-12/

Electric Propulsion
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Casaregola_5-04-11/
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso

I see plenty of the Energy Industry, a drilling company, Big Oil, and even an Investment Professional on the Advisory Board
 
I couldn't quickly find where the bulk of the department's funding comes from. But I bet it's no surprise.
 
They sure seem to be good friends to fracking.

I see plenty of the Energy Industry, a drilling company, Big Oil, and even an Investment Professional on the Advisory Board
 
I couldn't quickly find where the bulk of the department's funding comes from. But I bet it's no surprise.
 
They sure seem to be good friends to fracking.

... funded by Big Oil comes out with what is basically pro-fracking study that basically says, "We're doing it in a dangerous manner; it's the process, not what we're doing, even though everyone is doing it wrong."

And peer review? Nope. But it was reviewed by the pro-corporation sham of an environmental watch-group, the Environmental Defense Fund:

In addition to university faculty, the Environmental Defense Fund was actively involved in developing the scope of work and methodology for this study, and reviewed final work products.

(source)

Not buyin' it.

... funded by Big Oil comes out with what is basically pro-fracking study that basically says, "We're doing it in a dangerous manner; it's the process, not what we're doing, even though everyone is doing it wrong."

And peer review? Nope. But it was reviewed by the pro-corporation sham of an environmental watch-group, the Environmental Defense Fund:

In addition to university faculty, the Environmental Defense Fund was actively involved in developing the scope of work and methodology for this study, and reviewed final work products.

(source)

Not buyin' it.

You're kidding yourself if you believe that the SLS is truly about fielding a rocket. There are very few people intimately familiar with the space industry (outside those with a vested interest in saying so) who believe it will ever fly. Massive NASA projects like this get canceled before completion, the history of the last 35 years has been almost completely consistent about this. The ISS is the sole exception and that squeaked past by the only the thinnest of margins despite bringing in international partners and using it as a means to keep certain kinds of technical talent in Russia legitimately gainfully employed in the decade following the fall of the USSR. The supporters of SLS know quite well it won't run to completion, but they don't support it for what it could do for US space capabilities, they do it because for however long they string it along, it means jobs in their districts, influx of capital to their districts, and it provides a way to funnel funds to particular contractors. Once it gets canceled, they just rig up a new project targeted to sound impressive to the sheeple in the general public who don't know enough about space to realize this but who are generally willing to support NASA.

Moreover the whole idea that heavy lift of some arbitrarily high size is 'required to do human exploration beyond LEO' is just the fig leaf they use as an excuse, banking on the fact that the general public will never doublecheck and find out that it is completely false. Heavy lift is not at all required. Don't believe me, have a listen to this NASA conference call on the subject:

Logistics and Operations versus Heavy Lift: Examining Approaches to Human Exploration in a Cost-Constrained Era
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Akin_12-14-11/

If we need heavier lift than is available right now, we'll have the Falcon Heavy from SpaceX available in 2-3 years and I'd be willing to bet that the ULA could field the heavier versions of the Delta IV and Atlas V that they have on the drawing boards 3ish years after NASA commits to needing them. Neither of these options costs NASA tens of billions of dollars or a decade of work...which is precisely why congress doesn't like them.

NASA could be doing a lot of cool stuff in space both cheaper and sooner, but from a congressional standpoint that is not what NASA dollars are for.

One of the most eye-opening things I've read is On the cruelty of really teaching computer science by Edsger Dijkstra, one of the old computer science greats. While I don't agree with every point, it's well worth reading, and he has some choice words about software engineering:

"A number of these phenomena have been bundled under the name "Software Engineering". As economics is known as "The Miserable Science", software engineering should be known as "The Doomed Discipline", doomed because it cannot even approach its goal since its goal is self-contradictory. Software engineering, of course, presents itself as another worthy cause, but that is eyewash: if you carefully read its literature and analyse what its devotees actually do, you will discover that software engineering has accepted as its charter 'How to program if you cannot.'"

[citations needed]

Citations won't be found, because the explanation is incorrect. There is no technical issue with compilers implementing 'goto' so long as the destination is in the same lexical scope (C has this limitation). Nor is it worth considering execution context at the level of the CPU, as any high-level loop or branch instruction must be translated into one of a limited number of conditional or non-conditional, relative or absolute jumps. Ultimately whether you use 'goto' or some other control construct you are attempting to express the same programmatic flow, and the compiled instruction stream will be sufficiently similar that it's not worth splitting hairs over.

The reason 'goto' is "considered harmful" is because structured programming theorizes that any computable function can be expressed by combining simpler programs using sequence, selection and iteration; and this provides the opportunity for a constructive approach to program correctness. Dijkstra argues that we are cognitively limited and can benefit from code that is structured so that we can tell at any point where we are and where we have come from (a gross paraphrasing of what Dijkstra calls "coordinates"). But "[t]he unbridled use of the go to statement has as an immediate consequence that it becomes terribly hard to find a meaningful set of coordinates in which to describe the process progress". In other words careless use of 'goto' makes it hard to reason about your code.

Knuth contended that one could created structured programs with 'goto' statements, and provided examples of how 'goto' make the program more elegant.

It is important to realise that the claimed advantages of structured programming are undone by the use of break, continue, or exception handling. There are limited forms of goto, and using them prevents proofs of correctness (under the assumptions of structured programming; other techniques may be available) and reasoning using Dijkstra's "coordinates".

Look at this report from Professor Tadeusz Patzek, A Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley

Patzek and Pimentel are the two anti-ethanol shills that are always trotted out when making claims that ethanol is bad. Trace back almost any report that claims that ethanol is net energy negative, and you'll end up at a Patzek/Pimentel report. Reports by other groups usually find values of break-even or net energy gain. It's generally regarded that Patzek and Pimentel come up with their numbers by applying the most pessimistic estimates for everything, e.g. by using the energy efficiencies of worst facilities operating today, rather than that for modern ones, or even the current overall average.

By the way, Patzek *wasn't* a professor of Chemical Engineering at Berkeley. (Though his Ph.D. is in Chemical Engineering.) His main appointment was as a Professor of Geoengineering, and before that a Assistant Professor of Petroleum Engineering. He doesn't even list a joint appointment to the Berkeley Chemical Engineering department on his current C.V. His current job is as Professor and Chair of the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at UT Austin. He's been involved with oil companies and petroleum/natural gas extraction, including working with oil companies like Shell and Chevron.

David Pimentel, by the way, was a professor in the Department of Agricultural Science at Cornell (now retired), but as an entomologist (study of insects), rather than plant growth or processing, as might be naively assumed.

These days, you do have a quite reasonable alternative to BCrypt available as well, which is Ulrich Drepper's SHA2 based Crypt scheme. It's functionally the same as BCrypt but with the use of a different basic cryptographic operation. Like BCrypt, Drepper's sha-crypt is designed to be as slow as molasses, with the ability to make the operation even slower if you like by explicitly specifying the number of SHA256 or SHA512 passes to perform.

Drepper's SHA256 and SHA512 based Crypt routines are now standard in glibc on Linux, as well as on Solaris and HP-UX, and are likely to natively be supported by PHP and the like on those platforms. If you're looking for an implementation in Java, we have one at ftp://ftp.arlut.utexas.edu/java_hashes/.