Don't we already have sickle cell to help with this? Why are we wasting money when we can just send people with the genetic immunity to malaria to malaria infested countries?
It was part of the "etc" in the tour. The real treat was that next year the tour includes the Van Alen Suspenders.
@decsnake: http://www.nasa.gov/connect/social/index.html has information about the Nasa Social program. It'a basically a lottery system, where you sign up and if not picked, you join a wait list. As not everyone who is picked is willing to travel, has conflicts, end-of-year vacation shortages, whatever, you can get chosen off the wait list. You and only you can currently go (no +1s), although, and not to separate myself from/. users, I actually have a girlfriend and we were both randomly chosen to go, which I think may be a first for them to have an actual couple there. In full disclosure, we're both pretty pathetic NASA nerds. The next two they have coming up are welcoming the Endeavour shuttle landing in California, and the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in the Mojave desert. Both are social events that are accepting people (and pretty much anyone can apply).
The events are completely free, and they throw in lots of goodies, however transportation, lodging, etc. is your own expense.
I was part of the NASA Social program where they're allowing the social networking community to blog and tweet along with "actual journalists".
What this did is allow a small group of social networking types to go into the LCC (Launch Control Center), to the launch pad, tour the VAB (and then watch the launch from the roof, and it's a great view from the largest single story building in the world), have a Q&A with the International Space Station via live downlink, and other fun things. They also catered lunch. It was a three day event although with the two scrubbed launches previously it extended quite a few days.
I mention "actual journalists" above in sarcastic quotes, because to be honest, they were completely different from the SocialMedia citizen type journalists. It was interesting to note that our group was not getting paid; in fact had to finance our own trip, hotels, airfare, etc. We hung out together before and after the daily grind, had breakfasts together after scrubbed launches at 0430 at IHOP and nerded out all over the place. Everyone was giddy and having fun and taking pictures of every nut and bolt, sign, elevator, mosquitos, grabbing all the scientific material, paying attention to all the NASA administrators, program managers, scientists, etc. Everyone was there because they loved NASA and science and were nerds about it.
The journalist types, were in many cases serious SOBs. They were either complaining about their per diem, trying to scam their employers out of new and expensive equipment, bitching about scrubbed launches, complaining to our media minders about having to follow rules, etc. The Fourth Estate was, frankly, embarrassing to be around. They were like petulant children. I'd love to list all the observations of these people but it was clear to me that this was a paycheck to them, or maybe they were too cool for school to say they liked this stuff. It was a sad observation of the "media" (though certainly not my first viewing of this behavior). I suspect it has to do with organizations fearing the media will write bad things about them or something, so they have to put up with these jackasses. In a strange situation the only media people that seemed positive were the FOX news guys, but I more suspect that it was because they were a local affiliate. The worst media was ironically the team from a particular science periodical. It was sad.
I had the good luck to watch the launch from the roof of the VAB, and the launch was great. Although the moisture ladden air made long exposure photography not come out as crisp, it did make for a much better light show as the spaceship blasted off.
Many people are bummed out from the lack of "manned" space travel with NASA, but on the floor of the VAB, across from the shuttle Endeavour, were the nose cone and Launch Escape System - LES, for the Orion program.
Good luck to the RBSP and hope the data it sends back will give us more knowledge going forward to have humans travel safely through the storm belts.
Well the two cost about $435 million. I can assume there's a limit on money, plus adding another spacecraft (the two are stacked on the top), might be beyond a weight threshold that would require bigger and even more expensive launch platform.
The probes are in different elliptical orbits and one will lap the other as they fly in and out of the inner and outer belts, so they can see the particle effects on one vs. the other. There are several labs on it for measuring this, including probes that extend far away from the craft which will give three dimensional senses of what's happening.
I'm at the NASA Press Site as part of the #NasaSocial event, and it's fantastic. After touring the VAB, launch control, the Atlas V, and the scientists involved, the excitement is infectious.
Some of the most advanced sensors ever are aboard are on to measure the radiation belts and soup of particles for the next couple of years, and the dual orbits of probes A and B should give a wealth of information on how to handle EM storms that affect Cell networks, GPS, and satellite communications. 43 minutes to launch.
This will be interesting in a decade or two when they start using this as a court approved "lie detector".
Cops: "Your Honor, Mr. Smith tested positively of identifying the women we're accusing him of murdering. Although he requested a lawyer soon after, we found that the new NeuroIdent(tm) analyzer in the interrogation room remotely read a spike when we showed him a picture of the body, he also showed a spike when we flashed a picture of the murder weapon, a kitchen knife."
Judge: "This is the woman who worked at the Starbucks near where the suspect lives?"
Cops: "Yes, which is why we need a warrant on him Sir, obviously he killed her, otherwise, why would his brain have spiked when seeing her? Just like DNA, there's no possible way for it to happen because this is the same thing DARPA uses, and it's based on science Your Honor. We didn't find DNA at the crime scene, but we did notice the spike, so obviously he's lying about not knowing her and therefore, must have killed her."
Judge: "Sounds reasonable. I hope you catch the bastard. It's a good thing that the NeuroIdent(tm) is admissable as evidence in court, unlike those stupid old 'lie detectors' from years ago, that only reacted to involuntary stimuli manifesting a reaction in the subject. And since it's in the brain, there's no way he could fool it or it could be inaccruate."
"They are also the wings that fight so hard to keep a profitable drugs like viagra or prilosec out of the hands of generic manufacturers so they can be affordable when people really need them. "
Really need them? And they do have generic Viagra. It's called a strap-on.
I live in one of those large, over-priced "planned communities" with the town centre, the gym/tennis courts/water park area, etc. They offer free, open WiFi for people in the gym area, so I was checking some mail and decided to do a little network port scanning and saw a couple dozen systems, printers, routers and such on the network, which I thought was odd, as usually those kind of things aren't on the same network as all the free WiFi junk.
I'm just idly curious as to what is around, and came across some unusually named servers (ie: default out of the box) and was just connected via web and it brought up the entire security camera console.
Now there was no "exploiting" going on at all. I just connected to a publically accessible (and offerred) free WiFi point, and browsed a computer name using HTTP, and there I was looking at 4 streaming cameras through a web console, at the gym. Another server (just sitting on the network as well) had all the external cameras for the doors and walkways.
Now this wasn't just a monitoring console, but the full record/stop recording, pan, zoom, admin console. Sitting out completely available, for anyone to just ping and do whatever they wanted.
I've honestly never seen anything like it. There wasn't even a password or any security. Not even a "you shouldn't be here" pop up or anything.
Has anyone ever seen a situation like this? Where a security console wasn't at least locked down to a particular MAC address for monitoring or IP restricted or, God forbid, not on the same network as your customers to randomly browse to?
For me it was easy. I got my degrees in philosophy and psychology. They're much more useful in job interviews that boring old technical information. My technical knowledge came from years of DIY projects, some open source when that became cool, using skills as lame as writing excel and access projects at jobs, taking dozens of classes on my own time for a CS degree that never materialized, etc.
Seriously, the amount of technical information you have, starting out, is pretty moot. There's not a huge difference you can tell from looking at your academic list of knowledge other than a basic skillset. Most grads are the same, unless you just finished your PhD from MIT and hold 12 patents.
Psychological jokes aside, I just focus on pacing, leading, and manipulating the interviewer to wanting to hire me. How long I've been working with what tool or language is irrelevent if I can convince them I can learn anything in two weeks. I don't need to be able to write the greatest data structure in the world if I can convince them of the business reason why you would or wouldn't want one and what the affect is on the bottom line.
Of course, good or bad, none of it matter if you can't even get a technical interview with a human in the first place. I don't know if it was mentioned by others, but I went through contracting companies originally. They do all the work of getting the interview, and I just need to get the suit, tie, 37 pieces of flair, and a winning smile.
After that point, most everything is word of mouth and "social networking" whatever the hell that is. IT seems to luckily constantly churn, so I just keep in touch with those who can give me a job (or recommend me to a boss) and return the favor.
I haven't had to apply or interview for a gig in years that I didn't already have the job going in.
The problem is the mentality of wanting the government to "solve" the problems in the first place. Government can't and hasn't solved a single thing in history. They just promise you that, or try and take credit for it, so you will buy the hype that they are the solution and you should continue sending them your power.
Yeah, the Costa Rican's are really screwed, they'll have the healthiest, most attractive people on the planet with great bodies and almost no diabetes to speak of.
They should just open nude beaches and a health food paradise to make up for the "lost" expense of poisoning their own people.
This can't be right. The CHICOMs can't be trusted? I thought socialist big-government types like Hillary thought there was no possible abuse by powerful governments, that they just served the citizens and picked flowers?
Oh, right, this is a troll post. Please mod me down as appropriate.
There's no glory in IT, any more than there's glory in janitorial services.
Working on a good team, having fun, and actually delivering a product feels pretty good, and occassionally is an ego boost when things actually go well, but I don't see any "glory" in doing that.
Does anyone do anything for glory? What the hell is that anyway? At best it's a goal of narcissistic "ego inflation" or something. Those jack-nuts usually try to boss the group into becoming a VP or something.
I'd much rather work for money. You can have the glory, I'll have the cash. Slap your name and reputation all over it all you want. I don't think there are as many "IT Superstars" as there used to be because people started realizing how many false-positives you get from "glorious" self-promoting morons.
The EU needs some cheez with their whine. What are they going to do? Follow the same pattern of screwing themselves over, then being invaded by Germany?
America sucks, which is why a team of boyscouts could take over the EU. It could even be done with the boyscouts with gay scoutmasters.
The EU can go fornicate themselves. Wake me when they do something unrelated to food.
We have all the computing power we need. It's not like it'll work anyway.
They'll just look for camera to suddenly go orange/yellow with a mushroom shape in white then invoke a status message.
We all know this stuff is silly. What are they going to detect? A bunch of human shaped pixels increasing their speed in one direction? The number of false positives for the AI system to detect is astounding. Even the "AI systems" in video games where the system has every possible bit of information, as well as all the information from the last 50 times I killed something on that level, as well as the entire map and my location in space, STILL can't create a useful attack tactic that isn't an obviously programmed response, which is a smoke and mirrors to make it look like it's smart when it still faces the wrong way, shoots at the ceiling, stands in front of my gunsight, etc.
It's just like work. Another pie-in-the-sky project that'll never work no matter how much BS some MIT grad claims.
Here's a one act play of the pitch meeting for this stupid AI project, rewritten for how my workday goes.
Me (lying): "Hey boss, I want to do this really cool AI project which will be totally killer and get you a huge bonus and make us tons of money and you'll be CEO in 6 weeks..."
Boss (naive): "Sounds great! Go for it."
Me: Sound of halo starting up...
6 months later...
Me (lying): "Infrastructure said we couldn't use that technology, so I scrapped it, but I've got a new plan..."
Boss (pissed): What the hell happened?
Me (winning an Emmy): Well I was totally finished but the AI was completely based on..uhh....Service Broker and wouldn't you know it, there was some kind of port/firewall thingy or something so the Infrastructure Group said WTF are you doing..."
Boss: "Bastards!"
Me (searching for Grand Theft Billing IV DVD): "Anyway...I bet we can run the AI through Exchange so..."
What government are you currently enslaved by? The ones running my government are rarely voted in, they're "appointed" without checks and balances while the person I voted for is kissing babies and opening shopping malls while not reading the bills they vote on (or most likely abstain from).
Slashdot Mirror
Don't we already have sickle cell to help with this? Why are we wasting money when we can just send people with the genetic immunity to malaria to malaria infested countries?
It boggles the mind.
It was part of the "etc" in the tour. The real treat was that next year the tour includes the Van Alen Suspenders.
@decsnake: http://www.nasa.gov/connect/social/index.html has information about the Nasa Social program. It'a basically a lottery system, where you sign up and if not picked, you join a wait list. As not everyone who is picked is willing to travel, has conflicts, end-of-year vacation shortages, whatever, you can get chosen off the wait list. You and only you can currently go (no +1s), although, and not to separate myself from /. users, I actually have a girlfriend and we were both randomly chosen to go, which I think may be a first for them to have an actual couple there. In full disclosure, we're both pretty pathetic NASA nerds. The next two they have coming up are welcoming the Endeavour shuttle landing in California, and the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in the Mojave desert. Both are social events that are accepting people (and pretty much anyone can apply).
The events are completely free, and they throw in lots of goodies, however transportation, lodging, etc. is your own expense.
I was part of the NASA Social program where they're allowing the social networking community to blog and tweet along with "actual journalists".
What this did is allow a small group of social networking types to go into the LCC (Launch Control Center), to the launch pad, tour the VAB (and then watch the launch from the roof, and it's a great view from the largest single story building in the world), have a Q&A with the International Space Station via live downlink, and other fun things. They also catered lunch. It was a three day event although with the two scrubbed launches previously it extended quite a few days.
I mention "actual journalists" above in sarcastic quotes, because to be honest, they were completely different from the SocialMedia citizen type journalists. It was interesting to note that our group was not getting paid; in fact had to finance our own trip, hotels, airfare, etc. We hung out together before and after the daily grind, had breakfasts together after scrubbed launches at 0430 at IHOP and nerded out all over the place. Everyone was giddy and having fun and taking pictures of every nut and bolt, sign, elevator, mosquitos, grabbing all the scientific material, paying attention to all the NASA administrators, program managers, scientists, etc. Everyone was there because they loved NASA and science and were nerds about it.
The journalist types, were in many cases serious SOBs. They were either complaining about their per diem, trying to scam their employers out of new and expensive equipment, bitching about scrubbed launches, complaining to our media minders about having to follow rules, etc. The Fourth Estate was, frankly, embarrassing to be around. They were like petulant children. I'd love to list all the observations of these people but it was clear to me that this was a paycheck to them, or maybe they were too cool for school to say they liked this stuff. It was a sad observation of the "media" (though certainly not my first viewing of this behavior). I suspect it has to do with organizations fearing the media will write bad things about them or something, so they have to put up with these jackasses. In a strange situation the only media people that seemed positive were the FOX news guys, but I more suspect that it was because they were a local affiliate. The worst media was ironically the team from a particular science periodical. It was sad.
...AGW will get it.
I had the good luck to watch the launch from the roof of the VAB, and the launch was great. Although the moisture ladden air made long exposure photography not come out as crisp, it did make for a much better light show as the spaceship blasted off.
Many people are bummed out from the lack of "manned" space travel with NASA, but on the floor of the VAB, across from the shuttle Endeavour, were the nose cone and Launch Escape System - LES, for the Orion program.
Good luck to the RBSP and hope the data it sends back will give us more knowledge going forward to have humans travel safely through the storm belts.
Well the two cost about $435 million. I can assume there's a limit on money, plus adding another spacecraft (the two are stacked on the top), might be beyond a weight threshold that would require bigger and even more expensive launch platform.
The probes are in different elliptical orbits and one will lap the other as they fly in and out of the inner and outer belts, so they can see the particle effects on one vs. the other. There are several labs on it for measuring this, including probes that extend far away from the craft which will give three dimensional senses of what's happening.
I'm at the NASA Press Site as part of the #NasaSocial event, and it's fantastic. After touring the VAB, launch control, the Atlas V, and the scientists involved, the excitement is infectious.
Some of the most advanced sensors ever are aboard are on to measure the radiation belts and soup of particles for the next couple of years, and the dual orbits of probes A and B should give a wealth of information on how to handle EM storms that affect Cell networks, GPS, and satellite communications. 43 minutes to launch.
This will be interesting in a decade or two when they start using this as a court approved "lie detector".
Cops: "Your Honor, Mr. Smith tested positively of identifying the women we're accusing him of murdering. Although he requested a lawyer soon after, we found that the new NeuroIdent(tm) analyzer in the interrogation room remotely read a spike when we showed him a picture of the body, he also showed a spike when we flashed a picture of the murder weapon, a kitchen knife."
Judge: "This is the woman who worked at the Starbucks near where the suspect lives?"
Cops: "Yes, which is why we need a warrant on him Sir, obviously he killed her, otherwise, why would his brain have spiked when seeing her? Just like DNA, there's no possible way for it to happen because this is the same thing DARPA uses, and it's based on science Your Honor. We didn't find DNA at the crime scene, but we did notice the spike, so obviously he's lying about not knowing her and therefore, must have killed her."
Judge: "Sounds reasonable. I hope you catch the bastard. It's a good thing that the NeuroIdent(tm) is admissable as evidence in court, unlike those stupid old 'lie detectors' from years ago, that only reacted to involuntary stimuli manifesting a reaction in the subject. And since it's in the brain, there's no way he could fool it or it could be inaccruate."
Cops: "High five."
"They are also the wings that fight so hard to keep a profitable drugs like viagra or prilosec out of the hands of generic manufacturers so they can be affordable when people really need them. "
Really need them? And they do have generic Viagra. It's called a strap-on.
I noticed this just last night.
I live in one of those large, over-priced "planned communities" with the town centre, the gym/tennis courts/water park area, etc. They offer free, open WiFi for people in the gym area, so I was checking some mail and decided to do a little network port scanning and saw a couple dozen systems, printers, routers and such on the network, which I thought was odd, as usually those kind of things aren't on the same network as all the free WiFi junk.
I'm just idly curious as to what is around, and came across some unusually named servers (ie: default out of the box) and was just connected via web and it brought up the entire security camera console.
Now there was no "exploiting" going on at all. I just connected to a publically accessible (and offerred) free WiFi point, and browsed a computer name using HTTP, and there I was looking at 4 streaming cameras through a web console, at the gym. Another server (just sitting on the network as well) had all the external cameras for the doors and walkways.
Now this wasn't just a monitoring console, but the full record/stop recording, pan, zoom, admin console. Sitting out completely available, for anyone to just ping and do whatever they wanted.
I've honestly never seen anything like it. There wasn't even a password or any security. Not even a "you shouldn't be here" pop up or anything.
Has anyone ever seen a situation like this? Where a security console wasn't at least locked down to a particular MAC address for monitoring or IP restricted or, God forbid, not on the same network as your customers to randomly browse to?
For me it was easy. I got my degrees in philosophy and psychology. They're much more useful in job interviews that boring old technical information. My technical knowledge came from years of DIY projects, some open source when that became cool, using skills as lame as writing excel and access projects at jobs, taking dozens of classes on my own time for a CS degree that never materialized, etc.
Seriously, the amount of technical information you have, starting out, is pretty moot. There's not a huge difference you can tell from looking at your academic list of knowledge other than a basic skillset. Most grads are the same, unless you just finished your PhD from MIT and hold 12 patents.
Psychological jokes aside, I just focus on pacing, leading, and manipulating the interviewer to wanting to hire me. How long I've been working with what tool or language is irrelevent if I can convince them I can learn anything in two weeks. I don't need to be able to write the greatest data structure in the world if I can convince them of the business reason why you would or wouldn't want one and what the affect is on the bottom line.
Of course, good or bad, none of it matter if you can't even get a technical interview with a human in the first place. I don't know if it was mentioned by others, but I went through contracting companies originally. They do all the work of getting the interview, and I just need to get the suit, tie, 37 pieces of flair, and a winning smile.
After that point, most everything is word of mouth and "social networking" whatever the hell that is. IT seems to luckily constantly churn, so I just keep in touch with those who can give me a job (or recommend me to a boss) and return the favor.
I haven't had to apply or interview for a gig in years that I didn't already have the job going in.
The problem is the mentality of wanting the government to "solve" the problems in the first place. Government can't and hasn't solved a single thing in history. They just promise you that, or try and take credit for it, so you will buy the hype that they are the solution and you should continue sending them your power.
Yeah, the Costa Rican's are really screwed, they'll have the healthiest, most attractive people on the planet with great bodies and almost no diabetes to speak of.
They should just open nude beaches and a health food paradise to make up for the "lost" expense of poisoning their own people.
This can't be right. The CHICOMs can't be trusted? I thought socialist big-government types like Hillary thought there was no possible abuse by powerful governments, that they just served the citizens and picked flowers?
Oh, right, this is a troll post. Please mod me down as appropriate.
I just always use the laser printers at work. Brings my costs down to zero.
I guess the blue screen of death will really have more context now.
"Johhny! Don't go into the blue light!! Stay with me Johnny!...NOOO!..It's the POST loading...[sob]...Oh well, he'll be on his feet in a few minutes."
I just tried that and darn it, I got an error:
Msg 102, Level 15, State 1, Line 1
Incorrect syntax near 'TO'.
I'll never be rich.
There's no glory in IT, any more than there's glory in janitorial services.
Working on a good team, having fun, and actually delivering a product feels pretty good, and occassionally is an ego boost when things actually go well, but I don't see any "glory" in doing that.
Does anyone do anything for glory? What the hell is that anyway? At best it's a goal of narcissistic "ego inflation" or something. Those jack-nuts usually try to boss the group into becoming a VP or something.
I'd much rather work for money. You can have the glory, I'll have the cash. Slap your name and reputation all over it all you want. I don't think there are as many "IT Superstars" as there used to be because people started realizing how many false-positives you get from "glorious" self-promoting morons.
Does he work for Citibank?
As an overpaid defense contractor I can assure you that incompetence pays well and all sides are happy at the end.
Or was it I overpaid for a score of "Happy Endings" to seal the deal? I forget, it's probably illegal or something. As long as it's in the contract.
The EU needs some cheez with their whine. What are they going to do? Follow the same pattern of screwing themselves over, then being invaded by Germany?
America sucks, which is why a team of boyscouts could take over the EU. It could even be done with the boyscouts with gay scoutmasters.
The EU can go fornicate themselves. Wake me when they do something unrelated to food.
We have all the computing power we need. It's not like it'll work anyway.
They'll just look for camera to suddenly go orange/yellow with a mushroom shape in white then invoke a status message.
We all know this stuff is silly. What are they going to detect? A bunch of human shaped pixels increasing their speed in one direction? The number of false positives for the AI system to detect is astounding. Even the "AI systems" in video games where the system has every possible bit of information, as well as all the information from the last 50 times I killed something on that level, as well as the entire map and my location in space, STILL can't create a useful attack tactic that isn't an obviously programmed response, which is a smoke and mirrors to make it look like it's smart when it still faces the wrong way, shoots at the ceiling, stands in front of my gunsight, etc.
It's just like work. Another pie-in-the-sky project that'll never work no matter how much BS some MIT grad claims.
Here's a one act play of the pitch meeting for this stupid AI project, rewritten for how my workday goes.
Me (lying): "Hey boss, I want to do this really cool AI project which will be totally killer and get you a huge bonus and make us tons of money and you'll be CEO in 6 weeks..."
Boss (naive): "Sounds great! Go for it."
Me: Sound of halo starting up...
6 months later...
Me (lying): "Infrastructure said we couldn't use that technology, so I scrapped it, but I've got a new plan..."
Boss (pissed): What the hell happened?
Me (winning an Emmy): Well I was totally finished but the AI was completely based on..uhh....Service Broker and wouldn't you know it, there was some kind of port/firewall thingy or something so the Infrastructure Group said WTF are you doing..."
Boss: "Bastards!"
Me (searching for Grand Theft Billing IV DVD): "Anyway...I bet we can run the AI through Exchange so..."
Boss: "..."
fin
He'll probably have it tattooed somewhere I suppose.
What government are you currently enslaved by? The ones running my government are rarely voted in, they're "appointed" without checks and balances while the person I voted for is kissing babies and opening shopping malls while not reading the bills they vote on (or most likely abstain from).
I'd rather see a bunch of thin people selling me things than a bunch of fat ones.
I want the fantasy of what I'm buying, it's a lot better than the reality I'm being sold in the mirror.