Most of the work in Shuttle launch preparations and operations is contracted out to the United Space Alliance. Every year there is severe pressure to cut costs on NASA operations and maintenance contracts. These are often written into the contracts as performance goals. The contractor is expected to figure out how to reduce the cost of the contract by a certain percentage every year. This usually means getting rid of employees.
The crawlers have been in continuous service for decades, with a short rest in between the last Apollo mission (ASTP) in 1975 and the first Shuttle orbital flight test in 1981.
It seems that the cracked bearings were discovered when they overhauled several of the cylinders that level the platform. There is probably no way to inspect the bearings without disassembling the cylinder.
What about non-English languages? What about accented characters? It seems to me that an internationalized version of case-insensitivity could be very complicated and inconsistent.
The CEA (Consumer Electronics Association), the trade group for the companies that would build and sell a retail cable STB (set-top box), has repeatedly said that the secret contract terms offered by CableLabs, known as the PHILA (POD-Host Interface License Agreement) are unacceptable. This has stalled the process of making STBs available as a retail product for several years.
See the CEA press release. The HRRC (Home Recording Rights Coalition) is also opposed to the PHILA.
I don't think that it is fair to characterize the original developers of Windows as lazy. The typical PC was running MS-DOS, a primitive single-user operating system, when they were making the fundamental decisions about the architecture and design of Windows. Many of the design decisions that people like to bitch about can be traced back to what was necessary to implement a usable GUI on a grossly underpowered computer without protected memory or any semblance of a modern operating system. The Macintosh developers made similar decisions when they implemented MacOS on an 8 MHz 68000 with 128K of RAM. There is a huge chasm between a single-user microcomputer with limited RAM, CPU and no networking, and a modern networked multitasking workstation with a security model.
Optical media are great until the vendor decides to kill the product line and you can't get new disks, device drivers or replacement parts for the drives. This has happened to data archives I've worked with. You better hope that someone can find the funding to buy a new system and move all the data from the old system before it dies.
No Silver Bullet
on
Future of Wi-Fi
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
The author of the article seems to be seriously confused about radio technology. Spread spectrum is not a magic wand that creates more spectrum. Wireless LANs already use spread spectrum.
This isn't a contest between the evil corporate overlords, their minions at the FCC, and the freedom loving 802.11 users. Lots of people use the radio spectrum, for business, government, military, public safety, research and personal uses. One of the roles of the FCC is to coordinate and allocate the RF spectrum to the many competing uses in the public interest. The RF spectrum is a shared resource. That means that you can't expect the FCC to give you big chunks of unshared spectrum just because you want them.
You want to know is the biggest spectrum hog in the USA? The television broadcasting industry. We could recover huge amounts of spectrum if we killed over-the-air television distribution.
RTGs are not nuclear reactors. Nuclear reactors initiate and maintain a chain reaction. RTGs generate heat and electricity from the natural decay of radioactive isotopes.
I read something that said the giant squid had ammonium chloride in its body, not the sodium chloride that is present in most animals. This was supposed to be an adaptation to the great depths where they live.
I think it ruins any hope of making new gourmet dishes from giant squid.
I've read that RTGs have been used for undersea equipment, like the combination line tap/recorder systems that the NSA has been reported to use on undersea communication cables.
Re:destruction of the asteroid via nuclear means
on
A Rock Moves In Space
·
· Score: 2
You missed something. Nuclear weapons were detonated in space by the United States in the test series Argus and Starfish. The USSR also tested three weapons in space.
Re:destruction of the asteroid via nuclear means
on
A Rock Moves In Space
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Nuclear weapons have been tested in space. You can't use the ground-based effects data to predict their behaviour in space. A nuclear weapon can be treated as a black body radiator with peak output in the soft x-ray range. The thermal and blast effects seen on Earth are due to the fact that the atmosphere is relatively opaque to soft x-rays. This causes an absorption-emission cycle that produces a fireball and converts the soft x-ray emissions into infrared and visible light plus a shockwave created by the superheated air.
Re:Is it time for the Geek community to target...
on
MPAA vs. Television
·
· Score: 2
Tho the NRA doesn't have the problem of having so many manufacturers crawling into bed with the enemy, like we're seeing with computer hardware and software.
Gun manufacturers have undercut the second amendment when they thought it was in their interest. Many of them supported restrictions on the importation of foreign firearms. Smith & Wesson pissed off a lot of gun owners by caving in to the Clinton administration.
Contrary to popular opinion in anti-gun circles, the manufacturers do not have much influence in the NRA.
Ring up the Department of Energy and tell them that you would like to buy a Pu238 thermoelectric generator. There are Pu238 powered heart pacemakers in some people's chests.
NASA was thinking about turning off IMP-8 over 20 years ago, it was considered to be an old spacecraft back then. It's amazing that it is still working and providing useful data.
8080 assembly language programs could be mechanically translated to 8086 assembly language. Microsoft, and other software vendors, used this to produce many of their early 8086 software products.
Re:Sadly Intel has the upper hand here
on
AMD's 64-Bit Chip
·
· Score: 1
HP moved from a collection of old architectures to the Precision Architecture. IBM did something similar with the Power Architecture. IBM's AS/400 systems migrated to a version of the Power Architecture with few or no changes in user software.
In the "good old days", the people who could afford it left the city for the summer, the poor and working class had to suffer through the heat. Summer also brought increases in diseases like malaria and yellow fever. Why do you think the U.S. Congress has a summer recess? Washington, D.C. used to be considered a malaria-ridden swamp.
AC was also an important feature of the U.S. Navy's fleet submarines in World War II. By keeping the temperature and humidity down, it made the long war patrols in the Pacific bearable for the men and the equipment on the submarine.
IP works fine for real-time data as long as you have control over who has access to the network and what applications they run. You can use UDP for time critical data. The reason why IP is so popular is the widespread availability of cheap and off-the-shelf software and hardware.
So, if they accuse me of having illegal p0rn (instead of just the good stuff), they can search my computer till the cows come home. But if they find a terrorism plot, they can't use that information.
They can legally use the terrorism plot against you. Just because a search warrant specifies what they are searching for, doesn't mean that they can't seize other evidence/contraband that they happen to find while executing the warrant. There are limits. If the warrant is for a stolen car, they are not allowed to search places that could not conceivably contain a car.
Slashdot Mirror
Most of the work in Shuttle launch preparations and operations is contracted out to the United Space Alliance. Every year there is severe pressure to cut costs on NASA operations and maintenance contracts. These are often written into the contracts as performance goals. The contractor is expected to figure out how to reduce the cost of the contract by a certain percentage every year. This usually means getting rid of employees.
The crawlers have been in continuous service for decades, with a short rest in between the last Apollo mission (ASTP) in 1975 and the first Shuttle orbital flight test in 1981.
It seems that the cracked bearings were discovered when they overhauled several of the cylinders that level the platform. There is probably no way to inspect the bearings without disassembling the cylinder.
What about non-English languages? What about accented characters? It seems to me that an internationalized version of case-insensitivity could be very complicated and inconsistent.
The CEA (Consumer Electronics Association), the trade group for the companies that would build and sell a retail cable STB (set-top box), has repeatedly said that the secret contract terms offered by CableLabs, known as the PHILA (POD-Host Interface License Agreement) are unacceptable. This has stalled the process of making STBs available as a retail product for several years. See the CEA press release. The HRRC (Home Recording Rights Coalition) is also opposed to the PHILA.
I don't think that it is fair to characterize the original developers of Windows as lazy. The typical PC was running MS-DOS, a primitive single-user operating system, when they were making the fundamental decisions about the architecture and design of Windows. Many of the design decisions that people like to bitch about can be traced back to what was necessary to implement a usable GUI on a grossly underpowered computer without protected memory or any semblance of a modern operating system. The Macintosh developers made similar decisions when they implemented MacOS on an 8 MHz 68000 with 128K of RAM. There is a huge chasm between a single-user microcomputer with limited RAM, CPU and no networking, and a modern networked multitasking workstation with a security model.
Optical media are great until the vendor decides to kill the product line and you can't get new disks, device drivers or replacement parts for the drives. This has happened to data archives I've worked with. You better hope that someone can find the funding to buy a new system and move all the data from the old system before it dies.
This isn't a contest between the evil corporate overlords, their minions at the FCC, and the freedom loving 802.11 users. Lots of people use the radio spectrum, for business, government, military, public safety, research and personal uses. One of the roles of the FCC is to coordinate and allocate the RF spectrum to the many competing uses in the public interest. The RF spectrum is a shared resource. That means that you can't expect the FCC to give you big chunks of unshared spectrum just because you want them.
You want to know is the biggest spectrum hog in the USA? The television broadcasting industry. We could recover huge amounts of spectrum if we killed over-the-air television distribution.
GSM has the worst spectral efficiency of any deployed digital cellular system.
Give me a couple of RDF (radio direction finding) stations and an 8" howitzer and I will eliminate all of your interference and congestion problems.
RTGs are not nuclear reactors. Nuclear reactors initiate and maintain a chain reaction. RTGs generate heat and electricity from the natural decay of radioactive isotopes.
I read something that said the giant squid had ammonium chloride in its body, not the sodium chloride that is present in most animals. This was supposed to be an adaptation to the great depths where they live. I think it ruins any hope of making new gourmet dishes from giant squid.
I've read that RTGs have been used for undersea equipment, like the combination line tap/recorder systems that the NSA has been reported to use on undersea communication cables.
You missed something. Nuclear weapons were detonated in space by the United States in the test series Argus and Starfish. The USSR also tested three weapons in space.
Nuclear weapons have been tested in space. You can't use the ground-based effects data to predict their behaviour in space. A nuclear weapon can be treated as a black body radiator with peak output in the soft x-ray range. The thermal and blast effects seen on Earth are due to the fact that the atmosphere is relatively opaque to soft x-rays. This causes an absorption-emission cycle that produces a fireball and converts the soft x-ray emissions into infrared and visible light plus a shockwave created by the superheated air.
Gun manufacturers have undercut the second amendment when they thought it was in their interest. Many of them supported restrictions on the importation of foreign firearms. Smith & Wesson pissed off a lot of gun owners by caving in to the Clinton administration.
Contrary to popular opinion in anti-gun circles, the manufacturers do not have much influence in the NRA.
Ring up the Department of Energy and tell them that you would like to buy a Pu238 thermoelectric generator. There are Pu238 powered heart pacemakers in some people's chests.
NASA was thinking about turning off IMP-8 over 20 years ago, it was considered to be an old spacecraft back then. It's amazing that it is still working and providing useful data.
8080 assembly language programs could be mechanically translated to 8086 assembly language. Microsoft, and other software vendors, used this to produce many of their early 8086 software products.
HP moved from a collection of old architectures to the Precision Architecture. IBM did something similar with the Power Architecture. IBM's AS/400 systems migrated to a version of the Power Architecture with few or no changes in user software.
In the "good old days", the people who could afford it left the city for the summer, the poor and working class had to suffer through the heat. Summer also brought increases in diseases like malaria and yellow fever. Why do you think the U.S. Congress has a summer recess? Washington, D.C. used to be considered a malaria-ridden swamp.
AC was also an important feature of the U.S. Navy's fleet submarines in World War II. By keeping the temperature and humidity down, it made the long war patrols in the Pacific bearable for the men and the equipment on the submarine.
IP works fine for real-time data as long as you have control over who has access to the network and what applications they run. You can use UDP for time critical data. The reason why IP is so popular is the widespread availability of cheap and off-the-shelf software and hardware.
They can legally use the terrorism plot against you. Just because a search warrant specifies what they are searching for, doesn't mean that they can't seize other evidence/contraband that they happen to find while executing the warrant. There are limits. If the warrant is for a stolen car, they are not allowed to search places that could not conceivably contain a car.