How is speaking about how to protect yourself from "cyberspace intrusions" is a threat to the society as a whole. If he were talking to people committing those crimes about how to do it effectively, how he did it, how he got caught, how to avoid getting caught yourself, etc., that I could understand the government putting a stop to it. After all, he'd be encouraging others to commit crimes, which legally makes him responsible for them, I think.... Correct me if I'm wrong on that one.
This is clearly a violation of 1st Amendment rights, at least as far as I understand them. Sometimes the government walks the line on this, but this is way over the line. Allowing the man to speak about how to protect yourself and your company (presumably) from people like who he used to be is better than any jail time or fine, IMO.
Quite aside from Cassini and the moon probes, NASA used RTGs on almost all of their probes (including Voyager, Pioneer, Mariner, etc). The further out you get from the earth, the less sunlight there is (at the extreme is Pluto, where the sun is little more than a brigher than average star), so you need nuclear power because you sure aren't going to get the power you need from solar panels.
Even if Cassini had slammed into the earth, the plutonium was of insignificant quantity to do any damage, I believe. And had the rocket that launched Cassini exploded on launch, the RTG would have survived intact and still sealed. There was more danger due to falling debris than due to radiation from a comprimised RTG.
The reason the 286s are in there is because the shuttles were built in the mid-70s. It was cutting edge stuff back then, and they've served perfectly well ever since. There is little reason to spend the millions of dollars to upgrade (since mission control, both in Fla and Tx, must also be upgraded) unless safety becomes an issue. The new glass cockpits are part of that. Besides, the new stuff is 70 lbs lighter, which cuts launch costs by $700,000.
It was during a recent phone interview that I was asked the following question: "So, what's the coolest thing you ever made out of Legos?" I kid you not.:)
Unfortunately, no. All satellites operate under severe weight restrictions. The heavier your satellite is, the more expensive it is. This isn't a linear relationship either. It's expoential. Because of that, the Iridium satellites most likely have only the electronics and such required to bounce radio waves back and forth. The things you suggest would require IR cameras, spectrometers, and a host of other gizmos that are too heavy to put on just for grins. Oh well.
Also, I just want to add my two cents on the burnup question. Satellites such as Iridium sats are way too small to cause any damage to things on the ground. It is only a matter of concern for large orbiting facilities such as Mir, Skylab, the ISS, or similiar. Those craft have enough mass to have some of it survive reentry, hence the tanks in Austrailia from Skylab and the brouhaha around Mir's possible reentry. Just my two cents.
Wilbur and Orville Wright patented "wing warping," which made powered, controlled flight possible. Alierons (the things on the wings that allow a plane to bank, or turn) are a derivative of that. The Wright company got into viscous patent suits with Curtiss Aircraft up through WWI. It stalled the development of aeronautics in this country (the USA) for decades. In the end, the Wright patent expired, and the USA became the largest (and best, IMHO) aircraft producing country in the world. My point of this, besides telling a cool, slightly off topic story, is that that just because something is patented doesn't mean that the technology will not be developed or used or benefit all of humanity. It just means that, while the patent is in effect, some other country will do it, like the French did until 1918 or so.
Ah, but the groundhog is casting a shadow. It's just going the wrong direction (that is, of course, assuming the letters' shadows are correct). The 'sun' of the letters is near the horizon above our left shoulder, while the groundhog's 'sun' is higher in the 'sky' above our right shoulder. Hmmmmm....
As for significance, it probably fortells mass confusion and chaos in the weather for the next six weeks. 60 F one day, -20 the next. Stuff like that. Not that that is any different than normal... no... of course not...
Personally, I'd like to see a tech entry exam where they are provided with a complete PC dis-assembled with instructions. If they can't get it put together and use it to get on the net, they don't know enough to make decisions about tech issues.
There's a difference between knowing how to assemble or use a piece of technology and knowing how such technology can affect the society it is used in. The difference is as large as the difference between an engineering major and a history major.
Take, for example, the Industrial Revolution.
The series of innovations and societal changes we call the Industrial Revolution changed how people lived their lives and how they viewed the world. Suddenly, they had to live on a schedule and interact with their fellow man (and his machines) in a way that had never been done before. In the end, those changes created great hardship and required several legal acts to alleivate some of those problems. 40 hour workweeks, the right to unions, paid vacations, etc, are all the result of those acts. I don't think James Watt (inventor of the first effective steam engine) would be capable of recognizing those problems and fixing them. I wouldn't expect him to. I would expect a legislator to be able to handle those decsions, however. That legislator's ability to assemble, analzye, or design a steam engine isn't the question. It's irrelivant.
What does that have to do with the late 20th century? Everything.
The internet and IT and all that goes with it are similar to the steam engine (and railroads and other 18th & 19th century creations) in that they are revolutionizing the way we live and relate to our fellow man. I don't expect the legislators to be able to assemble a PC or even really understand how they work (I sure don't). I expect them to be able to recognize the changes and problems those technologies are creating and to act to avoid them.
This is not to say that Congress is doing a spectacuarly good job at it. Something needs to change, but insisting on them learning exactly how a computer works is not it.
The hype surrounding the failures of the Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander seemed particularly nasty from where I was sitting. It truely is sad that we have lost two missions, but that will not stop NASA and those of us who are advocates for space exploration from trying. These programs are essential to our future and our childrens' and grandchildrens' future.
Expensive as these programs are, they give us unbelievable benefits: as inspiration for people to get into math and science (how many of us does that apply to???), to show us how small a world we live on (the first picture of Earth as a globe, on which we live in a fragile shell was taken by Apollo astronauts and served to galvanize conciousness of our environment and was worth the entire cost, IMHO), to allow us to better understand our home planet (some researhers are planning for a constellation of satellites to measure extremely small land movements, perhaps leading to better earthquake prediction), and to give us our new frontier to explore and use our creative energies, on which we spend too much figuring out ways to kill each other.
If we don't go into space and utilize the infinate resources out there, and therefor doom our decendants to an empty, resourceless world, they will look back on our day, and think to themselves, "What the heck were they thinking?!?" We have the opportunity and the means today to gain access to those resources, and I for one don't want my decendants to curse my name for my generation's failure to provide for them.
Slashdot Mirror
This is clearly a violation of 1st Amendment rights, at least as far as I understand them. Sometimes the government walks the line on this, but this is way over the line. Allowing the man to speak about how to protect yourself and your company (presumably) from people like who he used to be is better than any jail time or fine, IMO.
Just my $0.02.
-Aerowolf
Even if Cassini had slammed into the earth, the plutonium was of insignificant quantity to do any damage, I believe. And had the rocket that launched Cassini exploded on launch, the RTG would have survived intact and still sealed. There was more danger due to falling debris than due to radiation from a comprimised RTG.
-Aerowolf
The reason the 286s are in there is because the shuttles were built in the mid-70s. It was cutting edge stuff back then, and they've served perfectly well ever since. There is little reason to spend the millions of dollars to upgrade (since mission control, both in Fla and Tx, must also be upgraded) unless safety becomes an issue. The new glass cockpits are part of that. Besides, the new stuff is 70 lbs lighter, which cuts launch costs by $700,000.
-Aerowolf
Also, I just want to add my two cents on the burnup question. Satellites such as Iridium sats are way too small to cause any damage to things on the ground. It is only a matter of concern for large orbiting facilities such as Mir, Skylab, the ISS, or similiar. Those craft have enough mass to have some of it survive reentry, hence the tanks in Austrailia from Skylab and the brouhaha around Mir's possible reentry. Just my two cents.
-Aerowolf
Wilbur and Orville Wright patented "wing warping," which made powered, controlled flight possible. Alierons (the things on the wings that allow a plane to bank, or turn) are a derivative of that. The Wright company got into viscous patent suits with Curtiss Aircraft up through WWI. It stalled the development of aeronautics in this country (the USA) for decades. In the end, the Wright patent expired, and the USA became the largest (and best, IMHO) aircraft producing country in the world. My point of this, besides telling a cool, slightly off topic story, is that that just because something is patented doesn't mean that the technology will not be developed or used or benefit all of humanity. It just means that, while the patent is in effect, some other country will do it, like the French did until 1918 or so.
As for significance, it probably fortells mass confusion and chaos in the weather for the next six weeks. 60 F one day, -20 the next. Stuff like that. Not that that is any different than normal... no... of course not...
-Aerowolf
There's a difference between knowing how to assemble or use a piece of technology and knowing how such technology can affect the society it is used in. The difference is as large as the difference between an engineering major and a history major.
Take, for example, the Industrial Revolution.
The series of innovations and societal changes we call the Industrial Revolution changed how people lived their lives and how they viewed the world. Suddenly, they had to live on a schedule and interact with their fellow man (and his machines) in a way that had never been done before. In the end, those changes created great hardship and required several legal acts to alleivate some of those problems. 40 hour workweeks, the right to unions, paid vacations, etc, are all the result of those acts. I don't think James Watt (inventor of the first effective steam engine) would be capable of recognizing those problems and fixing them. I wouldn't expect him to. I would expect a legislator to be able to handle those decsions, however. That legislator's ability to assemble, analzye, or design a steam engine isn't the question. It's irrelivant.
What does that have to do with the late 20th century? Everything.
The internet and IT and all that goes with it are similar to the steam engine (and railroads and other 18th & 19th century creations) in that they are revolutionizing the way we live and relate to our fellow man. I don't expect the legislators to be able to assemble a PC or even really understand how they work (I sure don't). I expect them to be able to recognize the changes and problems those technologies are creating and to act to avoid them.
This is not to say that Congress is doing a spectacuarly good job at it. Something needs to change, but insisting on them learning exactly how a computer works is not it.
-Aerowolf
Ironically enough, the Mars Climate Orbiter, lost in September 1999 due to a conversion error, was supposed to do double duty as a comm satellite.
-Aerowolf
The hype surrounding the failures of the Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander seemed particularly nasty from where I was sitting. It truely is sad that we have lost two missions, but that will not stop NASA and those of us who are advocates for space exploration from trying. These programs are essential to our future and our childrens' and grandchildrens' future.
Expensive as these programs are, they give us unbelievable benefits: as inspiration for people to get into math and science (how many of us does that apply to???), to show us how small a world we live on (the first picture of Earth as a globe, on which we live in a fragile shell was taken by Apollo astronauts and served to galvanize conciousness of our environment and was worth the entire cost, IMHO), to allow us to better understand our home planet (some researhers are planning for a constellation of satellites to measure extremely small land movements, perhaps leading to better earthquake prediction), and to give us our new frontier to explore and use our creative energies, on which we spend too much figuring out ways to kill each other.
If we don't go into space and utilize the infinate resources out there, and therefor doom our decendants to an empty, resourceless world, they will look back on our day, and think to themselves, "What the heck were they thinking?!?" We have the opportunity and the means today to gain access to those resources, and I for one don't want my decendants to curse my name for my generation's failure to provide for them.
-Aerowolf
http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast10dec 99_2.htm
-Aerowolf