>>The closed procurement process probably factored in the misshapen mirror. >It most certainly did.
To be sure, Chaisson merely theorizes to that effect. He implies that the NASA officials overseeing the process were not allowed access to the spysat optical tech and were not, in a sense, qualified to check Perkin-Elmer's work.
NASA was not allowed access to the plant to verify the correct figuring of the mirror,
It's not clear to Chaisson (ten years after the fact), but he believes that NASA simply rubber-stamped P-E's own tests, even though they may have shown the error.
As a cost-saving measure, the entire Hubble was not checked for proper focus before launch (Perkin-Elmer was assumed to know what they were doing).
To be clear, this was a result of the lower bid entered by P-E. It wasn't made after the fact. ("Hey, let's not check the mirror.") It may have been an oversight ("Hey, how come this bid's cheaper?"). NASA tried to pump up the testing cost to astronomical levels after the fact, to defend this choice, but Chaisson believes it could have been tested very cheaply. It was simply not considered critical to check the contractor's work on delivery.
In contrast, the backup mirror contract was let to Kodak; after the problem with the P-E mirror was discovered after launch, Kodak's mirror was checked and found to be flawless.
This is incorrect; I just read that chapter. The Kodak mirror was delivered to P-E before they had finished their own mirror. The crate in which it arrived remained on the P-E premises (as of 1991's writing), but nobody could/would verify whether or not it still contained a mirror. It was rumored to have been recycled into a spysat. Chaisson believes that it was probably flawless, since Kodak used a more reliable (standard) process to make it.
So, Kodak delivered a good mirror, but P-E (for some odd reason) had the choice to use their mirror or a competitors. Guess which they went with. ----
Unfortunate they didn't let Dame Dench's "M" show a little more of the resourcefulness and tradecraft that she must have had as an agent before she got promoted to "M".
It was established on her entrance in _Goldeneye_ that she was a "bean-counter", possibly even from outside the intelligence community. She certainly wasn't ever a field agent.
(I wish they'd give her a name; Benson's books call her Barbara Mawdsley.) ----
The films which have been done by United Artists (now MGM/UA) are considered the "Real" Bond series.
Please don't use "real" where "official" would be better.
The other Bond films have a character called James Bond and are substantially based on works by Ian Fleming, so they're as "real" as any other 007 movie. They just aren't part of the EON "official" continuity (such as it is). ----
With all the delays that Discovery and the rest of the shuttles have been experiencing, I think it may be time to retire the shuttles in favor of a newer design.
That's pretty disingenuous. What "newer design" is flight-ready? None.
While I'm no fan of the money-sucking, delay-prone, self-perpetuating shuttle program (I'd rather see that money spent on science missions, unless they're going to do something worthwhile like go to Mars), the shuttle is it for now. They're presently testing future shuttle technologies, e.g. X-33 and X-34 testbeds, X-38 flying wing station escape pod (CRV), and the big flying wing project from LockMart called VentureStar (we made it, it's really expensive, please buy it to make us rich). These are steps in the right direction, but they're baby steps. We're nowhere near designing the real next-generation shuttle. In fact, given the fact that shuttle's main apparent problems are not in fact problems -- that is, the people running the show care not about launch costs nor about delays, since the shuttle has so little to do nowadays -- it's hard to argue that it needs replacement.
There is a slate of possible shuttle upgrades, but again, they tend to solve problems we don't actually have (i.e. nobody cares about): making launches cheaper, or faster, or more capable. These would be nice to have, but there is no mission that requires them.
Meanwhile, the commercial launch business is sprinting toward next-generation vehicles like Rotary Rocket that have a good shot at reducing launch costs dramatically, which will change the equation for putting satellites in orbit -- and maybe just turn NASA into an agency buying a transport-to-orbit service from the market. ----
Does anyone know if the sort of problems the Hubble is having are "routine" or if this was a problem inherent in the design of the telescope? It seems (and maybe I'm just too influenced by the media) that this project has been beset by problems from the very start. Too bad too...its images are breathtaking.
If you want the whole story, I highly recommend reading Eric Chaisson's The Hubble Wars ; he was a senior scientist on the project during the pre-launch and commissioning, and is a tremendously detailed but engaging scientific writer. Read it, and you'll never look at NASA the same way again. (For a similar perspective on people in space, read Dragonfly.)
The problems with Hubble are too many to enumerate here, but they begin with the overselling of the shuttle's capabilities, i.e. flight rate and cost. (In the 1970s, they would have laughed at the idea of a six-month delay in launching a servicing mission.) The Hubble was also beset by requirements that they borrow tech from the military spysat side, but without classified knowledge about the limitations of that tech. The closed procurement process probably factored in the misshapen mirror.
But it is also crystal-clear from the book that NASA fumbled the PR. First they dissembled about the problems, then they labeled it a complete failure. Chaisson and others desperately tried to show that it could do real science even with the astigmatism, and they succeeded. And they came up with a correction, and NASA got on board with installing the fix. Since the fix, it has performed at or above expectations.
The gyros were known to have a limited lifespan, and having them replaced was always a possibility. The telescope is happily waiting in safe mode for its systems to be repaired. The shuttle repair mission was moved up, but then it was held, and held, and held again, while the gyros began to fail. Having Hubble offline is extremely disappointing, but this particular problem is really not to be compared with a design flaw. In fact, with this mission and the 3B repair mission in '01, we can probably expect Hubble to outperform its expected 15-year on-orbit lifespan.
(If anyone can recommend a decent book from outside Chaisson's perspective, I'd like to hear of it, just to hear the other side of the story.) ----
Can anyone tell me why the BBC has better intel on the NASA/shuttle situation than anybody IN the US? It just seems kinda odd that with all the DIRT our local media can dig up why can't they get any REAL inforamtion on what is going on at NASA.
This isn't "intel", it's been publicly announced that they chose to launch Sunday but trim one of the spacewalks (the insulation, which has the lowest priority, will now be part of repair mission 3B in 2001).
It is, however, true that NASA has a set way of dealing with the media, and are notorious for preferring those reporters who will play ball with their PR line. The constituencies within NASA who deviate from the official story are punished or exiled. The NASA public affairs office can be extraordinarily petty (viz. the way they tried to require that all Hubble photography carry only the NASA logo, no matter that the Space Telescope Science Institute prepared it or that European Space Agency equipment was used).
The media, in general, mostly run stories about NASA when they have: a) a ready-made success story b) pretty pictures c) a major failure c) 1) if major failure within last year, also report all minor failures in ominous tones
The BBC reports that the mission will be shorter than originally planned since the launch was delayed and the "agency did not want astronauts in space over millennium eve in case of computer problems." Kinda worrying that NASA aren't so confident about their Y2K readiness. Guess you have to be when you're so much in the public eye. But what happens if they have some other non-Y2K problems that hold them up further... into the new millenium?
It's not a matter of confidence; NASA's primary responsibility isn't showing off their confidence, but the safety of the astronauts. All things considered, having crew on orbit over the new year just isn't a good idea. The risk may be small, but the consequences could be fatal.
Boosting public confidence is the job of agencies like the FAA, which is making a point of having its administrator in flight over the Y2K clock tick (except she keeps getting flights cancelled out from under her, due to low demand).
As for problems not related to Y2K, it's more likely that they would then merely cut the mission short. The chance of an in-flight failure that prevents a return to Earth (e.g. cargo bay door stuck open) is the same as before, and nobody wants to think about that. There simply isn't any contingency for a rescue of a disabled shuttle. ----
Don't overlook XML-RPC, which builds on the XML spec to provide a way of serving data over the web to remote clients.
Then there's RSS, which is a way of serving up a news channel or other changing data. These applications are here and in use. Together, these XML-based technologies will someday provide the data layer for the software agents of the future. Read lately about that new "price-checker" technology? Imagine being the one business that doesn't serve up your product list and pricing to that agent.
An interface from XML to these "hidden" databases is only a matter of time. We're just caught right now at a moment between technologies: the authoring tools don't really exist. ----
The fireball was bright not so much because of size as because it was an Earth-grazer. It wasn't like normal Leonid debris where the Earth basically slams into a cloud of tiny pebbles (think of driving through a bunch of no-see-ums); this was something that was travelling roughly in Earth's orbit and slowly grazed along the upper reaches of the atmosphere. It was in the far North, which suggests a slower planetary rotation time, as well.
Bolides like this don't always break up, either. There was one a year or two ago (in the Southwest?) that was seen by thousands of people during daylight, but the trace it left suggested that it passed through and then left our atmosphere again.
Space junk is usually travelling pretty fast (90 minute orbit, compared with 24 hrs for the ground just a couple hundred miles below). We know about the big space junk (Cheyenne Mountain keeps close track of it); this doesn't sound much like a satellite orbit to me. It's possible, though. ---- Lake Effect, a weblog
Here's a useful overview of the law surrounding trademark confusion. I recommend that Slashdotters read it before posting uninformed opinions.
It's not mentioned here, but there's a new law (the Trademark Anti Dilution Act of 1999) addressing this issue, that gives more protection to so-called "famous marks". This has been cited before in regards to domain names, which seems to be one of its main thrusts. ---- Lake Effect, a weblog
danmcs says: How can goto claim to own a traffic signal design? If someone used a similar label for a site called stop.com, would they sue over that? Craziness.
Once again showing the pure ignorance that passes for "insightful" on slashdot! Trademarking of common items has always been acceptable: Apple Computer, Eagle Foods, Lighthouse Films. But if the "common item" in question is part of the industry the company is in, getting exclusive use is more difficult. (For instance, many landscaping firms will probably use an emblem of a tree in their logo.) In this case, the emblem has metaphoric value in regards to the purpose of the company, but certainly isn't directly related. The prior usage is by Goto.com, and it was clear from the beginning that Disney was trying to outlawyer them, to make up for their woefully inadequate research. (Any IP lawyer with an ounce of sense would have advised them to trash GO.com on seeing the other logo.)
I think a general rule of thumb should be: Don't get your Intellectual Property legal advice from anybody on Slashdot. Some days, it's appalling. ---- Lake Effect, a weblog
winglover writes: >I agree that the logos are similar, but they're certainly differnt enough that anyone with an IQ higher than an old pair of socks should be able to tell the difference. The GoTo.com logo is essentially "GoTo.COM" in white on a green circle background. The Go Network logo is "Go" superimposed on a traffic light. Sooner or later there will be no acceptable logos left.. the courts will rule that Westinghouse's "W" logo is too close to the McDonald's "M" logo. After all, it may confuse someone if one is just an upside-down version of the other.
It's not whether you can tell the difference, it's whether the average consumer might be confused. There's also a question of whether they're in the same "trade" (hence the term "trademark"). There would be no confusion between McDonald's and Westinghouse because they are in different industries; but if Westinghouse decided to start selling, say, the home-burger-and-shake-machine with a big "W" on the side, you might get an objection.
GOTO.com had been using their logo for over a year when Disney came up with the GO.com logo. They were both in the same business (net portals) and were using similar names (GO/GOTO) and were playing off the same motif (green traffic light). I think this was a clear failure of Disney's lawyers to properly research the market. ---- Lake Effect, a weblog
The Confederate States of America, having been defeated on the battlefield, ceased to have legal standing anywhere in the United States of America. There was probably an Act of Congress specifically stating this at some point -- essentially it was scrip issued by an illegal authority.
Sorry but when governments go, they're gone- along with any promises they made. The new gov't might say they'll carry out the old agreements, but that's by their own graciousness, and they're by no means bound to those old agreements.
That may be, but there can be wide-ranging side-effects. If you say you're not the same country and spit in the face of those agreements, who's going to loan you money to rebuild? One of the key questions that the former USSR faced was how to divvy up the national debt. This was something of a new situation, and so there were multilateral discussions with the other newly-created "nuclear states" (Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan), leading to agreements to eliminate weapons in all three. At that point the new agreement superseded the old one.
If a country could get out of agreements just by having a constitutional crisis, there wouldn't be much point to agreements. Russia could have said "screw you", in a practical sense, but then they would not have been trusted worth a tinker's damn, for nuke agreements let alone IMF loans. That's the carrot we hold out: participation in the world economic system. ---- Lake Effect, a weblog
scherry wrote: I am not aware of a treaty signed with the new Russian Republic that brings over all treaties that we have signed although I wouldn't put it past Clinton to have slipped such a thing in without going to the Senate for ratification.
You aren't aware of much, then. First of all, just because a government changes, don't imagine that their obligations change. The Russian Federation is the inheritor of all the obligations of the USSR, including monetary debt, trade agreements, extradition treaties, and yes, arms treaties. Your silly kneejerk suspicions aside, Clinton can't just sign a new treaty with the Russians; it would have no legal force without Senate ratification (read your Constitution).
I know that lots of the START treaty that we've subsequently signed was continued from negotiations with the USSR but those are new treaties for all intents and purposes.
And, thanks to inviting Poland into NATO, the Russian Duma did not ratify START II. Therefore it has no force as a treaty. The Clinton and Yeltsin administrations are both observing parts of it, as a matter of polite cooperation, but either side could abrogate it at any time.
I could be wrong about the lack of said "continuance" treaty but barring its existence, and from my recollection the ABM treaty was specifically between the two powers and not a general non-proliferation treaty like nuclear testing. That said, the ABM treaty is effectively dead.
As noted, no such magical "continuance" treaty is needed; the treaty would be considered to be in force until a new agreement is reached. The question of making it a general non-proliferation treaty came up at renewal time in 1993 and is part of the current tiff. It may be effectively dead, but there is still great weight in being the country to first break a treaty.
If we don't deploy a system that makes successful delivery of such warheads unlikely, thus drastically increasing the risk that a launch would be intercepted inviting an overwhelming and potentially nuclear retaliation without the intended benifits, its not likely that we'll get out of the next decade without a missle being launched against a major power.
I consider a much more likely scenario to be a regional nuclear conflict, such as Pakistan-India. In any case, whether we deploy an ABM system or not, it's doubtful that it could make "delivery of warheads unlikely". Even if it were an airtight missile defense (and predecessors like the Patriot system don't inspire confidence), the enemy could simply choose another delivery method, such as a Ryder truck.
I don't consider this ABM system worth unilaterally pulling out of existing agreements, especially when it might lead to other negative consequences, like the Russians going back to targeting American cities and going on a hairtrigger nuke alert. What we really need is to find a way (START II would have been one way) to start dismantling nukes so that there aren't as many lying around Russia to steal. That should be our ultimate real world goal. In fact, this is approximately what the Clinton administration is proposing -- helping the Russians finish that Siberian radar facility, for instance. ---- Lake Effect, a weblog
scherry wrote: I am not aware of a treaty signed with the new Russian Republic that brings over all treaties that we have signed although I wouldn't put it past Clinton to have slipped such a thing in without going to the Senate for ratification.
You aren't aware of much, then. First of all, just because a government changes, don't imagine that their obligations change. The Russian Federation is the inheritor of all the obligations of the USSR, including monetary debt, trade agreements, extradition treaties, and yes, arms treaties. Your silly kneejerk suspicions aside, Clinton can't just sign a new treaty with the Russians; it would have no legal force without Senate ratification (read your Constitution).
I know that lots of the START treaty that we've subsequently signed was continued from negotiations with the USSR but those are new treaties for all intents and purposes.
And, thanks to inviting Poland into NATO, the Russian Duma did not ratify START II. Therefore it has no force as a treaty. The Clinton and Yeltsin administrations are both observing it, as a matter of polite cooperation, but either side could abrogate it at any time.
I could be wrong about the lack of said "continuance" treaty but barring its existence, and from my recollection the ABM treaty was specifically between the two powers and not a general non-proliferation treaty like nuclear testing. That said, the ABM treaty is effectively dead.
As noted, no such magical "continuance" treaty is needed; the treaty would be considered to be in force until a new agreement is reached. The question of making it a general non-proliferation treaty came up at renewal time in 1993 and is part of the current tiff. It may be effectively dead, but there is still great weight in being the country to first break a treaty.
If we don't deploy a system that makes successful delivery of such warheads unlikely, thus drastically increasing the risk that a launch would be intercepted inviting an overwhelming and potentially nuclear retaliation without the intended benifits, its not likely that we'll get out of the next decade without a missle being launched against a major power.
I consider a much more likely scenario to be a regional nuclear conflict, such as Pakistan-India. In any case, whether we deploy an ABM system or not, it's doubtful that it could make "delivery of warheads unlikely". Even if it were an airtight missile defense (and predecessors like the Patriot system don't inspire confidence), the enemy could simply choose another delivery method, such as a Ryder truck.
I don't consider this ABM system worth unilaterally pulling out of existing agreements, especially when it might lead to other negative consequences, like the Russians going back to targeting American cities and going on a hairtrigger nuke alert. What we really need is to find a way (START II would have been one way) to start dismantling nukes so that there aren't as many lying around Russia to steal. That should be our ultimate real world goal. In fact, this is approximately what the Clinton administration is proposing -- helping the Russians finish that Siberian radar facility, for instance. ---- Lake Effect, a weblog
We already have "millions of people being able to freely trade with each other". It's called online stock trading. Actually, we already had it before that, too: it's called over-the-phone stock trading.
The only difference between then, and now, is that you can do it with a point and click interface instead of a highly-compensated broker in the middle. Nevertheless, this simple change has largely fueled the stock boom of the last several years, leading to price inflation and a more volatile market. And a lot of uneducated investors losing money, too.
The difference between a stock trade done via Etrade and a stock trade done with Joe Blow via Ebay is that the former is a licensed broker with the proper oversight and communication so that the stock trade is registered correctly and honestly. It's one thing to privately sell your brother some stock; it's another thing to buy stock from somebody you don't know on the other side of the country. The securities markets are highly regulated for good reason, and knee-jerk "nanny-state" responses are simply ignorant. Without oversight, the little investor is blindsided by insider trading and price scams. There is nothing in the regulations that prevents you or I from buying the stocks we want; it prevents abuses.
The most important shift in the stock market in the last generation, by the way, has been the 401(k) plan: an artifact of an obscure banking regulation that turned out to permit employer-managed tax-deferred investment, which since its creation in the early 80s has poured $billions into the stock market. There are more stock owners today than there ever have been, and with mutual funds and IRAs and the like the obstacles to stock ownership are few indeed. And you call this a "nanny state"? ---- Lake Effect, a weblog
But, duh, that was before they succeeded in getting the carcass out of the ice. Can we have a single freaking slashdot update, once, where some bozo doesn't ask "didn't we talk about this already"?
Otherwise I'm going to start posting "didn't we talk about this already?" posts in every Linux-vs-Microsoft thread, I swear.
Sheesh. You'd think people paid to use the place. ---- Lake Effect, a weblog
In any case, the counterexamoke which was offered was invalid, because Challenger flew on account of bureaucrats ignring their engineers. The moral of the story is: listen to the scientists, ESPECIALLY if they say something's not safe.
Which could be construed as undermining your original argument. Still, when faced with scientist X saying it's safe, and scientist Y saying it isn't, you don't always have the grace of an easy decision. Not all the "engineers" were objecting to the launch. And the attitude at NASA was very much post hoc ergo propter hoc.
The point I'm trying to make is roughly: any bureaucrat/politician/careerist scientist may choose to demonstrate a 1 in 1^n probability of risk. But are they correct, or are they cooking the numbers? Do we assume that we know enough to calculate these things with necessary precision? Before Trinity (to return to your original example) there had been not a single nuclear explosion in all of human history. With no experimental data, how could the Manhattan Project experts who calculated the risk of "igniting the atmosphere" really be certain? They couldn't. They could make educated guesses, and they did, and fortunately they were right.
My deeper point here is that we are at a point in human capability where we can make things -- quark guns, atom bombs -- that have potentially devastating side-effects. Therefore, a minor amount of prudence and forethought seems like a small price to pay for peace of mind. ---- Lake Effect, a weblog
mister attack says: The idea that we are going to destroy the world with the RHIC is absolutely ridiculous. I remember reading that a large number of physicists thought the first nuclear weapon would ignite the atmosphere, destroying all life on Earth. Didn't happen.
This is a logical fallacy known as post hoc ergo propter hoc. Just because we haven't destroyed the earth in the past doesn't mean we can't do it.
Now we have a _journalist_ - not even a Ph.D. in physics - claiming that we're going to create a black hole with the RHIC.
Ad hominem. In fact, objections have been raised within the scientific community. They have been taken seriously enough to be reviewed by the laboratory. They disagreed, of course.
This is a remote possibility, to say the least - collisions at much higher energy than this happen in our upper atmosphere daily without destroying us. But assuming for a moment that a black hole is created, what happens? The answer is simple: it will evaporate.
At last a real argument. I happen to agree with you in principle; I'm not going to lose sleep over these experiments. But I don't think that going around shouting "rubbish!" at people is the way to make your point. There are valid scientific questions to be raised here, and while the field of high-energy physics may be dominated by people who believe it's perfectly safe, the objections do not come from left field. It may not be this experiment, but I would not rule out the possibility that in the near future we could devise experiments that would be capable of creating (say) a microscopic black hole.
I'd be more worried about ballistic nukes from China.
Most people should worry about a) heart disease, b) lung cancer, and c) an auto accident, in roughly that order. Since we all know that very few people give those very real dangers any thought at all....
No, I don't believe RHIC is going to kill us all. But can we indeed come up with an experimental device that could? Most certainly. And human history is filled with enough follies by people who "know what they're doing" (say, Challenger) that I don't put all my trust in the intelligentsia here. The only safeguard is an atmosphere of collegiality where objections such as the one raised against RHIC are treated seriously and given due consideration in a peer review process.
That has happened, and has completed. It's only afterwards that the media really got hold of the story, and as they always do, they report it as if it were two equally valid political positions. Don't give in to the hysteria by treating all such objections with contempt. ---- Lake Effect, a weblog
Recalling that normal matter is made up of atomic particles, which themselves are composed of subparticles (quarks and leptons). Quarks summarized here. "Strange matter" is simply matter that is made up mainly of the quark with the flavor "strange" (the name comes from the strangeness of their long lifetimes compared with other known particles).
It holds a relationship to normal matter something akin to antimatter's, although it is not antimatter (there is "normal" strange matter and "antimatter" strange matter). Basically, it looks like normal matter but isn't made up of the same kinds of subparticles. I think that strange matter in general is nowhere near as stable as normal matter. ---- Lake Effect, a weblog
Re:NSI employee tries to blame the NSF...
on
Dirty Domains
·
· Score: 2
(Who moderated that as "informative"?)
The NSF shut down the NSFNET backbone in April of 1995. At that time the various functions were distributed among several organizations and commercial entities, effectively ending the government-funded internet.
From then until this year, Network Solutions was the sole entity responsible for domain name policies, creation, management, and so on.
It was only belatedly, as the commercial promise of the web crystallized, that the government created the ICANN to oversee the domain name system, formalize the process for creating new TLDs, and decentralize the registration process.
Your "friend" is spouting half-truths he read long ago. Don't trust him. (Besides, there is no "seven dirty words" list, there never was; there are only broad FCC guidelines for indecency.) ---- Lake Effect, a weblog
It's as ridiculous as saying that Apple invented the windowing GUI (which, of course, they did not, therefore nobody else should ever come out with a windowing GUI.
If Apple did it "years ago" and isn't doing it now, what the #$#*(& do they care if IBM does it with Thinkpads today? This isn't art class. This is business. There are no extra points for originality.
The Apple Baking Soda Company comes out with a baking soda box that has a shaker built into the top. International Baking Soda (IBS) sees that this sells well and designs their own shaker for their own box. Does Apple BS Co. then have the right to say that IBS cannnot have a box with a shaker? or do they only have the right to say that IBS's box can't look so much like the Apple box that there is no "consumer confusion"?
The answer, at least the LEGAL answer, is the latter.
And in a couple of years everybody's going to forget that the Apple BS Co. was the "innovator" behind the built-in shaker. The consumer is simply going to expect that any baking soda they buy, except maybe the store brand, is going to have that built-in shaker.
Apple may have done the very first laptop with translucent panels, but legally, big whoop. They didn't invent translucent panels. They didn't even invent translucent computers for Jesux's sake, they just came out with the first brand computer using the concept.
Slashdot Mirror
>>The closed procurement process probably factored in the misshapen mirror.
>It most certainly did.
To be sure, Chaisson merely theorizes to that effect. He implies that the NASA officials overseeing the process were not allowed access to the spysat optical tech and were not, in a sense, qualified to check Perkin-Elmer's work.
NASA was not allowed access to the plant to verify the correct figuring of the mirror,
It's not clear to Chaisson (ten years after the fact), but he believes that NASA simply rubber-stamped P-E's own tests, even though they may have shown the error.
As a cost-saving measure, the entire Hubble was not checked for proper focus before launch (Perkin-Elmer was assumed to know what they were doing).
To be clear, this was a result of the lower bid entered by P-E. It wasn't made after the fact. ("Hey, let's not check the mirror.") It may have been an oversight ("Hey, how come this bid's cheaper?"). NASA tried to pump up the testing cost to astronomical levels after the fact, to defend this choice, but Chaisson believes it could have been tested very cheaply. It was simply not considered critical to check the contractor's work on delivery.
In contrast, the backup mirror contract was let to Kodak; after the problem with the P-E mirror was discovered after launch, Kodak's mirror was checked and found to be flawless.
This is incorrect; I just read that chapter. The Kodak mirror was delivered to P-E before they had finished their own mirror. The crate in which it arrived remained on the P-E premises (as of 1991's writing), but nobody could/would verify whether or not it still contained a mirror. It was rumored to have been recycled into a spysat. Chaisson believes that it was probably flawless, since Kodak used a more reliable (standard) process to make it.
So, Kodak delivered a good mirror, but P-E (for some odd reason) had the choice to use their mirror or a competitors. Guess which they went with.
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Somebody on alt.fan.james-bond said it best:
God had a mission and needed his help.
We'll miss you, Des. Without you, how will 007 ever grow up?
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Unfortunate they didn't let Dame Dench's "M" show a little more of the resourcefulness and tradecraft that she must have had as an agent before she got promoted to "M".
It was established on her entrance in _Goldeneye_ that she was a "bean-counter", possibly even from outside the intelligence community. She certainly wasn't ever a field agent.
(I wish they'd give her a name; Benson's books call her Barbara Mawdsley.)
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The films which have been done by United Artists (now MGM/UA) are considered the "Real" Bond series.
Please don't use "real" where "official" would be better.
The other Bond films have a character called James Bond and are substantially based on works by Ian Fleming, so they're as "real" as any other 007 movie. They just aren't part of the EON "official" continuity (such as it is).
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With all the delays that Discovery and the rest of the shuttles have been experiencing, I think it may be time to retire the shuttles in favor of a newer design.
That's pretty disingenuous. What "newer design" is flight-ready? None.
While I'm no fan of the money-sucking, delay-prone, self-perpetuating shuttle program (I'd rather see that money spent on science missions, unless they're going to do something worthwhile like go to Mars), the shuttle is it for now. They're presently testing future shuttle technologies, e.g. X-33 and X-34 testbeds, X-38 flying wing station escape pod (CRV), and the big flying wing project from LockMart called VentureStar (we made it, it's really expensive, please buy it to make us rich). These are steps in the right direction, but they're baby steps. We're nowhere near designing the real next-generation shuttle. In fact, given the fact that shuttle's main apparent problems are not in fact problems -- that is, the people running the show care not about launch costs nor about delays, since the shuttle has so little to do nowadays -- it's hard to argue that it needs replacement.
There is a slate of possible shuttle upgrades, but again, they tend to solve problems we don't actually have (i.e. nobody cares about): making launches cheaper, or faster, or more capable. These would be nice to have, but there is no mission that requires them.
Meanwhile, the commercial launch business is sprinting toward next-generation vehicles like Rotary Rocket that have a good shot at reducing launch costs dramatically, which will change the equation for putting satellites in orbit -- and maybe just turn NASA into an agency buying a transport-to-orbit service from the market.
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Does anyone know if the sort of problems the Hubble is having are "routine" or if this was a problem inherent in the design of the telescope? It seems (and maybe I'm just too influenced by the media) that this project has been beset by problems from the very start. Too bad too...its images are breathtaking.
If you want the whole story, I highly recommend reading Eric Chaisson's The Hubble Wars ; he was a senior scientist on the project during the pre-launch and commissioning, and is a tremendously detailed but engaging scientific writer. Read it, and you'll never look at NASA the same way again. (For a similar perspective on people in space, read Dragonfly.)
The problems with Hubble are too many to enumerate here, but they begin with the overselling of the shuttle's capabilities, i.e. flight rate and cost. (In the 1970s, they would have laughed at the idea of a six-month delay in launching a servicing mission.) The Hubble was also beset by requirements that they borrow tech from the military spysat side, but without classified knowledge about the limitations of that tech. The closed procurement process probably factored in the misshapen mirror.
But it is also crystal-clear from the book that NASA fumbled the PR. First they dissembled about the problems, then they labeled it a complete failure. Chaisson and others desperately tried to show that it could do real science even with the astigmatism, and they succeeded. And they came up with a correction, and NASA got on board with installing the fix. Since the fix, it has performed at or above expectations.
The gyros were known to have a limited lifespan, and having them replaced was always a possibility. The telescope is happily waiting in safe mode for its systems to be repaired. The shuttle repair mission was moved up, but then it was held, and held, and held again, while the gyros began to fail. Having Hubble offline is extremely disappointing, but this particular problem is really not to be compared with a design flaw. In fact, with this mission and the 3B repair mission in '01, we can probably expect Hubble to outperform its expected 15-year on-orbit lifespan.
(If anyone can recommend a decent book from outside Chaisson's perspective, I'd like to hear of it, just to hear the other side of the story.)
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Can anyone tell me why the BBC has better intel on the NASA/shuttle situation than anybody IN the US? It just seems kinda odd that with all the DIRT our local media can dig up why can't they get any REAL inforamtion on what is going on at NASA.
This isn't "intel", it's been publicly announced that they chose to launch Sunday but trim one of the spacewalks (the insulation, which has the lowest priority, will now be part of repair mission 3B in 2001).
It is, however, true that NASA has a set way of dealing with the media, and are notorious for preferring those reporters who will play ball with their PR line. The constituencies within NASA who deviate from the official story are punished or exiled. The NASA public affairs office can be extraordinarily petty (viz. the way they tried to require that all Hubble photography carry only the NASA logo, no matter that the Space Telescope Science Institute prepared it or that European Space Agency equipment was used).
The media, in general, mostly run stories about NASA when they have:
a) a ready-made success story
b) pretty pictures
c) a major failure
c) 1) if major failure within last year, also report all minor failures in ominous tones
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The BBC reports that the mission will be shorter than originally planned since the launch was delayed and the "agency did not want astronauts in space over millennium eve in case of computer problems." Kinda worrying that NASA aren't so confident about their Y2K readiness. Guess you have to be when you're so much in the public eye. But what happens if they have some other non-Y2K problems that hold them up further ... into the new millenium?
It's not a matter of confidence; NASA's primary responsibility isn't showing off their confidence, but the safety of the astronauts. All things considered, having crew on orbit over the new year just isn't a good idea. The risk may be small, but the consequences could be fatal.
Boosting public confidence is the job of agencies like the FAA, which is making a point of having its administrator in flight over the Y2K clock tick (except she keeps getting flights cancelled out from under her, due to low demand).
As for problems not related to Y2K, it's more likely that they would then merely cut the mission short. The chance of an in-flight failure that prevents a return to Earth (e.g. cargo bay door stuck open) is the same as before, and nobody wants to think about that. There simply isn't any contingency for a rescue of a disabled shuttle.
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Don't overlook XML-RPC, which builds on the XML spec to provide a way of serving data over the web to remote clients.
Then there's RSS, which is a way of serving up a news channel or other changing data. These applications are here and in use. Together, these XML-based technologies will someday provide the data layer for the software agents of the future. Read lately about that new "price-checker" technology? Imagine being the one business that doesn't serve up your product list and pricing to that agent.
An interface from XML to these "hidden" databases is only a matter of time. We're just caught right now at a moment between technologies: the authoring tools don't really exist.
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Did Wired really mean to say
...
"[Network Solutions] offers no guarantees and won't be liable for registration gaffs"?
Unlike a "gaffe", French for "social blunder", a "gaff" is (apart from the original meaning of a large fishing hook on a stick):
"A trick or gimmick, especially one used in a swindle or to rig a game",
... or
"Harshness of treatment; abuse"....
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The fireball was bright not so much because of size as because it was an Earth-grazer. It wasn't like normal Leonid debris where the Earth basically slams into a cloud of tiny pebbles (think of driving through a bunch of no-see-ums); this was something that was travelling roughly in Earth's orbit and slowly grazed along the upper reaches of the atmosphere. It was in the far North, which suggests a slower planetary rotation time, as well.
Bolides like this don't always break up, either. There was one a year or two ago (in the Southwest?) that was seen by thousands of people during daylight, but the trace it left suggested that it passed through and then left our atmosphere again.
Space junk is usually travelling pretty fast (90 minute orbit, compared with 24 hrs for the ground just a couple hundred miles below). We know about the big space junk (Cheyenne Mountain keeps close track of it); this doesn't sound much like a satellite orbit to me. It's possible, though.
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Lake Effect, a weblog
Here's a useful overview of the law surrounding trademark confusion. I recommend that Slashdotters read it before posting uninformed opinions.
It's not mentioned here, but there's a new law (the Trademark Anti Dilution Act of 1999) addressing this issue, that gives more protection to so-called "famous marks". This has been cited before in regards to domain names, which seems to be one of its main thrusts.
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Lake Effect, a weblog
danmcs says:
How can goto claim to own a traffic signal design? If someone used a similar label for a site called stop.com, would they sue over that? Craziness.
Once again showing the pure ignorance that passes for "insightful" on slashdot! Trademarking of common items has always been acceptable: Apple Computer, Eagle Foods, Lighthouse Films. But if the "common item" in question is part of the industry the company is in, getting exclusive use is more difficult. (For instance, many landscaping firms will probably use an emblem of a tree in their logo.) In this case, the emblem has metaphoric value in regards to the purpose of the company, but certainly isn't directly related. The prior usage is by Goto.com, and it was clear from the beginning that Disney was trying to outlawyer them, to make up for their woefully inadequate research. (Any IP lawyer with an ounce of sense would have advised them to trash GO.com on seeing the other logo.)
I think a general rule of thumb should be: Don't get your Intellectual Property legal advice from anybody on Slashdot. Some days, it's appalling.
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Lake Effect, a weblog
winglover writes:
>I agree that the logos are similar, but they're certainly differnt enough that anyone with an IQ higher than an old pair of socks should be able to tell the difference. The GoTo.com logo is essentially "GoTo.COM" in white on a green circle background. The Go Network logo is "Go" superimposed on a traffic light. Sooner or later there will be no acceptable logos left.. the courts will rule that Westinghouse's "W" logo is too close to the McDonald's "M" logo. After all, it may confuse someone if one is just an upside-down version of the other.
It's not whether you can tell the difference, it's whether the average consumer might be confused. There's also a question of whether they're in the same "trade" (hence the term "trademark"). There would be no confusion between McDonald's and Westinghouse because they are in different industries; but if Westinghouse decided to start selling, say, the home-burger-and-shake-machine with a big "W" on the side, you might get an objection.
GOTO.com had been using their logo for over a year when Disney came up with the GO.com logo. They were both in the same business (net portals) and were using similar names (GO/GOTO) and were playing off the same motif (green traffic light). I think this was a clear failure of Disney's lawyers to properly research the market.
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Lake Effect, a weblog
Seriously, I've got $20,000 in confederate money?
The Confederate States of America, having been defeated on the battlefield, ceased to have legal standing anywhere in the United States of America. There was probably an Act of Congress specifically stating this at some point -- essentially it was scrip issued by an illegal authority.
Sorry but when governments go, they're gone- along with any promises they made. The new gov't might say they'll carry out the old agreements, but that's by their own graciousness, and they're by no means bound to those old agreements.
That may be, but there can be wide-ranging side-effects. If you say you're not the same country and spit in the face of those agreements, who's going to loan you money to rebuild? One of the key questions that the former USSR faced was how to divvy up the national debt. This was something of a new situation, and so there were multilateral discussions with the other newly-created "nuclear states" (Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan), leading to agreements to eliminate weapons in all three. At that point the new agreement superseded the old one.
If a country could get out of agreements just by having a constitutional crisis, there wouldn't be much point to agreements. Russia could have said "screw you", in a practical sense, but then they would not have been trusted worth a tinker's damn, for nuke agreements let alone IMF loans. That's the carrot we hold out: participation in the world economic system.
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Lake Effect, a weblog
scherry wrote:
I am not aware of a treaty signed with the new Russian Republic that brings over all treaties that we have signed although I wouldn't put it past Clinton to have slipped such a thing in without going to the Senate for ratification.
You aren't aware of much, then. First of all, just because a government changes, don't imagine that their obligations change. The Russian Federation is the inheritor of all the obligations of the USSR, including monetary debt, trade agreements, extradition treaties, and yes, arms treaties. Your silly kneejerk suspicions aside, Clinton can't just sign a new treaty with the Russians; it would have no legal force without Senate ratification (read your Constitution).
I know that lots of the START treaty that we've subsequently signed was continued from negotiations with the USSR but those are new treaties for all intents and purposes.
And, thanks to inviting Poland into NATO, the Russian Duma did not ratify START II. Therefore it has no force as a treaty. The Clinton and Yeltsin administrations are both observing parts of it, as a matter of polite cooperation, but either side could abrogate it at any time.
I could be wrong about the lack of said "continuance" treaty but barring its existence, and from my recollection the ABM treaty was specifically between the two powers and not a general non-proliferation treaty like nuclear testing. That said, the ABM treaty is effectively dead.
As noted, no such magical "continuance" treaty is needed; the treaty would be considered to be in force until a new agreement is reached. The question of making it a general non-proliferation treaty came up at renewal time in 1993 and is part of the current tiff. It may be effectively dead, but there is still great weight in being the country to first break a treaty.
If we don't deploy a system that makes successful delivery of such warheads unlikely, thus drastically increasing the risk that a launch would be intercepted inviting an overwhelming and potentially nuclear retaliation without the intended benifits, its not likely that we'll get out of the next decade without a missle being launched against a major power.
I consider a much more likely scenario to be a regional nuclear conflict, such as Pakistan-India. In any case, whether we deploy an ABM system or not, it's doubtful that it could make "delivery of warheads unlikely". Even if it were an airtight missile defense (and predecessors like the Patriot system don't inspire confidence), the enemy could simply choose another delivery method, such as a Ryder truck.
I don't consider this ABM system worth unilaterally pulling out of existing agreements, especially when it might lead to other negative consequences, like the Russians going back to targeting American cities and going on a hairtrigger nuke alert. What we really need is to find a way (START II would have been one way) to start dismantling nukes so that there aren't as many lying around Russia to steal. That should be our ultimate real world goal. In fact, this is approximately what the Clinton administration is proposing -- helping the Russians finish that Siberian radar facility, for instance.
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Lake Effect, a weblog
scherry wrote:
I am not aware of a treaty signed with the new Russian Republic that brings over all treaties that we have signed although I wouldn't put it past Clinton to have slipped such a thing in without going to the Senate for ratification.
You aren't aware of much, then. First of all, just because a government changes, don't imagine that their obligations change. The Russian Federation is the inheritor of all the obligations of the USSR, including monetary debt, trade agreements, extradition treaties, and yes, arms treaties. Your silly kneejerk suspicions aside, Clinton can't just sign a new treaty with the Russians; it would have no legal force without Senate ratification (read your Constitution).
I know that lots of the START treaty that we've subsequently signed was continued from negotiations with the USSR but those are new treaties for all intents and purposes.
And, thanks to inviting Poland into NATO, the Russian Duma did not ratify START II. Therefore it has no force as a treaty. The Clinton and Yeltsin administrations are both observing it, as a matter of polite cooperation, but either side could abrogate it at any time.
I could be wrong about the lack of said "continuance" treaty but barring its existence, and from my recollection the ABM treaty was specifically between the two powers and not a general non-proliferation treaty like nuclear testing. That said, the ABM treaty is effectively dead.
As noted, no such magical "continuance" treaty is needed; the treaty would be considered to be in force until a new agreement is reached. The question of making it a general non-proliferation treaty came up at renewal time in 1993 and is part of the current tiff. It may be effectively dead, but there is still great weight in being the country to first break a treaty.
If we don't deploy a system that makes successful delivery of such warheads unlikely, thus drastically increasing the risk that a launch would be intercepted inviting an overwhelming and potentially nuclear retaliation without the intended benifits, its not likely that we'll get out of the next decade without a missle being launched against a major power.
I consider a much more likely scenario to be a regional nuclear conflict, such as Pakistan-India. In any case, whether we deploy an ABM system or not, it's doubtful that it could make "delivery of warheads unlikely". Even if it were an airtight missile defense (and predecessors like the Patriot system don't inspire confidence), the enemy could simply choose another delivery method, such as a Ryder truck.
I don't consider this ABM system worth unilaterally pulling out of existing agreements, especially when it might lead to other negative consequences, like the Russians going back to targeting American cities and going on a hairtrigger nuke alert. What we really need is to find a way (START II would have been one way) to start dismantling nukes so that there aren't as many lying around Russia to steal. That should be our ultimate real world goal. In fact, this is approximately what the Clinton administration is proposing -- helping the Russians finish that Siberian radar facility, for instance.
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Lake Effect, a weblog
We already have "millions of people being able to freely trade with each other". It's called online stock trading. Actually, we already had it before that, too: it's called over-the-phone stock trading.
The only difference between then, and now, is that you can do it with a point and click interface instead of a highly-compensated broker in the middle. Nevertheless, this simple change has largely fueled the stock boom of the last several years, leading to price inflation and a more volatile market. And a lot of uneducated investors losing money, too.
The difference between a stock trade done via Etrade and a stock trade done with Joe Blow via Ebay is that the former is a licensed broker with the proper oversight and communication so that the stock trade is registered correctly and honestly. It's one thing to privately sell your brother some stock; it's another thing to buy stock from somebody you don't know on the other side of the country. The securities markets are highly regulated for good reason, and knee-jerk "nanny-state" responses are simply ignorant. Without oversight, the little investor is blindsided by insider trading and price scams.
There is nothing in the regulations that prevents you or I from buying the stocks we want; it prevents abuses.
The most important shift in the stock market in the last generation, by the way, has been the 401(k) plan: an artifact of an obscure banking regulation that turned out to permit employer-managed tax-deferred investment, which since its creation in the early 80s has poured $billions into the stock market. There are more stock owners today than there ever have been, and with mutual funds and IRAs and the like the obstacles to stock ownership are few indeed. And you call this a "nanny state"?
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Lake Effect, a weblog
But, duh, that was before they succeeded in getting the carcass out of the ice. Can we have a single freaking slashdot update, once, where some bozo doesn't ask "didn't we talk about this already"?
Otherwise I'm going to start posting "didn't we talk about this already?" posts in every Linux-vs-Microsoft thread, I swear.
Sheesh. You'd think people paid to use the place.
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Lake Effect, a weblog
Uh, after this post, I'll let others judge which of us is resorting to more rhetoric.
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Lake Effect, a weblog
In any case, the counterexamoke which was offered was invalid, because Challenger flew on account of bureaucrats ignring their engineers. The moral of the story is: listen to the scientists, ESPECIALLY if they say something's not safe.
Which could be construed as undermining your original argument. Still, when faced with scientist X saying it's safe, and scientist Y saying it isn't, you don't always have the grace of an easy decision. Not all the "engineers" were objecting to the launch. And the attitude at NASA was very much post hoc ergo propter hoc.
The point I'm trying to make is roughly: any bureaucrat/politician/careerist scientist may choose to demonstrate a 1 in 1^n probability of risk. But are they correct, or are they cooking the numbers? Do we assume that we know enough to calculate these things with necessary precision? Before Trinity (to return to your original example) there had been not a single nuclear explosion in all of human history. With no experimental data, how could the Manhattan Project experts who calculated the risk of "igniting the atmosphere" really be certain? They couldn't. They could make educated guesses, and they did, and fortunately they were right.
My deeper point here is that we are at a point in human capability where we can make things -- quark guns, atom bombs -- that have potentially devastating side-effects. Therefore, a minor amount of prudence and forethought seems like a small price to pay for peace of mind.
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Lake Effect, a weblog
mister attack says:
....
The idea that we are going to destroy the world with the RHIC is absolutely ridiculous. I remember reading that a large number of physicists thought the first nuclear weapon would ignite the atmosphere, destroying all life on Earth. Didn't happen.
This is a logical fallacy known as post hoc ergo propter hoc. Just because we haven't destroyed the earth in the past doesn't mean we can't do it.
Now we have a _journalist_ - not even a Ph.D. in physics - claiming that we're going to create a black hole with the RHIC.
Ad hominem. In fact, objections have been raised within the scientific community. They have been taken seriously enough to be reviewed by the laboratory. They disagreed, of course.
This is a remote possibility, to say the least - collisions at much higher energy than this happen in our upper atmosphere daily without destroying us. But assuming for a moment that a black hole is created, what happens? The answer is simple: it will evaporate.
At last a real argument. I happen to agree with you in principle; I'm not going to lose sleep over these experiments. But I don't think that going around shouting "rubbish!" at people is the way to make your point. There are valid scientific questions to be raised here, and while the field of high-energy physics may be dominated by people who believe it's perfectly safe, the objections do not come from left field. It may not be this experiment, but I would not rule out the possibility that in the near future we could devise experiments that would be capable of creating (say) a microscopic black hole.
I'd be more worried about ballistic nukes from China.
Most people should worry about a) heart disease, b) lung cancer, and c) an auto accident, in roughly that order. Since we all know that very few people give those very real dangers any thought at all
No, I don't believe RHIC is going to kill us all. But can we indeed come up with an experimental device that could? Most certainly. And human history is filled with enough follies by people who "know what they're doing" (say, Challenger) that I don't put all my trust in the intelligentsia here. The only safeguard is an atmosphere of collegiality where objections such as the one raised against RHIC are treated seriously and given due consideration in a peer review process.
That has happened, and has completed. It's only afterwards that the media really got hold of the story, and as they always do, they report it as if it were two equally valid political positions. Don't give in to the hysteria by treating all such objections with contempt.
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Lake Effect, a weblog
Recalling that normal matter is made up of atomic particles, which themselves are composed of subparticles (quarks and leptons). Quarks summarized here. "Strange matter" is simply matter that is made up mainly of the quark with the flavor "strange" (the name comes from the strangeness of their long lifetimes compared with other known particles).
It holds a relationship to normal matter something akin to antimatter's, although it is not antimatter (there is "normal" strange matter and "antimatter" strange matter). Basically, it looks like normal matter but isn't made up of the same kinds of subparticles. I think that strange matter in general is nowhere near as stable as normal matter.
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Lake Effect, a weblog
(Who moderated that as "informative"?)
The NSF shut down the NSFNET backbone in April of 1995. At that time the various functions were distributed among several organizations and commercial entities, effectively ending the government-funded internet.
From then until this year, Network Solutions was the sole entity responsible for domain name policies, creation, management, and so on.
It was only belatedly, as the commercial promise of the web crystallized, that the government created the ICANN to oversee the domain name system, formalize the process for creating new TLDs, and decentralize the registration process.
Your "friend" is spouting half-truths he read long ago. Don't trust him. (Besides, there is no "seven dirty words" list, there never was; there are only broad FCC guidelines for indecency.)
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Lake Effect, a weblog
You have no idea what you're talking about.
It's as ridiculous as saying that Apple invented the windowing GUI (which, of course, they did not, therefore nobody else should ever come out with a windowing GUI.
If Apple did it "years ago" and isn't doing it now, what the #$#*(& do they care if IBM does it with Thinkpads today? This isn't art class. This is business. There are no extra points for originality.
The Apple Baking Soda Company comes out with a baking soda box that has a shaker built into the top. International Baking Soda (IBS) sees that this sells well and designs their own shaker for their own box. Does Apple BS Co. then have the right to say that IBS cannnot have a box with a shaker? or do they only have the right to say that IBS's box can't look so much like the Apple box that there is no "consumer confusion"?
The answer, at least the LEGAL answer, is the latter.
And in a couple of years everybody's going to forget that the Apple BS Co. was the "innovator" behind the built-in shaker. The consumer is simply going to expect that any baking soda they buy, except maybe the store brand, is going to have that built-in shaker.
Apple may have done the very first laptop with translucent panels, but legally, big whoop. They didn't invent translucent panels. They didn't even invent translucent computers for Jesux's sake, they just came out with the first brand computer using the concept.