I think they need to be sent a termination notice already, I have started a petition to have the FCC set up a Citizens Band Digital mesh network protocol.
I have been seriously considering lobbying my Congressman to consider changing the top 20 channels of Citizens Band radio to a digital Citizens band format, where every device that uses the bandwidth would have to function like a WiFi AP Bridge. This sort of network would still function even when there is a disaster and the local Cell towers go down. It would also create some competition to the CelPhone companies and eventually the Cable companies. It's just a thought at the moment but I'm planning on doing research into it's feasibility and if it looks possible starting a grass roots political movement.
It will be really funny once these ISP's get hacked and all the dirty little websites these congressmen have been visiting get posted to the internet. The unintended consequences of there actions will most certainly end up destroying there political careers.
Considering that Google was recently given permission to monitor the white space between channels by the FCC, and the political mindset of many Google employees, wouldn't it be great if Google open sourced a distributed White space Wifi network protocol, every transmitter works as a node in the network. The early adopters would get lousy transmission speeds, but over time, coverage and bandwidth would increase until it reached a tipping point where the radio network passes the wired in functionality. The best thing about this would be that short of jamming there would be no way to switch it off.
Colonizing Mars is a great idea, but we really need to do a little bit of research to make sure it is even possible. Before we invest a lot of time and energy into getting to Mars we need to build an orbital centrifuge to determine how much gravity is required for mammals and other life forms to be able to reproduce. If 1/3rd G is not enough for people to have babies then large centrifuge nurseries will have to be built for child rearing. If that is the case then it may be easier to colonize the asteroid belt or other bodies in the solar system with lower gravity and minimal atmosphere to make centrifugal nurseries easier.
Personally I believe the purpose of life is to insure the survival of life, the closer to my personal genome the better. That said, I think that seeding planets such as Mars might be ok, as long as your certain your not destroying something already there. Mans colonizing of space should probably not be based on planetary colonization schemes any ways, gravity appears to play a critical role in embryonic development, and if centripetal acceleration is an effective substitute for gravity in this regard then smaller bodies with less or minimal Gravity might be best for building the necessary nurseries.
I personally would like to have my species be more significant then Panspermian ejecta bacteria. The colonization of the solar system will require the cooperation and support of the majority of people on earth. A tall order indeed, but if the people who contributed saw immediate and mutually beneficial rewards then it would not be as far fetched as it one might think. The beginning of building the largest public infrastructure in history would be best achieved by building flying space elevators that would not only reduce the cost of space flight in terms of Delta V but also become a series of platforms for international telecomunications, high speed intercontinental travel, and a staging area for rapid deployment of disaster relief supplies personnel and 15 minute insertion times for strikeforce security forces.
The necessity of a truly international agency capable of of administrating the use of the near space environment and satellite orbital control will be required.
I'm not saying that management should be completely erased, but it should most certainly be slimmed down as much as is possible, reducing the availability of management positions will drive down wages in the least productive area of infrastructure.
It has been my experience that the majority of people who don't actually work in sales, maintenance, or on production lines could, and most likely should be replaced with a few lines of code, if your job involves you doing nothing more than moving a few numbers around then your job could easily be handled by a computer with a much more consistent level of performance. Want to reduce costs and increase performance? Fire the vast majority of people holding meetings looking for ways to think outside the box, hire a couple of statisticians who know how to apply Benfords law correctly to the various metrics and data sets you already have, then send in the axemen where anomalies crop up. The biggest problem with management is that the computer revolution has failed to reduce the size of the management workforce, even though that is what it is best able to do and that is where the vast amount of corporate savings and higher dividend s for the stock can be created.
The vast majority of named species is animal with over 1.25 million named, if there isn't as many plant and fungi as animals I would be extremely surprised.
MS Mobile is doing much better than most people think because big business buys them in bulk to give crappy phones to there employees. Big Business does not care if you can watch videos, or share pictures, in fact many companies still ban cameras in the work place. Rim Blackberry are known to be good for business, just buy them out, keep a stable boring OS that works for business and sit back and wait for Jobs to die, Google to go the way of Yahoo and Facebook, and become the last guy left standing due to the insane nature of corporate culture and IT Infrastructure being unable to change.
Considering that the FCC can open up WiMax, and initiatives such as O3b may demonstrate that MEO satellite systems can offer nearly fiber speeds to third world nations, aren't the TelCo's just slitting their own throats? If companies like Google, ones that make more money by increasing the number of people who can access the internet and there services, are willing and able to offer free or nearly free internet access via low latency MEO satellite constellations and other radio transmission methods. why would agencies such as the FCC want to stop them?
Elon Musk, one of the top competitors in the private space launch industry, has built and flown a satellite launch system with only $100 million dollars invested, his Falcon 9 sits on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral awaiting it's maiden flight and looks to be able to become human rated , while in service fulfilling the COTS cargo to ISS program, 2 years before the Constellation paper rocket program makes it's first flight. . If Elon Musk, or his competitors are able to reduce the cost of space launch by even half of what they claim, the number of launches will increase exponentially. What the Space coast loses in socialized pork will be more than made up in real free market beef.
I find it completely reprehensible that young men and women can volunteer to kill and possibly be killed for political agendas, but are barred from volunteering to advance spaceflight or medicine.
To volunteer to risk ones life for the betterment of humanity should not be limited to military service.
Finally the Administration is doing something to end corporate welfare and make the US aerospace industry competitive once again. If it forces Republican congressmen to stand up and trumpet there support for pork barrel projects while crying for fiscal conservatism I'm sure the Irony will not be lost on the general population.
Give such corporations as Space Exploration Technologies a chance, there founder, Elon Musk, his comparison of other aerospace companies to "Dilbert in real life" is spot on.
The real unknowns are simply to get a working artificial gravity system in the first place and to figure out just how much artificial gravity is needed by humans.
Which is why I'm upset that the CAM was never flown to the ISS, it was specifically designed to do research of that nature among other things, unfortunately it is sitting in a parking lot in Japan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifuge_Accommodations_Module
We need to know exactly where and what it will take to establish off world colonies now, even if it will take decades to actually establish them, in order to know where manned space exploration should concentrate it's energies. I'm pretty sure a rotating space station with a radius of 150 to 200 meters will be sufficient as it will have a rotation of around 2 to 3 rpm , but centripetal acceleration is not gravity and there is the possibility that even mild Coriolis effects could have drastic implications on fetal development.
I seriously doubt that the 1/3 gravity will be enough to allow people to have children.
Where they should be going. The main purpose of manned spaceflight should be to develop the technologies to form permanent self sustaining colonies off of Earth.
With the abandonment of the Centrifuge Accommodations Module (CAM) we cannot determine if Humans or even most vertebrates can reproduce in reduced gravity and how much gravity is required.
All experiments with mice in microgravity have have indicated that cell division after fertilization does not occur, and that more advanced fetus that were launched do not undergo cell migration and/or cell differentiation properly.
If it is found out that Centripetal acceleration is an adequate substitute for gravity, then the asteroids may be our best bet.
Unfortunately experiments in reduced gravity are lacking, but to ignore what little data we do have would be very foolish as well. The fact that we do have data that implies very strongly that gravity plays a very important role in fertilization embryonic development and cell wall implantation.
While there are many URLs that do show the effects of microgravity and the few centrifuge experiments conducted on Mir, the best paper I have read so far was a document that came up on a google search entitled "Reproduction in Space" written by Eran Schenker, MD* and David M. Warmflash M.D.
Doing a google search of that title will bring up that document in the first few hits.
While the science is not yet conclusive on the matters of reduced gravity, it does strongly imply that reduced gravity will be a strong impediment to reproduction, hopefully centripetal acceleration will be an adequate substitute for actual gravity, the fact remains that much more research is needed before a good plan for building a space colonisation ifrastructure is decided upon. The ISS is the best place to conduct this research.
One of the most important facts to come out of these missions is that higher life forms, such as mammals, cannot effectively reproduce in micro gravity.
That basically means very large radii spin simulated gravity space colonies will be needed to have self sustaining extraterrestrial human populations in case catastrophe strikes earth.
These types of stations and infrastructures will require a large percentage of the Human race working together in a more social manner for the betterment of all mankind.
The reduced gravity of the planet mars probably means that it is unsuitable for human reproduction and child rearing,, making any colonies dependent on other sources for manpower.
Sorry folks, but there will be no single family homesteading in outer space.
I think the idea of lifting a generator on a kite is absurd, however, the Ladder mill concept, or any other scheme involving a reciprocating airfoil or flight path can be utilized by a generator on the ground to take advantage of variations on the tension of the tether to generate electricity.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2008/aug/01/electric.kite
I blame the Advertising executives that brought us Atomic Ming the Merciless palace style gas stations in the fifties. The problem is people focusing on what has not come to pass and not focusing on why much of it is a silly idea in the first place..
What distresses me more is what passes for Science Fiction today should be more often called Science Fantasy, in that it predicts a completely impossible future with our current understanding of Science.
I believe a prime example would be people dreaming up self sustaining colonies on Mars when recent studies of embryonic development in the microgravity environment appear to show that gravity is a big factor in fetal development.
I was asked to take a personality test at the company I work for and my response was "Why would you want to open yourselves up for possible civil litigation for thinly veiled religious, ethnic, or racial discrimination? Has the Legal department looked at these tests yet?". Test was canceled.
Does this mean that the Toyota iQ will get the best of all reactions or the worst of all reactions?
You really can't blame the car for looking angry, it looks like a tiny Yaris that somebody punched in the face and kicked in the butt.
http://www.carbodydesign.com/archive/2007/09/15-toyota-iq-concept/
Slashdot Mirror
I think they need to be sent a termination notice already, I have started a petition to have the FCC set up a Citizens Band Digital mesh network protocol.
http://wh.gov/Dlx
If you believe in freedom of communications, and a nearly indestructible internet please sign it.
I have been seriously considering lobbying my Congressman to consider changing the top 20 channels of Citizens Band radio to a digital Citizens band format, where every device that uses the bandwidth would have to function like a WiFi AP Bridge. This sort of network would still function even when there is a disaster and the local Cell towers go down. It would also create some competition to the CelPhone companies and eventually the Cable companies. It's just a thought at the moment but I'm planning on doing research into it's feasibility and if it looks possible starting a grass roots political movement.
It will be really funny once these ISP's get hacked and all the dirty little websites these congressmen have been visiting get posted to the internet. The unintended consequences of there actions will most certainly end up destroying there political careers.
So, the FCC, FDA, and NASA do not have a right to exist, hmm interesting.
Considering that Google was recently given permission to monitor the white space between channels by the FCC, and the political mindset of many Google employees, wouldn't it be great if Google open sourced a distributed White space Wifi network protocol, every transmitter works as a node in the network. The early adopters would get lousy transmission speeds, but over time, coverage and bandwidth would increase until it reached a tipping point where the radio network passes the wired in functionality. The best thing about this would be that short of jamming there would be no way to switch it off.
Colonizing Mars is a great idea, but we really need to do a little bit of research to make sure it is even possible. Before we invest a lot of time and energy into getting to Mars we need to build an orbital centrifuge to determine how much gravity is required for mammals and other life forms to be able to reproduce. If 1/3rd G is not enough for people to have babies then large centrifuge nurseries will have to be built for child rearing. If that is the case then it may be easier to colonize the asteroid belt or other bodies in the solar system with lower gravity and minimal atmosphere to make centrifugal nurseries easier.
Personally I believe the purpose of life is to insure the survival of life, the closer to my personal genome the better. That said, I think that seeding planets such as Mars might be ok, as long as your certain your not destroying something already there. Mans colonizing of space should probably not be based on planetary colonization schemes any ways, gravity appears to play a critical role in embryonic development, and if centripetal acceleration is an effective substitute for gravity in this regard then smaller bodies with less or minimal Gravity might be best for building the necessary nurseries.
I personally would like to have my species be more significant then Panspermian ejecta bacteria. The colonization of the solar system will require the cooperation and support of the majority of people on earth. A tall order indeed, but if the people who contributed saw immediate and mutually beneficial rewards then it would not be as far fetched as it one might think. The beginning of building the largest public infrastructure in history would be best achieved by building flying space elevators that would not only reduce the cost of space flight in terms of Delta V but also become a series of platforms for international telecomunications, high speed intercontinental travel, and a staging area for rapid deployment of disaster relief supplies personnel and 15 minute insertion times for strikeforce security forces.
The necessity of a truly international agency capable of of administrating the use of the near space environment and satellite orbital control will be required.
I'm not saying that management should be completely erased, but it should most certainly be slimmed down as much as is possible, reducing the availability of management positions will drive down wages in the least productive area of infrastructure.
It has been my experience that the majority of people who don't actually work in sales, maintenance, or on production lines could, and most likely should be replaced with a few lines of code, if your job involves you doing nothing more than moving a few numbers around then your job could easily be handled by a computer with a much more consistent level of performance. Want to reduce costs and increase performance? Fire the vast majority of people holding meetings looking for ways to think outside the box, hire a couple of statisticians who know how to apply Benfords law correctly to the various metrics and data sets you already have, then send in the axemen where anomalies crop up. The biggest problem with management is that the computer revolution has failed to reduce the size of the management workforce, even though that is what it is best able to do and that is where the vast amount of corporate savings and higher dividend s for the stock can be created.
The vast majority of named species is animal with over 1.25 million named, if there isn't as many plant and fungi as animals I would be extremely surprised.
MS Mobile is doing much better than most people think because big business buys them in bulk to give crappy phones to there employees. Big Business does not care if you can watch videos, or share pictures, in fact many companies still ban cameras in the work place. Rim Blackberry are known to be good for business, just buy them out, keep a stable boring OS that works for business and sit back and wait for Jobs to die, Google to go the way of Yahoo and Facebook, and become the last guy left standing due to the insane nature of corporate culture and IT Infrastructure being unable to change.
Considering that the FCC can open up WiMax, and initiatives such as O3b may demonstrate that MEO satellite systems can offer nearly fiber speeds to third world nations, aren't the TelCo's just slitting their own throats? If companies like Google, ones that make more money by increasing the number of people who can access the internet and there services, are willing and able to offer free or nearly free internet access via low latency MEO satellite constellations and other radio transmission methods. why would agencies such as the FCC want to stop them?
Elon Musk, one of the top competitors in the private space launch industry, has built and flown a satellite launch system with only $100 million dollars invested, his Falcon 9 sits on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral awaiting it's maiden flight and looks to be able to become human rated , while in service fulfilling the COTS cargo to ISS program, 2 years before the Constellation paper rocket program makes it's first flight. . If Elon Musk, or his competitors are able to reduce the cost of space launch by even half of what they claim, the number of launches will increase exponentially. What the Space coast loses in socialized pork will be more than made up in real free market beef.
I find it completely reprehensible that young men and women can volunteer to kill and possibly be killed for political agendas, but are barred from volunteering to advance spaceflight or medicine.
To volunteer to risk ones life for the betterment of humanity should not be limited to military service.
So exactly how many American astronauts have been launched aboard Russian launch vehicles?
If the ESA had human launch capabilities I'm certain American Astronauts would have already launched from there.
Finally the Administration is doing something to end corporate welfare and make the US aerospace industry competitive once again. If it forces Republican congressmen to stand up and trumpet there support for pork barrel projects while crying for fiscal conservatism I'm sure the Irony will not be lost on the general population.
Give such corporations as Space Exploration Technologies a chance, there founder, Elon Musk, his comparison of other aerospace companies to "Dilbert in real life" is spot on.
I say this as an aerospace employee.
The real unknowns are simply to get a working artificial gravity system in the first place and to figure out just how much artificial gravity is needed by humans.
Which is why I'm upset that the CAM was never flown to the ISS, it was specifically designed to do research of that nature among other things, unfortunately it is sitting in a parking lot in Japan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifuge_Accommodations_Module
We need to know exactly where and what it will take to establish off world colonies now, even if it will take decades to actually establish them, in order to know where manned space exploration should concentrate it's energies. I'm pretty sure a rotating space station with a radius of 150 to 200 meters will be sufficient as it will have a rotation of around 2 to 3 rpm , but centripetal acceleration is not gravity and there is the possibility that even mild Coriolis effects could have drastic implications on fetal development.
I seriously doubt that the 1/3 gravity will be enough to allow people to have children.
Where they should be going. The main purpose of manned spaceflight should be to develop the technologies to form permanent self sustaining colonies off of Earth.
With the abandonment of the Centrifuge Accommodations Module (CAM) we cannot determine if Humans or even most vertebrates can reproduce in reduced gravity and how much gravity is required.
All experiments with mice in microgravity have have indicated that cell division after fertilization does not occur, and that more advanced fetus that were launched do not undergo cell migration and/or cell differentiation properly.
If it is found out that Centripetal acceleration is an adequate substitute for gravity, then the asteroids may be our best bet.
Unfortunately experiments in reduced gravity are lacking, but to ignore what little data we do have would be very foolish as well. The fact that we do have data that implies very strongly that gravity plays a very important role in fertilization embryonic development and cell wall implantation.
While there are many URLs that do show the effects of microgravity and the few centrifuge experiments conducted on Mir, the best paper I have read so far was a document that came up on a google search entitled "Reproduction in Space" written by Eran Schenker, MD* and David M. Warmflash M.D.
Doing a google search of that title will bring up that document in the first few hits.
While the science is not yet conclusive on the matters of reduced gravity, it does strongly imply that reduced gravity will be a strong impediment to reproduction, hopefully centripetal acceleration will be an adequate substitute for actual gravity, the fact remains that much more research is needed before a good plan for building a space colonisation ifrastructure is decided upon. The ISS is the best place to conduct this research.
One of the most important facts to come out of these missions is that higher life forms, such as mammals, cannot effectively reproduce in micro gravity. That basically means very large radii spin simulated gravity space colonies will be needed to have self sustaining extraterrestrial human populations in case catastrophe strikes earth. These types of stations and infrastructures will require a large percentage of the Human race working together in a more social manner for the betterment of all mankind. The reduced gravity of the planet mars probably means that it is unsuitable for human reproduction and child rearing,, making any colonies dependent on other sources for manpower. Sorry folks, but there will be no single family homesteading in outer space.
I think the idea of lifting a generator on a kite is absurd, however, the Ladder mill concept, or any other scheme involving a reciprocating airfoil or flight path can be utilized by a generator on the ground to take advantage of variations on the tension of the tether to generate electricity. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2008/aug/01/electric.kite
I blame the Advertising executives that brought us Atomic Ming the Merciless palace style gas stations in the fifties. The problem is people focusing on what has not come to pass and not focusing on why much of it is a silly idea in the first place.. What distresses me more is what passes for Science Fiction today should be more often called Science Fantasy, in that it predicts a completely impossible future with our current understanding of Science. I believe a prime example would be people dreaming up self sustaining colonies on Mars when recent studies of embryonic development in the microgravity environment appear to show that gravity is a big factor in fetal development.
I was asked to take a personality test at the company I work for and my response was "Why would you want to open yourselves up for possible civil litigation for thinly veiled religious, ethnic, or racial discrimination? Has the Legal department looked at these tests yet?". Test was canceled.
A bigger hammer would make it harder to swing, there may be problems with torque if the swingers feet are not attached to the floor
Does this mean that the Toyota iQ will get the best of all reactions or the worst of all reactions? You really can't blame the car for looking angry, it looks like a tiny Yaris that somebody punched in the face and kicked in the butt. http://www.carbodydesign.com/archive/2007/09/15-toyota-iq-concept/