There is a very introductory book about solar sailing by Louis Friedman, Executive Directory of the Planetary Society: it's Starsailing: Solar Sails and Interstellar Travel (yeah, yeah, it's amazon, thbbbppp) and here are some selected chapters. It rocks because it walks you through the equations and such. It's really NOT hard to understand. I found it in my high school when I was a kid and really fell in love with the whole concept. It really rocks.
In the book it points out that the concept was tested with the Mercury probe that NASA sent way back (Mariner-10) in that they used the solar panels to get a spin from light pressure (iirc, it's in the book and I haven't read it in 10 years...)
Emphasis added to highlight some POVs. Note WHO they are too...
****
From the Albuquerque Journal
Saturday, August 3, 2002
Sandia May Help U.S. Regain Supercomputer Lead
By John Fleck
Journal Staff Writer
Sandia National Laboratories is negotiating a deal with legendary computer-maker Cray Inc. to build a $90 million supercomputer for nuclear weapons research.
In years past, this would likely be headlined something like "Sandia tobuild world's fastest computer." But the days of Sandia and the other U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories leading the world in high performance computing are gone.
The new Cray machine will be tremendously fast, and so big that a $3 million building must be constructed to hold it. But U.S. supercomputers have fallen far behind Japan's best.
Experts say the Sandia-Cray deal is an important step, however, in pushing the United States back toward preeminence in the supercomputer world.
The Sandia-Cray deal has the potential to push the state of the art in computer technology, said Horst Simon, director of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center in Berkeley, Calif.
Sandia announced in June that Seattle-based Cray has been chosen to build the labs' new computer.
Officials will not talk in detail about the deal until negotiations are complete, expected later this month. But in written responses to questions from the Journal, Sandia supercomputer program chief Bob Thomas said the new machine will be at least seven times faster than Sandia's current fastest computer.
That would make it second fastest among supercomputers currently operating around the world, but still well behind the Earth Simulator, a research machine built by Japanese computer giant NEC for a Yokohama-based research consortium.
The Earth Simulator shook up the high-performance computing world this spring with a staggering top speed of 36 trillion calculations per second, five times faster than its nearest competitor.
It was the first time in five years that a U.S. nuclear weapons laboratory has not held bragging rights as "world's fastest." For most of those five years, the title belonged to Sandia.
"The Japanese now have a trophy on their mantle," said University of Tennessee supercomputer expert Jack Dongarra.
But more than a trophy, leadership in high-performance computing is important to national security, Dongarra and Simon both argued.
Sandia and the other two U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories have long pushed the state of the art in high-performance computers in order to run the simulations needed to understand nuclear weapon design, reliability and safety.
Despite the Japanese leap to the title of "world's fastest," four of the 10 fastest computers in the world are at U.S. nuclear weapons labs, including one at Los Alamos and one at Sandia.
Among other things, the new Cray machine will be used to simulate warhead performance in the high radiation of a nuclear battlefield, according to Thomas.
While details about the new computer will not be revealed until the Sandia-Cray negotiations are complete, Simon said it is clear that Sandia is pursuing a different strategy to build the new computer.
The other large machines being bought by U.S. weapons laboratories are built around clusters of the sort of fast computers used in the business world.
"The machines we've been buying are nothing more than souped-up webservers," Simon said.
In contrast, in buying from Cray, Sandia has turned to a manufacturer that builds far more specialized machines.
After a series of mergers and corporate deals, the Cray of today is very different from the company that in the 1970s built the world's first "supercomputers" at Los Alamos.
But despite the corporate differences, the move to buy from Cray suggests that Sandia wants a machine designed specifically for scientific applications, Simon said.
Interesting to note is that #3, #6, and #8 are all linux clusters. All three of which are at Livermore.
Cray's X1 also debuted, but it was much lower @112. However, it ought to be noted, that the examples out so far are only 60 processors at tops. As soon as the money gets ponied up, prolly at ORNL, they'll be waaaay up towards the top. My guess is, if all goes as planned, they'll be at #15 by year's end.
I do wish there were more SC companies doing hardware development in the US. I love Cray, but a single vendor smacks of eggs in one backet syndrome...So, geeks, if ya wanna start a startup with a design, go for it...Betcha the NSA (aka Cthuhlu of HPC) would be happy to sponsor ya...;)
The first things that come to mind is, "What time frames are you speaking in for this technology?" and "What application are you talking about?" Each of these are very important.
If you are talking raw number crunching, it might end up having some problems with competition with rival technologies. The High Productivity Computational Systems Effort @ DAPRA is intended to bridge the gap between current supercomputers and quantum computers in capability. If the realistic xpectations for quantum computers are realized, and not the hype, then it might end up making the biological tech a case of an 'also ran' much like gallium arsenide seems to have become. Unless there is something that biotech processors do better than the traditional architectures and the projected quantums, then it might remain a lab curiousity.
On the other hand, if you mean something else, like revolutionary computer-human interfaces, or AI work, or something I'm not thinking of, then we might see something generated from this indeed.
If you could be more specific about what you have intended this technology applied to...
The MTA is dead, sadly. It was an interesting architecture, but Cray never did any work on it after Tera bought cray and changed name.
Burton Smith is Cray's lead systems architect now and heading up Cray's entry into DARPA's High Productivity Computing effort. I wouldn't want to call the MTA dead just yet. Burton's prolly not gonna let his baby die...:D
BTW, I think Burton Smith would be an ideal candidate for a/. interview. He'd prolly be amianable to the whole idea too.
Cray has long wanted to do a follow-up to the T3E. Unfortunately, the T3F was strangled in the cradle during that nasty marriage to SGI. SGI wanted to push its Origin designs for the MPP market, hence...
Red Storm might be a way to get back in the ball game for Cray in MPPs. Whether they are or not is something that I recommend that you contact Cray to talk to a sales rep. He/She can talk about such things as far as their plans much more so than I can. However, I can say that Cray has no compunctions, if they have the legal grounds, to taking experience and putting it to their own use.
As for the Dell-Cray Linux clusters...how many have you seen sold? I suspect that Cray would trumpet quite loudly if they did...I can see one sold on there to Ford, but, IIRC, that was not a dell cluster.
I think they're 1.54 GHz Athlons, off the top of my head. I'll double check that later.
We have an Opteron 4 way system. We're under NDA tho, so I can't speaaa*mmmph*mpph*
Cray is actually taking a multipath approach to their next systems. They have the X1, their current development in the vector architecture, which they are going to follow up with an enhanced version. Then they also have the Red Storm, which you note, for scalar-cluster work. Then they have the MTA for threaded work too. Basically, they do several routes, which IMNSHO, is the right thing to do.
Loosely coupled clusters like PDSF are great for work like what the high energy physics people do, like SNO.
However, somethings work better on vector architectures such as climate models and fusion work: there is a reason why the Spanish Met troops bought a Cray. Additionally, some chemistry, many fusion and several other codes work best on vector architectures.
There guys presented their global warming work where at my job. They've developed their climate code though as a parallel one. See here. One of the places that they have been running is on seaborg, an IBM RS/6000 with over 6k and near 7k processors.
Interestingly, the PCM guys presented what they wanted for an uber'puter. While it had massive amounts of storage, it was also a 500 *PETAFLOP* SUSTAINED PERFORMANCE machine.
*clickety clack* That'd be something like 166,666,666 Athlons. IDK of any interconnects that handle that. Can you imagine being an admin? Better hope you're good on rollerblades zipping to and fro replacing those oh-so-reliable commodity disks and CPUs...even if you have a.05% failure rate, that's still too damn much. As an admin, that'd be a huge waste of time. It'd also wreck havoc on the guys running stuff.
Or is that what grad students are for? To attempt such a silly thing and then admin it?;)
Seriously tho. To get from here to their, we're going to need some exotic techs...not just more 'attack of the killer micros'.
Please, don't get me wrong, I'm rather more in support of solar than I am coal, oil, or other fossil fuels. Very much so and I have consistantly said this irl and here.
However, iirc, something that is not said is that when you actually process this stuff to make solar panels, its not a clean process and does in fact produce nontrivial industrial waste. This is what I wanted to point out.
It would be a very interesting comparison to show from start of manufacture to end of life for any and all power sources and their industrial waste.
Re:In case it gets /.'ed (it's already getting slo
on
Nucular Hydrogen Economy
·
· Score: 1, Troll
Renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, are emissions-free.
Not quite the whole story. Anyone looked at the industrial waste that making solar panels creates? IIRC, it's nontrivial.
There's another problem with this though if you want to go strictly genetics for your classification, paleontology.
The vast majority of work done by paleontologists simply cannot use genetics. They are almost completely stuck using comparative physical characteristics. I'm sure that they'll get some things wrong, as far as relations, but like I said, they're mildly stuck.
If you can come up with a unified classification system that satisifies both the paleontology and the genetics crowds, then you might just have more than a few papers and a PhD thesis there...;)
Moller seems to have sucked up all the investment funds ove rthe years for this...and not produced a whole lot. How many years has he been working on this? 30 years? How often have we heard..."Any time now..."
Web space meets N Space?
on
Ask Larry Niven
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Since we're only allowed one question per post...
One of the things I have greatly admired about some of your works, and especially your info dumps (_N Space_ & _Playgrounds of the Mind_) is the raw creativity that comes through, especially in describing your sessions like at Contact where you pull out some really weird and fascinating ideas for aliens.
Have you ever considered, whether here on slashdot as a guest writer, or in your own web page (like what Jerry Pournelle does) or through UseNet (like Steve Stirling does), putting together an online presence/participation that would allow you to periodically spin out, with your fans, worlds and ideas?
Critical Commentary?
on
Ask Larry Niven
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Hey Larry,
I've been a fan since, well, I was knee high to a grasshopper. _The Mote In God's Eye_ was my first introduction to you, and JP, via my father when I was 11. Some of your earlier work has been amazing and fun, re _Ringworld_, _the Magic Goes Away_, etc. So please don't take this wrong.
I have been seeing something that has been, well, frankly, disturbing as of late in some of the books that have been coming out with you in colloration. While the first Renner and Bury chunk of _The Gripping Hand_ was quite good, the rest felt, uh, unworthy of the original. There were a lot of inconsistancies with the previous book. Ditto for _Beowulf's Children_ vs _Legacy of Heorot_.
What's the reason for this, if I may ask? Is this a side effect of just working up a sequel (already difficult) compounded with the added difficulty of working in collaboration? Or is that the collective you felt pressured into writing the books and just wanted to get them over with? Or was it due to the fact that they didn't get the scrutiny of previous works before going out the door (re Heinlein's famous critique of _The Mote in God's Eye_)?
You did note in one of your delightful mental dumps (_Playgrounds of the Mind or _N Space_, more please! Perhaps call it the _N Body Problem_?;)) that inconsistancies do tend to pile up (re Known Space). However, in both the cases I'm noting above, it's just single stories and their sequels (discounting JP's shared _War World_ books for the moment...)
So is this the case of an overly zealous fan (re trek[ies/ers];))?
Thanx and have fun playing! The rest of us thoroughly enjoy it when you do!
Forgive me, but having grown up in Los Alamos, I could have told ya that. Sheesh. Kids in Los Alamos have been a pest for LANLites for years. The security isn't the best for many areas.
Additionally, a few years ago, a peace activitist walked into the lobby of the plutonium processing plant (iirc) to pray for peace. This was in a supposed Cross-This-Line-and-We-Shoot-to-Kill area. Funny that. He certainly didn't get riddled. Good thing he didn't carry, say, a whole lot of plastic explosives with the intent of being a suicide bomber, huh?
Finally, even during the Cold War, one of the guys that worked in a sensitive area wore a hat with a KGB symbol on it. He wore it walking in and out as a joke with his coworkers. They, the guards, never even inquired about it. While it was a joke, and the guards might have gotten in on it, a large part of what made it funny was that the guards never even batted an eye.
This will remain controversial for scientists until one of two things happen.
1. There are other samples from the places that they claim the meteorite is from to compare to that are of the appropriate age.
or...
2. The current crop of scientists have passed on. There is a joke about the physics community that theory doesn't really advance until the last generation has died off...;)
I hope it's the former rather than the latter. That implies a more than a few expeditions or at least sample returns to the source of origin...which we all know what that is!;)
Actually, there was a short story in Analog (I think) about 7 years ago about a woman that was facing that problem. Except it was not for her, but the baby she was carrying. She hadn't read the fine print on her employment contract and it stated that she had to have all children tested for defects when they were conceived. The company's owner had a daughter that some genetic disease that mentally damaged her and physically harmed her, hence hte clause.
At the time, I thought...'Wow, that'll never happen...'.
Lord knows this is a little late for me to get moderated up, but this really needs to be said.
There is one way to keep manned space going. It's not difficult. it's not hard. It takes a whole of maybe twenty minutes to do and valueof($stamp + $paper + $envelope).
WRITE YOUR CONGRESS CRITTER.
Express your emphatic support for the continuance of manned space. Don't sit there and do the (hopefully false) stereotypical slashdot geek wank-and-do-nothing-routine. Don't email, that more often than not gets bit-bucketed. Old fashioned snal mail is what gets their attention PDQ.
This is assuming, of course, you're an American. If not, send a note to our embassy of sympathy and support...and bug your own $govvies to get your own manned space program rolling.
It's only by speaking up that you get paid attention to. It's only by voicing in the proper circles that things get changed. Not on the couch with a beer in hand grumbling to friends over this or that while watching $game. Not by sitting in front of a computer and posting to slashdot either...
Slashdot Mirror
There is a very introductory book about solar sailing by Louis Friedman, Executive Directory of the Planetary Society: it's Starsailing: Solar Sails and Interstellar Travel (yeah, yeah, it's amazon, thbbbppp) and here are some selected chapters. It rocks because it walks you through the equations and such. It's really NOT hard to understand. I found it in my high school when I was a kid and really fell in love with the whole concept. It really rocks.
In the book it points out that the concept was tested with the Mercury probe that NASA sent way back (Mariner-10) in that they used the solar panels to get a spin from light pressure (iirc, it's in the book and I haven't read it in 10 years...)
Brain fart...my apologies. d'oh. I glanced a wee bit too fast.
Emphasis added to highlight some POVs. Note WHO they are too...
****
From the Albuquerque Journal
Saturday, August 3, 2002
Sandia May Help U.S. Regain Supercomputer Lead
By John Fleck
Journal Staff Writer
Sandia National Laboratories is negotiating a deal with legendary computer-maker Cray Inc. to build a $90 million supercomputer for nuclear weapons research.
In years past, this would likely be headlined something like "Sandia tobuild world's fastest computer." But the days of Sandia and the other U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories leading the world in high performance computing are gone.
The new Cray machine will be tremendously fast, and so big that a $3 million building must be constructed to hold it. But U.S. supercomputers have fallen far behind Japan's best.
Experts say the Sandia-Cray deal is an important step, however, in pushing the United States back toward preeminence in the supercomputer world.
The Sandia-Cray deal has the potential to push the state of the art in computer technology, said Horst Simon, director of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center in Berkeley, Calif.
Sandia announced in June that Seattle-based Cray has been chosen to build the labs' new computer.
Officials will not talk in detail about the deal until negotiations are complete, expected later this month. But in written responses to questions from the Journal, Sandia supercomputer program chief Bob Thomas said the new machine will be at least seven times faster than Sandia's current fastest computer.
That would make it second fastest among supercomputers currently operating around the world, but still well behind the Earth Simulator, a research machine built by Japanese computer giant NEC for a Yokohama-based research consortium.
The Earth Simulator shook up the high-performance computing world this spring with a staggering top speed of 36 trillion calculations per second, five times faster than its nearest competitor.
It was the first time in five years that a U.S. nuclear weapons laboratory has not held bragging rights as "world's fastest." For most of those five years, the title belonged to Sandia.
"The Japanese now have a trophy on their mantle," said University of Tennessee supercomputer expert Jack Dongarra.
But more than a trophy, leadership in high-performance computing is important to national security, Dongarra and Simon both argued.
Sandia and the other two U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories have long pushed the state of the art in high-performance computers in order to run the simulations needed to understand nuclear weapon design, reliability and safety.
Despite the Japanese leap to the title of "world's fastest," four of the 10 fastest computers in the world are at U.S. nuclear weapons labs, including one at Los Alamos and one at Sandia.
Among other things, the new Cray machine will be used to simulate warhead performance in the high radiation of a nuclear battlefield, according to Thomas.
While details about the new computer will not be revealed until the Sandia-Cray negotiations are complete, Simon said it is clear that Sandia is pursuing a different strategy to build the new computer.
The other large machines being bought by U.S. weapons laboratories are built around clusters of the sort of fast computers used in the business world.
"The machines we've been buying are nothing more than souped-up webservers," Simon said.
In contrast, in buying from Cray, Sandia has turned to a manufacturer that builds far more specialized machines.
After a series of mergers and corporate deals, the Cray of today is very different from the company that in the 1970s built the world's first "supercomputers" at Los Alamos.
But despite the corporate differences, the move to buy from Cray suggests that Sandia wants a machine designed specifically for scientific applications, Simon said.
Interesting to note is that #3, #6, and #8 are all linux clusters. All three of which are at Livermore.
Cray's X1 also debuted, but it was much lower @112. However, it ought to be noted, that the examples out so far are only 60 processors at tops. As soon as the money gets ponied up, prolly at ORNL, they'll be waaaay up towards the top. My guess is, if all goes as planned, they'll be at #15 by year's end.
What I find exciting these days is actually the High Productivity Computing Systems Effort, the Blue Planet or Blue Gene. These are a little ways off from being on the Top500 list yet though. :D
I do wish there were more SC companies doing hardware development in the US. I love Cray, but a single vendor smacks of eggs in one backet syndrome...So, geeks, if ya wanna start a startup with a design, go for it...Betcha the NSA (aka Cthuhlu of HPC) would be happy to sponsor ya...;)
The first things that come to mind is, "What time frames are you speaking in for this technology?" and "What application are you talking about?" Each of these are very important.
If you are talking raw number crunching, it might end up having some problems with competition with rival technologies. The High Productivity Computational Systems Effort @ DAPRA is intended to bridge the gap between current supercomputers and quantum computers in capability. If the realistic xpectations for quantum computers are realized, and not the hype, then it might end up making the biological tech a case of an 'also ran' much like gallium arsenide seems to have become. Unless there is something that biotech processors do better than the traditional architectures and the projected quantums, then it might remain a lab curiousity.
On the other hand, if you mean something else, like revolutionary computer-human interfaces, or AI work, or something I'm not thinking of, then we might see something generated from this indeed.
If you could be more specific about what you have intended this technology applied to...
The MTA is dead, sadly. It was an interesting architecture, but Cray never did any work on it after Tera bought cray and changed name.
Burton Smith is Cray's lead systems architect now and heading up Cray's entry into DARPA's High Productivity Computing effort. I wouldn't want to call the MTA dead just yet. Burton's prolly not gonna let his baby die...:D
BTW, I think Burton Smith would be an ideal candidate for a /. interview. He'd prolly be amianable to the whole idea too.
Cray has long wanted to do a follow-up to the T3E. Unfortunately, the T3F was strangled in the cradle during that nasty marriage to SGI. SGI wanted to push its Origin designs for the MPP market, hence...
Red Storm might be a way to get back in the ball game for Cray in MPPs. Whether they are or not is something that I recommend that you contact Cray to talk to a sales rep. He/She can talk about such things as far as their plans much more so than I can. However, I can say that Cray has no compunctions, if they have the legal grounds, to taking experience and putting it to their own use.
As for the Dell-Cray Linux clusters...how many have you seen sold? I suspect that Cray would trumpet quite loudly if they did...I can see one sold on there to Ford, but, IIRC, that was not a dell cluster.
I think they're 1.54 GHz Athlons, off the top of my head. I'll double check that later.
We have an Opteron 4 way system. We're under NDA tho, so I can't speaaa*mmmph*mpph*
Cray is actually taking a multipath approach to their next systems. They have the X1, their current development in the vector architecture, which they are going to follow up with an enhanced version. Then they also have the Red Storm, which you note, for scalar-cluster work. Then they have the MTA for threaded work too. Basically, they do several routes, which IMNSHO, is the right thing to do.
Mod this guy up. He's really telling the truth!
Loosely coupled clusters like PDSF are great for work like what the high energy physics people do, like SNO.
However, somethings work better on vector architectures such as climate models and fusion work: there is a reason why the Spanish Met troops bought a Cray. Additionally, some chemistry, many fusion and several other codes work best on vector architectures.
There guys presented their global warming work where at my job. They've developed their climate code though as a parallel one. See here. One of the places that they have been running is on seaborg, an IBM RS/6000 with over 6k and near 7k processors.
Interestingly, the PCM guys presented what they wanted for an uber'puter. While it had massive amounts of storage, it was also a 500 *PETAFLOP* SUSTAINED PERFORMANCE machine.
*clickety clack* That'd be something like 166,666,666 Athlons. IDK of any interconnects that handle that. Can you imagine being an admin? Better hope you're good on rollerblades zipping to and fro replacing those oh-so-reliable commodity disks and CPUs...even if you have a .05% failure rate, that's still too damn much. As an admin, that'd be a huge waste of time. It'd also wreck havoc on the guys running stuff.
Or is that what grad students are for? To attempt such a silly thing and then admin it? ;)
Seriously tho. To get from here to their, we're going to need some exotic techs...not just more 'attack of the killer micros'.
Please, don't get me wrong, I'm rather more in support of solar than I am coal, oil, or other fossil fuels. Very much so and I have consistantly said this irl and here.
However, iirc, something that is not said is that when you actually process this stuff to make solar panels, its not a clean process and does in fact produce nontrivial industrial waste. This is what I wanted to point out.
It would be a very interesting comparison to show from start of manufacture to end of life for any and all power sources and their industrial waste.
Renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, are emissions-free.
Not quite the whole story. Anyone looked at the industrial waste that making solar panels creates? IIRC, it's nontrivial.
Just a thought...
There's another problem with this though if you want to go strictly genetics for your classification, paleontology.
The vast majority of work done by paleontologists simply cannot use genetics. They are almost completely stuck using comparative physical characteristics. I'm sure that they'll get some things wrong, as far as relations, but like I said, they're mildly stuck.
If you can come up with a unified classification system that satisifies both the paleontology and the genetics crowds, then you might just have more than a few papers and a PhD thesis there...;)
Maybe you've not heard of them then...;)
No. The irony is that I'm sure somone snooped said cybersecurity's message that was tripping along his department's network...
...and THAT is why we heard about it...really. ;)
Genom, boomers, and the Silky Doll pop up now?
Happen to be a reference to this. I do not share its view of the situation, but, it's still friggin hilarious...
Moller seems to have sucked up all the investment funds ove rthe years for this...and not produced a whole lot. How many years has he been working on this? 30 years? How often have we heard..."Any time now..."
Since we're only allowed one question per post...
One of the things I have greatly admired about some of your works, and especially your info dumps (_N Space_ & _Playgrounds of the Mind_) is the raw creativity that comes through, especially in describing your sessions like at Contact where you pull out some really weird and fascinating ideas for aliens.
Have you ever considered, whether here on slashdot as a guest writer, or in your own web page (like what Jerry Pournelle does) or through UseNet (like Steve Stirling does), putting together an online presence/participation that would allow you to periodically spin out, with your fans, worlds and ideas?
Hey Larry,
I've been a fan since, well, I was knee high to a grasshopper. _The Mote In God's Eye_ was my first introduction to you, and JP, via my father when I was 11. Some of your earlier work has been amazing and fun, re _Ringworld_, _the Magic Goes Away_, etc. So please don't take this wrong.
I have been seeing something that has been, well, frankly, disturbing as of late in some of the books that have been coming out with you in colloration. While the first Renner and Bury chunk of _The Gripping Hand_ was quite good, the rest felt, uh, unworthy of the original. There were a lot of inconsistancies with the previous book. Ditto for _Beowulf's Children_ vs _Legacy of Heorot_.
What's the reason for this, if I may ask? Is this a side effect of just working up a sequel (already difficult) compounded with the added difficulty of working in collaboration? Or is that the collective you felt pressured into writing the books and just wanted to get them over with? Or was it due to the fact that they didn't get the scrutiny of previous works before going out the door (re Heinlein's famous critique of _The Mote in God's Eye_)?
You did note in one of your delightful mental dumps (_Playgrounds of the Mind or _N Space_, more please! Perhaps call it the _N Body Problem_? ;)) that inconsistancies do tend to pile up (re Known Space). However, in both the cases I'm noting above, it's just single stories and their sequels (discounting JP's shared _War World_ books for the moment...)
So is this the case of an overly zealous fan (re trek[ies/ers] ;))?
Thanx and have fun playing! The rest of us thoroughly enjoy it when you do!
Forgive me, but having grown up in Los Alamos, I could have told ya that. Sheesh. Kids in Los Alamos have been a pest for LANLites for years. The security isn't the best for many areas.
Additionally, a few years ago, a peace activitist walked into the lobby of the plutonium processing plant (iirc) to pray for peace. This was in a supposed Cross-This-Line-and-We-Shoot-to-Kill area. Funny that. He certainly didn't get riddled. Good thing he didn't carry, say, a whole lot of plastic explosives with the intent of being a suicide bomber, huh?
Finally, even during the Cold War, one of the guys that worked in a sensitive area wore a hat with a KGB symbol on it. He wore it walking in and out as a joke with his coworkers. They, the guards, never even inquired about it. While it was a joke, and the guards might have gotten in on it, a large part of what made it funny was that the guards never even batted an eye.
If you're a terrorist, make sure to order a pork meal...and don't eat it. Sheesh. Talk about a stupid parameter to search by.
*shakes head*
Just another reason I think this homeland security office is a joke...
...that the place for geeks to pick up chix was here. After all, a geek only needs photoshop to... upgrade... himself. ;)
This will remain controversial for scientists until one of two things happen.
1. There are other samples from the places that they claim the meteorite is from to compare to that are of the appropriate age.
or...
2. The current crop of scientists have passed on. There is a joke about the physics community that theory doesn't really advance until the last generation has died off...;)
I hope it's the former rather than the latter. That implies a more than a few expeditions or at least sample returns to the source of origin...which we all know what that is! ;)
Actually, there was a short story in Analog (I think) about 7 years ago about a woman that was facing that problem. Except it was not for her, but the baby she was carrying. She hadn't read the fine print on her employment contract and it stated that she had to have all children tested for defects when they were conceived. The company's owner had a daughter that some genetic disease that mentally damaged her and physically harmed her, hence hte clause.
At the time, I thought...'Wow, that'll never happen...'.
Now insert evil chuckle: heh heh heh....
Lord knows this is a little late for me to get moderated up, but this really needs to be said.
There is one way to keep manned space going. It's not difficult. it's not hard. It takes a whole of maybe twenty minutes to do and valueof($stamp + $paper + $envelope).
WRITE YOUR CONGRESS CRITTER.
Express your emphatic support for the continuance of manned space. Don't sit there and do the (hopefully false) stereotypical slashdot geek wank-and-do-nothing-routine. Don't email, that more often than not gets bit-bucketed. Old fashioned snal mail is what gets their attention PDQ.
This is assuming, of course, you're an American. If not, send a note to our embassy of sympathy and support...and bug your own $govvies to get your own manned space program rolling.
It's only by speaking up that you get paid attention to. It's only by voicing in the proper circles that things get changed. Not on the couch with a beer in hand grumbling to friends over this or that while watching $game. Not by sitting in front of a computer and posting to slashdot either...