If you want to hero worship Rutan, have at it. I'm waiting for the private sector to put 100 tons or so in LEO, put people on it, and support them for a few years, all the while making a profit.
You're absolutely right, of course. But, a great many people seem to fixate on wings on space vehicles. If you never touch atmosphere, you don't need wings. We need to get used to the idea that a space vehicle is something that stays in space and that the vehicles that take people to and from it (these days, to and from LEO), are ferries. If we could figure out a better way to slow down than slamming into the atmosphere, we could dispense with heat shields on things like the CEV, too.
The reusable vehicle concept they've been "toying" with is the Shuttle. You may have noticed it has issues. The only advantage of reuse is cost savings. Shuttle has demonstrated that those cost savings are not there. As for Rutan, his techniques, edpecially his reentry technique, only work for a vehicle coming back at the very slow speed of 3000 mph. It won't work from orbit. (His Spaceship One is incapable of reaching orbit, but, if it had, it would have burned to a cinder on reentry.) If Rutan sends a vehicle into orbit, it will have a big slab of a heat shield, too.
>>...NASA, in a completely predictable move, sent the shuttle up unprepared and now we are watching in horror as the astronauts forego any attempt at the scientific experiments they went up for, instead fighting for their lives with a stick of velcro and some prayers from the world.
That statement is fundamentally wrong and verges on the hysterical, probably deliberately so.
There's been no reduction of Discovery's mission (which is not a scientific mission in the first place). The crew are not "fighting for the lives" and only the misinformed and misled think their situation merits prayer.
As for Rutan, he hasn't demonstrated the ability to do anything but use tiny airpland to coast to 60 miles at 3000 mph. Why should taxpayers pay him to send 7 people into LEO at 18000 mph when he lack that capability. Let him build it first.
As for Carmack, well, surely you are making a joke. He hasn't gotten anthing more than a few feet off the ground.
Unless you want to wave an "I Don't Know hat I'm Talking About" flag in public, maybe you ought to clam up until you learn a bit more.
Rutan's initial effort didn't need to deal with reentry at orbital speeds and didn't prove much of anything. His Spaceship One design won't work to and from LEO. For that, he'll need a heat shield like everyone else.
The story demonstrates a lot of ignorance about technology. By looking at a few images, the writer leaps to the bogus conclusion that NASA is planning a remix of 1960's and 1970's engineering. All this only because the CEV will have a conical shape and sit at the top of the launch vehicle.
This is more than a bit like criticizing F-117 Stealth aircraft as a mix of 1920's and 1940's tech: Look at any picture of planes in the '20's and you'll see wings and the jet engine was flying in the '40's. So, since the Stealth has wings and a jet engine, it must be engineering that picked up the decades ago. Right?
Look: Rockets will propel our launch vehicles for the forseeable future. You have only 2 places to attach a payload to a rocket: the top and the side. As Shuttles compromised design shows, putting the payload on the side puts it at risk from anything that falls off (and something always will); it also introduces uniue engineering problems; putting the payload at the top of the vehicle eliminates the threat from debris and, also, allows the use of crew escape devices, something essentially impossible in the current Shuttle.
The fact that the CEV shares a concical shape with Apollo is irrelevant. That's the logical shape for a vehicle reentering the atmosphere at 25,000 mph or more. Wings are totally useless (Shuttle's wings don't -- can't -- work until after reentry.) The reason you put wings on something is when you want to fly somewhere in an atmosphere. The CEV is a space vehicle- it won't be doing any flying.
The crew compartment of the CEV -- the conical piece with the heat shield -- is a crew ferry intended to take people to and from LEO. it's time to start thinking of it as just that.
The reporting on these "leaked" CEV and VSE architecture plans has been dismal, wallowing in mistakes and lack of expertise. Slashdot, not surprisingly, is shouting "Me, too!"
First, the Inquirer credits the Jo'burg Sunday Telegraph. But, if they'd read all the way to the end of the piece, they'd have noticed it was a "SAPA-AP" story. That means the Telegraph bought the sotry from the South African Press Association, who in turn got it from Associated Press. Since, however, the Inquirer has no standing as a reputable news journal, there's no reason to assume anyone on their staff would have half a clue.
Second, the whining that these researchers deliberately withheld their data from the public is inexcusable. It was preliminary unconfirmed data that belonged to the researchers, not the public. The public has no more right to see it than they do to see my checkbook.
Like Slashdot, the Inquirer is in the business of making money by playing to the juvenile emotions of people who believe everything belongs to everybody.
No one's arguing that the decison to trust someone belongs to you. But, that's just reality. Defendng realilty is rather pointless.
In any case, you seem to have a view of the world that I'd characterize as akin to paranoia. Since you carry your own misery with you, I doubt a new job would change anything.
Who you trust is up to you. You trust who you decide to trust. Stating that you don't know who to trust is an admission that you lack confidence in your own ability to assess character.
In any case, i don't think this is a matter of trust. As an employee, you'd have an obligation to tell me you'd discovered an attack on our network. (An anonymous note would not provide any anonoymity. As soon as I read it, I'd walk over and ask my network techs what they knew about it. If they all claimed ignorance, then we'd move on to that problem.)
If you're in an environment where you don't trust your bosses or your colleagues then, obviously, you might want to consider working elsewhere or, even, a different line of work. It isn't worth it. As someone who lived and worked in both worlds, I can tell you, first, that there are as many crooked techs as crooked managers; that a lot of techs are naive and inexperienced about people, most likely because they're still young and because their profession encourages them to believe there is always one correct way to get things done, a precept that does not apply to human relations; and, three, that I'd no more believe many posts here than I would claims made at a bar at 2:00 a.m.
My perspective is that of someone, in a past life, who hired network techs.
If this happened in my organization, I would expect three things from my network people:
1) Follow and stay within established policy; I would expect you to do what is needed to protect the security of the network short of attacking the presumed culprit. If it came to that, bring the network down. Attacking the apparent culprit puts my business at legal risk and you do not get to make that call.
2) Notify me (management) as soon as possible. Give me all the facts and answer my questions. Lay out my technical options objectively. Explain to me why our network was vulnerable and how we can remedy that. Don't try to spin me so I under or over react. It is my network and you work for me; I won't take kindly to attempts to manipulate me.
>> Why to (sic) producers of alcohol, cars, knives or hammers get off in your list? Are they somehow morally superior?
Because I'm talking about two specific videogame companies. If, say, Coke marketed a soft drink with a "hidden" alcohol content then the analogy would be clear. The question of moral superiority is irrelevant and I really don't care about it. I'm talking about legal culpability. The law is the law, but morality depends on who you're talking to.
>> If I get a prescription for opiate based painkillers and I abuse them, how is the manufacturer or pharmacy responsible for my actions?
If the drug company sold something with opiates but lied about the ingredients of that drug then of course they'd be liable. That's directly analagous to what happened here.
>> I cant understand how you people go all "It's not parents fault they cant spend 1 second in a lifetime raising the fruit of their loins"...
One second isn't quite enough to keep kids away from something their parents don't want them to be associated with. Remember, kids only have the rights given them by their parents, because the definition of a minor means someone who is too young to be responsible for themselves. So if a parent bans GTA in the house, but the kids play it at the neighbors, the parent's actions aren't working and can't work, short of keeping the kid away from the neighbors (which is what I'd do). If they don't want kids playing videogames, taking on the videogame company is a perfectly logical approach, whether you agree with that or not.
>>Do you know how stupid it sounds?
Not as stupid as someone who tries to defend the makers of this product. Anyone who believes that an "M" rating keeps kids away from GTA probably believes an "R" rating keeps kids out of theaters.
1. Responsible parents do what is necessary to raise their kids properly, including pressuring, lobbying and demanding that videogame makers and marketers live up to whatever they -- the parents -- decide is the gamesters' responsibility.
2. What are game makers and sellers supposed to do? They're supposed to acknowledge their responsiblity for making and distributing products that many parents don't want their children anywhere near. The liquor industry manages this reasonably well.
3. You're confusing proof of a cause-and-effect relationship with responsibility. If parents don't want their kids playing certain games, they do not need to show any cause-and-effecct link. Nor does it make any sense to argue that those who make something are not responsible for that product's exisence.
Parents know that they can talk for hours and days to their kids and be ignored. The fact that kids will go against their parents' wishes to behave irresponsibly is not earthshaking news. Arguments, such as your's, that any time a child plays an inappropriate game is is, by definition, a mark of parental failure is itself indicative of a childish point of view.
Parents know, or ar least ought to know, that children lack the maturity to act responsibly. That's why we call them "children". Children don't have the right to do anything they wish. A parent's responsibility to keep their children away from any behavior they consider inappropriate does not end at the front door. That includes telling game companies to stop shirking their own responsiblities.
Please try very hard to understand. You'll notice that I did not directly compare games with heroin, tobacco or assualt weapons. I compared the responsibility that makers and marketers of all four products must have.
If you wish to add movies to that list, fine. It doesn't seem at all silly that anyone who makes or markets any product has a share of the responsiblity for that product's use.
Most of the posts here, presumably, will be of the "blame the parents" variety, many, I suspect, from children themselves.
But, such attempts to exonerate game makers for playing to the purient interests of children. Sure, responsible parents ought to ensure that their kids don't buy or play any game they think is inappropriate. But, frankly, parents cannot accompany their kids on every trip to the mall and they certainly cannot stop their kids from playing any game they choose at a friend's home.
The people who make and market games have as much responsibiility for the impact of their products as do the people who make and market heroin, tobacco, or assault weapons.
There's little or no code production going on in most distributions, so their consolidation would accomplish very little.
With a relatively few exceptions, Linux distributions are packaging efforts, making no contributions, original or otherwise, to the software they contain. Of those that do actually modify the software they've collected, most seem to be content with tweaking a theme or two. (The major exceptions, of course, are folks like Red Hat/Fedora, SUSE, Debian/Ubuntu.)
So, in that regard, consolidating the efforts of most distributions would result in more tweaked themes and very little actual new code. Not much benefit there.
A managed consolidation of developer talent is a different kind of thing. For example, identifying and putting the best human interface developers at work on the design of the Linux desktop mightt reap some benefits. Collecting and focusing talent is easier in the proprietary world than it is in the open source world, where developers self-identify their interests and work on whatever interests them, whether or not their skills might be better applied elsewhere.
Besides walking around telling people they aren't afraid, what particular ideas for ending terror and terrorists has this batch of Slashdot brats suggested? All I've seen is whining that scanners are too expensive and a lot of nonsense about not being afraid. How is that supposed to end terror and eliminate terrorists? The assumption that someone won't kill because you're pretending to be unafraid is laughable. They don't care. They just want us dead.
Well, I'm talking about ending terror and terrorists, no matter how much you stomp your feet. If you want to talk about something else, go someplace else.
Slashdot Mirror
If you want to hero worship Rutan, have at it. I'm waiting for the private sector to put 100 tons or so in LEO, put people on it, and support them for a few years, all the while making a profit.
You're absolutely right, of course. But, a great many people seem to fixate on wings on space vehicles. If you never touch atmosphere, you don't need wings. We need to get used to the idea that a space vehicle is something that stays in space and that the vehicles that take people to and from it (these days, to and from LEO), are ferries. If we could figure out a better way to slow down than slamming into the atmosphere, we could dispense with heat shields on things like the CEV, too.
Wrong. The Shuttle isn't cost-efficient because it is not reusable. It is rebuildable.
The Suttle-derived cargo vehicle has a lift capacity in the same ballpark as the Saturn 5, so that's a very good thing.
The reusable vehicle concept they've been "toying" with is the Shuttle. You may have noticed it has issues. The only advantage of reuse is cost savings. Shuttle has demonstrated that those cost savings are not there. As for Rutan, his techniques, edpecially his reentry technique, only work for a vehicle coming back at the very slow speed of 3000 mph. It won't work from orbit. (His Spaceship One is incapable of reaching orbit, but, if it had, it would have burned to a cinder on reentry.) If Rutan sends a vehicle into orbit, it will have a big slab of a heat shield, too.
>>...NASA, in a completely predictable move, sent the shuttle up unprepared and now we are watching in horror as the astronauts forego any attempt at the scientific experiments they went up for, instead fighting for their lives with a stick of velcro and some prayers from the world.
That statement is fundamentally wrong and verges on the hysterical, probably deliberately so.
There's been no reduction of Discovery's mission (which is not a scientific mission in the first place). The crew are not "fighting for the lives" and only the misinformed and misled think their situation merits prayer.
As for Rutan, he hasn't demonstrated the ability to do anything but use tiny airpland to coast to 60 miles at 3000 mph. Why should taxpayers pay him to send 7 people into LEO at 18000 mph when he lack that capability. Let him build it first.
As for Carmack, well, surely you are making a joke. He hasn't gotten anthing more than a few feet off the ground.
Unless you want to wave an "I Don't Know hat I'm Talking About" flag in public, maybe you ought to clam up until you learn a bit more.
Rutan's initial effort didn't need to deal with reentry at orbital speeds and didn't prove much of anything. His Spaceship One design won't work to and from LEO. For that, he'll need a heat shield like everyone else.
>> ...continuing the rocket program seems logical.
What other program did you have in mind?
The story demonstrates a lot of ignorance about technology. By looking at a few images, the writer leaps to the bogus conclusion that NASA is planning a remix of 1960's and 1970's engineering. All this only because the CEV will have a conical shape and sit at the top of the launch vehicle.
This is more than a bit like criticizing F-117 Stealth aircraft as a mix of 1920's and 1940's tech: Look at any picture of planes in the '20's and you'll see wings and the jet engine was flying in the '40's. So, since the Stealth has wings and a jet engine, it must be engineering that picked up the decades ago. Right?
Look: Rockets will propel our launch vehicles for the forseeable future. You have only 2 places to attach a payload to a rocket: the top and the side. As Shuttles compromised design shows, putting the payload on the side puts it at risk from anything that falls off (and something always will); it also introduces uniue engineering problems; putting the payload at the top of the vehicle eliminates the threat from debris and, also, allows the use of crew escape devices, something essentially impossible in the current Shuttle.
The fact that the CEV shares a concical shape with Apollo is irrelevant. That's the logical shape for a vehicle reentering the atmosphere at 25,000 mph or more. Wings are totally useless (Shuttle's wings don't -- can't -- work until after reentry.) The reason you put wings on something is when you want to fly somewhere in an atmosphere. The CEV is a space vehicle- it won't be doing any flying.
The crew compartment of the CEV -- the conical piece with the heat shield -- is a crew ferry intended to take people to and from LEO. it's time to start thinking of it as just that.
The reporting on these "leaked" CEV and VSE architecture plans has been dismal, wallowing in mistakes and lack of expertise. Slashdot, not surprisingly, is shouting "Me, too!"
They new vehicles derived from Shuttle components. See an Orbiter or anything else in those pictures?
Geez, are five-year olds in charge of this place? At Slashdot, ignorance wants to be free.
Let's see what's wrong here:
First, the Inquirer credits the Jo'burg Sunday Telegraph. But, if they'd read all the way to the end of the piece, they'd have noticed it was a "SAPA-AP" story. That means the Telegraph bought the sotry from the South African Press Association, who in turn got it from Associated Press. Since, however, the Inquirer has no standing as a reputable news journal, there's no reason to assume anyone on their staff would have half a clue.
Second, the whining that these researchers deliberately withheld their data from the public is inexcusable. It was preliminary unconfirmed data that belonged to the researchers, not the public. The public has no more right to see it than they do to see my checkbook.
Like Slashdot, the Inquirer is in the business of making money by playing to the juvenile emotions of people who believe everything belongs to everybody.
No one's arguing that the decison to trust someone belongs to you. But, that's just reality. Defendng realilty is rather pointless.
In any case, you seem to have a view of the world that I'd characterize as akin to paranoia. Since you carry your own misery with you, I doubt a new job would change anything.
Who you trust is up to you. You trust who you decide to trust. Stating that you don't know who to trust is an admission that you lack confidence in your own ability to assess character.
In any case, i don't think this is a matter of trust. As an employee, you'd have an obligation to tell me you'd discovered an attack on our network. (An anonymous note would not provide any anonoymity. As soon as I read it, I'd walk over and ask my network techs what they knew about it. If they all claimed ignorance, then we'd move on to that problem.)
If you're in an environment where you don't trust your bosses or your colleagues then, obviously, you might want to consider working elsewhere or, even, a different line of work. It isn't worth it. As someone who lived and worked in both worlds, I can tell you, first, that there are as many crooked techs as crooked managers; that a lot of techs are naive and inexperienced about people, most likely because they're still young and because their profession encourages them to believe there is always one correct way to get things done, a precept that does not apply to human relations; and, three, that I'd no more believe many posts here than I would claims made at a bar at 2:00 a.m.
My perspective is that of someone, in a past life, who hired network techs.
If this happened in my organization, I would expect three things from my network people:
1) Follow and stay within established policy; I would expect you to do what is needed to protect the security of the network short of attacking the presumed culprit. If it came to that, bring the network down. Attacking the apparent culprit puts my business at legal risk and you do not get to make that call.
2) Notify me (management) as soon as possible. Give me all the facts and answer my questions. Lay out my technical options objectively. Explain to me why our network was vulnerable and how we can remedy that. Don't try to spin me so I under or over react. It is my network and you work for me; I won't take kindly to attempts to manipulate me.
3) Then, follow my instructions.
>> Why to (sic) producers of alcohol, cars, knives or hammers get off in your list? Are they somehow morally superior?
...
Because I'm talking about two specific videogame companies. If, say, Coke marketed a soft drink with a "hidden" alcohol content then the analogy would be clear. The question of moral superiority is irrelevant and I really don't care about it. I'm talking about legal culpability. The law is the law, but morality depends on who you're talking to.
>> If I get a prescription for opiate based painkillers and I abuse them, how is the manufacturer or pharmacy responsible for my actions?
If the drug company sold something with opiates but lied about the ingredients of that drug then of course they'd be liable. That's directly analagous to what happened here.
>> I cant understand how you people go all "It's not parents fault they cant spend 1 second in a lifetime raising the fruit of their loins"
One second isn't quite enough to keep kids away from something their parents don't want them to be associated with. Remember, kids only have the rights given them by their parents, because the definition of a minor means someone who is too young to be responsible for themselves. So if a parent bans GTA in the house, but the kids play it at the neighbors, the parent's actions aren't working and can't work, short of keeping the kid away from the neighbors (which is what I'd do). If they don't want kids playing videogames, taking on the videogame company is a perfectly logical approach, whether you agree with that or not.
>>Do you know how stupid it sounds?
Not as stupid as someone who tries to defend the makers of this product. Anyone who believes that an "M" rating keeps kids away from GTA probably believes an "R" rating keeps kids out of theaters.
1. Responsible parents do what is necessary to raise their kids properly, including pressuring, lobbying and demanding that videogame makers and marketers live up to whatever they -- the parents -- decide is the gamesters' responsibility.
2. What are game makers and sellers supposed to do? They're supposed to acknowledge their responsiblity for making and distributing products that many parents don't want their children anywhere near. The liquor industry manages this reasonably well.
3. You're confusing proof of a cause-and-effect relationship with responsibility. If parents don't want their kids playing certain games, they do not need to show any cause-and-effecct link. Nor does it make any sense to argue that those who make something are not responsible for that product's exisence.
Parents know that they can talk for hours and days to their kids and be ignored. The fact that kids will go against their parents' wishes to behave irresponsibly is not earthshaking news. Arguments, such as your's, that any time a child plays an inappropriate game is is, by definition, a mark of parental failure is itself indicative of a childish point of view.
Parents know, or ar least ought to know, that children lack the maturity to act responsibly. That's why we call them "children". Children don't have the right to do anything they wish. A parent's responsibility to keep their children away from any behavior they consider inappropriate does not end at the front door. That includes telling game companies to stop shirking their own responsiblities.
No, the post did not say videogames are the same as "2 addictive substances". Now, exercise what little reading skills you have and try again.
Please try very hard to understand. You'll notice that I did not directly compare games with heroin, tobacco or assualt weapons. I compared the responsibility that makers and marketers of all four products must have.
If you wish to add movies to that list, fine. It doesn't seem at all silly that anyone who makes or markets any product has a share of the responsiblity for that product's use.
Most of the posts here, presumably, will be of the "blame the parents" variety, many, I suspect, from children themselves.
But, such attempts to exonerate game makers for playing to the purient interests of children. Sure, responsible parents ought to ensure that their kids don't buy or play any game they think is inappropriate. But, frankly, parents cannot accompany their kids on every trip to the mall and they certainly cannot stop their kids from playing any game they choose at a friend's home.
The people who make and market games have as much responsibiility for the impact of their products as do the people who make and market heroin, tobacco, or assault weapons.
There's little or no code production going on in most distributions, so their consolidation would accomplish very little.
With a relatively few exceptions, Linux distributions are packaging efforts, making no contributions, original or otherwise, to the software they contain. Of those that do actually modify the software they've collected, most seem to be content with tweaking a theme or two. (The major exceptions, of course, are folks like Red Hat/Fedora, SUSE, Debian/Ubuntu.)
So, in that regard, consolidating the efforts of most distributions would result in more tweaked themes and very little actual new code. Not much benefit there.
A managed consolidation of developer talent is a different kind of thing. For example, identifying and putting the best human interface developers at work on the design of the Linux desktop mightt reap some benefits. Collecting and focusing talent is easier in the proprietary world than it is in the open source world, where developers self-identify their interests and work on whatever interests them, whether or not their skills might be better applied elsewhere.
Why watch a go-kart?
Besides, it takes off hanging onto an airplane. Yawn.
Besides walking around telling people they aren't afraid, what particular ideas for ending terror and terrorists has this batch of Slashdot brats suggested? All I've seen is whining that scanners are too expensive and a lot of nonsense about not being afraid. How is that supposed to end terror and eliminate terrorists? The assumption that someone won't kill because you're pretending to be unafraid is laughable. They don't care. They just want us dead.
Well, I'm talking about ending terror and terrorists, no matter how much you stomp your feet. If you want to talk about something else, go someplace else.
So, the best way to kill terrorists before they kill us is to pretend they don't exist?