One of the most important recommendations the report made, and which is provoking little comment, is that NASA needs to separate the shuttle's operational managment from the shuttle's safety management.
That is, the people who decide "This machine can/can't fly even if we do/don't fix that widget" ought not to be the same people who are responsible for flying the thing. This especially applies to approving safety waivers.
The model to follow is that of the U.S. military. Operations is in one command, R&D is in another, and the people who say a plane is safe to fly are not the people who get paid to fly it.
It passes through the atmosphere. It's wings provide no lift during that portion of flight, only more weight to drag to orbit.
The wings only come into play during the final stages of re-entry, when the atmosphere is dense enough to allow the wings to generate lift.
The wings are there because NASA believed, 30 years ago, that they would make the Shuttle reusable and, hence, cheap. Instead, we've learned that the Shuttle needs to be rebuilt between flights, and that the wings provide a high degree of risk during re-entry.
Rather than fixate on putting wings on space craft, why don't we spend some time figuring out how to make cheaper expendable boosters? The Russians use a 40-year old booster to put people in orbit, and they can do it a lot cheaper than we can.
>> The Shuttle "can also carry a lot more payload than the saturn generation hardware."
Wrong. The Saturn 5 could carry a lot more to LEO than the Shuttle. The Shuttle, in fact, can carry only marginally more than something like the Titan-4.
And, the transition from steam to diesel locomotives made a lot more sense than ging from Saturn to Shuttle. If the Saturn's were steam-driven, then the Shuttle is a steam-driven train with wings.
The notion that the Shuttle is a technological breakthrough is bogus. Even if it is, none of that is needed to get people and cargo to LEO. It is inappropriate technology for the purpose.
Remember, no railroads dropped steam for diesel until it made economic sense. I can't say that for the Shuttle.
>>...the only way to challenge it in court is to actually violate it and get sued.
Not necessarily. Odds are Dell, or any other company, isn't going to sue you unless your EULA violation is costing them more than what it would cost them to bring suit.
You, however, can bring suit against the company. There's no need to violate their EULA and then sit around waiting to be caught.
Auto repair shops often post signs telling customers to stay out of the work area, adding that they aren't responsible for accidents. Nice words, but no excuse for the shop's negligence. If you walk through the door to the shop and someone drops an engine block on your head, that little sign isn't going to give the shop much cover from your suit.
Apples and oranges. The shuttle's only job is to carry hardware and people to and from LEO. We don't need the Shuttle to do that; it adds nothing new to the mix except cost, complexity and risk.
The point is that the only way to determine if a EULA is legally enforceable is to challenge it in court. Jut because someone puts a bunch of words on paper and tells you that those words legally bind you doesn't necessarily make it so.
Hickam is on track, but I'm not sure we need spacecraft with wings. Wings are only useful on airplanes. By definition, spacecraft are not airplanes. NASA has thrown away too much money pursuing winged spacecraft for their own sake, rather than dealing with the issue of getting people to and from space. They might as well try to make a submarine that can fly. Probably do-able, but: why?
Let's decide that we will do two things:
1) Any human space travel beyond LEO will start from LEO in spacecraft built in LEO and that return to LEO. If we do that, we will never need to spend money trying to build airplane-spacecraft hybrids.
2) Let's use big expendable boosters to get hardware to LEO, and smaller expendable boosters to get people to LEO. Put the people in modern versions of the Apollo or Gemini craft (the so-called "Big" Gemini was an appropos solution)>
And, let's also decide that the main reason to build a space station in LEO is to serve as a construction yard and a gas station for trips elsewhere. Let's put aside the quaint notion that the reason we need to be in space is to "do science".
What's really the root of the problem is that no one has provided any political leadership for the American spce program for 30 years -- since Nixon took office, in other words.
If Nixon had provided the right kind of leadership -- pointing to a destination and declaring "Go There!" -- we would have built a spacecraft and the supporting infrastructure to get the job done.
Instead, the nation's political leadership turned to the NASA bureaucracy and asked "Well, what next?" NASA, unsurprisingly, asked for a lot, didn't get it, and consequently saddled itself with the sorry combination of a lame spacecraft design and nowhere for that craft to go except low-Earth orbit.
It was, however, a guarantee that NASA's budget wouldn't flatline.
Folks, the problem of getting people into and out of LEO was solved satisfactorily in the 1960's. So was the problem of getting tons of hardware to LEO. We did not -- and do not -- need the Shuttle to get either people or hardware to orbit safely, reliably, and cheaply.
The fact that the U.S., 40 years later, can't get people or hardware to LEO is a testament to the failure of both NASA and every president after Kennedy to have a clue about where to go next.
Think what we might have accomplished if we'd never built the Shuttle, but, instead, put the money into building more Saturns and more Apollos, more Titans and more Geminis, and expanded SkyLab rather than scuttling it.
Well, yeah, I read the piece. Seemed to me that he was more interested in thumping his chest at Dell than behaving like an adult.
Of course it is ridiculous to try to force users to agree to something that isn't there. But a lot of people would rather whine about it on/. than go to court to make the point.
This seems like a silly and futile argument to have with your boss.Let's remember which way the money is flowing here. Geez, it's not like it's her personal web site, right?
More to the point, you don't have to be "elderly" to have vision problems. (In fact, I'd say her boss was engaging in a bit of ageism.) Very few people have both perfect vision as well as the kind of hardware many designers use. If it looks great on your 21-inch Apple flatscreen, why not try looking at it using a cheap 15-inch monitor and an e-machine?
Agree. People like to beat on this EULA business because it is a chance to take a cheap shot at some Big Evil Corporation that we're all supposed to loathe.
A bit of thought should indicate that any agreement or license that says, in effect, read and agree to my terms before using this product but can't be read without making use of the product is going to be difficult to enforce.
What'd he expect the Dell license to say that was different from all the other licenses in the industry? If you wanna be that anal about it, call Dell and tell them you are putting the credit card payment on hold until Dell FedEx's you hardcopy of all those licenses.
Remember, your in the 'service' industry now, not the IT industry. (Do you think that kid selling you a cheeseburger is in the 'culinary' business?) Your real job is to keep your customers from whining at management. The last thing you want is your customers complaining that you've made them unahppy.
Your job is to keep the customers happy and off the backs of management. That's not exactly the same thing as catching up on all those lingering IT issues. In all likelihood, your customers won't notice any of that, but they'll still be ticked off because you haven't responded to their request to fix their own little annoyance.
If a customer's request can't be handled without dealing with a larger IT issue, explain that to your customer. If there's a workaround, use it. If not, move on. If the fix requires more money, let the customer do the asking. After all, if they can't do their job because management won't spend money, it's their problem. If it turns out that they're asking you for something that's not job related, your boss ought to be happy you said 'no'.
Never, ever, tell a customer 'no' and walk away without providing an explanation. It's part of your job to explain things in a way that non-techies can understand, but, even id they don't, you've protected yourslef from being labelled 'arbitrary' and 'rude'.
>>...academic computing has traditionally been both the source of and the stronghold for innovative software.
Is this true? "A" source, and "a" stronghold" maybem but "the" source and stronghold of innovation? I wonder...
Sure, lots of college geeks have played around with Unix, and written some useful programs. But, Unix itself was developed by a corporation. And, didn't IBM invent the hard drive (the Winchester)? And, what was all that noise about Xerox and interfaces? The mouse, too.
Let's not get carried away about academia's contributions.
I think you're confusing a person's intelligence with what that person knows.
People choose what they learn, but they are born with a level of intelligence that they cannot change. To use your example, somone doesn't run Windows ME in a life support unit because they know that's the wrong option, not because their intelligence level is higher, or lower, than others.
Yes, intelligence influences what people learn. Some things are more difficult to understand than other things. (Otherwise, no one would remember Hawking, Einstein, Newton, etc.)
But, no, choice of an OS isn't an indicator of intelligence. Knowledge, yes, if someone bothers to learn what they want from an OS and what each OS offers.
Remember, too, that each personal computer OS is pretty much the same as the others. They all have to run on the same hardware, display on the same kind of screens, open the same kind of files, etc. At the interface level, there's hardly any real difference between X, the Mac, Windows: The user clicks on something, and something happens.
After you've read about the commission's report, read this piece by former astronaut Walter Cunningham.
In addition to Cunningham's perspective on the failings of NASA managers and personnel ("Former NASA Administrator Dan Goldin's decade of "faster, better, cheaper" in the 1990s was not better -- it was less safe and delivered only on the cheaper part. Focus switched to avoiding individual blame or responsibility, and risk avoidance became part of the management culture, even as operations became more risky.)"you'll learn some things you need to know:
--NASA funding is 20 percent of 1965 levels; --The shuttle's piece of that budget is down by 25 percent in the last decade; --Spending on research and personnel at NASA's safety office was cut by almost one-half;
Cunningham says: "You can't continue to make draconian cuts in spending and have acceptable mission safety. What you get, instead, is a shuttle flying into a barrage of foam it was designed to avoid at all costs and not recognizing it as a flight safety problem."
Hah! A sensible post. NASA has cultural, management and budget problems. But the nation has a serious space leadership problem. I.e., there hasn't been any for 3 decades. Without setting a specific national goal, any changes at NASA, and budget increases, will simply be soaked up pointlessly in more Shuttle flights.
>> learned how to use a computer without anybody spoon feeding me instructions, intelligence can make all the difference for learning a specific computer system.
Well, good for you. But you've simply proven you are intelligent enough to figure out how to use a Mac without supplementary study. That, I believe, is Apple's intention. So, you would appear to be an exemplary Apple customer.
I contend that all personal computers should be equally as easy to use.
What you have not proven -- because it can't be proven -- is the notion that choice of an operating system is an indicator of intelligence. This little bit of elitist nonsense appears with regularity around here, usually in posts from Linux fanatics who have invested a portion of their emotional identity in the OS. learned how to use a computer without anybody spoon feeding me instructions, intelligence can make all the difference for learning a specific computer system.
You're both equating intelligence with knowledge of a specific computer system. That's completely bogus and more than a little techno-elitist. It's a bit like arguing that backyard mechanics are more intelligent than Linux geeks because they fix their own cars.
What someone does or does not know is not a sign of intelligence. It is simply a sign of what they know.
One would expect Linux users to be more system savvy than Windows or Mac users because a Linux distribution typically takes some study to configure and to put on the Net.
If/when Linux becomes a significant part of the shrinkwrapped desktop market, the need for self-study to make it usable will diminish (otherwise no one but geeks will use it).
>> Pointless spreading to new places has been the very nature of humans since the beginning. It is also the nature of virus. (Can't help it but Matrix hit it right on the nail)
Haven't seen the Matrix films, but your comparison of humans to a spreading virus is both demeaning and morally unacceptable. Humans are the pinnacle of life on this planet, while a virus is one of the simplest, if not the lowest, entity that can be considered "living".
The migration of humans to new lands has not been pointless. The migration has allowed us to grow, expand, and prosper. Would you rather our ancestors engaged infanticide and genocide in order to keep their numbers small enough to survive inside their ancestral home?
Only a belief that a human and a virus are driven by equivalent desires can be behind bankrupt statements such as yours that seek to reduce the nature of the highest form of life on Earth to that of a molecular-sized infestation.
Stop being ashamed to be human. Stop pretending humans are just another animal with a larger brain. Accept the responsibility of being human and the possibilities of our abilities.
Humans belong in space as much as they do anywhere on this planet. We didn't spring into existence across Earth. We evolved in only one small place and then explored and discovered and conquered our way around the globe. We have the technology to continue that migration off the planet. We will do exactly that, because those voyages are no different than the voyages my ancestors took when they left one continent and sailed for months -- in a different kind of ship -- to another continent to start a new kind of life.
Staying at home until life is perfect is a futile utopian fantasy that only diverts resources away from beneficial pursuits. If anything, history provides ample evidence that it is the new societies created by the explorers and the settlers that provide the impetus for the liberation of the old regimes, not theo ther way around. (That's why I think of the New World as the home of freedom and democracy and populations who challenge authority, and the Old World as the home of monarchies, dictatorships, totalitarianism, established religion, and populations who feel obligated to obey authority.)
Fifty years on, it isn't surprising that several countries have demonstrated the will to build the technology to launch small unmanned satellites into low-Earth orbit.
In other words, that's comparable to building an airplane in 1953. No reason to get excited.
Launching small satellites is for the minor leagues, though. Supporting human space travel -- the real reason to use this technology -- is the mark of a major league player.
In both cases, though, it is lack of will and resolve that prevent us from making more effective use of existing technology.
My initial reaction to this was one of dislike, but it strikes me that this is equivalent to the phone company tracking people who tap into a line, or a cable TV company tracking cable thieves.
Why are we offended when a company includes in a product the means to report its own theft? Aren't there programs that attempt to alert the owner of a laptop when a thief tries to use the machine?
The Internet is a public place. If you don't want anyone to watch what you do on the net, log off.
Slashdot Mirror
One of the most important recommendations the report made, and which is provoking little comment, is that NASA needs to separate the shuttle's operational managment from the shuttle's safety management.
That is, the people who decide "This machine can/can't fly even if we do/don't fix that widget" ought not to be the same people who are responsible for flying the thing. This especially applies to approving safety waivers.
The model to follow is that of the U.S. military. Operations is in one command, R&D is in another, and the people who say a plane is safe to fly are not the people who get paid to fly it.
It passes through the atmosphere. It's wings provide no lift during that portion of flight, only more weight to drag to orbit.
The wings only come into play during the final stages of re-entry, when the atmosphere is dense enough to allow the wings to generate lift.
The wings are there because NASA believed, 30 years ago, that they would make the Shuttle reusable and, hence, cheap. Instead, we've learned that the Shuttle needs to be rebuilt between flights, and that the wings provide a high degree of risk during re-entry.
Rather than fixate on putting wings on space craft, why don't we spend some time figuring out how to make cheaper expendable boosters? The Russians use a 40-year old booster to put people in orbit, and they can do it a lot cheaper than we can.
>> The Shuttle "can also carry a lot more payload than the saturn generation hardware."
Wrong. The Saturn 5 could carry a lot more to LEO than the Shuttle. The Shuttle, in fact, can carry only marginally more than something like the Titan-4.
And, the transition from steam to diesel locomotives made a lot more sense than ging from Saturn to Shuttle. If the Saturn's were steam-driven, then the Shuttle is a steam-driven train with wings.
The notion that the Shuttle is a technological breakthrough is bogus. Even if it is, none of that is needed to get people and cargo to LEO. It is inappropriate technology for the purpose.
Remember, no railroads dropped steam for diesel until it made economic sense. I can't say that for the Shuttle.
Skylab was a working space station that gave us more bang for the buck than anything IIS will ever provide.
>> ...the only way to challenge it in court is to actually violate it and get sued.
Not necessarily. Odds are Dell, or any other company, isn't going to sue you unless your EULA violation is costing them more than what it would cost them to bring suit.
You, however, can bring suit against the company. There's no need to violate their EULA and then sit around waiting to be caught.
Auto repair shops often post signs telling customers to stay out of the work area, adding that they aren't responsible for accidents. Nice words, but no excuse for the shop's negligence. If you walk through the door to the shop and someone drops an engine block on your head, that little sign isn't going to give the shop much cover from your suit.
Apples and oranges. The shuttle's only job is to carry hardware and people to and from LEO. We don't need the Shuttle to do that; it adds nothing new to the mix except cost, complexity and risk.
The point is that the only way to determine if a EULA is legally enforceable is to challenge it in court. Jut because someone puts a bunch of words on paper and tells you that those words legally bind you doesn't necessarily make it so.
Hickam is on track, but I'm not sure we need spacecraft with wings. Wings are only useful on airplanes. By definition, spacecraft are not airplanes. NASA has thrown away too much money pursuing winged spacecraft for their own sake, rather than dealing with the issue of getting people to and from space. They might as well try to make a submarine that can fly. Probably do-able, but: why?
Let's decide that we will do two things:
1) Any human space travel beyond LEO will start from LEO in spacecraft built in LEO and that return to LEO. If we do that, we will never need to spend money trying to build airplane-spacecraft hybrids.
2) Let's use big expendable boosters to get hardware to LEO, and smaller expendable boosters to get people to LEO. Put the people in modern versions of the Apollo or Gemini craft (the so-called "Big" Gemini was an appropos solution)>
And, let's also decide that the main reason to build a space station in LEO is to serve as a construction yard and a gas station for trips elsewhere. Let's put aside the quaint notion that the reason we need to be in space is to "do science".
What's really the root of the problem is that no one has provided any political leadership for the American spce program for 30 years -- since Nixon took office, in other words.
If Nixon had provided the right kind of leadership -- pointing to a destination and declaring "Go There!" -- we would have built a spacecraft and the supporting infrastructure to get the job done.
Instead, the nation's political leadership turned to the NASA bureaucracy and asked "Well, what next?" NASA, unsurprisingly, asked for a lot, didn't get it, and consequently saddled itself with the sorry combination of a lame spacecraft design and nowhere for that craft to go except low-Earth orbit.
It was, however, a guarantee that NASA's budget wouldn't flatline.
Folks, the problem of getting people into and out of LEO was solved satisfactorily in the 1960's. So was the problem of getting tons of hardware to LEO. We did not -- and do not -- need the Shuttle to get either people or hardware to orbit safely, reliably, and cheaply.
The fact that the U.S., 40 years later, can't get people or hardware to LEO is a testament to the failure of both NASA and every president after Kennedy to have a clue about where to go next.
Think what we might have accomplished if we'd never built the Shuttle, but, instead, put the money into building more Saturns and more Apollos, more Titans and more Geminis, and expanded SkyLab rather than scuttling it.
Well, yeah, I read the piece. Seemed to me that he was more interested in thumping his chest at Dell than behaving like an adult.
/. than go to court to make the point.
Of course it is ridiculous to try to force users to agree to something that isn't there. But a lot of people would rather whine about it on
This seems like a silly and futile argument to have with your boss.Let's remember which way the money is flowing here. Geez, it's not like it's her personal web site, right?
More to the point, you don't have to be "elderly" to have vision problems. (In fact, I'd say her boss was engaging in a bit of ageism.) Very few people have both perfect vision as well as the kind of hardware many designers use. If it looks great on your 21-inch Apple flatscreen, why not try looking at it using a cheap 15-inch monitor and an e-machine?
Agree. People like to beat on this EULA business because it is a chance to take a cheap shot at some Big Evil Corporation that we're all supposed to loathe.
A bit of thought should indicate that any agreement or license that says, in effect, read and agree to my terms before using this product but can't be read without making use of the product is going to be difficult to enforce.
What'd he expect the Dell license to say that was different from all the other licenses in the industry? If you wanna be that anal about it, call Dell and tell them you are putting the credit card payment on hold until Dell FedEx's you hardcopy of all those licenses.
>> ...I don't feel guilty at all about sucking up their bandwidth by viewing their web pages with the reload button.
Boy, that'll tell 'em!
SCO might be threatening to sue you, but it seems to me they've already got you wasting your time.
Remember, your in the 'service' industry now, not the IT industry. (Do you think that kid selling you a cheeseburger is in the 'culinary' business?) Your real job is to keep your customers from whining at management. The last thing you want is your customers complaining that you've made them unahppy.
Your job is to keep the customers happy and off the backs of management. That's not exactly the same thing as catching up on all those lingering IT issues. In all likelihood, your customers won't notice any of that, but they'll still be ticked off because you haven't responded to their request to fix their own little annoyance.
If a customer's request can't be handled without dealing with a larger IT issue, explain that to your customer. If there's a workaround, use it. If not, move on. If the fix requires more money, let the customer do the asking. After all, if they can't do their job because management won't spend money, it's their problem. If it turns out that they're asking you for something that's not job related, your boss ought to be happy you said 'no'.
Never, ever, tell a customer 'no' and walk away without providing an explanation. It's part of your job to explain things in a way that non-techies can understand, but, even id they don't, you've protected yourslef from being labelled 'arbitrary' and 'rude'.
>> ...academic computing has traditionally been both the source of and the stronghold for innovative software.
Is this true? "A" source, and "a" stronghold" maybem but "the" source and stronghold of innovation? I wonder...
Sure, lots of college geeks have played around with Unix, and written some useful programs. But, Unix itself was developed by a corporation. And, didn't IBM invent the hard drive (the Winchester)? And, what was all that noise about Xerox and interfaces? The mouse, too.
Let's not get carried away about academia's contributions.
I think you're confusing a person's intelligence with what that person knows.
People choose what they learn, but they are born with a level of intelligence that they cannot change. To use your example, somone doesn't run Windows ME in a life support unit because they know that's the wrong option, not because their intelligence level is higher, or lower, than others.
Yes, intelligence influences what people learn. Some things are more difficult to understand than other things. (Otherwise, no one would remember Hawking, Einstein, Newton, etc.)
But, no, choice of an OS isn't an indicator of intelligence. Knowledge, yes, if someone bothers to learn what they want from an OS and what each OS offers.
Remember, too, that each personal computer OS is pretty much the same as the others. They all have to run on the same hardware, display on the same kind of screens, open the same kind of files, etc. At the interface level, there's hardly any real difference between X, the Mac, Windows: The user clicks on something, and something happens.
After you've read about the commission's report, read this piece by former astronaut Walter Cunningham.
In addition to Cunningham's perspective on the failings of NASA managers and personnel ("Former NASA Administrator Dan Goldin's decade of "faster, better, cheaper" in the 1990s was not better -- it was less safe and delivered only on the cheaper part. Focus switched to avoiding individual blame or responsibility, and risk avoidance became part of the management culture, even as operations became more risky.)"you'll learn some things you need to know:
--NASA funding is 20 percent of 1965 levels;
--The shuttle's piece of that budget is down by 25 percent in the last decade;
--Spending on research and personnel at NASA's safety office was cut by almost one-half;
Cunningham says: "You can't continue to make draconian cuts in spending and have acceptable mission safety. What you get, instead, is a shuttle flying into a barrage of foam it was designed to avoid at all costs and not recognizing it as a flight safety problem."
Hah! A sensible post. NASA has cultural, management and budget problems. But the nation has a serious space leadership problem. I.e., there hasn't been any for 3 decades. Without setting a specific national goal, any changes at NASA, and budget increases, will simply be soaked up pointlessly in more Shuttle flights.
>> learned how to use a computer without anybody spoon feeding me instructions, intelligence can make all the difference for learning a specific computer system.
Well, good for you. But you've simply proven you are intelligent enough to figure out how to use a Mac without supplementary study. That, I believe, is Apple's intention. So, you would appear to be an exemplary Apple customer.
I contend that all personal computers should be equally as easy to use.
What you have not proven -- because it can't be proven -- is the notion that choice of an operating system is an indicator of intelligence. This little bit of elitist nonsense appears with regularity around here, usually in posts from Linux fanatics who have invested a portion of their emotional identity in the OS. learned how to use a computer without anybody spoon feeding me instructions, intelligence can make all the difference for learning a specific computer system.
You're both equating intelligence with knowledge of a specific computer system. That's completely bogus and more than a little techno-elitist. It's a bit like arguing that backyard mechanics are more intelligent than Linux geeks because they fix their own cars.
What someone does or does not know is not a sign of intelligence. It is simply a sign of what they know.
One would expect Linux users to be more system savvy than Windows or Mac users because a Linux distribution typically takes some study to configure and to put on the Net.
If/when Linux becomes a significant part of the shrinkwrapped desktop market, the need for self-study to make it usable will diminish (otherwise no one but geeks will use it).
>> ...responsibility of being human and the possibilities of our abilities.
They're synonymous.
>> Pointless spreading to new places has been the very nature of humans since the beginning. It is also the nature of virus. (Can't help it but Matrix hit it right on the nail)
Haven't seen the Matrix films, but your comparison of humans to a spreading virus is both demeaning and morally unacceptable. Humans are the pinnacle of life on this planet, while a virus is one of the simplest, if not the lowest, entity that can be considered "living".
The migration of humans to new lands has not been pointless. The migration has allowed us to grow, expand, and prosper. Would you rather our ancestors engaged infanticide and genocide in order to keep their numbers small enough to survive inside their ancestral home?
Only a belief that a human and a virus are driven by equivalent desires can be behind bankrupt statements such as yours that seek to reduce the nature of the highest form of life on Earth to that of a molecular-sized infestation.
Stop being ashamed to be human. Stop pretending humans are just another animal with a larger brain. Accept the responsibility of being human and the possibilities of our abilities.
Not to travel in space is to deny human nature.
Humans belong in space as much as they do anywhere on this planet. We didn't spring into existence across Earth. We evolved in only one small place and then explored and discovered and conquered our way around the globe. We have the technology to continue that migration off the planet. We will do exactly that, because those voyages are no different than the voyages my ancestors took when they left one continent and sailed for months -- in a different kind of ship -- to another continent to start a new kind of life.
Staying at home until life is perfect is a futile utopian fantasy that only diverts resources away from beneficial pursuits. If anything, history provides ample evidence that it is the new societies created by the explorers and the settlers that provide the impetus for the liberation of the old regimes, not theo ther way around. (That's why I think of the New World as the home of freedom and democracy and populations who challenge authority, and the Old World as the home of monarchies, dictatorships, totalitarianism, established religion, and populations who feel obligated to obey authority.)
Fifty years on, it isn't surprising that several countries have demonstrated the will to build the technology to launch small unmanned satellites into low-Earth orbit.
In other words, that's comparable to building an airplane in 1953. No reason to get excited.
Launching small satellites is for the minor leagues, though. Supporting human space travel -- the real reason to use this technology -- is the mark of a major league player.
In both cases, though, it is lack of will and resolve that prevent us from making more effective use of existing technology.
My initial reaction to this was one of dislike, but it strikes me that this is equivalent to the phone company tracking people who tap into a line, or a cable TV company tracking cable thieves.
Why are we offended when a company includes in a product the means to report its own theft? Aren't there programs that attempt to alert the owner of a laptop when a thief tries to use the machine?
The Internet is a public place. If you don't want anyone to watch what you do on the net, log off.